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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Jul 29, 2021 • 31 tweets • 29 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Bankruptcy and elite impunity; Stories from Black women's customer service hell; Tracking you with accelerometer signatures; Unauthorized cups; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/07/29/imp…

#Pluralistic

1/
Bankruptcy and elite impunity: The Sacklers offer billions of reasons to overthrow the system.



2/
Stories from Black women's customer service hell: The women who answer the phone when you call Disney, Airbnb, Carnival and others.



3/
Tracking you with accelerometer signatures: Yet another latent unique identifier with horrifying consequences.



4/
Unauthorized cups: RFID-equipped disposable cups deny water to homeless people.



5/
#20yrsago How to help someone use a computer pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/h…

#20yrsago Declines in advertising in major magazines in the first six months of 2001 web.archive.org/web/2001071410…

#15yrsago Cingular threatens Consumerist over “how to discriminate” docs consumerist.com/consumer/cd/ci…

6/
#10yrsago Batman logo in equation form reddit.com/r/pics/comment…

#10yrsago Bill Nye explains to Fox News why lunar volcanoes don’t disprove anthropogenic global warming web.archive.org/web/2011092418…

7/
#10yrsago House Committee passes bill requiring your ISP to spy on every click and keystroke you make online and retain for 12 months eff.org/deeplinks/2011…

8/
#10yrsago Vindictive WalMart erroneously accuses couple of shoplifting, has husband deported, wife fired, costs them house and car web.archive.org/web/2011100210…

9/
#10yrsago Man with camera in park who fled angry parent sought by police (turns out he was taking pix of his grandson) web.archive.org/web/2011082905…

#10yrsago Copyright extortionist ripped off his competitor’s threatening material torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-la…

10/
#10yrsago US ISP/copyright deal: a one-sided private law for corporations, without public interest eff.org/deeplinks/2011…

#10yrsago Why they call the Tories “the nasty party” theguardian.com/uk/2011/jul/28…

12/
#5yrsago The Ice Bucket Challenge did not fund a breakthrough in ALS treatment healthnewsreview.org/2016/07/ice-bu…

#5yrsago Silicon Valley banks offer tech giants’ new hires 100% mortgages on 24 hours’ notice bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

13/
#5yrsago RIP, MAD Magazines’s Jack Davis bbc.com/news/entertain…

#5yrsago Laurie Penny at the DNC: “Dissent will not be tolerated. Protest will not be permitted.” medium.com/welcome-to-the…

14/
#5yrsago North Carolina’s voter suppression law struck down as “racist” cnn.com/2016/07/29/pol…

#5yrsago Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz calls Apple’s tax strategy a “fraud” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

15/
#5yrsago Trump campaign frisks, then blocks ticketed Washington Post reporter at Pence rally washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/w…

#5yrsago Pregnancy-tracking app was riddled with vulnerabilities, exposing extremely sensitive personal information consumerreports.org/mobile-securit…

16/
#1yrago Bitcoin is not a socialist's ally pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/bre…

#1yrago No consequences for police violence at BLM actions pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/bre…

#1yrago Let's force Big Tech to interoperate pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/bre…

#1yrago Break 'Em Up pluralistic.net/2020/07/29/bre…

17/
#1yrago Police "unions" are not unions pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

#1yrago Snowden's Little Brother intro pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

#1yrago Audible Exclusives pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

#1yrago Mexican copyright crushes free speech pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

18/
#1yrago Afterland pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/aft…

19/
Tuesday's threads: What would a live concert album sound like with all the songs taken out?; The infosec apocalypse is nigh; and more!



20/
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…

21/
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…

22/
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/

23/
Upcoming appearances:

* Privacy Without Monopoly, @Defcon 29, Aug 7
defcon.org/html/defcon-29…

* Keynote speaker, The Quills Conference, Aug 12-15
quillsconference.com

* From Wayback to Way Forward: The @InternetArchive turns 25, Oct 21
eventbrite.com/e/from-wayback…

24/
Recent appearances:

Reset the Internet? (Project Syndicate)
project-syndicate.org/podcasts/reset…

* Trustbusting (@NicoleSandler)


* Launch for @UnshavedMouse's When the Sparrow Falls (@MystGalaxyBooks):
crowdcast.io/e/virtual-even…

25/
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 @MCRockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe…

26/
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/2021/07/29/imp…

27/
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.

