Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Dec 8, 2021 • 22 tweets • 16 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: All the books I reviewed in 2021; Broken Promises; How elite hobbies let billionaires pay no tax; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/12/08/req…

#Pluralistic

1/
I'm heading on a work trip that dovetails into a Xmas holiday and then, in turn, to a hip replacement. I may not put out another Pluralistic edition until Feb (though I might squeak another edition in before then, who can say?). Get vaxed, stay safe and I'll see you in '22!

2/
All the books I reviewed in 2021: Plus one I published!



3/
Broken Promises: The Writers Guild of America West makes the case for media un-consolidation.



4/
How elite hobbies let billionaires pay no tax: More from Propublica's IRS Leaks.



5/
#10yrsago Yellow Kid Weil: Autobiography of the greatest con man in American history memex.craphound.com/2011/12/08/yel…

#10yrsago Money is the dark matter of American elections: visualizing political donations since Citizens United motherjones.com/politics/2011/…

6/
#10yrsago ESP proponents claim that ESP skeptics are psychic, and use their powers to suppress ESP chronicle.com/blogs/percolat…

#10yrsago First-hand account of Occupy LA arrest myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-occ…

7/
#5yrsago Everything is a Remix, including Star Wars, and that’s how I became a writer recreatecoalition.org/new-recreate-p…

#5yrsago In Africa, British spies target allied leaders, executives, and telcoms engineers lemonde.fr/afrique/articl…

8/
#5yrsago William Gibson on individual privacy, governmental secrecy and the future of history nytimes.com/2016/12/06/opi…

#1yrago Uber pays to get rid of its self-driving cars pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/req…

9/
#1yrago All the books I reviewed in 2020 pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/req…

#1yrago Ford patents plutocratic lane-changes pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/req…

10/
Yesterday's threads: Podcasting "Give Me Slack"; A lexicon of euphemisms for "corporate crime"; IP lawyers weaponize trade secrecy to stall vaccine waivers; and more!



11/
My latest book is Attack Surface, a sequel to my bestselling Little Brother books, now in paperback, wherever books are sold.

Signed copies at @darkdel:

darkdel.com/store/p1840/Co…

12/
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…

13/
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/
14/
Upcoming appearances:

* @intgovforum (Warsaw), Dec 10
intgovforum.org/en/schedule/20…

15/
Recent appearances:

* Seize the Means of Computation (@SeaGL)
seagl.org/archive/2021/s…

* Redistribute the Internet (@NGIForward Summit)
vimeo.com/651018259

* NFTs (@UpstreamPodcast)
soundcloud.com/upstreampodcas…

16/
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…

17/
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/2021/12/08/req…

18/
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.

My latest Medium column is "Pandemic of the Unvaccinated":

medium.com/@doctorow/pand…

19/
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

20/
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/

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 22
Turns out Donald Trump isn't the only world leader with a tech billionaire "first buddy" who gets to serve as an unaccountable, self-interested de facto business regulator. UK PM Kier Starmer has just handed the keys to the British economy over to Jeff Bezos.

1/ A vintage Puck cover illustration depicting a tophatted millionaire as a puppeteer, operating two marionettes, one dressed as a general, the other as a businessman. It has been altered: the puppeteer's face has been replaced with Jeff Bezos's. The general marionette's face has been replaced with Keir Starmer's. The other marionette's face has been replaced with a vintage oil pastel drawing of an outraged bricklayer in a folded paper hat. The puppet theater is surmounted by the UK royal crest. Image: UK Parliament/Maria Unger (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keir_Starmer_...
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/2025/01/22/aut…

2/
Oh, not literally. But here's what's happened: the UK's Competitions and Markets Authority, an organisation charged with investigating and punishing tech monopolists (like Amazon) has just been turned over to Doug Gurr, the guy who used to run Amazon UK.

3/
Read 50 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 20
Many of us have left the big social media platforms; far more of us *wish* we could leave them; and even those of us who've escaped from Facebook/Insta and Twitter still spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the people we care about off of them, too.

1/ A page out of a medieval hand-illuminated grimoire; it is an illustration of a tree, with each branch terminating in a demon; these branches are annotated in an unknown script. The demons have been replaced with 19th century caricatures of shouting millionaire industrialists.
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/2025/01/20/cap…

2/
It's lazy and easy to think that our friends who are stuck on legacy platforms run by Zuckerberg and Musk lack the self-discipline to wean themselves off of these services.

3/
Read 93 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 18
We're less than a month into 2025 and I'm already overwhelmed by my backlog of links! Herewith, then, is my 25th linkdump post, a grab-bag of artful transitions between miscellaneous subjects. Here's the previous 24:



1/ pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/A pile of miscellaneous junk. Image: Jen (cropped) https://www.flickr.com/photos/jenrab/4877784036 CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
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/2025/01/18/rag…

2/
Last week's big tech event was the Supreme Court giving the go-ahead for Congress to ban Tiktok, because somehow the First Amendment allows the US government to shut down a speech forum if they don't like the content of its messages.

3/
Read 101 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 15
Five years ago, Trump touted his "big, beautiful" replacement for NAFTA, the "free trade agreement" between the US, Mexico and Canada. Trump's NAFTA-2 was called the USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada Agreement) and it was pretty similar to NAFTA, to be honest.

1/ A 19th century painting depicting the burning of the White House during the War of 1812. The white Xes on the soldiers' uniforms have been replaced with white Canadian maple leaves.
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/2025/01/15/bea…

2/
That tells you a couple things: first, NAFTA was, broadly speaking a good thing for Trump and the ultra-wealthy donors who backed him (and got far richer as a result). That's why he kept it intact.

3/
Read 57 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 14
During the Napster wars, the record labels *seriously* pissed off millions of internet users when they sued over 19,000 music fans, mostly kids, but also grannies, old people, and dead people.

1/ A multiton bank vault door set in a red room. Within the vault, we see a 'code waterfall' effect as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movies. In front of the fault is a ghoulish, skull-faced figure in a tailcoat and a red sash, holding a tube that is vomiting out a poorly differentiated stream of rubbish and slop.
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/2025/01/14/con…

2/
It's hard to overstate how badly the labels behaved. Like, there was the Swarthmore student who was the maintainer of a free/open source search engine that indexed files available in public sharepoints on the LAN.

3/
Read 59 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 11
The social function of the economics profession is to explain, over and over again, that your boss is actually right and that you don't really want the things you want, and you're secretly happy to be abused by the system.

1/ A Soviet propaganda poster depicting two workers holding flags in front of a locomotive. The flags have been replaced with US flags. The locomotive's face has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The maxim below has been replaced with the lettering from a Walmart 'everyday low prices' sign. The background has been replaced with a posterized grocery aisle. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao (modified) ht...
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/2025/01/11/soc…

2/
If that wasn't true, why would your "choose" commercial surveillance, abusive workplaces and other depredations?

In other words, economics is the "look what you made me do" stick that capitalism uses to beat us with.

3/
Read 61 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(