Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jul 5, 2022 31 tweets 31 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: "The Swerve"; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/07/05/gra…

#Pluralistic 1/ A broken bridge over a mysterious chasm.
Sponsor me for the @ClarionUCSD Write-A-Thon! I'm writing 10,000 words on my prison-tech thriller "Some Men Rob You With a Fountain Pen" and raising scholarship money for the Clarion SF/F workshop, which I graduated from in 1992.

clarionwriteathon.com/members/profil… 2/
"The Swerve": My Locus column on hope in the dark.

3/
Hey look at this

* How to save lives and avoid privacy apocalypse ft.com/content/fa2683… (h/t @TimHarford)

* Craft beer uses recycled sewage theguardian.com/world/2022/jul… (h/t my mom)

* Valedictorian Rips Into Erosion Of Public Education popularresistance.org/lausd-high-sch… (h/t my dad) 4/
#20yrsago Themepark queues and traffic-shaping web.archive.org/web/2002071313…

#20yrsago Parasitic computing proof uses JavaScript to compel computation web.archive.org/web/2003120303…

#20yrsago Shredding Hollywood’s digital television FUD web.archive.org/web/2002070814… 5/
#20yrsago What is Palladium? What is the area of a Moebius Strip? web.archive.org/web/2002090315…

#20yrsago @therealjanisian vs the RIAA web.archive.org/web/2002080208…

#15yrsago RIP, Fred Saberhagen locusmag.com/2007/2007NewsA… 6/
#15yrsago @lewisshiner’s short fiction online for free lewisshiner.com/liberation/man…

#15yrsago Me on CBC, talking Universal v. iTunes web.archive.org/web/2007072911… 7/
#10yrsago Meet the legions of wingnuts who think Andy Griffith was a communist and want him to burn in hell theblaze.com/tag/report-and…

#10yrsago Team Human: a high-school vampire novel doesn’t suck (it rocks) memex.craphound.com/2012/07/03/tea… 8/
#10yrsago Karl Marx on a MasterCard npr.org/sections/money…

#10yrsago Fretting about Facebook, 17th century style tomstandage.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/the…

#10yrsago @TheWELL users pledge more than $100K to community buyout nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/07/wi… 9/
#10yrsago @MrChuckD’s rules for the music business craphound.com/images/ChuckDs…

#10yrsago @EFF weighs in on Charles Carreon’s latest dumb stunt eff.org/deeplinks/2012…

#10yrsago Charles Carreon: “Mission accomplished” arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20… 10/
#10yrsago Chinese-built ghost town in Angola – the first of many to come? bbc.com/news/world-afr…

#10yrsago #ACTA IS DEAD (ish) (for now) web.archive.org/web/2012070703…

#10yrsago Why we still fight about music and copyright on the Internet locusmag.com/2012/07/cory-d… 11/
#5yrsago AT&T: it’s not “forced arbitration” because no one forced you to have broadband arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#5yrsago California has so much solar power it has to pay Arizona to use its excess energy latimes.com/projects/la-fi… 12/
#5yrsago Now any Floridian can ask to have public schools’ science and literary curriculum censored web.archive.org/web/2017050100…

#5yrsago A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: DNA, individuals, and species memex.craphound.com/2017/07/03/a-b… 13/
#5yrsago Celebrate Independence Day with @mc_frontalot’s nerdcore rap about free software vs open source

#5yrsago Dominic Cummings thought up the Brexit Bus and its NHS lie, now says referendum was a “dumb idea” independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi… 14/
#5yrsago Vidangel is a stupid censorship service and we should welcome it anyway wired.com/story/vidangel…

#5yrsago For sale: any Australian’s full health record for a mere $22 theguardian.com/australia-news… 15/
#5yrsago Bloomberg: Middle-class Americans were “fleeced” by neoliberalism bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

#5yrsago In the 1990s, a Serbian biology textbook used a still from Raising Arizona for its cover art avclub.com/nicolas-cage-w… 16/
#5yrsago Mom feared being beaten by United crew, so she didn’t complain when her son’s seat was given away hawaiinewsnow.com/story/35811846…

#5yrsago Debullshitifying the free speech debate about CNN and Trump’s alt-right wrestling GIF popehat.com/2017/07/05/cnn… 17/
#1yrago Podcasting "Self Publishing": My column on monopolism, publishing, and the fortunes of authors pluralistic.net/2021/07/05/ide…

#1yrago Conspiracy fantasy: The political significance and personal appeal of conspiratorialism pluralistic.net/2021/07/05/ide… 18/
#1yrago The future is symmetrical: Broadband netizens vs asymmetrical mouse-potatoes pluralistic.net/2021/07/03/bea…

#1yrago Biden admin orders an end to surprise ER billing pluralistic.net/2021/07/02/spo… 19/
Friday's threads: After inflation, the whip-crack; and more!

