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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Aug 13, 2021 • 25 tweets • 22 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Smart cities are neither, 2021 edition; End of the line for Reaganomics; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/pos…

#Pluralistic

1/
I'm a guest of honor and keynote speaker at Salt Lake City's Quills Conference on writing, Aug 12-15:

quillsconference.com

2/
Smart cities are neither, 2021 edition: "Whose Streets? Our Streets! (Tech Edition)."

hhttps://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1426195851056058370

3/
End of the line for Reaganomics: The OG antitrust is back, baby!



4/
#20yrsago "State-of-the-industry" letter from the year 2021 web.archive.org/web/2001082201…

#20yrsago Our faulty intuition about open systems ft.com/content/641671…

#15yrsago NBC: Hair-gel terrorists posed no risk last week web.archive.org/web/2006081319…

5/
#15yrsago Defending against the last plot won’t save us from the next one schneier.com/blog/archives/…

#15yrsago RIAA to grieving family: We depose your children in 60 days recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2006/08/riaa-w…

6/
#10yrsago AT&T merger leak: it’s all about raising prices and reducing competition dslreports.com/shownews/Leake…

#10yrsago Doctor tried to "cure" homosexuality by tasping gay man while he had sex with female sex worker web.archive.org/web/2011100408…

7/
#10yrsago My panel with Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf and Al Gore at Mexico City’s Campus Party

#10yrsago 1968: when Britain’s Daily Mirror tried to overthrow Parliament bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurt…

8/
#10yrsago Stasi spywear: the inept art of commie disguise web.archive.org/web/2011080210…

#5yrsago How removing headphone jacks opens the door to DRM (and how to close the door) fastcompany.com/3062741/the-ip…

10/
#5yrsago Cash grants to people with unexpected bills successfully prevents homelessness science.sciencemag.org/content/353/63…

#5yrsago Forget Skynet: AI is already making things terrible for people who aren’t rich white dudes nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opi…

11/
#1yrago Trump's Solicitor General says bribery is legal pluralistic.net/2020/08/12/fai…

#1yrago Payday lenders are CFPB's pandemic aid pluralistic.net/2020/08/12/fai…

#1yrago Sorting machines snatched from post offices pluralistic.net/2020/08/12/fai…

#1yrago Failed State pluralistic.net/2020/08/12/fai…

12/
#1yrago Mexico's terrible copyright is in trouble pluralistic.net/2020/08/12/fai…

#1yrsago Florida sheriff bans masks pluralistic.net/2020/08/13/bet…

#1yrago My origin story pluralistic.net/2020/08/13/bet…

13/
Wednesday's threads: Canada's got the world's worst internet ideas; IRS leaks reveal billions reaped through ultra-wealthy lobbying on the tax bill; and more!



14/
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…

15/
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…

16/
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/

17/
Upcoming appearances:

* Launch for @Ben_Rosenbaum's The Unraveling, Aug 23 (@Booksoup)
booksoup.com/event/benjamin…

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

18/
Recent appearances:

* Privacy Without Monopoly (@Defcon)


* Building the Digital Commons (@moneyontheleft)
moneyontheleft.org/2021/08/01/bui…

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

19/
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…

20/
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/2021/08/13/pos…

21/
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.

22/
My latest @Medium column is "Expectations management," part five of a series on themepark design, queing theory, immersive entertainment, and load-balancing.

doctorow.medium.com/expectations-m…

23/
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

24/
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…

25/
Today's top sources: Bruce Schneier (schneier.com).

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 20
Forget surveillance capitalism - let's talk about *surveillance infantalism*: the drive by the wealthy to spy on you in order to pursue the toddler's goals of getting everything they want from the people around them, without any reciprocal obligations.

1/ Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse avatar's head atop the body of a figure from a earth 20th century editorial cartoon; the figure wears a suit, holds a long fork, and stares into the eyepiece of a microscope. The microscope is attached to a sinister scientific apparatus. The microscope is trained on a tiny human figure, limned in red, who shouts through a megaphone back up into the microscope's lens. The background is a 1980s NASA oil painting of the red, rocky surface of Venus.
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/2025/08/20/bil…

2/
After the Snowden revelations, I started to wonder about something fundamental: why spy at all?



