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You neglected to mention: - It was company policy to keep coffee excessively hot (180-190 degrees Fahrenheit, vs 140 or so for coffee brewed at home). This was to make customers drink it more slowly and request fewer refills

- Other customers had suffered similar burns, and McDonald's knew about it and did not change the policy

McDonald's, then, was willfully and inevitably causing injury to random customers in order to save themselves a few cents in coffee.

In light of those facts, I think a $2M verdict was too low, and the executives who decided to continue keeping the coffee that hot should have been criminally charged with reckless endangerment.


> 180-190 degrees Fahrenheit, vs 140 or so for coffee brewed at home

Did you just make up that 140 number? To add to the other sibling comment, SCA (https://sca.coffee/) requires that water contacts the grounds at a temp of 195-205 F and that the coffee be at a temp of 175-185 up to 30 mins after brewing in order to certify home brewers:

> The SCA ensures that the brewer's carafe is appropriately sized for its designated machine and can maintain the coffee's warmth. Specifically, the brew must stay within the range of 176 °-185°F (80°-85°C) for at least 30 minutes post-brew. While retaining this warmth, the machine must never actively reheat the brew, ensuring the coffee's nuanced flavors remain intact. (from https://us.moccamaster.com/blogs/blog/certified-by-the-sca-m...)

Then you say

> Other customers had suffered similar burns, and McDonald's knew about it and did not change the policy

Again, lots of people cut their fingers off, accidentally, with knives. I don't think this means knife makers were "willfully and inevitably causing injury to random customers" because their product was too sharp.


> It was company policy to keep coffee excessively hot (180-190 degrees Fahrenheit, vs 140 or so for coffee brewed at home).

The "official" recommendation for keeping coffee that I've seen, eg here[1], has always been around 80-85C, which translates to 176-185F.

Good home brewers, like this[2], will hold the coffee at that temperature.

[1]: https://kaffe.no/7-bud-for-god-kaffe/

[2]: https://no.moccamaster.com/products/optio


> Not very smart itself. How sad to reduce the whole thing to ignorant stereotypes

It's hard to call it an ignorant stereotype when it is the explicit policy of some police departments not to hire smart people. And to go to court to defend that policy.

https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...


> some police departments

There is one story about one police department. Does the sheriff's department in the OP do that? Does it apply to these particular people? If you don't know, it's ignorant and it's a stereotype.


There are easily hundreds of compounds that can reduce beta-amyloid in vitro. This is a decade-old nothingburger.


I don't think that's obvious at all. I think there are obviously a mix of wars where the outcome was inevitable, and where it was decided through a series of one or more battles.

In WWI, for example, if Germany had won the battle of the Marne, they would have captured Paris in 1914 and likely (eventually) have won the war.


Sovereign like Putin.


No, there'll always be a new trick.


That's what the MBA are paid for. New magic tricks.


Do you think their lives would be substantially better if they had been arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison terms?

Alcohol can have a well-documented destructive effect on people's lives. Should it also be made illegal?


I don't know, but I think your comment would be substantially better without false dilemmas and manipulative appeals to emotion.


They were both appealing to emotion, though.


Arguably yes, arguably no.

I don't know either of them and have never noticed comments by either until now, but it seems to me that one is speaking autobiographically, describing how their view changed after personal experience they detailed, while explicitly admitting the ultimate rational insufficiency of such a position, even stating there may be sufficient counterexamples to contradict their experience. If that's an appeal to emotion it's either a highly insidious or a pretty impotent one. It doesn't read either way to me, but in either case I'm content to give them the benefit of the doubt, based on the general tone of their comment.

The other is simultaneously purely argumentative and fallacious in every regard, and lacks any evidence of even a shred of self-awareness, unlike its parent comment. It's shabby argumentative rhetoric lacking any insight or particular substance. There's a much better argument to be made from their viewpoint, but they didn't make anything resembling it.

Their other comment in the thread is similar in tone and form. People expressing concerns about marijuana potency increasing over time were summarily 'refuted' as actually arguing for smoking more material to achieve the same high. It's very r/iamverysmart, and it also checks off another fallacy box.

Like their other comment, there's a worthwhile point to be made there, but that wasn't it. Every useful argument has to acknowledge its own weakness (because every argument has one). One of them did, one of them didn't even attempt to.

I care less about what particular positions people hold and a lot more about how they hold them. I'd rather read high-minded debate between people who've arrived at their opinions after grappling with contradiction, than pithy dismissals of worthwhile comments.

And if one notes that I am guilty of the same, while fair, please consider that the comment to which I originally replied was far from worthwhile.


It's weird that people argue it's better for you to consume extra burned plant material to get to the same level of high-ness. If it's stronger, people just use less.


Problem is that they dont, actually


Continuing the analogy, it does mean that they can blame the alcohol and not, say, rohypnol for their outcomes.


Somehow, the "Everything is Corrupt" folks always end up supporting the most corrupt president in our history.


Maybe you have to say "everything is corrupt" in order to not be morally required to condemn the current administration.

Yes, other administrations were corrupt, going back at least to Andrew Jackson. No, from what I can tell, they weren't this corrupt (with the possible exception of Grant).


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