20/ Image: Lars Frantzen (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.or
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… 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:

* A New @HOPEconf (NYC), Jul 24
hope.net

* @DEFCON 30 (Las Vegas), Aug 13
defcon.org/html/defcon-30… 24/
Recent appearances:

* @CMAgovUK Data, Technology and Analytics Conference:


* Supp-Lie Demand (Bad Faith with @briebriejoy):
patreon.com/posts/67550669

* The Sci-Fi Feedback Loop: Mapping Fiction’s Influence on Real-World Tech
csi.asu.edu/calendar/event… 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/2022/07/05/gra… 27/
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - as well as previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com. 28/
My latest Medium column is "Shovel-Ready: A half-to-three-quarters-baked idea to fix capitalism"

doctorow.medium.com/shovel-ready-3…

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…

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Dec 16
We are about to get a "post-American internet," because we are entering a post-American *era* and a post-American *world*. Some of that is Trump's doing, and some of that is down to his predecessors.

1/ Uncle Sam staring into a funhouse mirror that has made him painfully thin. The reflection is wearing a Trump wig and has orange skin. He stands atop a map of the world that stretches to infinity. In the background is a shantytown with the TRUMP logomark rising in the sky over it.
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/2025/12/16/k-s…

2/
When we think about the American century, we rightly focus on America's hard power - the invasions, military bases, arms exports, and CIA coups.

3/
Read 86 tweets
Dec 13
Look, I'm not trying to say that new technologies *never* raise gnarly new legal questions. But what I *am* saying is that a lot of the time, the "new legal challenges" raised by technology are somewhere between 95-100% bullshit.

1/ A modified FBI badge. It now reads 'Federal Wallet Investigators.' It is made out to 'Timothy J Shotspotter.' It is held in the three-fingered, gloved grip of a cartoon character. Around its edges, we see a cartoon room from a public domain Betty Boop cartoon.
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/2025/12/13/unc…

2/
It's ginned up by none-too-bright tech bros and their investors, and then swallowed by regulators and lawmakers who are either so credulous they'd lose a game of peek-a-boo, or (likely) in on the scam.

3/
Read 68 tweets
Dec 9
I have a weird fascination with early-stage Bill Gates, after his mother convinced a pal of hers - chairman of IBM's board of directors - to give her son the contract to provide the operating system for the new IBM PC.

1/ A 1960s ad for IBM mainframes, featuring a woman in an office chair seated at a console, surrounded by large processing and storage units. It has been modified. A man in a business suit, impatiently checking his watch, looms out from between two of the cabinets. His head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The woman's head has been replaced with a hacker's hoodie. Both the woman and the man have been tinted red.   Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommon...
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/2025/12/09/tem…

2/
Gates and his pal Paul Allen tricked another programmer into selling them the rights to DOS, which they sold to IBM, setting Microsoft on the path to be one of the most profitable businesses in human history.

3/
Read 36 tweets
Nov 20
Well, this fucking *sucks*. A federal judge has decided that Meta is not a monopolist, and that its acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp were not an illegal bid to secure and maintain a monopoly:



1/ gizmodo.com/meta-learns-th…The classic Puck Magazine editorial cartoon entitled 'The King of All Commodities,' depicting John D Rockefeller as a man with grotesquely tiny body and a gigantic head, wearing a crown emblazoned with the names of the industrial concerns he owned. Rockefeller's head has been replaced with that of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar. The names of the industrial concerns have been replaced with the wordmarks for Scale AI, Instagram, Oculus and Whatsapp. The dollar-sign at the crown's pinnacle has been replaced with the Facebook 'f' logo. The chain around Rockefeller's neck sports the charm th...
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/2025/11/20/if-…

2/
This is particularly galling because Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly, explicitly declared that these mergers were undertaken *to reduce competition*, which is the only circumstance in which pro-monopoly economists and lawyers say that mergers should be blocked.

3/
Read 55 tweets
Nov 18
Gary K Wolf is the author of a fantastic 1981 novel called *Who Censored Roger Rabbit?* which Disney licensed and turned into an equally fantastic 1988 live action/animated hybrid movie called *Who Framed Roger Rabbit?*

1/ The final scene of Disneyland's 'Roger Rabbit's Toontown Spin,' in which Roger Rabbit is deploying a pair of portable holes; the holes have been replaced with copyright symbols, which are partially cropped.  Image: Ken Lund (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/16775732643/  CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/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/2025/11/18/im-…

2/
But despite the commercial and critical acclaim of the movie, Disney hasn't made any feature-length sequels.

3/
Read 52 tweets
Nov 8
A blockbuster Reuters report by Jeff Horwitz analyzes leaked internal documents that reveal that: 10% of Meta's gross revenue comes from ads for fraudulent goods and scams, and; the company knows it, and; they decided not to do anything about it, because...

1/ A tuxedoed figure dramatically shoveing greenish pigs into a tube, from whose other end vomits forth a torrent of packaged goods. He has the head of Mark Zuckerberg's 'metaverse' avatar. He stands upon an endless field of gold coins. The background is the intaglioed upper face of the engraving of Benjamin Franklin on a US$100 bill, roughed up to a dark and sinister hue.
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/2025/11/08/fae…

2/
...The fines for facilitating this life-destroying fraud are far less than the expected revenue from helping to destroy its users' lives:



3/reuters.com/investigations…
Read 59 tweets

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