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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37132 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Critics of the McDonalds judgment usually point to the fact that the lady spilled the coffee on herself. Which I understand, it’s like suing Black and Decker for someone bonking themselves on the head with a hammer. People who agree with the McDonalds judgment point to the fact that the coffee served at McDonalds back then was extremely hot: McD’s used to keep their coffee a few degrees short of boiling at time of service. This is far too hot to drink for an extended period of time. In fact if you tried to drink it at the time of service you would probably injure yourself. People generally expect hot coffee to be hot, and that you should be careful with it. But I don’t think they expect it to be so hot that it literally melts your genitals off your body (which is what happened in the case), and that you should exercise the same extreme caution you would use for handling molten iron slag at an industrial plant.

But I don’t think they expect it to be so hot that it literally melts your genitals off your body

But they should. That's what boiling water does, any adult should know how to handle boiling water, and you should expect any hot beverage you ordered to be just a few degrees short of boiling.

...We just had a thread where a lot of people seemed flatly dismissive that a pot of boiling water could be a seriously threatening weapon. Inspired by this comment, I did a quick google search and confirmed that boiling water attacks are routinely charged under "attempted murder" without controversy.

I think "is boiling water dangerous" is a pretty good example of an opinion that is observably functionally meaningless, due to specific emotional valiances swamping all factual considerations.

I think this is that thread :) The McDonald's case got brought up as a comparison, and because someone was wondering how opinions on it correlate to this shooting.

I'm camp "hot water is definitely dangerous, but that does not mean the cops acted correctly". I refuse to go beyond that, as it would require watching the videos, and as others, I have a firm policy of not watching snuff films.

Iron melts at 2800 degrees Fahrenheit. The McDonalds coffee temperature was somewhere between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit. They were not the same.

I think that's an unnecessary nitpick, and we should encourage colorful metaphors because they're fun to read.

It misrepresents the central point of the case. McDonalds coffee was hot coffee, not some sort of ultra-dangerous killer liquid. If you've ever made instant coffee or tea you've made a hotter beverage.

Here's a NSFW reddit thread with a picture of her burns, which is way worse than the experience most people get when they spill coffee on themselves. I daresay something that would cause those injuries could be reasonably described as "ultra-dangerous".

One of the answers to this Quora question has a picture of someone's arm after they touched molten metal, and to non-medical me it seems similar enough to the lady's injuries. Yes, less time in contact with skin between her coffee and his slag, but I just don't think the distinction is enough to be worth arguing over.

And, again, I like a good metaphor.

Here's a NSFW reddit thread with a picture of her burns, which is way worse than the experience most people get when they spill coffee on themselves. I daresay something that would cause those injuries could be reasonably described as "ultra-dangerous".

It wasn't any sort of extreme temperature which made the burns bad. It was pouring the very hot water on a sensitive area of an elderly woman's body, then literally sitting in it with clothing that apparently made it worse. At this point the apologists then invoke the eggshell skull rule, but that's wrong; the eggshell skull rule is about damages, not liability.

Here's a NSFW reddit thread with a picture of her burns, which is way worse than the experience most people get when they spill coffee on themselves

Yes, but that is not because McDonald's made some magical McEvil Coffee that was 400° hot without it being immediately obvious by looking at the cup from a distance.

Someone in this thread tried making the argument that the cops shouldn't be affaid of having boiling water thrown at them, because they were clothed. Someone else pointed out that this makes things worse. This is what happened here. If she prepared coffee at home, spilled it herself while wearing the same clothes, the effect would be just as bad, or worse.

Huh, alright, Claude agrees with you about the home brewing:

Q. What is the temperature range for coffee in a carafe of a home drip coffee brewer? In *Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants, *Stella Liebeck's attorneys argued that, at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C), McDonald's coffee was abnormally hot, but I have trouble assessing that claim without knowing how hot other coffee is.

A. To assess the claim made in the Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants case, it's helpful to compare the temperature of McDonald's coffee to typical home-brewed coffee. Let's look at the temperature range for coffee in a carafe of a home drip coffee brewer:

  1. Brewing temperature: Most home drip coffee makers brew coffee at temperatures between 195°F to 205°F (90.5°C to 96°C). This is the ideal range for extracting the best flavors from coffee grounds.
  2. Initial serving temperature: Immediately after brewing, the coffee in the carafe is typically around 180°F to 185°F (82°C to 85°C).
  3. Holding temperature: Many home coffee makers with warming plates maintain coffee at temperatures between 150°F to 170°F (65.5°C to 76.7°C) after brewing.

Comparing these temperatures to the 180–190°F (82–88°C) range cited in the Liebeck case:

The McDonald's coffee temperature falls within the range of freshly brewed coffee from a home machine. However, it's higher than the typical holding temperature of home-brewed coffee after it has been sitting on a warming plate.

I wish you The_Nybbler had focused on that instead of the slag part. Because, and I am wondering if you're not people aren't hearing me here because you haven't nobody has replied to this point, I liked the metaphor and hope we continue to have colorful writing here.

Edit: I just realized you're not The_Nybbler. Correcting last paragraph in italics, original text crossed out.

I thought I was attacking the point of the metaphor by being equally colorful...

...Does... Does this mean colorful writing can get in the way of productive conversation...? (No, it is the children who are wrong!)

Oh, no, I enjoyed your colorfulness. I'm still hung up on this comment because I think focusing on the molten iron slag metaphor pedantic. Colorful writing can get in the way of productive conversation, sure, but I feel like we here can handle it better than in many other forums because of the userbase and the rules. I learned something today, and that's awesome, because I had believed that McDonald's coffee was abnormally hot when it actually wasn't. I came into the thread with that old understanding, and I enjoyed ABigGuy4U's response because it colorfully confirmed my priors. If the counter to that post stopped at the differences between iron and coffee, I would have learned that comparing coffee to iron is wrong in some contexts, the end.

Instead, there was a discussion, and I took the time to ask an LLM, and it turns out that was wrong. Rereading, I also notice that this may have been implied earlier in the thread but without enough details for me to learn from it: I didn't know what side the fact sheet from the American Trial Lawyers Association took. I don't think the criticism should be on the colorful writing, because even if ABigGuy4U's point was made without metaphor it still would have been the same root error of believing McDonald's coffee was dangerously hot compared to other coffees.

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