[Plura-list] Solar futures and futuristic fellowships; FCC wants broadband complaints; Tories pass Grenfell costs onto tenants

[Cory Doctorow]

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Tomorrow night, I'm participating in a Clarion Writing Workshop panel
called "Balancing Worldbuilding and Narrative," with Karen Osborne and
Kali Wallace

https://ucsd.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YSvD5IjGS7Su2z-xhQN1ZA

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Today's links

* Solar futures and futuristic fellowships: What's happening at ASU's
Center for Science and the Imagination.

* FCC wants broadband complaints: Your chance to sound off about a
shithole country.

* Tories pass Grenfell costs onto tenants: A Parliament of Landlords,
doing its job.

* This day in history: 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

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🐫 Solar futures and futuristic fellowships

Over the years, Arizona State University's Center for Science and the
Imagination has been merging science, engineering, the humanities and
science fiction, building collaborations between sf storytellers and
scholars and technologist (I've been lucky enough to be involved in
several of these).

https://csi.asu.edu/

The Center has launched a fellowship: a $10,000 grant for "projects that
advance visions of inclusive futures and address our greatest collective
failures of imagination, including climate change, systemic inequality,
and global conflict."

https://csi.asu.edu/fellows/

The fellowships come up with mentorship, support and collaboration from
the CSI faculty and students; applications are due on Apr 5.

To get a feel for the Center's work, check out its brand-new anthology
of original sf stories and essays, "Cities of Light: A Collection of
Solar Futures," with work from Paolo Bacigalupi, S.B. Divya, Andrew Dana
Hudson and Deji Bryce Olukotun.

https://csi.asu.edu/books/cities-of-light/

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🐫 FCC wants broadband complaints

When it comes to broadband, America is the original shithole country: a
land of copper wires wrapped in newspaper, then dipped in tar and draped
over shrubs and sold to suckers with no other choice at some of the
highest prices in the western world.

America's broadband barons are farcically dirty, and while president
after president has given them a free ride to one degree or another, it
was during the Trump years that they really got *savage*, fucking over
the entire nation under the idiotic grin of FCC Chair Ajit Pai.

Now Pai is out of office - and blocking me on Twitter (oh, *diddums*) -
and America has a chance to fix things. *Really* fix things: not just
showering telco monopolists in money for their shareholders in exchange
for bored frauds purporting to show broadband investment.

Actual. Fucking. Change.

Fiber to every goddamned curb.

Biden FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel wants to know how you feel about
your ISP.

Try to keep it clean, but let her know.

https://twitter.com/JRosenworcel/status/1374093168816369672

It's all grist for the new FCC Broadband Data Task Force, which is
poised to end the official farce that the internet is a glorified
video-on-demand service and acknowledge the truth:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/22/22345533/fcc-broadband-data-collection-program-fix-the-internet

Broadband is the single wire that delivers free speech, a free press,
free assembly, education, family life, employment, health, opportunity,
civic and political engagement, and every other necessity for a decent
and dignified life in the 21st century.

Recently, everything we did involved the net. Today, everything we do
*requires* it. You deserve better than a greedy, indifferent monopolist
whose only interaction with the national telecoms regulator is to pop in
for a periodic massage and complimentary mani-pedi.

Here's Chairwoman Rosenworcel's form. You know what to do.

https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360001440131

, CC BY-SA, modified; Fly, CC BY, modified)

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🐫 Tories pass Grenfell costs onto tenants

In 2017, at 72 people were burned alive when London's Grenfell Tower
went up in flames. It had been skinned in highly flammable "decorative
cladding" to make it less of an eyesore for rich people in nearby blocks
of luxury flats.

That charnel house was the opening act on a yearslong odyssey of cruelty
that just reached a new climax in Parliament, as Tory MPs ensured that
working people - not landlords, developers or manufacturers - would fit
the bill for removing cladding from their homes.

Here's what happened, and what's happening. After Grenfell, there were a
series of (ahem) burning questions. For example: where would the people
who lost their homes live? This fell to the (Tory) Kensington Council,
which had been trying to oust poor people for years.

