Pluralistic: Apple fucked us on right to repair (again) (22 Sept 2023)


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Pluralistic: How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California (14 Sept 2023)


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Pluralistic: SoCal Gas spent millions on astroturf ops to fight climate rules (19 August 2023)


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Pluralistic: Why are so many Californians homeless? (12 July 2023)


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Pluralistic: California to smash prison e-profiteers (08 May 2023)


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Pluralistic: Private equity finally delivered Sarah Palin's death panels (26 Apr 2023)


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Pluralistic: 15 Jun 2022


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All (Broadband) Politics Are Local

A Chance for Individuals to Make a Difference.

Farmers and co-op members assisting professional telephone pole installers raise a rural phone pole, with rope and pulleys, 1930s.

“We’re the phone company, we don’t care.” –Lily Tomlin

Even before the lockdown, we all hated our ISPs. Comcast routinely won “worst company in America” polls. AT&T was a trash-fire of endless boondoggles and scandals. Verizon charged you $12/month to rent a modem, and also charged you $12/month to not rent a modem. Everyone hated Frontier for its slow speeds, which were revealed to be the result of the company’s practice of “installing” phone lines by tying them to trees with twine or draping them over shrubs. New York State ordered Charter/Spectrum to leave the state and never come back.

Then the pandemic struck, and terrible internet service became a matter of survival: it was how your kids went to school, how you visited the doctor, how you saw family, how you participated in civics and politics, and, for those of us who were lucky enough to have remote-capable jobs, how you earned your living.

The dismal state of the American telecoms industry, where monopolies divided up the country into non-competing exclusive territories like Pope Alexander VI dividing up the “New World,” suddenly became a lot more important.

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Pluralistic: 28 Jan 2022


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Pluralistic: 15 May 2021


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