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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

14 Oct

This month marked the publication of Kim Stanley Robinson's latest novel, "The Ministry for the Future." I have a copy, but I haven't been able to bring myself to read it.

hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kim-sta…

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The last time I saw Stan, he told me he thought it might be his last novel. He's writing nonfiction about the Sierras now. The thought of a world with no unread KSR novels is thoroughly depressing, precisely because his books are so inspiring.

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@eliotpeper

But after reading his interview with @eliotpeper, I've reconsidered. No one writes optimistic novels about crises the way Robinson does, and reading about his approach to narrative is just as inspiring as the narratives themselves.

eliotpeper.com/2020/10/kim-st…

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Read 8 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

14 Oct

My statistician/data-science friends all tell me that if you're using a spreadsheet, you're not doing science, you're courting disaster. Real analysis requires Python, or, possibly, #julialang.

arstechnica.com/science/2020/1…

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Despite these warnings, plenty of mission-critical work gets done in spreadsheets, and (in support of these warnings), it can go horribly, horribly wrong.

It's not just the UK losing 16,000 covid cases:

popularmechanics.com/technology/a34…

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It's years of destructive, crushing austerity - costing real human lives; trashing cities, regions, whole countries - due to spreadsheet formula errors:

theconversation.com/the-reinhart-r…

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Read 13 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

14 Oct

If you live in California, you have been blitzed by messages to vote for #Prop22, a rule that would allow Uber, Lyft, Postmates and other money-losing, destructive bezzles to continue to abuse their employees through the fiction that they are "independent contractors."

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Prop 22 is the most expensive ballot initiative in California history, with a pricetag of $186m and counting, money transfered from the never-to-be-profitable app companies that have destroyed so many Californian businesses and lives.

theweek.com/articles/94279…

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These companies launched with deep cash reserves from the Saudi royals, funneled through Softbank, and they were a bet that they could monopolize our state's transport, logistics and food by losing money on every transaction until all the real, money-making businesses failed.

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Read 9 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

14 Oct

20 years on, #BushVGore is back in our discourse - an election stolen by mobs at the polling places, a media blitz, and a Supreme Court at its most antidemocratic and antimajoritarian.

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We remember this as an election that the plutes stole, but it's also an election that the Dems gave to them. That's why we're talk about it now. There will be an attempt to steal next month's election. Will we surrender again?

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The last surrender led to a war being fought today by the children of the soldiers who were sent into battle on day one. It led to climate inaction, monopolistic concentration, erosions to our right to vote and to our right to protest.

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Read 12 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

14 Oct

@freedomhouse

Each year, @freedomhouse publishes "Freedom on the Net," an annual snapshot of internet policy and outcomes in different countries, from #netneutrality to internet shutdowns to domestic surveillance.

This year's report is a grim read.

freedomhouse.org/report/freedom…

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The new report, spanning Jun 2019 to May 2020, tracks the steady (pre- and post-pandemic) march to a locked down internet robbed of its liberatory power and perverted in service to control, censorship and surveillance.

wired.com/story/internet…

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Even before the pandemic, things were bad, but the pandemic accelerates everything: inequality, monopoly, and internet crackdowns. In the name of epidemiology, the world's governments have criminalized some online speech and then arrested journalists and activists.

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Read 10 tweets