Kensington Council found a way to realise its twin goals of discouraging
poor people from living in the borough and doing the absolute least to
satisfy its legal obligations: it had the Grenfell survivors bid against
their neighbours for homes:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-tower-fire-survivors-bid-permanent-homes-housing-kensington-council-rbkc-a7905341.html

With that question settled (!), the next question raised by Grenfell
was, "Do I live in a building with flammable cladding, and if so, what
happens next?" These should have been easy questions to answer, but Tory
MPs did everything they could to keep the nation in the dark.

Take the question of who should pay to make homes safe. Tory MPs had
repeatedly voted down legislation that would have required landlords to
pay to make their buildings fit for human habitation. One bill was voted
down just months before Grenfell.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/corbyn-tried-pass-law-make-homes-safe-last-year-conservatives-rejected-49103/

That the Tories voted against a bill that would protect tenants from
landlords is no surprise. After all, David Cameron's 2012 "war on safety
culture" paved the way for Grenfell, and the committee that killed the
bill was composed of MPs who were mostly landlords themselves.

Neither the landlords, nor the parliament in their thrall, would pay to
make the country's firetraps safe.

Theresa May (who found £1B to bribe the bigoted loons at the DUP) told
local councils they shouldn't expect anything for cladding removal.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-tower-cladding-scandal-council-funding-government-no-guarantee-local-government-budgets-a7809216.html

The rest of the country was just wising up to something May knew: there
are hell of a lot of future Grenfells out there. Conservative councils
had been on a highly flammable cladding buying spree, because it was
5.7% cheaper than the safe alternative.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/08/grenfell-tower-more-costly-fire-resistant-cladding-plan-was-dropped

The only reason the cladding was for sale at all was because the
companies that made it had committed fraud, falsifying their safety
reports (the "war on safety culture" had ended, making this kind of
lethal fraud easy to get away with).

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-tower-fire-latest-inquiry-london-cladding-building-safety-uk-celotex-a8362186.html

The local councils who'd saved pennies buying these fraudulent materials
went into full CYA mode. They told their residents that information
about which homes were affected needed to be kept secret, lest arsonists
burn them all down (no, really).

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/16/towers-with-grenfell-style-cladding-at-risk-of-arson-and-terrorism

Still, the cladding had to be replaced, and so work began. The same
property developers who'd padded their bottom lines by skimping on
fire-safety and installing the cladding made millions replacing it.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-fire-cladding-exclusive/exclusive-after-grenfell-fire-same-builders-rehired-to-replace-dangerous-cladding-reuters-finds-idUKKBN1E714Z

These companies sent gleeful notes to their shareholders announcing
massive increases in their profitability:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/08/rydon-profit-rises-grenfell-tower-contractor

and the people who lived in the buildings got sent the bills:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/17/citiscape-croydon-2m-recladding-bill-prompted-grenfell-disaster

It's been four years since Grenfell, and at last, a new Fire Safety Bill
is working its way through Parliament. The Lords amended it to shift the
costs of replacing cladding to the landlords who bought it, the
developers who recommended it, and the manufacturers who sold it.

But the Tory Parliament of Landlords voted the amendment down. Millions
of English people (Wales, Scotland and NI are a different story) are now
on the hook for £40-50K in costs.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/03/the-ultimate-grenfell-betrayal-uk-government-leaves-victims-of-cladding-crisis-holding-the-bill.html

They're already paying huge insurance premiums because their homes are
deathtraps. Banks won't extend mortgages because their homes are
deathtraps. They are obliged to spend hundreds of pounds a month for
fire-prevention "walking watches" because their homes are deathtraps.

These leaseholds are the cheapest in the country and their residents are
the most economically precarious leaseholders. Many are selling at steep
discounts to cash buyers, losing everything.

A survey found 90% of the people in these buildings are experiencing
declining mental health as a result of the inaction and uncertainty.

These people had nothing to do with the decision to convert their homes
to deathtraps, but they are now stuck with the bill.

