Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: XKCD's scientific microfiction meme; Attack Surface is a Locus Awards finalist; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/05/02/mic…

#Pluralistic

1/
On May 7, the @GburgBookFest is featuring me in an interview conducted by John @Scalzi; we pre-recorded the event but I'll be in the live chat for the premiere.



2/
XKCD's scientific microfiction meme: "Types of scientific paper."



3/
Attack Surface is a Locus Awards finalist: And what EXCELLENT company it's in!



4/
#20yrsago Microsoft slams Open Source. Again. nytimes.com/2001/05/03/bus…

#20yrsago Fiery screed about the state of Linux desktop environments web.archive.org/web/2002120405…

#15yrsago Rich Americans as sick as poor Brits web.archive.org/web/2006051622…

5/
#15yrsago Classic multi-ending MAD flexidisc MP3s scarstuff.blogspot.com/2006/04/mad-ma…

#10yrsago Brust’s Tiassa: versatile fantasy in three modes memex.craphound.com/2011/05/02/bru…

#10yrsago Will technology make us freer, and if so, how? locusmag.com/2011/05/cory-d…

6/
#1yrago Kim Stanley Robinson on "our rewritten imagination" pluralistic.net/2020/05/02/rew…

#1yrago Ticketmaster gets $500m from Mohammad bin Salman pluralistic.net/2020/05/02/rew…

#1yrago How "contact tracing" apps could be worse than useless pluralistic.net/2020/05/02/rew…

7/
#1yrago Prisons, meatpacking plants, nursing homes pluralistic.net/2020/05/02/rew…

8/
Yesterday's threads: Political economy vs inflation; and more!



9/
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…

10/
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…

11/
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/

10/
Upcoming appearances:

* In conversation with @Scalzi, May 7,

* Interoperability and Alternative Social Media, May 12, knightcolumbia.org/events/reimagi…

* Launch for @Aminder_d's Cyclopedia Exotica, May 13, crowdcast.io/e/udbva8py/reg…

11/
Recent appearances:

* Talking "Robot Artists & Black Swans" with Bruce Sterling archive.org/details/robot-…

* The Right to Repair Movement, Monopolies, & Solarpunk

* The surveillance state, monopolies, and why worry (Podsongs) anchor.fm/podsongs/episo…

14/
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…

15/
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/2021/05/02/mic…

16/
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

17/
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…

eof/

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More from @doctorow

2 May
Apple is a true business innovator: For more than a decade, they have been steadily perfecting an obscure anticompetitive tactic, turning a petty grift invented by console games companies into a global, cross-industry mechanism for extracting rents and centralizing control.

1/ The product-shot for a Bob Cassette Rewinder, featuring a ca
I'm speaking of App Stores, of course, and not just any app store, but one that's illegal to compete with or switch away from. This started with console companies, who used technical tricks to ensure that they could skim a rake from every program you bought for your system.

2/
Consoles used proprietary hardware or media formats to ensure that software vendors couldn't sell directly to you, that every sale would be forced through their storefronts or licensing systems.

3/
Read 40 tweets
2 May
Just because the whole thing is crazy doesn’t mean it won’t make it on Broadway!

The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) dir. Frank Oz
wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/650036899…
Just because the whole thing is crazy doesn’t mean it won’t make it on Broadway!

The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) dir. Frank Oz
wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/650036899…
Just because the whole thing is crazy doesn’t mean it won’t make it on Broadway!

The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) dir. Frank Oz
wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/650036899…
Read 6 tweets
2 May
@About_Medicine Think of a loan. You ask me for a $10,000 loan to buy a car, and you offer the car as collateral. You pay some upfront processing fees, a downpayment, and a monthly fee. If you default, I can repo the car. That's a normal loan.
@About_Medicine But now I turn around and sell someone else the right to collect your payments from the loan. Say you're paying $200/month, and with interest, you will spend 8 years paying it back. If you miss a payment, you'll get hit with penalties.
@About_Medicine If you default on the loan - miss three payments in a row, say - the car gets repoed. The repo man wants paying, and the car has depreciated, so there's a chance that whoever buys that loan won't see the full amount.
Read 29 tweets
1 May
The annual Locus Awards finalists have been announced and I am thrilled to pieces to see my novel ATTACK SURFACE, a standalone book in the Little Brother universe for adults, in the final ten for Best SF Novel!

locusmag.com/2021/05/2021-l…

1/
Even more exciting than making the top ten is the company it puts me in: the other finalists are:

* Machine by @matociquala
* Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott
* Agency by @GreatDismal
* The Relentless Moon by @MaryRobinette
* War of the Maps by @UnlikelyWorlds

2/
* The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
* The Last Emperox by @scalzi
* Network Effect by @MarthaWells1
* Interlibrary Loan by Gene Wolfe

(also excited to see @torbooks, my publisher, next to so many of those names!)

3/
Read 5 tweets
1 May
In 2008, I traveled to the world's largest scientific data-centers for a @Nature story. No matter whether the labs were devoted to internet archiving, the human genome, or the Higgs boson, they had two things in common: vast server farms, and @xkcd.

nature.com/news/2008/0809…

1/ One frame from XKCD's 'Types of Scientific Papers' strip; th
Randall Munroe's webcomic is so unabashedly geeky, so unafraid to be obscure or format-breaking, so affectionate and knowing about the triumphs and pitfalls of science that it is absolute catnip for scientists.

2/
Last week, Munroe published strip #2456, "Types of scientific paper," a 3x4 grid of thumbnails of journal articles with titles like, "We put a camera somewhere new" and "My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it."

xkcd.com/2456/

3/ XKCD 2456, Types of Scientific Papers.
Read 18 tweets

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