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

Oct 29
Amazon made $35b profit last year. They're celebrating by firing 14k workers (a number they say will rise to 30k). It's the kind of thing Wall St loves. It comes after a string of pronouncements from Andy Jassy about how AI is going to let him fire *tons* of workers.

1/ A black and white image of an armed overseer supervising several chain-gang prisoners in stripes doing forced labor. The overseer's head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The prisoners' heads have been replaced with hackers' hoodies.   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/2025/10/29/wor…

2/
That's the AI story, after all. It's not about making workers more productive or creative.

3/
Read 45 tweets
Oct 11
I am an environmentalist, but I'm not a climate activist. I used to be - I even used to ring strangers' doorbells on behalf of Greenpeace.

1/ A field of utility scale solar. Behind the mountains on the horizon line loom two logos: the original EFF 'clenched fist and lightning bolt' logo and the first Earth Day logo. They are reflected in the solar panels. Behind them roils hellish red-shot smoke.
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/2025/10/11/cyb…

2/
But a quarter of a century ago, I fell in with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and became a lifelong digital rights activist, and switched to cheering on environmental activists from the sidelines of their fight:



3/eff.org
Read 53 tweets
Sep 27
Like you, I'm sick to the back teeth of talking about AI. Like you, I keep getting dragged into AI discussions. Unlike you‡, I spent the summer writing a book on why I'm sick of AI⹋, which @fsgbooks will publish in 2026.

‡probably

⹋"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI"

1/ A Zimbabwean one hundred trillion dollar bill; the bill's iconography have been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' and a stylized, engraving-style portrait of Sam Altman.  Image: TechCrunch https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sam_Altman_-_TechCrunch_Disrupt_SF_2017_(36522988343).jpg  CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/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
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/2025/09/27/eco…

2/
A week ago, I turned that book into a speech, which I delivered as the annual Nordlander Memorial Lecture at Cornell, where I'm an AD White Professor-at-Large.

3/
Read 52 tweets
Sep 24
Billionaires don't think we're real. How could they? How could you inflict the vast misery that generates billions while still feeling even a twinge of empathy for the sufferer in your extractive enterprise. No wonder Elon Musk calls us "NPCs":



1/ pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/see…  An oil painting of a French king atop a throne, draped in sumptuous robes. His head has been replaced with a screaming, toothless man wearing a top-hat. Over his shoulder looms the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.'  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/2025/09/24/rob…

2/
Ever notice how people get palpably stupider as they gain riches and power? Musk went from a cringe doofus to a world-class credulous dolt, and it seems like he loses five IQ points for every $10b that's added to his net worth.

3/
Read 26 tweets
Sep 23
I'm only a few chapters into Bill McKibben's stupendous new book *Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization* and I already know it's going to change my outlook forever:



1/ billmckibben.com/books/here-com…A rooftop solar installation. Behind the roof rages a blazing forest fire. Reflected in the solar panels is the poop emoji from the cover of my book 'Enshittification,' which has angry eyebrows and a black, grawlix-filled bar across its mouth."    Image: Bastique (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Panels_on_Church_Roof_full.jpg  CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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/2025/09/23/our…

2/
McKibben is one of our preeminent climate writers and activists, noteworthy for his informed and brilliant explanations of the technical limits - and possibilities - of various climate interventions, and for his lifelong organizing work.

3/
Read 80 tweets
Sep 22
One of the dumbest, shrewdest tricks corporate America ever pulled was teaching us all to reflexively say, "If a corporation blocks your speech, that doesn't violate the First Amendment and therefore it's not censorship":



1/ pluralistic.net/2022/12/04/yes…Two figures in royal robes seated back to back atop a pile of gold bars. One wears a tophat, the other, a crown in the form of a gilded crown. A forest of angled broadcast towers sits behind them. The sky is overshadowed by thunderheads.
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/2025/09/22/one…

2/
Censorship isn't limited to government action: it's the act of preventing a message from a willing speaker from reaching a willing listener. The fact that it's censorship doesn't (necessarily) mean that it's illegitimate or bad.

3/
Read 62 tweets

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