Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Sep 14, 2022 25 tweets 24 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The Chokepoint Capitalism tour; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/09/14/mea…

#Pluralistic 1/ A photo of me giving a talk...
I'm Kickstarting a DRM-free audiobook of Chokepoint Capitalism, the book @rgibli and I wrote about how tech- and entertainment monopolies rip off artists, and how to unrig those terrible labor markets:

kickstarter.com/projects/docto…

("This book really gets it" - @stephenfry) 2/
The Chokepoint Capitalism tour: Ottawa, Toronto, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles (and beyond!)

3/  Image: Alex Schoenfeldt Ph...
Hey look at this

* @xkcd Is Back to Answer Your Impossible Questions wired.com/story/randall-…

* Idaho’s Far Right Suffers Election Loss to 18-Year-Old Climate Activist theintercept.com/2022/09/13/ida…

* What Do Aliens Eat? gastropod.com/what-do-aliens… 4/ Image
#20yrsago BNL endorse Jack Layton web.archive.org/web/2002091306…

#15yrsago New iPods reengineered to block synching with Linux memex.craphound.com/2007/09/14/new…

#10yrsago Fan art and copyright presentation from ComicCon 5/ Image
#10yrsago Canadian mint claims copyright over pictures of pennies web.archive.org/web/2012091302…

#10yrsago Librarian tattoos mentalfloss.com/article/56189/…

#5yrsago EVE Online doublecross is biggest in game history, blowing up $20K+ worth of game assets kotaku.com/how-eve-player… 6/ Image
#5yrsago Justin Trudeau promised reconciliation with indigenous peoples of Canada, but has not delivered cbc.ca/news/opinion/r…

#5yrsago Newark customs officers “hazed” new hires on a “rape table” in a locked room cnn.com/2017/09/13/pol… 7/ Image
#5yrsago Equifax has terrible information security practices, and that resulted in multiple breaches arstechnica.com/information-te…

#5yrsago @xychelsea: we’re spied on all the time, and the state still can’t figure out who we are nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opi… 8/ Image
#5yrsago Trump’s ethics office reverses policy, will allow anonymous donors to fund White House employees’ legal defense politico.com/story/2017/09/…

#5yrsago @Snowden: Public money shouldn’t fund software the public isn’t allowed to fix 9/ Image
#5yrsago Chinese economists say Big Data can replace markets in planned economies jstor.org/stable/10.1316…

#5yrsago Canada’s Mounties use a 6-year-old “interim policy” to justify warrantless mass surveillance vice.com/en/article/yw3… 10/ Image
#5yrsago The financial crisis created a precariat army of RV-nomad seniors who serve as Amazon’s seasonal workers wired.com/story/meet-cam… 11/ Image
Yesterday's threads: Survival of the Richest; 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:

* Canadians Connected (Ottawa), 9/15
member.cira.ca/Events/Canadia…

* Chokepoint Capitalism, @typebooks Junction (Toronto), 9/16, 7PM
eventbrite.ca/e/chokepoint-c…

* Chokepoint Capitalism, @mcnallyjackson (NYC), Sept 19, 7PM
mcnallyjackson.com/event/rebecca-… 16/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #UnfinishedLive (NYC), 9/21-23
live.unfinished.com

* Chokepoint Capitalism with @reckless, @NYUEngelberg (NYC) 9/23, 7PM
eventbrite.com/e/chokepoint-c…

* Chokepoint Capitalism, SFPL (San Francisco), 9/25
sfpl.org/events/2022/09… 17/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Chokepoint Capitalism, @BookSoup (LA), 9/27
booksoup.com/event/cory-doc…

* Discussing "Adventure Capitalism" with @raycraib, @skylightbooks (LA), Sept 29
blog.pmpress.org/events/raymond…

* @WEDF_forum, 10/26-28
worldethicaldataforum.org 18/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Arthur C Clarke Award (DC), 11/16
mailchi.mp/2e2b8a01e992/s… 19/ Image
Recent appearances:

* Where’s My Privacy? (@myjetpackca)
wheresmyjetpack.ca/2022/09/14/doc…

* Launch for @motherboard's Terraform antho
vice.com/en/article/3ad…

* Crypto and the Left (@TBSocialist)
theblockchainsocialist.com/crypto-and-the… 20/ 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… 21/ 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/2022/09/14/mea… 22/
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 "Sound Money: The best money is social, not personal"

doctorow.medium.com/sound-money-28… 23/
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 24/
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… 25/

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More from @doctorow

Mar 3
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.

