Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Sep 25, 2022 34 tweets 32 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: McKinsey and Providence colluded to force poor patients into destitution; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/09/25/cri…

#Pluralistic 1/
#SanFrancisco! I'm in town TODAY AT 2PM with "Chokepoint Capitalism," @rgibli's and my latest book!

sfpl.org/events/2022/09…

Next stop, #LA (Tues): booksoup.com/event/cory-doc… 2/
If you can't make it and want a signed, personalized copy shipped to your door, our friends at @FolioSF have you covered:

foliosf.com/chokepointcapi… 3/
McKinsey and Providence colluded to force poor patients into destitution: "How would you like to pay that today?"

4/
Hey look at this

* Framework’s new Chromebook: upgradable, customizable theverge.com/2022/9/21/2336…

* 20 Mechanical Principles in a Lego Machine

* 5 Walled Gardens: Browsers Essential to the Internet; OSes Are Holding Them Back research.mozilla.org/browser-compet… 5/
#20yrsago Labels shoot selves in foot by focusing on stopping P2P itweb.co.za/content/WnxpE7…

#20yrsago Haunted Mansion movie inches forward web.archive.org/web/2002120108…

#15yrsago Chinese MMO bans in-game gender-bending web.archive.org/web/2007101201… 6/
#15yrsago Harvard lawyers shred Harvard Coop’s claim that book prices are “property” web.archive.org/web/2007110400…

#15yrsago Donald Duck foiled a patent application iusmentis.com/patents/priora…

#15yrsago Scroogled in the Wall Street Journal wsj.com/articles/SB119… 7/
#15yrsago Amazon creates gigantic DRM-free music store! web.archive.org/web/2007122111…

#10yrsago Guerrilla Grafters covertly add fruit-tree branches to ornamental trees web.archive.org/web/2012092100… 8/
#10yrsago UK government spent millions arming and training Congolese and Sudanese soldiers theguardian.com/politics/2012/…

#10yrsago Pranksters crash final speech of corporate tax avoidance taxman, posh hilarity ensues 9/
#10yrsago Preservation Hall 50th Anniversary Collection: four discs of New Orleans jazz with guest appearances from Tom Waits, Pete Seeger, Del McCoury and others memex.craphound.com/2012/09/25/pre… 10/
#10yrsago Study: Republican state voting laws “will disenfranchise 10,000,000 Hispanic US citizens” web.archive.org/web/2012092408… 11/
#10yrsago Laptop rental companies reach cash-free, pointless settlement with toothless FTC for taking secret naked pictures of customers having sex, harvesting medical records and banking passwords and more wired.com/2012/09/laptop… 12/
#10yrsago EU working group produces the stupidest set of proposed Internet rules in the entire history of the human race arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#10yrsago Debunking the NYT feature on the wastefulness of data-centers web.archive.org/web/2012092600… 13/
#10yrsago Cyclists are safe and courteous, and your disdain for them is grounded in cognitive bias slate.com/technology/201… 14/
#10yrsago 64,000 drug-bust samples in Mass. were processed by a dirty lab tech who tampered with them, altered weight, faked positive and tests for illegal substances stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2012… 15/
#10yrsago @DBtodomundo and St Vincent performing each others’ songs together pitchfork.com/news/47868-wat… andvincent-perform-each-others-songs/

#5yrsago Deluded billionaire gives UC Irvine $200M to study homeopathy and “alternative” therapies skepchick.org/2017/09/uc-irv… 16/
#5yrsago Tinder stores a scary amount of information about what you do, including your Facebook history theguardian.com/technology/201…

#5yrsago Equifax CEO Richard Smith is finally resigning consumerist.com/2017/09/26/equ… 17/
#5yrsago America’s worst patent judge gets a scorching language lesson from the appeals court techdirt.com/2017/09/25/app…

#5yrsago Trump DoJ nominee Jon Adler loves Scientology’s bogus, occasionally lethal “detox” program wired.com/story/doj-nomi… 18/
#5yrsago Deloitte got comprehensively hacked in March and didn’t tell anyone theguardian.com/business/2017/…

#5yrsago John Oliver on monopolies, anti-trust and the death of real competitive markets 19/
#5yrsago RIP Kit Reed, brilliant giant of science fiction facebook.com/EllenDatlow/po…

#1yrago The Scholars of Night: John M Ford was a goddamned WIZARD pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/mik… 20/
Yesterday's threads: Billionaire grifters hate her; and more!

21/
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… 22/
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… 23/
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/ 24/
Upcoming appearances:

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

* Chokepoint Capitalism event, @AltaJournal Live (Zoom), 9/28
altaonline.com/events/a411093… 25/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Discussing "Adventure Capitalism" with @RayCraib, @SkylightBooks (LA), 9/29
blog.pmpress.org/events/raymond…

* #OnlinePublicSphere2022, 10/3
globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/events/regulat…

* Chokepoint Capitalism event, @BooksandBooks (Miami), 10/12
booksandbooks.com/event/in-perso… 26/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @LibraryJournal Day of Dialog (Zoom), 10/20
libraryjournal.com/event/library-…

* @WEDF_forum, 10/26-28
worldethicaldataforum.org/registration

* Arthur C Clarke Award (DC), 11/16
mailchi.mp/2e2b8a01e992/s… 27/
Recent appearances:

* Cultural Capture by Chokepoint Capitalism (@MachineKillsPod)
soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…

* Billionaires As Policy Failure Factories (@CheeseMacro)
realprogressives.org/podcast_episod…

* Where’s My Privacy? (@myjetpackca)
wheresmyjetpack.ca/2022/09/14/doc… 28/
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… 29/
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/2022/09/25/cri… 30/
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. 31/
My latest @Medium column is "Oil is Bankrupt (If We Want It): Alberta’s Oil Companies Are the Walking Dead"

doctorow.medium.com/oil-is-bankrup… 32/
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 33/
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… 34/

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More from @doctorow

Jun 28
In 2014, I read a political science paper that nearly convinced me to quit my lifelong career as an activist: "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," published in *Perspectives on Politics*:



1/ cambridge.org/core/journals/…An inflatable pig balloon against a blue sky, bearing the Zohran for Mayor logo. The Chrysler Building sits to one side.  Image: Frank Vincentz (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geeste_-_Biener_Stra%C3%9Fe_-_Speicherbecken_-_Drachenfest_38_ies.jpg  Petri Krohn https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrysler_building-_top.jpg  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/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/2025/06/28/mam…

2/
The paper's authors are Martin Gilens, a UCLA professor of Public Policy; and Northwestern's Benjamin Page, a professor of Decision Making. Gilens and Page studied a representative sample of 1,779 policy issues.

3/
Read 49 tweets
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

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