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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Apr 13, 2021 • 20 tweets • 14 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Jackpot; Bill Gates will kill us all; What "IP" means; Data-brokerages vs the world; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/pub…

#Pluralistic

1/
Tonight, I'm giving a workshop in collaboration with Phoenix's Changing Hands bookstore: "All the Teachable Things I Know About Writing":

changinghands.com/event/april202…

2/
Jackpot: Inequality sucks...for everyone.



3/
Bill Gates will kill us all: Elite philanthropy created vaccine apartheid.



4/
What "IP" means: Control over customers, critics and competitors.



5/
Data-brokerages vs the world: The public-private partnership from hell.



6/
#15yrsago NOLA mayoral candidate uses photo of Disneyland New Orleans Square web.archive.org/web/2006041421…

#10yrsago Historical first look into the Fed’s bailout payments reveals breathtaking multi-trillion-dollar corruption rollingstone.com/politics/polit…

7/
#5yrsago How corporate America’s lobbying budget surpassed the combined Senate and Congress budget theatlantic.com/business/archi…

#5yrsago Panama Papers reveal offshore companies were bagmen for the world’s spies yahoo.com/news/panama-pa…

8/
#5yrsago Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca law offices raided by Panama authorities reuters.com/article/us-pan…

#5yrsago Piracy dooms motion picture industry to yet another record-breaking box-office year torrentfreak.com/piracy-fails-t…

9/
Yesterday's threads: Fraud-resistant election-tech; Big Tech's secret weapon is switching costs, not network effects; Podcasting How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism; and more!



10/
My latest novel is Attack Surface, a sequel to my bestselling Little Brother books. @washingtonpost called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance."

Get signed books from @darkdel: darkdel.com/store/p1840/Av…

11/
My book "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" is a critique of Big Tech connecting conspiratorial thinking to the rise of tech monopolies (proposing a way to deal with both) is now out in paperback:

onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy…

Signed copies here:
darkdel.com/store/p2024/Av…

12/
My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."

craphound.com/shop/

13/
Upcoming appearances:

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

* Book launch for Bruce Sterling's Robot Artists & Black Swans (Book People), Apr 27, bookpeople.com/event/virtual-…

14/
Recent appearances:

* Right to Repair, Monopolies, and Solarpunk


* The surveillance state, digital monopolies, and why we should be worried (Podsongs)
anchor.fm/podsongs/episo…

* Conspiracy Theories (Utopian Horizons):
soundcloud.com/utopianhorizon…

15/
My first picture book is out! It's called Poesy the Monster Slayer and it's an epic tale of bedtime-refusal, toy-hacking and monster-hunting, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe…

16/
You can also follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/pub…

17/
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is also ad- and tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🧓🏾". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!

Subscribe here: pluralistic.net/plura-list

18/
Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? Follow these threads on the #fediverse at @pluralistic@mamot.fr.

Here's today's edition: mamot.fr/@pluralistic/1…

19/
Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (nakedcapitalism.com).

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 15
Even by Amazon standards, this is extraordinarily sleazy: starting March 28, each Amazon Echo device will cease processing audio on-device and instead upload all the audio it captures to Amazon's cloud for processing.

1/ A cylindrical black Alexa speaker on a coffee table; it is wearing a Darth Vader helmet. Image: Stock Catalog/https://www.quotecatalog.com (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexa_%2840770465691%29.jpg Sam Howzit (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SWC_6_-_Darth_Vader_Costume_(7865106344).jpg CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/03/15/alt…

2/
This will happen even if you have previously opted out of cloud-based processing:



3/arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/0…
Read 48 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 13
My theory of the "shitty technology adoption curve" holds that you can predict the future impact of abusive technologies on you by observing the way these are deployed against people who have less social power than you:



1/ pluralistic.net/2023/06/11/the…A magnified image of the inside of an automated backup tape library, with gleaming racks of silver tape drives receding into the distance. In the foreground is a pile of dirt being shoveled by three figures in prisoner's stripes. Two of the figures' heads have been replaced with cliche hacker-in-hoodie heads, from which shine yellow, inverted Amazon 'smile' logos, such that the smile is a frown. The remaining figure's head has been replaced with a horse's head. Behind the figure is an impatiently poised man in a sharp business suit, glaring at his watch. His head has been replaced with the ...
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/03/13/ele…

2/
When you have a new, abusive technology, you can't just aim it at rich, powerful people, because when *they* complain, they get results.

3/
Read 71 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 12
Let me tell you how I became a proud science denier, and how it saved my life.

1/ A cross-section of the head of a man who is wide-eyed and screaming. The head is elongated and is being sucked into a black hole.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/03/12/epi…

2/
It was about 15 years ago. I was living in London, and my wife's job came with a private health insurance buff that let us use private doctors instead of the NHS.

3/
Read 58 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 10
Inflation has many complex causes and dynamics, but this much should be obvious: when prices go up, and the *profits* go up, the price rise - the "inflation" is in part the result of greed - it's greedflation.

1/ A 'stonks' meme, featuring a 3d modeled head atop the body of a man in a business suit, arms folded, standing before a stylized stock-chart with an orange arrow pointing up and to the right. The word 'stonks' has been replaced with 'eggs.' A cartoon drawing of a shattered, crying Humpty Dumpty is in the bottom left corner.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/03/10/dem…

2/
Orthodox economists insist that greedflation is impossible. Sure, companies would *prefer* to jack up prices, but if they do, other companies would rush inn to sell more cheaply.

3/
Read 53 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 5
You guys, I don't want to bum you out or anything, but I think there's a good chance than some self-described capitalists *aren't really into capitalism*.

Sorry.

1/ A giant, complicated, mechanical printing press. Looming over it is an 18th-century demon from the Compendium Rarissimum Totius Artis Magicae; it is a eating severed human leg, and waving another leg in the air. In the background rise dark red flames. The printer has a Brother logo.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/03/05/pri…

2/
Take incentives: Charlie Munger, capitalism's quippiest pitchman, famously said, "Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome."

3/
Read 50 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 3
I get a special pleasure from citing Milton Friedman. I like to imagine that as I do, he groans around the red-hot spit protruding from his jaws, prompting howls of laughter from the demons who pelt him with molten faeces for all eternity.

1/ Oil derricks superimposed against a 'code waterfall' as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movies. In the foreground is Trump's hair.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/03/03/fri…

2/
If you're lucky enough not to know about Friedman, here's the short version. Friedman was a kind of court sorcerer to Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Augusto Pinochet, and other assorted authoritarian, hard-right leaders who set us on the path to the hellscape we inhabit today.

3/
Read 56 tweets

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