1/ Oil derricks superimposed against a 'code waterfall' as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movies. In the foreground is Trump's hair.
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/2025/03/03/fri…

2/
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.

3/
Read 56 tweets
Feb 20
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.

1/   A towering figure with the head of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' surmounted by Trump's hair, wearing a tailcoat with a Google logo lapel pin. It peers through a magnifying glass at a distressed, tiny Uncle Sam figure perched in its monstrous palm.   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/2025/02/20/pri…

2/
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:



3/pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the…
Read 41 tweets
Feb 18
In 2013, Thomas Piketty had an unexpected bestseller (a 750 page economics book translated from French!) *Capital in the 21st Century*.

1/ A Gilded Age editorial cartoon of a frowning Uncle Sam giving a blood transfusion to a gargantuan business-man whose waistcoat is labeled 'protected monopolies.' The businessman's head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background has been replaced with a halftoned EU flag whose blue field is covered in circuit-board traceries. The floor beneath the figures is an abstract, pinkish pattern.  Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed....
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/2025/02/18/pik…

2/
It offers a very convincing explanation of our political decay, and it continues to serve this purpose as the decay undergoes alarming acceleration:



3/memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/tho…
Read 62 tweets
Feb 17
Theory-free inference is a hell of a drug. For years, Big Data advocates - the larval form of today's AI weirdos - have insisted that if you have enough data, you can infer causal relationships between complex phenomena without ever having to understand how x causes y.

1/ https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/17/caliper-ai/#racism-machine   A phrenological illustration of a man's face in profile, with his skull divided up into sections with illustrations of what each area is meant to govern, e.g., appetite, artistic aptitude, aggression, ardor. A pair of gleaming silver calipers, wielded by the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' measures the figure's skull.   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/2025/02/17/cal…

2/
Thus, we can slay the dread "correlation is not causation" beast. This is cousin to Milton Friedman's famous economic catechism:



3/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in…
Read 36 tweets
Feb 12
Remember the Tiktok ban? I know, it was ten million years ago (in Musk years, anyway), so it may have slipped your mind, but let me remind you: Congress passed a law saying Tiktok was banned. Trump said he wouldn't enforce the law. The end.

1/ An official portrait of the US Supreme Court, with the justices sitting and standing before a red velvet curtain. Their faces have been replaced with the green 'Mr Yuck' logo. Floating in the middle of the image, obscuring several judges, is the Tiktok logo, with Trump's hair.
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/2025/02/12/you…

2/
No, really. I mean, sure, there's a bunch of bullshit about whether Trump will pick up the ban again after Tiktok's grace period ends, depending on whether they sell themselves to his creepy wax museum pal Larry Ellison. Maybe he will.

3/
Read 39 tweets
Feb 11
Let me tell you about the most wasteful US federal government spending I know about. It's a humdinger. You and everyone you know are mired in it for weeks, or perhaps months, every year.

1/ A halftoned 2025 IRS 1040 form. To the left is a bloated billionaire figure in top hat, white gloves and tux, with the pouting face of Elon Musk. With one hand, he is yanking on a lever made out of a gilded dollar-sign. With the other hand, he contemptuously dangles a street urchin. The podium to which the lever is attached bears the Turbotax logo, a white checkmark in a red circle. To the left is a cascade of gold coins, falling out of an upended sack.   Image: Wcamp9 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_-_March_28,_2024_%28cropped%29.jpg  CC BY 4.0 https://creative...
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/2025/02/11/dou…

2/
It will cost you, personally, thousands of dollars over your lifetime. I'm talking about filing your taxes.

Not *paying* your taxes. Paying your taxes is fine.

3/
Read 29 tweets

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