A simple, incomplete ransomware defense; Community Health Services sued its way through the pandemic; Apple's complicity in Chinese state oppression; What Would OSS Look Like If It Were Healthy; and more!
Yesterday's threads: Paygo, false consciousness and the IRS; The Public Interest Internet; Concluding How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism; and more!
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."
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:
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."
* Can Antitrust Laws Destroy Surveillance Capitalism? (Majority Report)
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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.
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these - as well as previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.
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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!
The Biden administration's (carefully worded) support for a WTO IP waiver on vaccines may not be the full-throated support the issue warrants, but it was still a complete reversal of decades of subservience to Big Pharma, and the industry is waging all-out war.
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(If you'd like an unrolled 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:)
The arguments against allowing poor countries to make their own vaccines are a mix of racist condescension ("poor brown people are too primitive to make high-tech vaccines"), misdirection ("patents aren't the problem") and bad faith ("we don't have enough materials").
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Of all the moving, wrenching accounts of death during the pandemic, @mollymcghee's "America's Dead Souls," for the @parisreview stands out: haunting, furious and sad, an rude awakening of the status quo that denies any possibility of inaction.
(If you'd like an unrolled 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:)
I've known McGhee a long time, since she worked on my book INFORMATION DOESN'T WANT TO BE FREE from @mcsweeneys, a professional association we renewed when she landed at @torbooks.
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