28/
My latest @Medium column is "Now you’ve got two problems," part three of a series on themepark design, queing theory, immersive entertainment, and load-balancing.

doctorow.medium.com/now-youve-got-…

29/
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

30/
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…

31/
Today's top sources: @NakedCapitalism (nakedcapitalism.com), @GlennF, @Sophpsych, @TheBekku, @SeamusBellamy, @hipsterelectron and @aggrowill.

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jul 3
As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are *not popular*.

1/ A kneeling figure, shackled hand-and-foot with ball-and-chains at his ankles. His face is that of a turn-of-the-century newsie, grinning broadly under a torn cloth cap. Behind him is a heavily halftoned neon HELP WANTED sign, askew over a indistinct black hellscape ganked from the third panel of Boschs's 'Garden of Earthly Delights.'
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/2025/07/03/sta…

2/
Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is *extremely* unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jul 1
If there's one are where tech has shown a consistent aptitude for innovation, it's in accounting tricks that make money-losing companies appear wildly profitable. And AI is the greatest innovator of all (when it comes to accounting gimmicks).

1/ A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/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/2025/06/30/acc…

2/
Since the dotcom era, tech companies have boasted about giving stuff away but "making it up in volume," inventing an ever-sweatier collection of shell-games that let them hide the business's true profit and loss.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jun 28
In 2014, I read a political science paper that nearly convinced me to quit my lifelong career as an activist: "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," published in *Perspectives on Politics*:



1/ cambridge.org/core/journals/…An inflatable pig balloon against a blue sky, bearing the Zohran for Mayor logo. The Chrysler Building sits to one side. Image: Frank Vincentz (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geeste_-_Biener_Stra%C3%9Fe_-_Speicherbecken_-_Drachenfest_38_ies.jpg Petri Krohn https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrysler_building-_top.jpg CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/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/2025/06/28/mam…

2/
The paper's authors are Martin Gilens, a UCLA professor of Public Policy; and Northwestern's Benjamin Page, a professor of Decision Making. Gilens and Page studied a representative sample of 1,779 policy issues.

3/
Read 49 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jun 24
When a company sells you something for $2 that someone else can buy for $1, they're revaluing the dollars in your pocket at half the rate of the other guy's.

1/ A busy 1950s grocery store. The scene has been altered: the massive, menacing, glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' hovers over the store, shooting red beams into the cash register. The store -- but not the shoppers at its front -- is suffused with red light. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/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/2025/06/24/pri…

2/
Economists praise "price discrimination" as "efficient." That's when a company charges different customers different amounts based on inferences about their willingness to pay.

3/
Read 50 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jun 20
Private equity firms are the demon princes of the hellspace that is the imploding, life-destroying, plutocrat-generating American economy.

1/ A billionaire in a tuxedo with dollar-sign cufflinks, stands at a podium, yanking a lever shaped like a gilded dollar sign with one gloved hand. From the other hand, he contemptuously dangles a bloody corpse. His head has been replaced with the head of a doctor in a surgeon's blue cap, with red, glaring eyes. The background is the text of Oregon's new Corporate Practice of Medicine law, in blown-out, red type.
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/2025/06/20/the…

2/
Their favorite scam, the "leveraged buyout" is a mafia bustout dressed up in respectable clothes, and if you mourn a beloved, failed business, chances are that an LBO was the murder weapon, and PE was the killer:



3/pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spi…
Read 44 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
May 27
On a recent This Machine Kills episode, guest Hagen Blix described the ultimate form of "AI therapy" with a "human in the loop":



1/ soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…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 posed man in a sharp business suit, frowning 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/2025/05/27/ran…

2/
> One actual therapist is just having ten chat GPT windows open where they just like have five seconds to interrupt the chatGPT. They have to scan them all and see if it says something really inappropriate. That's your job, to stop it.

3/
Read 98 tweets

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