3/theguardian.com/technology/201…
Read 40 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 18
When Elon Musk disagrees with someone, he calls them an "NPC" (non-player character). In video-games, an NPC is a machine-puppeted sprite that engages in predictable movements (e.g. Pac-Man ghosts) and utters some scripted (or AI-generated) dialog:



1/ futurism.com/elon-musk-inte…Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar, perched on a legless nude Ken doll body; its eyes are psychedelic pinwheels. Behind the figure is a group shot of child laborer miners from the 1910s, glitched out, blue tinted, and covered with scan lines. The background is a psychedelic swirl of moody colors. They stand atop a filthy checkerboard floor that stretches off to infinity.
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/2025/08/18/see…

2/
Seeing people as automata is probably a side-effect of sitting in the command-center of a big online service, in which you primarily interact with users as statistical aggregates in an analytics dashboard.

3/
Read 30 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 16
When LLM users describe their experience with their chatbots, the results are so divergent that it can sound like they're describing two completely different products.

1/ A vintage photo of two men in front of a slot machine. The men's heads have been replaced by the heads of hooded figures wearing Guy Fawkes mask. The image is sepia toned: the only color is the pay-line of the slot-machine, which is showing three glaring red eyes of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The slot machine has a sign over the rotor-window that displays the Openai logo and wordmark. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- Frank Schwichtenberg (modified...
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/2025/08/16/jac…

2/
Previously, I've hypothesized that this is because there are two distinct groups of *users*: "centaurs" (people who are assisted by a machine - in this case, people who get to decide when, whether and how to integrate an LLM into their work)...

3/
Read 27 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 13
It's not just that Texas DA Gocha Ramirez charged a woman with murder for having an abortion (not t allowed even in Texas). It's that Ramirez paid for his mistress's abortion, after he impregnated her while having an affair with her *and* her sister:



1/ archive.is/20250812192203…A red, angry mushroom cloud. Sitting atop it, surrounded by blue skies and fluffy clouds, is a smirking business-suited man reclining in an armchair. He wears a MAGA hat and reads a magazine turned to a page showing Donald Trump's face.
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/2025/08/13/the…

2/
This is perfect Magaism, as captured by Wilhoit's Law:

> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.



3/crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/lib…
Read 52 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jul 30
Delta's announced new surveillance pricing: they're feeding an AI your nonconsensually harvested personal info that data-brokers and credit bureaux hold to predict the maximum you're willing to pay, and then price their tickets accordingly:



1/ fortune.com/2025/07/16/del…Hieronymus Bosch's 'The Conjurer,' which depicts a sleight-of-hand artist doing a cup-and-balls routine for a group of amazed yokels. It has been altered. The head of the conjurer has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' He wears a Delta Airlines logo over his breast. The table on which the cup-and-balls game is playing out sports a crashed jet in Delta livery, smoke rising from the wreckage. 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/2025/07/30/eff…

2/
Data-brokers sell all kinds of data, from the "legitimate" info about everywhere your car's been, to everywhere place the Bluetooth radios on your phone and headphones has been, to everything you've bought, to every sit you've visited and every search you've performed.

3/
Read 61 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jul 22
Ever notice how many right wing influencers are on the grift?

1/ A carny barker at a podium, gesticulating with a MAGA cap. He wears a Klan hood, and his podium features products from Nu-skin, Amway and Herbalife. Behind him is an oil-painted scene of a steamship with a Trump Tower logo, at a pier in flames.
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/2025/07/22/all…

2/
Like Alex Jones - that guy is basically Gwyneth Paltrow for conservative bros, selling the same "wellness" crap to a male audience (and not for nothing, Paltrow's victims are reliable boosters for RFK Jr's MAHA movement):



3/theweek.com/speedreads/709…
Read 66 tweets

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