#10yrsago New Zealand Prime Minister sends police to raid major news outlets over covert recording of negotiations with far-right party rnz.co.nz/news/election-… 7/
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."
* Alternative recommender systems in the DSA: How to protect free expression, create competition and empower users all at once (@Article19org), Nov 18 zoom.us/webinar/regist… 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 @MCRockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, (ad-/tracker-free, and utterly unadorned save a single emoji). Today's is "🤯". Suggestions solicited for future emojis! Thanks to Michael Downey for today's!
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:
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:
Let me tell you how I became a proud science denier, and how it saved my life.
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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:
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.
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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.
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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:
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.
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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.
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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:
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.
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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:
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.
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The commercial surveillance industry is almost totally unregulated. Data brokers, ad-tech, and everyone in between - they harvest, store, analyze, sell and rent every intimate, sensitive, potentially compromising fact about your life.
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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:
Late last year, I testified at a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hearing about a proposed new rule to kill off data brokers, who are the lynchpin of the industry: