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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 7:49:23 GMT -8
R.I.P boiled water. You will be mist.
YouTube and TIkTok Blame Canada
A new law that seeks to give Canadian artists a leg up online has left many influencers and tech giants alike seeing red.
They took out subway ads, they posted TikToks, but in the end, the score was Silicon Valley-0, Ottawa-1.
After many twists and turns, and over two-and-a-half years of review, the Canadian government has passed a new law that makes tech giants like YouTube and TikTok support Canadian cultural content.
The law, dubbed Bill C-11, gives the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) broad authority to regulate these platforms, much like they already do with radio and television.
The government says it is necessary to stop streaming giants from getting a free ride, and to promote local artists.
Although it's still unclear what those final regulations will look like, the law has raised the ire of everyone from TikTokers to esteemed author Margaret Atwood.
YouTube took out ads in Toronto's subway decrying the bill, which they said would take power away from viewers and creators put it in the hands of bureaucrats. Ms Atwood, never shy with her opinion, likened it to Soviet censorship. Some Canadian influencers have even threatened to move to the US.
So what is the new law, and why is it so controversial?
With a global cultural juggernaut just south of the border, Canadians have long grappled with the issue of how to make sure that home-grown content, like music and television, does not get drowned out by the glitz and glam of its American competition.
Since the 1970s, the CRTC has been in charge of regulating broadcasters, including setting quotas for the minimum amount of Canadian content a radio or television station must play, and requiring broadcasters to spend at least 30% of their revenue producing Canadian content.
Dubbed "CanCon," the complex system has helped boost some of the country's biggest cultural exports, including musicians Celine Dion and Drake and sketch comedy show Kids in the Hall.
But by the 21st Century, Canadians were letting the algorithms on Spotify, YouTube and TikTok do their dial-spinning for them. These Silicon Valley imports did not have to abide by the same Canadian content rules, a loophole the government says Bill C-11 now closes.
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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 7:52:32 GMT -8
Why Was He Banned? It's a Secret. If Anyone Should Be Able to Keep a Secret, It Would be the Secret Service, Right?
The United States Secret Service blocked a Muslim mayor from attending a White House celebration with President Joe Biden to belatedly mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Shortly before he was to arrive at the White House for the Eid al-Fitr celebration on Monday, Mayor Mohamed Khairullah said he received a call from the White House stating he had not been cleared for entry by the Secret Service and could not attend the celebration, where Biden delivered remarks to hundreds of guests.
He said the White House official did not explain why the Secret Service had blocked his entry. Khairullah, 47, informed the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations after he was told he would not be allowed to attend the event.
The group has called on the Biden administration to cease the FBI’s dissemination of information from what is known as a “terrorist screening data set” that includes hundreds of thousands of individuals. The group informed Khairullah that a person with his name and birthdate was in a data set that its attorneys had obtained in 2019.
Khairullah was an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump’s travel ban that limited entry to the US of citizens from several predominantly Muslim countries. He also has travelled to Bangladesh and Syria to do humanitarian work with the Syrian American Medical Society and the Watan Foundation.
“It left me baffled, shocked and disappointed,” Khairullah said in a telephone interview as he made his way home to New Jersey.
“It’s not a matter of ‘I didn’t get to go to a party.’ It’s why I did not go. And it’s a list that has targeted me because of my identity. And I don’t think the highest office in the United States should be down with such profiling,” he said.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed Khairullah was not allowed into the White House complex but declined to say why.
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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 7:54:36 GMT -8
I Am Sure Previous Guy Thinks Convicts Dying on a Battlefield is a Wonderful Idea.
Russia’s winter push in Ukraine may have made little progress and at a “stunning” cost.
The Kremlin’s forces have suffered more than 100,000 killed or wounded fighters since December alone, the United States now estimates — outlining Moscow's massive losses as its military leaders scramble to recruit more men and prepare for an impending counteroffensive.
The figure, if accurate, could spell trouble ahead for President Vladimir Putin: He faces a second year at war with the land he has seized in Kyiv's sights and his military's struggles forcing the Kremlin to balance battlefield necessity with domestic pressures.
The casualty figure includes around 20,000 Russians who have been killed in about six months, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday, citing newly declassified American intelligence that the Kremlin swiftly rejected.
"It's really stunning, these numbers," Kirby said.
Half of those killed were from the Wagner mercenary group, the majority of whom were ex-convicts “thrown into combat” in Bakhmut, Kirby said, who lacked “sufficient combat training, combat leadership or any sense of organizational command and control.”
The eastern mining city has turned into something of a modern day Stalingrad and became the focus of a Russian winter offensive that was fueled by the call-up of hundreds of thousands of military reservists but that has failed to make substantive progress.
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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 7:56:09 GMT -8
30 Days in May. That's About All We Have Left
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress on Monday that the U.S. could default on its debt as early as June 1, if legislators do not raise or suspend the nation's borrowing authority before then and avert what could potentially become a global financial crisis.
In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Yellen urged congressional leaders “to protect the full faith and credit of the United States by acting as soon as possible” to address the $31.4 trillion limit on its legal borrowing authority. She added that it is impossible to predict with certainty the exact date of when the U.S. will run out of cash.
“We have learned from past debt limit impasses that waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States," Yellen said in the letter.
