- "The whole story would be far more humorous were it not from a case in which Perrone represented a woman who claims that she nearly died after being incarcerated and not given proper medical care. Perrone must now refile his complaint in that case—without the cartoon dragon."
That should be more offensive than cartoons. In a just world.
It's not as if the victim had the luxury of many choices of law firms, or any capacity to oversee their work. Their access to legal services is presumably similar to their access to medical care. There's nothing amusing about this outcome. It's seriously depressing that "the coked-up cartoon-dragoon attorney" is the best representation that person, in their helpless situation, was able to navigate to.
> That should be more offensive than cartoons. In a just world.
If the complaint is true, then yes it is offensive and the results will be more serious than being required to refile the complaint without the watermark. The process of determining if the complaint is true or not is the justice system.
Yes. Now probably a couple dozen people are going to collectively spend thousands of hours going over the complaint. The watermark issue is indeed just a sideshow by comparison.
The posts on this HN story demonstrate exactly the point the judge is trying to make. This sort of optics issue looms so large in human brains that it is indeed generating accusations that the court case is not being taken seriously because the court must obviously be spending all of its attention on this visually appealing story, even though in the grand scheme of things it is a tiny fraction of just the effort that will be spent on this case overall. Justice must not just be just, it must be seen to be just, and this sort of behavior is an impossibly attractive nuisance for people. Even those defending the picture are still being sucked into a sideshow.
To a normal person, sure. But the legal system ruins lives and deals in ruined lives every day. They don't blink twice at that stuff. A cartoon dragon on the other hand...
The formality of the process helps them keep their conscious clear. Attacking the formality of the process therefore threatens them.
The watermark is actively distracting from the enormously important work of reading the complaint in detail. This isn't a question of formality for formality's sake, it's a question of ensuring that the processes run smoothly so that justice can be done.
This is really important to understand. Formality isn't an arbitrary concept invented by old fogies, it's a psychological hack we apply to convince people to take things seriously. A lot of people develop weird complexes about it, because there are big gaps between otherwise close subcultures in what should or shouldn't be taken seriously, but I hope nearly everyone can agree that court proceedings are a serious matter.
The world has gone from substance to optics. You see it in every industry or field.
Heh, optics have been important since the dawn of man, and probably even before. Ziggurats are all about optics, and so are mating displays. A cynic might say "more important", but that's hard to ascertain.
people say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but first impressions are everything
"Don't let a shallow first impression affect your deeper judgement, but expect others to let it affect theirs."
And somehow along the way every institution seems to have forgotten the meaning of the phrase "even the appearance of impropriety".
The legal system, for millienia, has always been a hodgepodge of very peculiar and esoteric rules about both substance and optics.
That's why lawyers exist, by the way. Outside of small claims court, laymen aren't equipped to navigate it without stepping on every possible rake imaginable.
That's not a "watermark", keep it to 5% opacity. This is around 13% and very distracting.
There's a color, gray95, that is the recommended black and white color for watermarks in a few books I've read on the topic. Honestly the best way to do it right is to ask the court (politely) what their stated requirements for watermarking are and if you get shrugs, you go for the bare minimum.
> I don't know what the big deal is. Lady Justice also has scales.
This comment had me spitting my coffee. How do they even come up with this.
Wow! I thought the judge was overreacting. But that's one extremely annoying watermark. I would demand the same, no matter what I do for a living.
It might be appropriate if you're a children's cartoonist/artist and you're sending out proofs? But yeah, I get your point and agree.
Is there a term for this (bad) style of writing or linguistic device where you mention the thing ('purple dragon') in the title/first paragraph and then really force a synonym in the second?
> Federal Magistrate Judge Ray Kent of the Western District of Michigan was unamused by a recent complaint (PDF) that prominently featured the aubergine wyrm.
(Emphasis mine.)
You could call it Elegant Variation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegant_variation
These documents should all be processed through a computer to sanitize anything that could be considered unique or specific enough to identify anyone involved with the creation. some kind of linter for court documents.
