Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Oct 13, 2022 30 tweets 30 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: US health insurers get more and more federal funding, deliver less and less care; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/10/13/sic…

#Pluralistic 1/ Image
I'm in #Miami!

Catch me today (Oct 13) at @JoinLincoln's Reboot Conference:

eventbrite.com/e/reboot-2022-… 2/
US health insurers get more and more federal funding, deliver less and less care: Medicare Advantage will murder your grandparents - and you're next.

3/ Image
Hey look at this

* How Flashbots is taking over Ethereum block proposals protos.com/how-flashbots-…

* The Polyhedral Perspective publicdomainreview.org/essay/polyhedr…

* One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross” uxdesign.cc/how-apple-make… (h/t @BoingBoing) 4/ Image
#15yrsago First-ever patent-suit filed against Linux groklaw.net/article.php?st…

#15yrsago HOWTO cite blogs in formal academic medical papers ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7266/ 5/ Image
#10yrsago California AG publicly shames United Airlines on Twitter over crappy privacy policy latimes.com/business/la-xp…

#10yrsago Videos from the HOPE 2004 conference: Jello Biafra, Woz, Schneier, Mitnick and more web.archive.org/web/2012103000… 6/ Image
#10yrsago UK surveillance bill: 19,000 letters opposing, 0 in favour web.archive.org/web/2012101500…

#10yrsago Myhrvold patents 3D printing DRM web.archive.org/web/2012101404…

#10yrsago Scanning whole books is fair use arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20… 7/ Image
#10yrsago Photos from backstage at Disneyland imgur.com/a/TJQYm

#5yrsago How do you dump the firmware from a “secure” voting machine? With a $15 open source hardware board blog.adafruit.com/2017/10/11/ft2… 8/ Image
#5yrsago Portland police stage bizarre sensory deprivation stunt against ICE protesters

#5yrsago The US has quit UNESCO, the UN agency that protects world heritage sites and teaches poor children to read vice.com/en/article/gy5… 9/ Image
#5yrsago China’s 1 percenters are now worth as much as the GDP of the United Kingdom scmp.com/business/china…

#5yrsago Here are the three most common dishonest arguments used to derail universal healthcare proposals latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/… 10/ Image
#5yrsago Yet another Trump official accused of defrauding taxpayers with dirty travel expenses cnn.com/2017/10/11/pol…

#5yrsago Trump’s FCC redefines “effective competition” to include having only one ISP in your county techdirt.com/2017/10/12/gro… 11/ Image
#5yrsago Here’s what hospital food looks like in Japan web.archive.org/web/2017100606…

#5yrsago Chinese internet censors really enjoy the work scmp.com/news/china/pol…

#5yrsago You are the elevator captain: a guide to Japan’s unspoken elevator etiquette medium.com/japan-init/ele… 12/ Image
#5yrsago Equifax is serving malware to visitors arstechnica.com/information-te…

#5yrsago How the University of New Hampshire spun blowing a frugal librarian’s donation on a stupid football scoreboard deadspin.com/how-unh-turned… 13/ Image
#1yrago There are no corporate criminals in America: Because America doesn't have corporate crime prosecutions pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-…

#1yrago This Thing Between Us, a neck-hair-stand-up cuycuy horror: Gus Moreno's debut novel pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-… 14/ Image
#1yrago India funded a starving kids' app, but not food: Solutionism at its worst pluralistic.net/2021/10/13/the…

#1yrago Adobe uses copyfraud to preserve spyware: A free-as-in-surveillance-free Flash installer is gone thanks to a bogus copyright claim pluralistic.net/2021/10/13/the… 15/ Image
#1yrago Charter uses bad credit threats to corral ex-subscribers: "Resubscribe or we'll keep trashing your credit report." pluralistic.net/2021/10/13/the… 16/ Image
Monday's threads: Undetectable, undefendable back-doors for machine learning; Shelter in place; and more!

17/ Image: in0_m0x0 (modified) ...
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… 18/
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… 19/
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/ 20/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

* Reboot Conference, @JoinLincoln (Miami), 10/13
eventbrite.com/e/reboot-2022-…

* Copyright Evidence: Synthesis and Futures – @copyrightcentre (Glasgow), Oct 17
create.ac.uk/copyright-evid…

* @LibraryJournal Day of Dialog (Zoom), 10/20
libraryjournal.com/event/library-… 21/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Chokepoint Capitalism Event, @ArgoBookshop (Montreal), Oct 23
eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctoro…

* Surviving Apocalyptic Economics, with @rushkoff and @rgibli, Ottawa @Writersfest, 10/24
writersfestival.org/events/fall-20… 22/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* #RadicalBookFair/@Lighthousebks (Edinburgh), Nov 10
lighthousebookshop.com/events/chokepo…

* Arthur C Clarke Award (DC), 11/16
mailchi.mp/2e2b8a01e992/s… 23/ Image
Recent appearances:

* Regulating the Online Public Sphere (@ColumbiaGFoE)


* Canadians Connected 2022 with @ambermac:


* Amazon Billing Amazon for Amazon (@trashfuturepod)
trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/amazon-billi… 24/ 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… 25/ 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/2022/10/13/sic… 26/
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 "Bankruptcy protects fake people, brutalizes real ones"

doctorow.medium.com/bankruptcy-pro… 27/
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 28/
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… 29/
Today's top sources: @yvessmith (nakedcapitalism.com). 30/ Image

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More from @doctorow

Jan 26
The best summary of Trump's trade "philosophy" comes from Trashfuture's November Kelly, who said that Trump is flipping over the table in a poker game that's rigged in his favor because he resents having to pretend to play the game at all.

