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Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

11 Oct

@tuckerian

The third Little Brother book, ATTACK SURFACE, came out in the UK on Oct 1 (it'll be published in the US/Canada on Oct 13 - that's TUESDAY!). In honour of the launch, I sat down for an interview with @tuckerian, @ObserverUK's science and tech editor.

theguardian.com/media/2020/oct…

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It's a really good interview: Tucker got right into the issues of technological optimism and pessimism, letting me talk about how these balance: the belief that tech can be a force for liberation, the terror of how it can be force for oppression.

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This is really the core of the Little Brother books (and my activism).

Attack Surface is about a techie who spent her career building oppressive tech and has to confront her moral legacy when the cyberweapons she built for use overseas are turned on her friends in the US.

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Read 23 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

11 Oct

Peter De Yager owns the Foreign Candy Company in Hull, Iowa. He's a die-hard Republican, having donated more than $30,000 to GOP PACs and campaigns since 2019. And on July 26, he stole a Biden yard-sign from a private home in Monarch Cove.

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@DickinsonCoNews

De Yager initially pleaded not guilty to fifth-degree theft and trespassing, but eventually pleaded guilty on Sept 21 and paid $365 in fines.

De Yager's charges were published in the Sept 2 edition of the @DickinsonCoNews.

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Shortly after the Sept 2 paper hit the stands, De Yager went on a crime-spree, visiting a series of retailers who carried the paper and stealing their entire stock of the the paper, hitting newspaper vending boxes as well.

dickinsoncountynews.com/story/2839758.…

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Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

11 Oct

The right has long held that homelessness is a symptom - of a lack of self-control, a lack of foresight, of addiction, mental illness, etc - and therefore the solution to it is training, incarceration, rehab, or rigid discipline.

None of this stuff worked.

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For more than a decade, there's been a more pragmatic approach to homelessness: giving people homes. The housing first movement has repeatedly shown that the best way to make homeless people not homeless is to give. them. a. home.

endhomelessness.org/resource/housi…

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After all, if you are struggling with addiction, mental illness, etc, or if you eed structure in your life, the chaos of not having a home only makes this a thousand times worse.

(Oh, and giving homeless people homes is MUCH cheaper than treating homelessness as a crime)

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Read 27 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

11 Oct

Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement has been routed by China's brutal, authoritarian government. The #612strike movement went into high gear on Jun 12, 2019 and endless months, the protesters embodied indomitable spirit, technological shrewdness, and creative exuberance.

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For many of us supporting the protests from abroad, the most iconic images weren't the street-battles or the masks, but rather, the incredible visual art of the movement, which saw the city plastered with #BeWater posters:

archive.org/details/HongKo…

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@HongKongHermit

Today, those poster-walls are erased, with only their ghosts lingering: painted over rectangles, scraps of glue and wheatpaste. They speak loudly. As @HongKongHermit says in their thread of images, "I can still hear you."