Also, sometimes we (developers) like to use wacky data for testing purposes. For example, I like to put Batman as a dummy user, and my QA likes to upload cat pictures when testing uploads/images.
We do it so it's obvious it's test data, and also we're lazy to think of more "real" data.
Just say some users expect real(ish) data for testing. I had a client who was totally not happy when he saw Batman and Superman in the test data.
I've seen too many stories of placeholder text ending up in production... so I better make it worthwhile and include some Lovecraft quotes [0] because everyone needs more gibbering, cyclopean, eldritch adjectives in their lives.
Rust had something similar: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/13871
There was a bank that wasn’t happy with “Rich Bastard” being used as dummy data but not being replaced in the mail merge, resulting in a couple thousand of their wealthiest customers getting a mailing with the salutation “Dear Rich Bastard,”
I learned a long time ago to be very careful with mock, dummy, or test data.... because some people will just push anything to prod, take screenshots during your demo and paste it into the official documentation... you name it.
I was giving a demo on how to set up multiple computers in a federated setup using Active Directory, ADFS, etc... I had about 5 VMs named things like Hank, Peggy, Bobby, Boomhauer, Bill, and a test user HHill, 123 Rainy Street, Arlen, TX -- someone screenshotted and took notes during the demo and now that's in some formal training somewhere material. Thankfully, it's all internal.
When I and doing dev work and I need an available port, just any port, I use 666 -- because it's never used by anything and also DOOM. I gave a sprint demo and I used 660 instead of 666 to demo that the customer can specify the port number of screen X. Someone put that in the internal and also customer facing documentation... so now my company's product is default setup on 660, even thought it's completely user-configurable. Thank God I didn't demo with 666...
For example, I like to put Batman as a dummy user
I can't remember the details, but I've heard a story multiple times about a fake-sounding name being used in testing -- I think US military payroll? -- and causing problems when a real person had that name. Can anyone here remember this?
In any case, "batman" is just about plausible enough that it could be real. I tend to use names like "Mr. Testy Testalicious" which (a) contain the string "test", and (b) are so wildly absurd that I'm confident nobody will ever collide with it.
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, famously had issues with IT systems:
Tim: There’re so many places we could start, but in the process of doing homework for this, I found mentioned, and I wanted to do a fact check on this, of you having plane tickets automatically cancelled, and other issues related to your last name. Is that accurate? Did those things actually happen?
Caterina Fake: This has happened to me many times, in fact. And I discovered that it was actually the systems at KLM and Northwest that would throw my ticket out, my last name being “Fake.” And I have missed flights and have spent way too many hours with customer service trying to fix this problem. Here’s another thing too, is that I was unable for the first two years of Facebook to make an account there also. And probably all of my relatives.
People named Null are also having struggles in the modern world:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160325-the-names-that-b...
lol so much data gets converted into strings at some point when passed around. Definitely encountered systems where you have to check for both null and "null"
This seems like a good spot for the link to @patio11's "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names"
So, as a public service, I’m going to list assumptions your systems probably
make about names. All of these assumptions are wrong. Try to make less of
them next time you write a system which touches names.
See, the issue is a lot of people have stupid names.
I usually use Adele Dazeem as in [0]
[0] https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/adele-dazeem-idina-menz...
I used to use Test T. Testerton until coworkers critiqued that "Test T" reminded them of male genitals.
Our first user at one company was Richard Test. He had user ID 1001. Well-meaning people deactivated his account several times over the years because it looked fake to them.
Sorry, Richard. I hope you were more amused than annoyed.
One of the audio checks I've heard over the many conventions I've volunteered for is "Ice Ice Icicles, Cue Cue Cuticles, Test... Test... Testicles" with the final word pronounced like Hercules.
