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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Nov 17, 2022 • 32 tweets • 29 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Private equity health-care monopolies are on a profitable killing spree; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/11/17/the…

#Pluralistic 1/ A hospital Emergency Room parking lot. In the center of the
Hey #DC! There's a *very special* invite-only book party for "Chokepoint Capitalism" tonight (Nov 17) and while it's not a public event, there's a limited number of spaces I can distribute on a first come/first serve basis. If you'd like to come, email doctorow@craphound.com! 2/
Today (11/17), I'm part of a @library_futures webinar:
us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…

Tomorrow (11/18), I'm in Baltimore at @thePeale Museum:
thepeale.org/event/book-tal…

Fri (11/19), I'm at Sky Live in London:
news.sky.com/bigideaslive 3/
Private equity health-care monopolies are on a profitable killing spree: And you thought it was bad before.

4/ Image: Rae Allen (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/r
Hey look at this

* Libraries Are Launching Their Own Local Music Streaming Platforms vice.com/en/article/5d3… (h/t Slashdot)

* Fantastic Medieval Campaigns traversefantasy.itch.io/fmc (h/t Vintage RPG)

* @LocusMag's first crowdfunding campaign! indiegogo.com/projects/locus… 5/
#20yrsago Visa claims to own dictionary definition of “visa” web.archive.org/web/2002111811…

#20yrsago Hacker R0TC latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

#15yrsago Korea’s Internet “addiction” boot-camps nytimes.com/2007/11/18/tec… 6/
#15yrsago House keeps AT&T on the hook for spying on America, Senate next? eff.org/deeplinks/2007…

#15yrsago Infringement Nation: we are all mega-crooks web.archive.org/web/2007112701…

#10yrsago Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: The perfect nerdish fantasy memex.craphound.com/2012/11/16/mr-… 7/
#10yrsago What do we do about untrustworthy Certificate Authorities? nature.com/articles/49132…

#10yrsago Taliban uses CC instead of BCC, exposes identity of 400+ contacts observer.com/2012/11/taliba… 8/
#10yrsago House Republicans release watershed copyright reform paper techdirt.com/2012/11/16/hou…

#5yrsago Outstanding rant about the surreal design ethos of The Cheesecake Factory 9/
#5yrsago Poor Detroit neighborhoods, abandoned by telcos and the FCC, are rolling out homebrew, community mesh broadband vice.com/en/article/kz3…

#5yrsago 70% of poor people on broadband subsidy will lose their connections thanks to Trump’s FCC arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20… 10/
#5yrsago The 0.2% of Americans exempted by the GOP estate-tax plan (including the Trump cabinet) have never paid tax on their millions and never will nytimes.com/2017/11/16/bus… 11/
#5yrsago Donald Trump will re-legalize importing endangered elephants’ ivory and severed heads newscientist.com/article/215368…

#5yrsago Navy admits its pilot sky-wrote a giant cloud-wiener krem.com/article/news/l… 12/
#5yrsago Pentagon mass surveillance slurped up the world’s social media traffic; then they dumped it on a publicly accessible Amazon cloud server upguard.com/breaches/cloud… 13/
#5yrsago Web analytics companies offer “replay sessions” that let corporations watch every click and keystroke for individual users wired.com/story/the-dark… 14/
#5yrsago Trump’s top economic advisor asks CEOs to raise hands if they’re going to use tax cuts to invest, boggled by no one raising hands washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2… 15/
#5yrsago Study finds that people vote for strongman “dominance” leaders when they they feel out of control of their lives scientificamerican.com/article/explai… 16/
#5yrsago Hackers can freeze the camera that lets you know whether your “Amazon Key” equipped door is locked and who is using it wired.com/story/amazon-k… 17/
#5yrsago The Internet of Shit is so manifestly insecure that people are staying away from it in droves www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/De…

#5yrsago “Economic murder”: Senior UK public health researchers say 120,000 people died under Tory austerity independent.co.uk/news/health/to… 18/
#1yrago What Police Get When They Get Your Phone pluralistic.net/2021/11/16/cop…

#1yrago Live Nation is to blame for the Astroworld deaths pluralistic.net/2021/11/17/do-…

#1yrago Aspiration's comprehensively deceptive greenwashing pluralistic.net/2021/11/17/do-… 19/
Tuesday's threads: Tracers in the Dark; and more!

20/
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… 21/
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… 22/
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/ 23/
Upcoming appearances:

* @library_futures Webinar, 11/17
us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…

* Chokepoint Capitalism at @ThePeale Museum (Baltimore), 11/18:
thepeale.org/event/book-tal…

* Big Ideas Live (London), 11/19
news.sky.com/bigideaslive 24/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Kim Stanley Robinson's Gold Coast (California Book Club), Nov 22
altaonline.com/california-boo…

* Conversation with @Superwuster, #Informed22/@knightfdn (Miami), 11/30:
informed22.interkinnect.com 25/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @Aus_Digital Copyright Forum (Canberra), 2/17:
digital.org.au/2022/11/08/doc… 26/
Recent appearances:

* @teamhumanshow interview
teamhuman.fm/episodes/229-c…

* How big tech traps consumers and shafts creators (@IrishTimes)
shows.acast.com/inside-politic…

* Copyright Waffle (@UKCopyrightLit)
soundcloud.com/user-243274189… 27/
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/2022/11/17/the… 28/
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 "They Want to Kill Libraries"

doctorow.medium.com/they-want-to-k… 29/
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 30/
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… 31/
Today's top sources: @YvesSmith (nakedcapitalism.com). 32/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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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