Also Monday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that it saw a greater risk of the U.S. running out of funds in early June. CBO Director Phillip L. Swagel said because of less-than-expected tax receipts this filing season and a faster IRS having processed already received returns, “Treasury’s extraordinary measures will be exhausted sooner than we previously projected.”
Don't Like the Yellen? Try Wells Fargo
With June now just a few weeks away, uncertainty around the timing of when the United States will run out of cash — what’s known as the X-date — remains, and determining the true deadline could have huge consequences for the country.
Determining the X-date depends on a complex set of factors, but ultimately what matters most is how much money the government spends and how much it takes in through taxes and other revenue.
The Bipartisan Policy Center, which tracks federal revenues, projected in February that lawmakers would need to raise or suspend the debt limit sometime between summer and early fall to avoid a default. The specific date would largely depend on how quickly tax revenues are coming into the government’s coffers.
There are signs that 2022 tax receipts are trickling in too slowly for comfort. Economists at Wells Fargo wrote in a note to clients last week that because tax collections appear to be weaker than expected, there is a chance the X-date could be as soon as early June. However, they continue to believe early August is the most likely default deadline.
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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 8:02:57 GMT -8
I Don't Think a Lot of Russians Will Read the Messages
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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 8:05:34 GMT -8
They Are Dying to Get Into the War
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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 8:08:45 GMT -8
Useless and Pointless Propaganda
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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 8:09:35 GMT -8
Everything you need to know about King Charles III’s coronation
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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 8:10:37 GMT -8
From that Bastion of Liberals, The Wall Street Journal
Why Is Inflation So Sticky? It Could Be Corporate Profits
Some companies might have been raising prices faster than their costs have increased
They're Not the Only Ones Saying It
It's becoming clear that corporate greed is screwing over the US economy
Drew has worked in the wholesale grocery business for over 20 years, making sure food hits the shelves on time and at the best prices. But nothing in his two decades in the industry prepared him for companies' response to the pandemic.
"Usually in the industry, a price increase would happen maybe once a year, maybe once every two years," he told me. But when COVID-19 hit, companies started raising prices every three to four months, which Drew said was "unheard of."
For a while, the price hikes made sense: Supply chains were snarled, manufacturers were paying more for the ingredients needed to make their products, companies were having to offer big wage hikes to lure workers, and consumers were buying everything in sight. But around October, Drew — whose last name is known to Insider but withheld over concerns about professional repercussions — noticed something odd. From what he could tell, cost pressures from the war in Ukraine and the supply-chain crisis were easing. There was inventory on the shelves and shoppers were doing less compulsive buying. Yet prices were still going up.
In the past, Drew said, food manufacturers' business success was gauged by how many products they sold. If they weren't selling enough, they'd offer deals to entice consumers. But instead of trying to sell a higher volume at a lower price point, it seemed as if companies realized they could raise prices and still bring in the same amount of money.
"They can sell half of what they need to sell, but they're hitting those profit numbers already," he said. While Drew told me he's seen prices stabilizing in 2023, there's one thing they're definitely not doing: coming down.
Anyone who has reached for a carton of eggs, filled up their tank with gas, or tried to buy pretty much anything has felt the sting of that inflation over the past few years. While many of the problems that helped trigger the upward spiral have abated, prices are still high and getting higher. The data is increasingly pointing to one culprit: corporate profit hoarding. And given the relative impunity big business enjoys, there may not be much relief for Americans' wallets anytime soon.
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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 8:13:11 GMT -8
All the Lonely People
Widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking a dozen cigarettes daily, costing the health industry billions of dollars annually, the U.S. surgeon general said Tuesday in declaring the latest public health epidemic.
About half of U.S. adults say they’ve experienced loneliness, Dr. Vivek Murthy said in a report from his office.
“We now know that loneliness is a common feeling that many people experience. It’s like hunger or thirst. It’s a feeling the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing,” Murthy told The Associated Press in an interview. “Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows, and that’s not right. That’s why I issued this advisory to pull back the curtain on a struggle that too many people are experiencing.”
The declaration is intended to raise awareness around loneliness but won’t unlock federal funding or programming devoted to combatting the issue.
Research shows that Americans, who have become less engaged with worship houses, community organizations and even their own family members in recent decades, have steadily reported an increase in feelings of loneliness. The number of single households has also doubled over the last 60 years.
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Post by mhbruin on May 2, 2023 8:16:26 GMT -8
Could We Do the Same Thing for Coal Miners?
The White House is trying to persuade Congress to pass a 30% tax on the electricity used in cryptocurrency mining in the next federal budget in order to minimize the nascent industry’s impact on climate change.
“Cryptominers’ high-energy consumption has negative spillovers on the environment, quality of life, and electricity grids where these firms locate across the country,” the president’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) argues in a blog post that will appear on the White House website on Tuesday, to which Yahoo News gained advance access. The post will lay out the case for the Digital Asset Mining Energy (DAME) excise tax, which the CEA writes is an “example of the Administration’s efforts to fight climate change and reduce energy prices.”
“Currently, cryptomining firms do not have to pay for the full cost they impose on others, in the form of local environmental pollution, higher energy prices, and the impacts of increased greenhouse gas emissions on the climate,” the CEA writes in its post. “The DAME tax encourages firms to start taking better account of the harms they impose on society.”
Burning fossil fuels to create electricity accounts for 25% of annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and releases harmful air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.
I Guess Not. We Might Upset Joe Manchin.
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