DOGE is going to delete Jon Tester [0] from the list of historical senators
Batman is definitely a real name... https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24911186
Major Major Major from Catch-22?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(surname) - 'Batman is a surname of English origin. It originates from Saint Bartholomew and means "a friend or servant of Bart."'
It lists a few people, like "Daniel Batman (20 March 1981 – 26 June 2012) was an Australian sprinter." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Batman
A few DDG searches finds others with the surname Batman who are not famous enough to be on Wikipedia.
Aside: Batman (John) is also a well known name in Melbourne, au.
He was a kind of founding father. He negotiated a fake treaty to steal the land from the local Kulin nation. He wanted to call it Batmania.
Also responsible for organising hunting parties for bushrangers and multiple massacres and genocide of aboriginal people in NSW, VIC, and TAS.
Total fucking cunt.
I have this one baked into my dummy data:
Ralf Kramden 1060 W. Addision Chicago IL 60613 United States
lol I read something else right there
I'm a big fan of using Emoji for names of test/dummy users. It helps test your application and dev stack's end-to-end Unicode compliance. It is less likely to conflict with real data (so far as I'm aware we haven't yet seen children born named with emoji, though that is likely a matter of time). It is often very visibly test data that stands out. But also and maybe more important, you can have fun with it.
Your client needs to remove the broom stucks in their ass. Your story reminds me of the uptight people angry about the Anubis' catgirl.
I give Abubis a special pass, because they sell a business oriented version without the character. The true cost of using FOSS is you don't have any say in what the developer does.
Au contraire, FOSS allows you to fork and make modifications.
This just confirms OP’s point that "you don't have any say in what the developer does", since the only way to get your modifications in if the developer disagrees is to maintain your own version of the code.
This is also true of paid software, except you have to start from scratch.
A friend of mine uses a scraped list of heavy metal band names for QA testing how well systems deal with weird characters.
He is, himself, a weird character.
When designing, the standard practice is to use Lorem Ipsum - sort of mangled Latin that works like normal text but is very recognisable. This backfired once when I did a website for the Jesuits - the feedback they gave was that the design looks good but they were all baffled by the text and could I do something about it please.
I’d not considered that they might be the only client where everyone was fluent in Latin.
Reminds me of the Catholic friend who once told me that he had done IT support for every Catholic religious order with a presence in the city where he lived, except two.
The Carthusians didn't use computers, and the Jesuits didn't need his help.
I used to put a diagonal light gray huge "DRAFT" across pages of certain documents for which it was important that a working draft not be interpreted as final.
What would've been a great use for the lawyer's dragon documents would be to clearly mark incomplete/unapproved drafts, for internal review only.
Because, obviously, there was no way that you would accidentally submit a filing to the court with a huge purple cartoon dragon on every page.
Depending on the lawyer's personality, a big purple dragon might also double as lighthearted stress relief, when billing 12+ hours a day, of high-stakes work.
What about a header/footer saying "DRAFT" (ideally with the date and other things that would perhaps not fit on a watermark)?
Text watermarks can be a PITA when they cover the page and the PDF reader prioritizes them for text selection rather than the top layer text.
Courts have all sorts of detailed requirements for briefs. They specify font, size, spacing, etc. It is crazy that a lawyer thought that this would pass muster.
> that plaintiff shall not file any other documents with the cartoon dragon or other inappropriate content
Formal answers to goofiness (voluntary or not) will always amuse me.
Any image in this position would be distracting.
However, I have never understood notions like this: “it is juvenile and impertinent. The Court is not a cartoon”
Is like my great grandpa scolding us at the dinner table for laughing and talking.
> Is like my great grandpa scolding us at the dinner table for laughing and talking
It's more like a non-familial, formal dinner setting. Think about a job interview where the CEO and interviewer take you and another interviewee to dinner in a fancy restaurant. You turn up in jeans and sneakers with your buddy and you laugh and crack jokes together, the other interviewee turns up in smart clothes and talks soberly. In a few cases (and perhaps only seen in Holywood movies about the American Dream) the CEO may love the irreverence and impertinence and see it as a strength and sign of strong individuality, in almost all cases the bosses will not appreciate it and you will not get a job. Great grandpa loves you, the boss at your place of work doesn't.
