Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Oct 1, 2022 28 tweets 29 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: How Palantir will steal the NHS; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/10/01/the…

#Pluralistic 1/ Image
Next Monday (Oct 3) at 9hPT, I'm on a panel ("Regulatory Requirements and Necessary Standards") for #OnlinePublicSphere2022:

globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/events/regulat… 2/
How Palantir will steal the NHS: Stealth privatisation was always the endgame for public-private-partnerships.

3/ Image: Gage Skidmore (modif...
Hey look at this

* hark ye oakland county mcmansionhell.com/post/696589275…

* HDD Clicker retrokits.de/index.php/hdd-… (h/t @slashdot)

* ‘We can continue Pratchett’s efforts’: the gamers keeping Discworld alive theguardian.com/games/2022/sep… (h/t Waxy) 4/ Image
#20yrsago Record industry defends practices to Senate web.archive.org/web/2002101816…

#20yrsago @dangillmor responds to Jack Valenti web.archive.org/web/2002101222…

#20yrsago 2000+ year old Greek computer reinterpreted economist.com/science-and-te… 6/ Image
#15yrsago Keep Your Copyrights: helping creators beat abusive contracts web.law.columbia.edu/kernochan/keep…

#15yrsago Disney kills its spy-on-your-kids phones web.archive.org/web/2007101915…

#15yrsago Nokia taunts Apple lockware phone with posters for “open” N-series forums.macrumors.com/threads/timely… 7/ Image
#15yrsago Archibishop of Mozambique: condoms and HIV cocktails will give you AIDS news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/70…

#15yrsago @rudytheelder’s Postsingular: Wheenk! memex.craphound.com/2007/10/01/rud…

#15yrsago Things you shouldn’t do in science fiction/fantasy writing eeknight.livejournal.com/283350.html 8/ Image
#15yrsago Guerrilla librarians free the $86k Library of Congress copyright database web.archive.org/web/2007101100…

#15yrsago @ScottWesterfeld’s Extras – a superb volume in the Uglies series memex.craphound.com/2007/09/30/sco… 9/ Image
#10yrsago Quant: leaving finance made me happy, you should try it mathbabe.org/2012/09/30/tel…

#10yrsago How Frederik Pohl became a pulp literary agent, and saved himself 8¢ per story in postage web.archive.org/web/2012100501… 10/ Image
#10yrsago Replacement ear grown on an arm cbsnews.com/baltimore/news…

#5yrsago Troops fire rubber bullets to prevent Catalan independence vote, injure at least 465 theguardian.com/world/live/201… 11/ Image
#5yrsago Equifax blames hack on state actors, but breach followed spat with security contractor bloomberg.com/news/features/…

#5yrsago China’s massive property bubble creates mad scramble to take on decades of debt scmp.com/news/china/eco… 12/ Image
#5yrsago Republican Senator caught making up fake news about fake news doubles down web.archive.org/web/2017093021…

#5yrsago Hamilton: the My Little Pony edition 13/ Image
#5yrsago DRM could kill game emulators and erase the history of an artform techdirt.com/2017/09/29/how…

#1yrago Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation": They'd rather be evil than incompetent pluralistic.net/2021/09/30/don… 14/ Image
Thursday's threads: Porn on Tumblr is a complicated subject; and more!

15/
My latest book is Chokepoint Capitalism (with @rgibli), nonfiction about monopoly and fairness in creative labor markets.

chokepointcapitalism.com

Signed copies available from @BookSoup:

booksoup.com/book/978080700… 16/ Image
My latest novel 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… 17/
My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, @BeaconPressBks et al) 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/ 18/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

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

* Chokepoint Capitalism event, @BooksandBooks (Miami), 10/12
booksandbooks.com/event/in-perso…

* Reboot Conference, @JoinLincoln (Miami), 10/13
eventbrite.com/e/reboot-2022-… 19/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* Surviving Apocalyptic Economics, with @rushkoff and @rgibli, Ottawa @Writersfest, 10/24
writersfestival.org/events/fall-20…

* @WEDF_forum, 10/26-28
worldethicaldataforum.org/registration 20/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Arthur C Clarke Award (DC), 11/16
mailchi.mp/2e2b8a01e992/s… 21/ Image
Recent appearances:

* Triangulation: Chokepoint Capitalism
twit.tv/shows/twit-eve…

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

* Billionaires As Policy Failure Factories (@CheeseMacro)
realprogressives.org/podcast_episod… 22/ Image
Happy #SpookySeason! My picture book "Poesy the Monster Slayer" is the perfect read for your little monsters: it's an epic tale of bedtime-refusal, toy-hacking and monster-hunting, illustrated by @mcrockefeller.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poe… 23/ 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/2022/10/01/the… 24/
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. 25/
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… 26/
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 27/
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… 28/

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Keep Current with Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK

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More from @doctorow

Jul 3
As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are *not popular*.

1/ A kneeling figure, shackled hand-and-foot with ball-and-chains at his ankles. His face is that of a turn-of-the-century newsie, grinning broadly under a torn cloth cap. Behind him is a heavily halftoned neon HELP WANTED sign, askew over a indistinct black hellscape ganked from the third panel of Boschs's 'Garden of Earthly Delights.'
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/2025/07/03/sta…

2/
Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is *extremely* unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Jul 1
If there's one are where tech has shown a consistent aptitude for innovation, it's in accounting tricks that make money-losing companies appear wildly profitable. And AI is the greatest innovator of all (when it comes to accounting gimmicks).

1/ A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill.   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/2025/06/30/acc…

2/
Since the dotcom era, tech companies have boasted about giving stuff away but "making it up in volume," inventing an ever-sweatier collection of shell-games that let them hide the business's true profit and loss.

3/
Read 42 tweets
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

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