1. BAM expresses that the original franchise owner (Chrystal) was heavily in debt to BAM ($175,000 ) owed to BAM
2. When Chystal told BAM of her intent to sell, BAM 'repossessed' her store and her inventory to help cover her debt (really, it was the her LLC's debt, but I'm using Chrysal as a shorthand). There is a clause in the franchise agreement that says everything IN the store will be repossessed. Afterwards BAM characterizes Chrystal's actions as 'abandoning' her store
3. BAM valued the repossessed inventory at $38,000 and subtracted that amount from her $175,000 debt.
4. BAM then sold the repossessed inventory to another franchisee who took over the store location (Baker Bricks, LLC).
5. BAM argues that this agreement and rules only provide consignment IFF BAM receives a request in writing and approves the consignment.
6. BAM says they never were informed of the agreement and disallows consignment.
7. BAM says the consignment was a PRIVATE agreement between Chrystal and Mansell.
8. BAM questions the veracity of the agreement as they claim the only version they have is unsigned.
9. BAM completes the sale to Baker Bricks, LLC and claims "Baker did not at any time acquire, take over or assume any obligations of Chrystal or Salem LLC"
Then things go off the rails as Mansell is trying to figure out what happened to his LEGO.
Isn't that bad for BAM?
IF:
1. it's a PRIVATE agreement between Mansell and Chrystal
2. The agreement state Mansell is the owner of the lego until sold
3. Mansell's legos were repossessed by BAM
THEN:
What legal right do they have to 'repossess' and then sell the Lego to Baker?
Chrystal, in one of her posts, made a case that they were in debt to BAM because of misconduct from BAM who were not honoring their side of the franchise agreement.
oh for SURE there is more to what the documents say. This is 100% BAM's cherry-picked side that is leaving some stuff out. They're mostly focused on Ben's actions to justify their complaints
The VERY first mention of Mansell's in person actions are "Bryan showed up later that day and began yelling at personnel..."
really? Bryan Mansell is SO unhinged and deranged that he started the interaction with yelling at personnel?
I think BAM's ultimate claim is that Chrystal either stole Bryan's inventory OR already sold it all before BAM's repossession.
Since BAM claim's the store's inventory at time of repossession was only $38,000 and when Mansell was able to audit Baker's inventory there was none of Mansell's lego in the store.
BUT THEN, in in late 2025 Baker "...located a few (approximately 20)
Star Wars LEGO sets in a back office lockable cupboard, on which they noticed stickers not previously recognized"
BAM also claims the small-claims court victories in the video aren't real.
I will say Reckless Ben did a lot of stuff that does NOT look good in a legal document
BAM is not to be trusted in anything they say that isn't under oath. They've repeatedly made statements which are easily and provably false, and have also made false criminal complaints against Ben in order to harass him, and potentially have him injured or killed.
That said, a lot of this would wash out in discovery where both sides can put forth their evidence, followed by some in-person testimony under oath.
it's a temporary payment that gets returned when certain obligations are met (often at the end of trial when you're either free to go or going to prison). Bail also often comes with conditions like an ankle monitor, drug/alcohol testing, staying within a certain state... etc. Part of the idea is that you want that money back so you'll be on your best behavior and comply.
Tangentially, it's really important to be out on bail while your court case progresses. Access to lawyers, income, friends, support, research, etc is a critical factor in preparing your defense.
Pretty much all the machine learning recommendation engines that emerged in the Netflix era were doomed to collapse under their own weight over time for non-mainstream users because the some limited number of mainstream modes dominate as most statistically "optimal" across the total user pool. These algorithms are best in the early days, when they're still exploring the content space for good novel fits but eventually get trapped into deep, boring grooves that work really well for tons of non-discriminating users with similar tastes.
Separately, in real commercial terms, they're all fundamentally poisoned by business model objectives of highlighting cheap content or servicing partnership/advertising deals, etc. And that problem also becomes more and more prominent as the companies running them grow and become more influential and as they need to squeeze harder and harder for revenue growth.
It was basically just a long, winding, wildly expensive road back to broadcast radio programming.
It was a good run for a while, but we're long due for a new model.
The sad thing is that before Spotify bought the Echo Nest[1], they had hosted some of the coolest discovery demos for non-mainstream (in my case ambient/IDM) where you would feed it a youtube video URL and it would make a really compelling radio playlist based off it. i found so many artists i still listen to today by just sticking a video in there in the morning and coming back to the tab when something incredible popped up.
When Spotify bought TEN i considered moving my listening over, but the radio button we ended up with in Spotify and Youtube Music are huge disappointments in comparison, so corporatist and flattened to 1.5 dimensions, I always wondered how the magic was lost.
Bandcamp's feed (especially once you trick the UI in to showing you how to follow tags) is usually interesting to leave running but limited in its own way by the artist pool lacking mainstream tentpoles to jump off of.
> over time for non-mainstream users because the some limited number of mainstream modes dominate as most statistically "optimal" across the total user pool
This isn’t true, YouTube recommendations when it chooses music are amazing (no idea if YouTube Music is good I mean the video site).
Spotify recs are intentionally recommending you things cheap to stream or that have been paid for. It’s not a raw rec engine and it’s not bad cos it’s collapsing under normies, YouTube is proof of that.
Absolutely, you're hitting the same conclusions I've reached. The algorithms are optimized for the lowest friction users that just replay the same music they like over and over again and accept whatever the popular music is. If you're a user that likes music discovery you're fighting against the system to get what you want.
I don't really go for any of the spotify recommendations or algorithmic playlists, but I have great success with the weekly Release Radar playlist.
AFAIK, the playlist is only generated from artists that you've followed. It will pull in tracks from different artists that feature your followed artists as well, so you get some occasional drift, which I consider a positive.
Similar experience here. Lots of time spent outside until around 14, when I got my first self-built computer. After that more time was spent inside chatting with friends and playing games. It was self-isolation.
Of course around the same time my older brother, and all our friends were doing the same. So it was just natural to spend less time outside or hanging out with friends in person
I wish more news outlets actually stated so - Kyndryl was formerly IBM, has 73.000 employees worldwide. When this news first broke, nobody had ever heard of it so it sounded like some small random hosting company, but it's huge.
I concluded "this is definitely AI" when I looked closely at one panel and what initially looked like a halftone pattern on a person was actually weird mottling that looked like an unpleasant flesh disease.
Wheel of Time is still some of the finest fantasy you will ever read. I'm personally tired of the digs at the last few books that Robert Jordan wrote before passing the baton to Brandon Sanderson.
Wide open Throttle. Aka puttin the pedal to the metal, or twisting the throttle to the max on a bike, or pressing the lever as far is it will go on a jetski/quad.
reply