Surely you are aware that a lot of the people on this site interview in their jeans
If the CEO invites you to dinner at a high end restaurant hopefully you change into something a bit nicer.
He's in jeans too
Y'all are wearing pants??
Blazer and jeans, of course.
I'm sorry to disappoint
While the metaphor they chose may conflict with your personal experiences, you should still be able to do a good-faith reading of it and realize the underlying point.
But nah, probably better to nitpick over the details.
Would it make more sense if it was a funeral instead? A wedding?
No reason for disappointment, but you likely won't be invited back.
Um, this is highly region dependent. If it were a hot day, I would be comfortable interviewing with a CEO in nice shorts and a clean t-shirt, and fully expect that they'd dress similarly.
I would say that job interview in the fancy restaurant is the first "unprofessional" step in this chain. The place to conduct serious interviews is called the office.
At my company when we bring you onsite for an interview takes you to lunch. The person who takes you to lunch is not allowed to talk to the people making the hiring decisions. You can thus talk about whatever you want. It is a relaxing situation where you can safely press about what work is like. If you talk about something that in an interview is illegal (likely family) it doesn't matter because that person doesn't have a say on if you are hired.
(I encourage anyone who does interviewing to have a similar policy - if someone flys in to talk to you that means you are buying them meals anyway. Ensuring there is time to talk about things that might or might not matter is important)
For engineers we wouldn't go to a fancy restaurant. However I'd expect executives probably would.
For higher tier jobs, the setting can be wherever looks good. I've met and been hired by CTOs at a local coffee shop and an Indian buffet. Nothing about a meeting room in an office is more conducive to an interview than a shaded patio with a nice chai.
Courts deal with serious life-changing issues and everyone involved in a court case is expected behave seriously. In fact, that is literally the primary role of the judge. And why judges are famously strict on procedure, demeanor, and the overall decorum of the courtroom. This is the only thing that prevents your average court case from turning into an episode of Jerry Springer.
In all honesty, would you hire this dude as YOUR lawyer?
If he laughed and talked in court over the judge, he would also be scolded.
The court is not a homely dinner between citizens, it's the pinnacle of state power and a place where people are judged by it. Even if the court would always be just and fair it would still be a place of tragedy and suffering for many of the participants.
It’s just as terrible as a lawyer submitting a document written in a totally inappropriate register, like street slang littered with vulgar phrases. There’s a time and a place for cartoon dragons. A court of law is neither. If you don’t understand why, maybe it’s time for you to learn a thing or two about human communication.
A judge has the power to (effectively or actually) end someone's life. I am very glad this responsibility is taken seriously. As an adult I'm sick of memes and childish "stickers" etc everywhere as it is. It certainly doesn't belong in a court.
One day, someone will discover a use for across-the-page watermarks that is not better handled by marginalia and makes up for the loss in readability, copyability and compatibility with graphics.
Until then, we'll be seeing this...
Gamers may be the most oppressed group of people… but I think furries are a close second.
The whole point of a judicial process is to make judgments on the merit of a case not personal prejudice.
What if someone comes to court wearing tattoos are they more guilty?
I want to make two observations here.
First, the order being reported is made against the lawyer, not against the lawyer's client - And it is in order not to do this in future. So, while your observation is good I think the conclusion you draw from it doesn't follow.
Secondly, one aspect of your good point is that arguments are filed in a very plain format. The point being that the format does not detract from the message. In this case, the format heavily detracts from the message. Have you seen the PDF? It's absolutely nuts. I hope he doesn't turn up to court wearing a dragon mask.
> First, the order being reported is made against the lawyer, not against the lawyer's client…
I suspect the client will be billed for the revisions, though.
> What if someone comes to court wearing tattoos are they more guilty?
