The Daily Valet. - 4/19/23, Wednesday
✔️ Who Had THIS on Their 2023 Bingo Card?
Wednesday, April 19th Edition
By Cory Ohlendorf, Valet. Editor
Mom, if you’re reading this, that Netflix password is only going to last for so long.
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Today’s Big Story
Child Labor Is Back?
12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes, but they can work in tobacco fields?
Do you remember those images from the history books? Grainy photos of dirty kids in factories? Child labor has been practiced throughout most of human history, but “reached its zenith during the Industrial Revolution,” according to History.com. Why? Because “children could be paid less and were less likely to organize into unions.” But that was something that, as a country, we snuffed out when we realized it was better to care for and educate kids. Or did we?Lawmakers in Iowa's Senate passed a controversial bill in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday that would allow minors to work longer hours and work in currently banned roles, like serving alcohol at restaurants, the Des Moines Register reports. The bill passed 32-17 before 5 a.m. local time with just two Republicans—Sens. Charlie McClintock and Jeff Taylor—joining the entire Democratic party in opposition of the bill.The U.S. Department of Labor's top lawyer, Seema Nanda, spoke out against the bill, saying it's simply “irresponsible for states to consider loosening child labor protections.” Because it's not just Iowa. In the past two years, lawmakers in at least 11 states have sought to loosen child labor laws to help employers fill empty jobs, even as federal officials and news investigations suggest that many minors working in manufacturing, meatpacking and construction jobs are being exploited or hurt.This year alone, the DOL found over 100 kids as young as 13 years old were working illegal jobs in slaughterhouses owned by Tyson, JBS, Cargill and other companies. The children—some of whom were migrant children that came to the U.S. alone—worked night shifts cleaning dangerous blades on kill floors, and several suffered such serious injuries as chemical burns.As NPR points out, a seventh-grader can't buy cigarettes, and (in most states) they can't work at grocery stores or fast-food chains. But they can work in a North Carolina tobacco field. But efforts to tighten agricultural child labor laws have repeatedly failed because of opposition from Republicans in Congress and farm lobbying groups. They argue that such changes would hurt family farms and make it harder to teach kids about farming. Let's just hope they're also teaching them about nicotine poisoning, or green tobacco sickness, which endangers all tobacco workers, but especially kids, when nicotine seeps into your skin directly from the tobacco leaves.
Meanwhile:
A 17-year-old just became the youngest professional basketball player in U.S. history.
Fox News Settles Defamation Suit
The $787.5 Million settlement is one of the largest ever in a defamation case
Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday for $787.5 million in what would have been a historic defamation trial. The 11th-hour agreement stunned the full courtroom in Delaware, where the case was being heard. Gasps filled the air when the judge told the jury that the two parties had resolved the matter. It was so last minute that the lawyers already had their microphones clipped to their jacket lapels.The settlement spared Fox a potentially embarrassing trial that would have gone on for weeks and forced prominent on-air personalities to testify about misleading information in their 2020 election coverage. In a statement following the settlement decision, Fox News acknowledged that the court found that it aired falsehoods which could have implications for other defamation cases it faces—of which there are a few (including a $2.7 billion case brought by another election technology company, Smartmatic).“Money is accountability,” Stephen Shackelford, a Dominion lawyer, said outside the courthouse, “and we got that today from Fox.” However, Fox won't have to admit on-air that it spread misinformation about Dominion.
FYI:
How much is $787.5 million for Fox? A recent corporate filing showed that the Fox Corporation had about $4.1 billion “of cash and cash equivalents” on hand.
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Netflix Ends DVD Biz After 25 Years
They were seriously still sending out those little red envelopes?
Netflix said on Tuesday that it's officially ending its 25-year-old mail-in DVD business. By the end of September, they will send out the last red envelope. Remember those? I'm genuinely shocked that they were still doing it. How long does it take from ordering to delivery? If you still use the DVD service (or find an old envelope in your media cabinet), the company says it will accept returns until Oct. 27th. Netflix has also provided the option for interested users to download a copy of the data associated with their accounts, which will feature a total tally of the videos the user has rented during their time with Netflix, should you want that for the purposes of nostalgia.While most of us stopped mailing away for those little red envelopes sometime around Netflix's streaming launch back in 2007, a surprising chunk of people continued to use the home delivery system. In 2019, the last time Netflix released its subscriber data for DVDs, it listed some 2.15 million people as active users. Still, at that point, user numbers—and, thus, revenue—had been steadily falling for quite some time. According to Yahoo Finance, it brought in a profit of $145.69 million last year, a revenue plummet of 20% from 2021.
FYI:
Netflix's new password-sharing fees will begin hitting U.S. customers by this summer. You can either pay more to share or persuade friends and family to get their own accounts.
Hollywood Writers’ Strike Looms
But what does it really mean for our entertainment?
The Writers Guild of America has announced that its members voted to authorize a strike, should the May 1 contract-expiration date pass without coming to an agreement with producers group, the AMPTP. This is a fairly customary and expected outcome—but it's also key in forecasting the possibility of a strike.The bulk of their issues deal with a big beast they've been trying to tame for a decade: streaming. “The companies have leveraged the streaming transition to underpay writers, creating more precarious, lower-paid models for writers' work,” a March report by WGA states. If they can't reach a deal, it means that scribes of everything from network shows and streaming series to studio movies would close their laptops and hit the picket lines for the first time in 15 years.You might recall that back in 2007, the WGA's last strike brought the industry to a halt. Late-night comedians had no jokes for their monologues. Movie sets shut down. And suddenly, reality and foreign TV shows (not represented by the union) started ruling the airwaves. If a strike happens, viewers will first notice the effects on late-night talk shows and live productions like SNL. And a prolonged strike would likely affect how soon our favorite shows would return in the fall.
Meanwhile:
Asian and Black representation grew in film and television last year, a new study has found.
In Other News
“I am sure that this will be the best secured EU border.”
Have you heard about ...
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Shopping
What We’re Buying
Running Sneakers
This style, from Salomon's mid-2000s archive, has been updated for today's terrain. The Agile Chassis System provides more stability when running, and the exterior powerbands add extra durability.
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Salomon ACS + OG hiking sneaker, $175 / $148 by Salomon
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