Pluralistic: 29 Sep 2022 Porn on Tumblr is a complicated subject


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Pluralistic: 28 Sep 2022 Maintaining monopolies with the cloud


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Pluralistic: 27 Sep 2022 Federalist Society v Corporate Personhood


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25 Sep 2022 McKinsey and Providence colluded to force poor patients into destitution


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Oil is Bankrupt (If We Want It)

Albertaā€™s Oil Companies Are the WalkingĀ Dead.

This figure shows how Albertaā€™s let-the-future-pay-for-cleanup funding model is playing out. The red curve shows the growth of cleanup liabilities, which accumulate as new wells are drilled and not cleaned up. The blue curve shows the assets that will pay for this cleanupā€Šā€”ā€Šthe industryā€™s future income (assuming various prices of oil and gas).

Albertā€™s oil-patch is a zombie, the walking dead. The companies that extract oil there owe more money than they can pay, more than they can borrow, more than they can earn. If they were made to pay their lawful debts, they would all go bankrupt, and, in so doing, would end the extraction of one of the dirtiest, worst sources of oil in the world.

Now, thereā€™s an argument that all the oil companies are busted, Alberta or no. If they were made to pay for the damage theyā€™ve done to our world, the millions their deadly products have killed and the billions they threaten, they would all be cleaned out.

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Pluralistic: 24 Sep 2022 Billionare grifters hate her


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Pluralistic: 22 Sep 2022 Twitch's Chokepoint Capitalism


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Pluralistic: 20 Sep 2022 Book-banning wingnuts are a tiny, vocal minority


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Pluralistic: 19 Sep 2022 How to ditch Facebook without ditching your friends


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Doing the Work

How to Write When YouĀ Suck

A giant typewriter sculpture at Burning Man, with several people admiring and climbing on it.

Iā€™m out on tour again, my first in-person book tour since 2019. I had four books come out during lockdown and ā€œtouredā€ them over Zoom, which was as good as many talented and dedicated publishing PR people, booksellers, and co-presenters could make it.

Now, after three years, Iā€™m out on tour again. Itā€™s an odd kind of tour, because itā€™s a different kind of book. Chokepoint Capitalism isnā€™t a novel from a Big Five publisher, itā€™s a nonfiction critique of monopolies and cartels. That includes the Big Five, which is why we went with an indie, the storied Beacon Press, praised by the likes of Albert Einstein and Howard Zinn for a publishing program that promotes progressive values.

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