That question is for the jury to decide for better and worse. There are lots of good points to a jury trial which is why free societies usually (always?) have them in some form. However one downside is you will once in a while get someone on the jury who judges you not on the facts of the case but on things that shouldn't matter.
Overall it is still better than the alternatives in my opinion, but it does mean you need to figure out what your local cultures are and avoid offending them (note cultures is plural - figure out them all).
I don't see how the order is making anyone more or less guilty.
Judicial process historically has a certain seriousness flair and a code of conduct based on it. Making fun of the judge or the court of law is a quick way go get removed from the process or fined, or even jailed. As well as performing marketing stunts like this.
All courts have local rules or even standing orders governing filings and pleadings - from case styling formatting, font/size, spacing, max pages, ect… Federal district courts are not places to flaunt rules of the court or court orders.
Beyond that lawyers are governed by state bars and rules of professional conduct — as an example the Florida bar has taken action against an attorney that used to advertise himself as a “pitbull.”
Regarding tattoos courts have rules of decorum, which generally cover appropriate dress/attire in the courtroom. As far as tattoos, I’ve been to thousands of hearings and can give a single anecdote. It was a drug possession case and the defendant was allowed to transfer their case from circuit felony to drug court - basically allowing completion of drug classes while on kind of pretrial probation in exchange for either a nolle pros (dismissal) or withhold of adjudication. The drug court judge gave the defendant a hard time at this initial hearing over having a drug molecule tattooed on their neck - questioning if drug court was a good fit for someone the seemingly was pretty committed to drugs (based on the neck tat). The drug court judge can see a hundred or more defendants a day, they’ve seen it all and aren’t passing judgement, its just that their experience allows them to read people extremely well and they had legitimate concerns because getting in trouble in drug court can result in automatic conviction of the original charge + having to deal with any new charge.
A rule of thumb professionalism and decorum go a long way in court - this attorney could be decent, but as a potential client any lawyer using a gimmicky dragon in a suit in their paperwork should probably raise some red flags for you.
Lawyers are held to different standards of professional conduct than defendants. This also makes it much harder to read.
I see what you are saying about there being different standards.
I would follow up with, if the shoe was on the other foot, do you believe that a lawyer with tattoos and or purple hair should be allowed to practice?
We may never agree? But I think that we should be more tolerant of individuality than prejudice.
I change my mind. A tattoo is individuality, a purple dragon on a client document is not an appropriate place to express that.
I disagree with the way the bar associations are currently constructed as state-sanctioned monopolies. Since they're technically the ones who determine who is "allowed to practice", that's a hard question to answer.
I'd be comfortable establishing a stronger dress code for courtrooms - wear business casual or some such - but dyed hair and tattoos aren't easily fixable mistakes if you get called to court, so they have to be permitted for at least the defendant. For attorneys, it's probably fine to say that those with purple hair and tattoos can practice but not appear in a courtroom to represent a client. They can prep and file a patent but not represent you in a trial. That is, of course, if most people would hire an attorney with purple hair and tattoos. I would not do that unless I wanted to somehow get the death penalty for a speeding ticket.
I don't like the idea that one should be excluded from doing a type of work because of something arbitrary like hair color or skin markings.
Except those are choices they made knowing full well the consequences. Here's what people miss: the fact that it's a social norm is reason to care, not reason to ignore it.
If you were a brilliant lawyer strongly committed to your craft, you would not get tattoos or dye your hair purple. The reason is simple: too many people would see it and think less of you. As such, it makes you less able to effectively defend your clients. When your job involves appealing to society on behalf of someone, you do not make a middle finger to that same society an immutable part of your appearance unless you are very thoughtless, also not a characteristic I want in a attorney.
