Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Aug 19, 2022 24 tweets 20 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The Business Roundtable's climate plan was killed by its arch-rival, the Business Roundtable; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/08/19/han…

#Pluralistic 1/ The Earth seen from space, ...
I'm Kickstarting a DRM-free audiobook edition of Chokepoint Capitalism, the book @rgibli and I wrote about how tech- and entertainment monopolies rip off artists, and how to unrig those terrible creative labor markets:

kickstarter.com/projects/docto… 2/
The Business Roundtable's climate plan was killed by its arch-rival, the Business Roundtable: If only Apple, Pepsi, Walmart and Google knew someone at the lobbying shop they own.

3/ Image
Hey look at this

* Handmade eyeglass frames made of denim mosevic.com

* Old laptop hard drives allegedly crash when exposed to Janet Jackson music arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/0…

* Comprehensive timeline of email innovation archive.computerhistory.org/resources/acce… (h/t @nelson) 4/ Image
#20yrsago John M. Ford’s 110 Stories about 9-11 nielsenhayden.com/110.html

#20yrsago Why researchers tremble before the DMCA web.archive.org/web/2002090622…

#20yrsago @EdFelten, spam-vigilante martyr web.archive.org/web/2002082109… 5/ Image
#10yrsago European Directories sends legal threat to guy who wants to make it easy to stop receiving phone books 24oranges.nl/2012/08/19/pho… 6/ Image
#10yrsago Boots keeps selling quack remedies intended for babies, even after they are banned from US import over fears of broken glass quackometer.net/blog/2012/08/b…

#10yrsago Man in a coma is “fit for work,” loses disability benefits rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthr… 7/ Image
#10yrsago Pussy Riot, sentenced to two years in a penal colony, release new anti-Putin single theguardian.com/music/2012/aug…

#5yrsago Durham protesters turn themselves in at police station after pulling down Confederate statue washingtonmonthly.com/2017/08/17/res… 8/ Image
#5yrsago Mafia money-launderer listed his profession as “fraudster” with UK companies register standard.co.uk/business/occup…

#1yrago Hench: The madcap rage of life under vigilante rule pluralistic.net/2021/08/19/fai… 9/ Image
#1yrago Machine learning's crumbling foundations: Doing 'data science' with bad data pluralistic.net/2021/08/19/fai… 10/ Image
#1yrago The Sacklers threaten us all with a good time: "Give us total impunity or we won't accede to the total impunity deal" is a hell of an ultimatum pluralistic.net/2021/08/18/let… 11/
Wednesday's threads: Kickstarting the "Chokepoint Capitalism" audiobook; and more!

12/ Image
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… 13/
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… 14/ Image
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/ 15/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

* Radical Interoperability: An Internet Disassembly Manual, Aug 29 15h (@burningman Center Camp)

* Chokepoint Capitalism: a Better Deal for Creative Labor, Aug 30, 13h (@burningman @PalenqueNorte, 915 and E) 16/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd)

* Interview w/ @bunniestudios on the Precursor and Trusting Trust, Aug 31, 12h (@burningman Liminal Labs, 945 and Rod's)

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

* #UnfinishedLive (NYC), Sep 21-24
live.unfinished.com 17/
Recent appearances:

* The Wondrous World of the Early Internet & How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism (@curaffairs) patreon.com/posts/cory-doc…

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

* Bricking Tractors (Inside Agri-Turf)
inside-agriturf.captivate.fm/episode/bricki… 18/ Image
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… 19/ Image
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/2022/08/19/han… 20/
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… 21/
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 22/
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… 23/
Today's top sources: Adam Lowenstein (@amlowenstein). 24/ Image

• • •

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

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
May 2
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

NOTE: I DID NOT BUY A BLUE TICK. IT WAS NONCONSENSUALLY ADDED TO MY ACCOUNT.

Inside: AI and the fatfinger economy; and more!

Archived at:

#Pluralistic

1/ pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpi…A leg-hold trap whose trigger disc has been replaced with the hostile, glaring eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' A giant man's finger enters the frame from one corner, aimed at the trigger.  Image: Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Index_finger_%3D_to_attention.JPG  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en  --  Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.

Catch me in NEW ZEALAND at UNITY BOOKS in WELLINGTON TODAY (May 3, 3PM):

unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-event…

More tour dates (PDX, Pittsburgh, London, Manchester) here:

martinhench.com

2/ Image
AI and the fatfinger economy: Every slip of the finger in money in the bank.



3/  Image: Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Index_finger_%3D_to_attention.JPG  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en  --  Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
Read 24 tweets
Apr 24
Patrick "patio11" McKenzie is a fantastic explainer, the kind of person who breaks topics down in ways that stay with you, and creep into your understanding of other subjects, too. Take his 2022 essay, "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero":



1/ bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optima…A rainforest in Chiapas, green and intergrown.
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/2025/04/24/her…

2/
It's a very well-argued piece, and here's the nut of it:

> The marginal return of permitting fraud against you is plausibly greater than zero, and therefore, you should welcome greater than zero fraud.

3/
Read 55 tweets
Apr 22
Astrophysicist Adam Becker knows a bit about science and tech - enough to show, in his book *More Everything Forever* that claims tech bros make about space colonies, mind uploading, and other skiffy subjects are nonsense dressed up as prediction:



1/ hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-be…The Basic Books cover for Adam Becker's 'More Everything Faster.'
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/2025/04/22/vin…

2/
Becker investigates the personalities, the ideologies, the coalitions, the histories, and crucially, the *grifts* behind various science fictional pursuits.

3/
Read 24 tweets
Apr 21
Have you heard that tariffs are going to drive prices up? Me too. There's a good reason we're hearing a lot of talk about tariffs prices: tariffs are a tax that is ultimately paid by consumers.

1/
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/2025/04/21/tru…

2/
Trump plans to raise $6t in tariffs, making them the largest tax increase in US history:



But that $6t is just for starters.

3/ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/04/03/as-…
Read 42 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!

:(