Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 17, 2022 21 tweets 18 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Kickstarting the "Chokepoint Capitalism" audiobook; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/08/17/cho…

#Pluralistic 1/
Tomorrow (Aug 18), I'll be at the launch for @Vice @Motherboard's new "Terraform" sf anthology in Venice, CA:

eventbrite.com/e/terraform-bo… 2/
Kickstarting the "Chokepoint Capitalism" audiobook: We wrote a book that Amazon won't sell.

3/
Hey look at this

* Closing Down the Billionaire Factory mattstoller.substack.com/p/closing-down… 4/
#10yrsago @RIAA budget shrinks nearly 50% over two years torrentfreak.com/riaa-revenue-d…

#10yrsago Major American firms pay more in CEO compensation than they do in fed tax csmonitor.com/Business/Lates…

#10yrsago Batman Earth One: rebooting the bat memex.craphound.com/2012/08/17/bat… 5/
#5yrsago Steve Bannon calls left-wing reporter out of the blue and unloads on alt-right and GOP prospect.org/power/steve-ba…

#5yrsago Homeopathic infant teething products contain dangerous levels of deadly nightshade arstechnica.com/science/2017/0… 6/
#5yrsago Texas Republicans will now require women to carry “rape insurance” if they need abortions vice.com/en/article/paa…

#5yrsago Charlottesville white supremacist strips off uniform and insists it’s just for lulz 7/
#1yrago Big Oil caught lying about methane pluralistic.net/2021/08/17/kin…

#1yrago Sandman Slim's final adventure: King Bullet brings in @Richard_Kadrey's masterpiece for a hell of a landing pluralistic.net/2021/08/17/kin… 8/
Yesterday's threads: How Democrats could win more elections; and more!

9/
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… 10/
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… 11/
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/ 12/
Upcoming appearances:

* Launch for @Motherboard's Terraform anthology, @Vice offices (Los Angeles), Aug 18
eventbrite.com/e/terraform-bo…

* Radical Interoperability: An Internet Disassembly Manual, Aug 29 15h (@BurningMan Center Camp) 13/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Chokepoint Capitalism: a Better Deal for Creative Labor, Aug 30, 13h (@BurningMan @PalenqueNorte, 915 and E)

* Interview with @BunnieStudios on the Precursor and Trusting Trust, Aug 31, 12h (@BurningMan Liminal Labs, 945 and Rod's) 14/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Canadians Connected (Ottawa), Sept 15
member.cira.ca/Events/Canadia…

* #UnfinishedLive (NYC), Sept 21-24
live.unfinished.com 15/
Recent appearances:

* DRM Secretly Polices You (@dtnsshow)
dailytechnewsshow.com/2022/07/29/drm…

* Bricking Tractors (Inside Agri-Turf)
inside-agriturf.captivate.fm/episode/bricki…

* Blockchain, Bitcoin & Selling The Brooklyn Bridge (@MMTPodcast):
pileusmmt.libsyn.com/135-cory-docto… 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/2022/08/17/cho… 18/
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.

My latest Medium column is "Takes One To Know One"

doctorow.medium.com/takes-one-to-k… 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… 21/

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More from @doctorow

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
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
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
May 21
My latest *Locus Magazine* column is "Strange Bedfellows and Long Knives," about the secret engine of sweeping political upheavals (like Trumpism) and their inherent fragility:



1/ locusmag.com/2025/05/commen…A Renaissance oil-painting of the assassination of Julius Caesar, modified to give Caesar Trump's hair and turn his skin orange, to make the knives glow, and to emboss a Heritage Foundation logo on the wall behind the scene.
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/2025/05/21/et-…

2/
Stories about major change usually focus on a *group*, but groups rarely achieve big, ambitious goals. Think about all the goal-oriented groups in your orbit, with missions like alleviating hunger, or beautifying your neighborhood, or changing the health-care system.

3/
Read 40 tweets
May 14
Something's very different in tech. Once upon a time, every bad choice by tech companies - taking away features, locking out mods or plugins, nerfing the API - was countered, nearly instantaneously, by someone writing a program that overrode that choice.

1/ A 19th century engraving of fiendishly complex machine composed of thousands of interlocking gears and frames (originally an image of a printing press, but modified so that it's just all gears and things), colored dark blue. It bears Woody Guthrie's guitar sticker, 'This machine KILLS fascists. To one side of it stands an image of Ned Ludd, taken from an infamous 19th century Luddite handbill, waving troops into battle. King Ludd's head has been replaced with a hacker's hoodie, the face within lost in shadow.
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/2025/05/14/pre…

2/
Bad clients would be muscled aside by third-party clients. Locked bootloaders would be hacked and replaced. Code that confirmed you were using OEM parts, consumables or adapters would be found and nuked from orbit.

3/
Read 51 tweets
May 13
"Understood: Who Broke the Internet?" is my new podcast for CBC about the enshittogenic policy decisions that gave rise to enshittification. Episode two just dropped: "ctrl-ctrl-ctrl":



1/ cbc.ca/listen/cbc-pod…The logo for 'Who Broke the Internet' - a shattered hard-drive with the CBC logomark.
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/2025/05/13/ctr…

2/
The thesis of the show is straightforward: the internet wasn't killed by ideological failings like "greed," nor by economic concepts like "network effects," nor by some cyclic force of history that drives towards "re-intermediation."

3/
Read 49 tweets

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