There's also the fact that law, more than most disciplines, is premised on adherence to old, old forms of tradition and ritual. In britain they still wear powdered wigs, for goodness' sake. The law still uses Latin terms though it's decades to centuries since educated men learned it in school. Our legal tradition in America is old, with Common Law in some ways tracing back to William the Conqueror. The other major legal tradition on which I've read, Justinian's Codex and its evolution into the Napoleonic Code, dates back to the 500s AD. Discarding old customs, even if you think them outmoded, trampling social niceties because you find them outmoded, is a really bad sign for a capable attorney.
If you were facing the death penalty would you pick a lawyer with purple hair and face tattoos to defend you?
I would if they were the best lawyer available? Their personal appearance is going to be pretty far down my list of concerns. See also Taleb’s Surgeon Paradox: https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like-surg...
The point is this might work for a surgeon but does not for an attorney. There are enough jurors who would be strongly biased against anyone arguing before them with purple hair and tattoos that it's exceedingly unlikely anyone with such an appearance ever could rise to the top of his field.
This would also be true in e.g. M&A. Even if Cravath's fieriest new partner looked like that I'd hesitate to hire him. Patent law might be an exception, but if I needed to actually go to court, WilmerHale's top guy would still be a liability. Even in a bench trial the judge could see it as disrespectful or look down on my representation because of it. You see my meaning here?
On the table, the surgeon's appearance has little or nothing to do with his ability; in court, a lawyer's appearance can be crucial.
I wouldn't be opposed to it, but I wouldn't select based such traits.
A friend of mine is a lawyer with numerous tattoos, and it didn't preclude him from successfully representing his clients in court.
He's also a USMC veteran. Stereotypes can be funny like that.
> I would follow up with, if the shoe was on the other foot, do you believe that a lawyer with tattoos and or purple hair should be allowed to practice?
Yes, they should be allowed to practice, because a lawyer’s tattoos and purple hair do not have anything to do with court documents and readability of those. Exceptions obviously apply, as not all tattoos are created equal, and having a visible gang-affiliation tattoo or a tattoo saying “cop killer” (which actually happened, but to a defendant) might be problematic as a lawyer.
Here is an analogy that might help: my employer might not care if someone communicates in offtopic employee chats using gifs and emojis, but I can easily see an employee getting fired for doing the same thing either to an external customer or in cross-org sev 0 incident threads.
You're comparing a person's appearance to the formatting of a legal document. Nobody is talking about the physical appearance of the attorney.
There is procedure and standards in document filing for a reason, this is more difficult to read than a white background.
> The whole point of a judicial process is to make judgments on the merit of a case not personal prejudice.
And specifying the style of something that they are able to change easily helps that.
In fact, in many societies, tattoos are considered a sign of low status, affiliation with lower class (which tends to get harsher sentences) and/or criminal activity, and may - consciously or subconsciously - lead to worse outcomes in trials.[1]
Just tattoo 'cop killer' on your forehead and see if they give you parole.
[1] https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/f/305...
> What if someone comes to court wearing tattoos are they more guilty?
Unfortunately, it's true - that's how it will be seen. :(
And as the court pointed out, it's hard to judge the merit of the case when you're distracted by a huge purple dragon when reading the legal document.
It's the same reason why you can't send documents written in yellow font on a blue background - technically not against the rules, but no judge will suffer through reading it.
>>What if someone comes to court wearing tattoos are they more guilty?
Obviously you can just choose not to watermark the document, tattoos cannot be removed that easily. And yes, there are various situations where you'd be asked to cover your tattoo if it was inappropriate for the situation too.
Question - is watermarking legal filings even common? How about the law firm logos in the footer?
No; this filing is very unusual. Typical practice is for legal filings to be submitted in a standardized and very plain format.
I think it's a mistake to have rules about filings. Maybe it's distracting, but if the filing has been done, there should be no reason for the court not to read it and make a decision based on the text.
Procedure or order can't be more important than deciding cases.
If you allow one person to get away with this, others may see it as an invitation to do worse. Filings are often a matter of immutable public record and it makes sense that there should be rules as to what goes into them.