The three main manufacturers - Celotex, Kingspan, and Arconic - were all
determined to have falsified their fire-safety test data and ignored
whistleblowers who warned management about the risk.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/12/how-they-built-grenfell

The newly privatised standards bodies - the British Board of Agrément,
British Standards Institute, British Research Establishment - that
certified the buildings also operate a revolving door with execs from
firms whose work they certify.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/29/fir1-n29.html

None have paid a price. Quite the reverse! Arconic billed HM Treasury
for £500k in furlough subsidies last year.

The £5.1b that Parliament has approved for cladding replacement does not
come close to the total cost, and tenants are being stuck with the
shortfall.

In particular, buildings with fewer than 7 storeys will get *no* subsidy
- instead, the government will offer the people unlucky enough to live
in them loans that they can't afford.

And while these are tenants, they can't move. They are "leasehold
tenants" with 99-999 year leases: they don't own their flat, but they
own the right to live there for a century. The building is owned by a
freeholder - typically an aristocrat or financial speculator.

These leases are sold as though they were property - when a leaseholder
"buys a flat," they actually buy the lease, typically with a mortgage.
These leases are now underwater, because they are leases on deathtraps.

To move, they'd have to convince someone to buy their flammable leases.
To stay, they have to borrow £40-50k to make their homes safe. They
didn't create this situation, but the Tories have stuck them with the bill.

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🐫 This day in history

#20yrsago Warner’s lawyers nastygram teenagers running Harry Potter
fansites
https://web.archive.org/web/20020123090400/http://www.potterwar.org.uk/

#15yrsago Rant transcript from Game Developers’ Conference
https://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2006/03/gdc_game_develo.html

#15yrsago Intellectual property's worst excesses
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/03/intellectual-property-run-amok/

#10yrsago Understanding the SSL security breach, preparing for the next
one
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/03/iranian-hackers-obtain-fraudulent-https

#10yrsago Anti-union group: send us secret, unlimited donations so we
can bring transparency to politics!
https://web.archive.org/web/20110325141411/https://www.wmc.org/MediaOutlet/display.cfm?ID=2485

#10yrsago LSE economists: file sharing isn’t killing music industry, but
copyright enforcement will
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/is-file-sharing-the-global-future/

#5yrsago Bake: homemade Jabba the Hutt peeps
https://www.starwars.com/news/jabba-the-hutt-marshmallow-treats

#1yrago It's time for a coronavirus jubilee
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/23/tacocat-vs-dog-prostates/#jubilee

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🐫 Colophon

Currently writing:

* My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. Yesterday's progress: 527 words (118759 total).

* A short story, "Jeffty is Five," for The Last Dangerous Visions.
Yesterday's progress: 298 words (9569 total).

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues." Yesterday's
progress: 1033 words (37342 total).

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Free Markets
https://craphound.com/podcast/2021/03/22/free-markets/

Upcoming appearances:

*  Balancing Worldbuilding and Narrative (with Karen Osborne and Kali
Wallace), Mar 24,
https://ucsd.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YSvD5IjGS7Su2z-xhQN1ZA

* Launch for Brian David Johnson's Future You (Powell's Books), Mar 30,
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/5716148038801/WN_psgDGchIRfaUQOJyvLnvzw

* All the Teachable Things I Know About Writing, Apr 13,
https://www.changinghands.com/event/april2021/virtual-writing-workshop-cory-doctorow-all-teachable-things-i-know-about-writing

* Interop: Self-Determination vs Dystopia (FITC), Apr 19-21,
https://fitc.ca/presentation/interop/

Recent appearances:

* The surveillance state, digital monopolies, and why we should be
worried (Podsongs)
https://anchor.fm/podsongs/episodes/Cory-Doctorow-on-the-Surveillance-State--digital-monopolies--and-why-we-should-be-worried-eso43k

* Conspiracy Theories (Utopian Horizons):
https://soundcloud.com/utopianhorizons/conspiracy-theory-w-cory-doctorow

* Canadian Speculative Fiction (Unknown Worlds):
https://unknownworlds.podbean.com/e/canadian/

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59
(print edition:
https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907)
(signed copies:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* The Shakedown, with Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction/business/politics,
Beacon Press 2022

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially,
provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are
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"*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion
Guy" DeVilla


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