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Saturday, July 29th, 2023

    Time Event
    1:32p
    Streaming corporation strategy: purging shows

    Movie and TV streaming is fundamentally unjust because of DRM, requirement to identify oneself, and the antisocial contracts where users commit not to share copies with other people. For these reason, I have never used those streaming dis-services.

    Now Disney is trying a secondary injustice — what looks like a kind of tax fraud. It is deleting many old programs, supposedly because they no longer bring in revenue, and claiming a tax writeoff of $1.5 billion for them.

    Those two claims contradict each other, so it looks like we need the IRS to cut down Disney's tax writeoff.

    Republicans, the party of the plutocrats, are trying to cut the IRS funding so it can't do this job.

    It doesn't make economic sense for a company to renounce the profits from selling something that basically costs nothing to sell in order to avoid paying a share of those profits to someone else. The idea that this really a way to punish actors on strike has the virtue of being a rational (though vicious) motive.

    1:32p
    Modeling v. regional weather events

    Climate science has projected the aggregate amounts of heating on a large scale. But it has been unable to project grave regional effects.

    What we know is that the slower we are to stop making things worse, the bigger the disaster will be.

    1:32p
    Plastic phaseout: delivery-packaging

    Amazon pledged to stop using its unrecyclable plastic bags.

    This is a change for the better but it doesn't alter the many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.

    1:32p
    Cases against former president growing

    Additional charges have been added to the insurrectionist's indictment for holding secret documents and concealing them from the government.

    1:32p
    Urgent: End government bailouts for Big Oil

    US citizens: call on Biden to end government bailouts for Big Oil.

    The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.

    If you phone, please spread the word!

    1:32p
    Most extreme ocean heatwave, FL

    *Florida ocean records "unprecedented" temperatures similar to a hot tub.*

    It is too hot for serious swimming. But what is more serious is that the heat puts marine species in danger. They have never experienced such heat, and it can kill them.

    Some will be able to move away from the tropics to find cooler water. But those in the Gulf of Mexico can't get to any — they are trapped.

    1:32p
    North American heatwave

    *More than 170m Americans under heat alerts as heatwave expands.* That is half the population. 3/4 of the population will face unpleasant heat. Here in Boston, one of my friends has to stay in bed when it is hot, because her air conditioner isn't strong enough to deal with this level of heat.

    1:32p
    Mountain Valley pipeline final ruling

    The Supreme Court gave final permission to finish the Mountain Valley pipeline.

    Republicans in Congress and on the court have fought hard to unlock the profits that will flow as that pipeline's gas contributes its fraction to speed destruction of our world.

    1:32p
    UPS strike averted

    UPS negotiated with the drivers' union and they got a substantial wage increase, as well as air conditioning in their trucks, necessary for safety in the beginnings of climate disaster.

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