Haul away, you rolling king

[sovay]

So the first pieces of news that greeted me when I woke up were the death of Jeffrey Epstein and the punishment of Arisia for supporting a strike, neither of which was a great chaser to the realization that yesterday's excruciating headache did not have the decency to buzz off overnight, but I also saw via spatch this wonderful production still of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984):



It is so effectively in character and outside the plot that it looks like fanfic. Have some links.

1. Elie Mystal and Ken White, "Should the North Carolina Gun Store Billboard Targeting 'The Squad' Be Unconstitutional?"

2. Ethan Siegel, "Astronomy Faces a Field-Defining Choice in Choosing the Next Steps for the TMT."

3. Philip Miller, "Biennale." The magazine is dedicated to islands, which I love.

I was supposed to spend the day with my niece, but the current circumstances are looking like spending the evening with her. She wants to watch Ponyo (2008), which I haven't seen in almost a decade. I think I can manage to do that.

Comments

[sara]

*googles things* Hunh. Looks like the directors may be personally liable since it's breach of contract and there aren't any limits on liability in that situation. There are some other categories in which you're limited to $20k, which in the grand scheme of things is relatively minor.

I mean, personally, I carry a million dollar umbrella liability policy because I do a lot of nonprofit work and I don't want to lose my damn house over something like this, so if I were an Arisia director I'd call my lawyer and my insurance company and assume I was going to have to eat it (and have a bear of a time renewing my umbrella next year). But I think I'm relatively unusual in that, and it's 100% an artifact of me having gotten sued over stupid shit during my years in nonprofitland. I hope someone on the board has something like that kind of coverage.

[sara]

As context for those of you reading this and wondering what a million dollars worth of extra liability coverage costs me, the answer is, $12 a month including the extra personal injury coverage I had to tack on to my homeowner's policy...the actual liability is $9/month. This is one of those where it's so cheap to do it and the downside risk is so massive (I am a regular volunteer with an organization with which I regularly put people in my personal car, drive them into wilderness areas, and take them hiking; my potential liability here really doesn't bear thinking about, but I think it's probably smaller than the potential liability of being on the concom for a large event) that even my extremely cheap self just pays the bill.

Mind you, I live a basically dull life, so I'm cheap to insure.

[rosefox]

Hm, I wonder whether I could add that to my renters insurance. Thanks for the info!

[sara]

Yeah, I started doing it because between the nonprofit work and the big dogs (and now the single parenthood and being the sole household income) My Uncle The Lawyer told me I would be very stupid not to.

[rosefox]

That would certainly be a convenient thing for someone on the board to have!

[sara]

I would also hope that the corporation itself is carrying some kind of directors' and officers' liability coverage. Like, this judgment should not be getting paid out of assets or the operating budget. It should be getting paid out of someone's insurance. Unless there's something I don't understand (quite possible, none of my nonprofits have ever fucked it to the tune of 125k), it seems to me like it should be an insurance problem at this point.

[rosefox]

That was my first thought too, but I have no clue what Arisia Inc. does behind the scenes.

[sara]

Nope. I just thought the FB discussion was pretty weird given that my first take would not be that we might need to fundraise, it would be that we were going to need to find a VERY good insurance broker if we didn't want to get the claim paid out and then have to dissolve the corporation because we were subsequently uninsurable.