Tweet

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

21 Oct

People of Nigerian descent and human rights activists around the world have taken to the streets under the banner of #EndSARSProtest: a global protest movement over Nigeria's lawless, murdering Special Anti-Robbery Squad.

themarysue.com/endsars-what-i…

1/

@amnesty

SARS was founded in 1984 in answer to a wave of property crimes, today, its founder Fulani Kwajafa says that it has "turned into banditry" - @amnesty has documented 82 cases of torture, brutality and murder by SARS since 2017.

2/

The current wave of protests was ignited by the public murder of a young man by SARS officers on Oct 8. President Muhammadu Buhari has disbanded the unit, but the criminals who served in it have been deployed elsewhere in Nigerian security forces, spreading the contagion.

3/

Read 6 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

21 Oct

As pandemic and climate emergency force the contradictions of capitalism to the breaking-point, the world's streets have erupted in ceaseless, ferocious protest. In a desperate bid to prolong their rule, elites have fielded increasingly cruel and violent police responses.

1/

The cops are, to varying degrees, complicit. They have chosen to follow orders rather than risk their jobs (or even, in some cases, their safety from state retaliation).

The increasingly obvious injustice of the cause they fight for also increases the risk they bear.

2/

There are three risks for the shock troops of late-stage capitalism:

I. the risk of official sanction by the state they fight for

II. the risk of punishment by a new regime should their cause fail

III. the risk of vigilante justice for the people they brutalize and murder

3/

Read 10 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

21 Oct

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Comedic obituary poetry; Tom Lehrer in the public domain; Trustbusting is stimulus; Falsehoods programmers believe about time; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2020/10/21/eac…

#Pluralistic

1/

@TochiTrueStory

Today's Attack Surface Lecture: Little Revolutions with @TochiTrueStory and @BCMorrow.

skylightbooks.com/event/live-cro…

Full schedule: attacksurface.com

2/

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1318656733309399041

Comedic obituary poetry: Out of the Hurly-Burly.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1318656733309399041

Read 21 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

21 Oct

The categories we think of as discrete, bounded entities are most often continua, with broadly coherent centers and hairy, noisy edges that defy categorization.

1/

Computers operate on binary states, but the actual electronics that represent these ones and zeroes are quite noisy, and only average out to "off" and "on." It's quite ironic, because computerization so often forces us to incinerate the edge-cases.

2/

Prior to computerization, the fuzziness of analog record-keeping and the potential for official forebearance allowed us to maintain the pretence of neat categories while (sometimes) accommodating the infinite complexity of the edges.

3/

Read 21 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

21 Oct

Antitrust enforcement is virtually a dead letter in America (it was killed 40 years ago by Reagan's court sorcerer Robert Bork, better known as the Nixonite criminal who couldn't get approved for a SCOTUS seat).

1/

But even when we WERE enforcing antitrust, we tended to pump the brakes during economic crises: no one wants to put additional constraints on business during a downturn.

2/

That's wrong. Antitrust enforcement isn't an economic drag, it's an economic STIMULUS.

promarket.org/2020/10/19/ant…

Monopolies extract higher profits by crushing workers and small competitors, but workers and small businesses spend their earnings back into the economy.

3/

Read 24 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

20 Oct

Carroll Borland, Elsa Lanchester, Vincent Price, Maila Nurmi (Vampira) and Jeepers at The Tomb of Ligeia premiere, 1964. draculasdaughter.tumblr.com/post/632539258…