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And there are plenty of Democrats who continue to throw in with the rotten, corrupt crypto industry, which flushed billions into the 2024 election to bring Trump to office. The result is *absolutely* going to be more massive bubbles and life-destroying implosions. Fuck those guys. They were warned, and they did it anyway.
Speaking of the climate emergency: greetings from smoky Los Angeles! My city's on fire.
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Content warning Long thread/28
This was *not* an unforeseeable disaster. Malibu is the most on-fire place in the world:
https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/
Since 1919, the region has been managed on the basis of "total fire suppression." This policy continued long after science showed that this creates "fire debt" in the form of accumulated fuel. The longer you go between fires, the hotter and more destructive those fires become, and the relationship is nonlinear.
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Content warning Long thread/29
A 50-year fire isn't 250% more intense than a 20-year fire: it's *50000%* worse.
Despite this, California's invested peanuts in controlled burns, which has created biennial *uncontrolled* burns - wildfires that cost thousands of times more than any controlled burn.
Speaking of underinvestment: PG&E has spent decades extracting dividends for its investors and bonuses for its execs, while engaging in near-total neglect of maintenance of its high-voltage transmission lines.
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Content warning Long thread/30
Even with normal winds, these lines routinely fall down and start blazes.
But we don't have normal winds. The climate emergency has been steadily worsening for decades. LA is just the latest place to be on fire, or under water, or under ice, or baking in wet bulb temperatures. Last week in southern California, we were warned to expect gusts of *120mph*.
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Content warning Long thread/31
They were warned. #ExxonKnew: in the early 1970s, Exxon's own scientists warned them that fossil fuel consumption would kick off climate change so drastic that it would endanger human civilzation. Exxon responded by burying the reports and investing in climate deniel:
They were warned! Warned about fire debt. Warned about transmission lines. Warned about climate change.
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Content warning Long thread/32
And specific, named people, who *individually* had the power to heed these warnings and stave off disaster, ignored the warnings. They didn't make honest mistakes, either: they ignored the warnings because doing so made them extraordinarily, disgustingly rich. They used this money to create dynastic fortunes, and have created entire lineages of ultra-wealthy princelings in $900,000 watches who owe it all to our suffering and impending dooml
Fuck those guys. Fuck 'em all.
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Content warning Long thread/33
We've had so many missed opportunities, chances to make good policy or at least not make bad policy. The enshitternet didn't happen on its own. It was the foreseeable result of choices - again, choices made by named individuals who became very wealthy by ignoring the warnings all around them.
Let's go back to Bill Clinton, because more than anyone else, Clinton presided over some *terrible* technology regulations.
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Content warning Long thread/34
In 1998, Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a bill championed by Barney Frank (fuck that guy, too). Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's a felony, punishable by a five year prison sentence, and a $500,000 fine, to tamper with a "digital lock."
That means that if HP uses a digital lock to prevent you from using third-party ink, it's a literal crime to bypass that lock.
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Content warning Long thread/35
Which is why HP ink now costs $10,000/gallon, and why you print your shopping lists with colored water that costs more, ounce for ounce, than the sperm of a Kentucky Derby winner:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches
Clinton was warned that DMCA 1201 would soon metastasize into every kind of device.
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Content warning Long thread/36
Not just the games consoles and DVD players where it was then used, but medical implants, tractors, cars, appliances - anything you could put a chip into (Jay Freeman calls this "felony contempt of business-model"):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon
He ignored those warnings and signed the DMCA anyway (fuck that guy). Then, under GWB (fuck that guy), the US Trade Rep went all around the world demanding that America's trading partners adopt versions of this law (fuck that guy)
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Content warning Long thread/37
In 2001, the European Parliament capitulated, enacting the EU Copyright Directive, whose Article 6 is a copy-paste of DMCA 1201 (fuck all those people).
Fast forward 20 years, and boy is there a lot of shit with microchips that can be boobytrapped with rent-extracting logic bombs that are illegal to research, describe, or disable.
Like choo-choo trains.
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