> Despite this promising start, the conservation experiment wasn't to last, after a rival juice manufacturer called TicoFruit sued Del Oro, alleging that its competitor had "defiled a national park".
... why does TicoFruit even care? Did they just see their competitor do something that might be good for people and sue them out of spite?
> TicoFrut, which is 98% Costa Rican-owned, charges that the environmental services contract is little more than a permit for improper disposal of its foreign-owned competitor's waste. TicoFrut President Carlos Odio says Del Oro should be compelled to build a proper waste-disposal plant just as his company was forced to do in the mid-1990s amid allegations that orange waste from its juicing plant was polluting a nearby river. So TicoFrut teamed up with a high-profile environmentalist and radio host, Alexander Bonilla, and enlisted the support of two prominent congressmen and a few citrus growers in denouncing the Del Oro project. However, none of Costa Rica's conservation groups joined in the attack on Del Oro.
[...]
> One of the ministers they cited was the acting environment minister at the time, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, who signed the contract on behalf of the government. Rodriguez, an attorney, denied having sat on Del Oro's board but acknowledged representing the company while working in a law firm contracted by the CDC, Del Oro's British owners. The other official, Agriculture Minister Esteban Brenes, acknowledged having sat on Del Oro's board but denied any involvement with the contract.
> TicoFrut also claimed foreign employees of the CDC and, by extension, Del Oro, had received diplomatic immunity as a sweetener to invest, and could thus act with impunity.
> The Costa Rican Ombudsman's Office conducted its own review and declared the contract illegal. In its non-binding ruling, the ombudsman's office said no official studies had been done on the viability of the orange-waste experiment, and that due process had not been followed before the contract's signing
> TicoFrut President Carlos Odio says Del Oro should be compelled to build a proper waste-disposal plant just as his company was forced to do in the mid-1990s amid allegations that orange waste from its juicing plant was polluting a nearby river.
This is the work of a petty man child. This is how it reads to me: "I got caught being a lazy irresponsible cheap-skate who was illegally dumping and had to pay. Meanwhile, these intelligent forward-thinking jerks find an environmentally beneficial way to dispose of their waste for free! I'll show them and take those goody two shoes down a peg!"
I'm also disappointed by the decision, but I get the argument made from the business perspective. I'm required to dispose my waste properly and its reflected in my prices, my competitor is not doing these practices and they should be compelled to follow the same regulations. I'm just disappointed that their court sided with the business since a better resolution would've been "your company can do this too if you just do the legwork".
In a way, they might have been right. Who knows whether or not a continuation of the active experiment would have pushed it over a tipping point where the positive effects were nullified. Maybe part of the "magic" is that they literally left it there to rot.
I mean it makes sense if you were just forced to implement an expensive waste management system and your competitor gets to just dump the stuff on the ground in a National Park. I would complain too.
It doesn't make sense if you were forced to implement waste management because you did it poorly to start with and your competitor found a smart way to do it for cheap.
These are two pages telling two different things, albeit with the same stats. The information is presented by OP in a way to show the results of the Microsoft acquisition.
I think that's a fair criticism for issues where Linux devs might be blind to the friction a lot of Linux distros come with, but I don't think it's universal for all devs and for all features, all the time.
Personally, although I'm not a Linux maintainer, I am a dev and I love doing work that makes UX better for everyone.
Huh. I have the opposite opinion. I'm monolingual English for all intents and purposes but I gathered that opinion from quite a few sources, including:
- We had to take spelling tests in school
- English speakers make (generally light) fun of other's spelling or grammar mistakes in a casual setting
- In a professional setting, a lot of time is taken to proofread our own emails
- There's de jure spellings for every word
- Some online communities are really weird about pointing out grammar and spelling mistakes (namely Reddit)
Language is meant to be a fluid, evolving thing but I always felt like English was treated the opposite way. Maybe that's also why it's the de facto Lingua Franca.
I do think, and hope, that this rigidity will change thanks to AI. I've started to embrace my mistakes. I care a lot less about capitalization and punctuation in my Slack messages, for example.
A bit of a tangent, but I just want to say how, as a Canadian, I'm getting a lot of joy reading about this restaurant. It's a hilarious facsimile of a Canadian restaurant for a couple reasons:
- There's nothing Canadian about a pancake house. We love pancakes but they aren't really ingrained with our identity. Maple syrup on the other hand, is EXTREMELY important to a lot of Canadians. Serving table syrup instead of real maple syrup is an affront. I found a Reddit thread[1] where a user espouses "tons of free syrup" you were given at RCPH. That's NOT a good thing if you ask me!
- In Canada (and I assume other British Commonwealth countries) you aren't legally allowed to have "Royal" in the name of your business without Royal consent from the Governor General of Canada[2]
Just a bit of Canadiana sparked by your comment I thought I'd share. I always get a kick of the small but conspicuous cultural differences between Canada and USA. They give me that Ingluorious Basterds "number 3" moment.
> I suspect that removing half of the bus stops in a city will piss people off and cause even less ridership.
is thrown out but how do we know it's true? That commenter throws it out as their opinion but my opinion is the opposite -- the stated preference will be that people think it's bad but the revealed preference will show even more ridership as travel times improve.
I suspect the evidence here would fall mostly on the side of "it increases ridership", though it's probably hard to study, as it's rarely done in isolation, but more commonly as part of route redesign.
... why does TicoFruit even care? Did they just see their competitor do something that might be good for people and sue them out of spite?
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