1/ A detail from a US $100 bill. The bill has been tinted orange. Ben Franklin's face has been replaced with an indistinct blur surmounted by Trump's hair. The lettering in the scrollwork beneath the portrait reads 'TRUMP.' The '100's have been turned into '000's. The writing 'ONE HUNDRED' now reads 'NONE HUNDRED.' The series issue has been changed to '47.' The Secretary of the Treasury's signature has been replaced with Trump's.
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/2026/01/26/i-d…

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After all, the global system of trade was designed and enforced by American officials, especially the US Trade Representative.

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Read 84 tweets
Jan 17
Ireland is a tax haven. In the 1970s and 1980s, life in the civil-war wracked country was hard - between poverty, scarce employment and civil unrest, the country hemorrhaged its best and brightest. As the saying went, "Ireland's top export is the Irish."

1/ A green Irish pillarbox, standing before a verdant, rolling Irish countryside. The pillarbox is emblazoned with the poop emoji from the cover of 'Enshittification,' with angry eyebrows and a grawlix-scrawled black bar over its mouth.  Image: Stuart Caie (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Double_aperture_Irish_pillar_box_in_Dublin_2008.jpg  CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en  --  Sourabh.biswas003 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PXL_20231216_105219694-Ballygalley_Larne_UK-_Irish_Countryside-Northern_Ireland_06.jpg  CC BY-SA 3.0 ht...
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/2026/01/17/eri…

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In desperation, Ireland's political class hit on a wild gambit: they would weaponize Ireland's sovereignty in service to corporate tax evasion.

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Read 35 tweets
Jan 6
Code is a liability (not an asset). Tech bosses don't understand this. They think AI is great because it produces 10,000 times more code than a programmer, but that just means it's producing 10,000 times more liabilities.

1/ A shredder, shredding a giant US$100 bill. Benjamin Franklin's head has been replaced with a cliched 'hacker in a hoodie' illustration. The machine's faceplate bears the Claude Code wordmark. The background is 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/2026/01/06/100…

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AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our high-tech society:



Code is a liability. Code's *capabilities* are assets.

3/pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/eco…
Read 48 tweets
Dec 16, 2025
We are about to get a "post-American internet," because we are entering a post-American *era* and a post-American *world*. Some of that is Trump's doing, and some of that is down to his predecessors.

1/ Uncle Sam staring into a funhouse mirror that has made him painfully thin. The reflection is wearing a Trump wig and has orange skin. He stands atop a map of the world that stretches to infinity. In the background is a shantytown with the TRUMP logomark rising in the sky over it.
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/2025/12/16/k-s…

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When we think about the American century, we rightly focus on America's hard power - the invasions, military bases, arms exports, and CIA coups.

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Read 86 tweets
Dec 13, 2025
Look, I'm not trying to say that new technologies *never* raise gnarly new legal questions. But what I *am* saying is that a lot of the time, the "new legal challenges" raised by technology are somewhere between 95-100% bullshit.

1/ A modified FBI badge. It now reads 'Federal Wallet Investigators.' It is made out to 'Timothy J Shotspotter.' It is held in the three-fingered, gloved grip of a cartoon character. Around its edges, we see a cartoon room from a public domain Betty Boop cartoon.
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/2025/12/13/unc…

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It's ginned up by none-too-bright tech bros and their investors, and then swallowed by regulators and lawmakers who are either so credulous they'd lose a game of peek-a-boo, or (likely) in on the scam.

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Read 68 tweets
Dec 9, 2025
I have a weird fascination with early-stage Bill Gates, after his mother convinced a pal of hers - chairman of IBM's board of directors - to give her son the contract to provide the operating system for the new IBM PC.

1/ A 1960s ad for IBM mainframes, featuring a woman in an office chair seated at a console, surrounded by large processing and storage units. It has been modified. A man in a business suit, impatiently checking his watch, looms out from between two of the cabinets. His head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The woman's head has been replaced with a hacker's hoodie. Both the woman and the man have been tinted red.   Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommon...
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/2025/12/09/tem…

2/
Gates and his pal Paul Allen tricked another programmer into selling them the rights to DOS, which they sold to IBM, setting Microsoft on the path to be one of the most profitable businesses in human history.

3/
Read 36 tweets

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