What is the act of deciding cases if not a carefully constructed procedure meant to keep order? What is the harm of telling a lawyer to try again, this time following the rules?
You hear the case, however it's presented, and then you decide.
In Swedish courts the court evaluates evidence as it likes. If the judges and sort-of-half-judge-half-jury-Nämdemän agree that something can be concluded, then they're allowed to conclude that.
Obviously procedure is useful, but hearing the complaint is more important.
It's not about procedure for procedure's sake. It's about establishing a precedent that unnecessary content should be left out, so that complaints are always conveyed and heard sincerely.
Nah this is not the place to let folks get cutesy. If anything the standards should be strict and uniform.
Yes, the dragon is terrible and it's very inappropriate, but someone can't behave sensibly may still be someone whose case the courts must hear.
They’re more than willing to hear the case. It’s the lawyer, not the complainant, who the court is chastising.
If anything, it scans like the court is concerned, like you are, that this vulnerable person’s case isn’t being presented with the seriousness it deserves.
But it's simple enough to regenerate it without the watermark. Also, if it's actively annoying the judge, it's in the lawyer and client's best interest to fix it once and give the judge time to clear his head instead of repeating the issue.
From the PDF linked in TFA:
> Respectfully submitted,
DRAGON LAWYERS PC
I get why furries are called that — they’re into human-animal caricatures with fur.
What do you call someone who likes dragons? Scalies?
yep that is what they are calling themselves
TIL and I didn't want to, sigh, Internet.
Unintentionally discovering a thing you know you're going to hate has got to be top 10 internet experiences.
Hate's a strong word for this interaction.
They're not InDrag? :-D sorry, this is a silly subject
People who are into dragons are furries, it's not a literal term. Their furry subgroup is usually called scalies, which besides dragons and snakes include people who are into things like salamanders and other amphibians.
I'm under the impression that such taxonomies are less important to these in-groups than whether you're just into the aesthetic or get off on it sexually as well.
Disney movies and 80s cartoons with talking animals really created a whole new subculture.
It certainly didn't start with 80s cartoons - anthropomorphized depictions of animals feature among the oldest written works. Aesop's Fables are 2500 years old, and the geographic dispersal of similar stories indicates that they originate even further back than that.
Fun fact: there are also "therians", which are people who truly believe they are part/all animal.
It actually distracts from reading. It feels as if the person producing these papers hasn't even tried reading them themselves, it's painful for the eyes. And what is this watermark even supposed to protect from?
Printing and photocopying? Because this could get really unreadable really quick.
At least it wasn't a bad dragon.
Well the judge thought it was a bad dragon!
I find it disturbing that a judge has blocked the legal system because they don't like a lawyer's logo.
They didn't, though. No one has lost access to the legal system. They just said they had to resubmit without the watermark on every page.
My dad said something a few years ago - we’re all more interested in being ‘funny’ and ‘edgy’ than acting like adults and getting on with each other. The world has gotten very embarrassing.
Did he ever specify what he meant by ‘acting like adults’? I can imagine a number of changes in attitude one might associate with growing up, and I find a good part of them regrettable at best.
Oh no! How dare someone have some fun
Courtrooms are not a place designed for "fun". If you're in serious legal trouble you better hope your lawyer isn't there to have "fun" and make it difficult for the judge to read about your case.
If watermarks are thing, and the judge just doesn’t like this one because he finds it disrespectful, that sounds like a first amendment issue.
Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGOofzZOyl8
Why?
Read the article and find out
The lawyer is an idiot and has bad taste. Saved you a click and cookie banner BS.
Why not?
Does purchased for $20 online imply the dragon is an NFT?
I bet the lawyer could flip it now if yes.
No? The concept of purchasing images online has existed long before NFTs
The hosting company iFastNet uses a green and yellow dragon, which is what came to mind when I read the title, despite it being nearly 2 decades since I had anything to do with them, so I think this is definitely a marketing stunt of some sort.