Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Nov 21, 2022 41 tweets 37 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Universities secretly sold their students to online casinos; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/11/21/rah…

#Pluralistic 1/ A gaudy casino floor. In th...
My publisher @torbooks and @goodreads are drawing for a giveaway of advance copies of my next novel, "Red Team Blues," a Silicon Valley forensic accounting thriller about a cryptocurrency heist - If you're in the US or Canada, enter here to win a copy:

goodreads.com/giveaway/show/… 2/ Image
Tomorrow (11/22), I'm hosting a @CalBookClub event with Kim Stanley Robinson where we'll be discussing his 1998 novel "The Gold Coast":

altaonline.com/california-boo… 3/
Universities secretly sold their students to online casinos: It's varsity-level corruption.

4/ Image
Hey look at this

* Watch an @iFixit employee shoot a battery with a nailgun to teach us safety theverge.com/2022/11/18/234…

* Twitter Is Going Great twitterisgoinggreat.com (h/t @BoingBoing)

* "AOC" Handmade Moments/John Craigie (h/t Cindy Cohn) 5/ Image
#20yrsago BBC’s new site learns from you memex.craphound.com/2002/11/20/bbc…

#20yrsago Turducken: chicken-in-duck-in-turkey nytimes.com/2002/11/20/din…

#20yrsago The DMCA and the Mac web.archive.org/web/2002120419… 6/ Image
#20yrsago Ten Commandments judge Roy Moore overruled by Supreme Court salon.com/2005/06/28/ten…

#15yrsago Open Rights Groups – the first two years openrightsgroup.org/blog/open-righ…

#15yrsago Engraved Victorian tentacle-horrors from Dan Hillier danhillier.com 7/ Image
#15yrsago Disney lawyers enstupidize ride with dumb legal disclaimer flickr.com/photos/unsuper…

#15yrsago UK tax authorities repeatedly lose 25m peoples' tax records theguardian.com/politics/2007/… 8/ Image
#15yrsago Sardine in Outer Space: Cheerful anarchist comix for kids memex.craphound.com/2007/11/20/sar…

#15yrsago Time’s Joe Klein gets everything wrong in column about NSA domestic spying wired.com/2007/11/times-… 9/ Image
#10yrsago Five reasons to opt out of TSA pornoscanners this weekend huffpost.com/entry/5-reason…

#10yrsago Creationist fifth grade science textbook used in Louisiana public school buzzfeednews.com/article/andrew… 10/ Image
#10yrsago Toronto Mayor Rob Ford demonstrates his governance style memex.craphound.com/2012/11/21/tor…

#10yrsago Beyond the public debt: making a wider case for openness theguardian.com/technology/201… 11/ Image
#10yrsago US publishers sabotage treaty on the rights of people with print disabilities eff.org/deeplinks/2012…

#10yrsago Buyer beware: Nintendo nukes $400 worth of downloaded content during DRM-fail migration to Wii U arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11… 12/ Image
#10yrsago Bibliomat: a vending machine for random rare and antiquarian books (with satisfying clunk) vimeo.com/53679084

#10yrsago Cowardice: Gutless House Republicans retract copyright paper in less than 24 hours techdirt.com/2012/11/17/tha… 13/ Image
#10yrsago Artist arrested at Oakland airport for wearing ornate watch cbsnews.com/news/man-with-…

#10yrsago Absurd licensing terms imposed on public domain works by libraries and museums papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… 14/ Image
#10yrsago Solitaire.exe: a real deck of cards based on Windows 98 Solitaire evan-roth.com/work/solitaire…

#5yrsago After a Freedom of Information lawsuit, the White House visitor logs are now available online as a free searchable database projects.propublica.org/graphics/wh-co… 15/ Image
#5yrsago The stairs in a viral sensation public library in China run with blood, and its “books” are just sheets of aluminum screened with pictures of spines yahoo.com/news/chinas-fu… 16/ Image
#5yrsago The FCC will move to kill net neutrality over Thanksgiving and it thinks that we’ll all be too busy eating and shopping to notice techdirt.com/2017/11/21/fcc… 17/ Image
#5yrsago Paul Ryan imagines “Cindy,” a hypothetical beneficiary of his tax plan, doesn’t realize she and her child are starving to death shadowproof.com/2017/11/20/pau… 18/ Image
#5yrsago Trump’s Oklahoma campaign manager, who once introduced an anti-immigrant law to “stop sex trafficking of children,” admits to trafficking young boy for sex americanindependent.com/trump-campaign… 19/ Image
#5yrsago Wall Street and Trump are about to kill the CFPB, the only government agency that effectively polices bank scams, crimes and frauds theintercept.com/2017/11/18/wal… 20/ Image
#5yrsago Candid Wall Street barons worry that GOP tax plan will lead to literal euthanasia of the rentier vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/w… 21/
#5yrsago The Trump-funding, democracy-denying, Gawker-destroying Peter Thiel is finally no longer involved with Y Combinator buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma… 22/ Image
#5yrsago Scientist puts his dog on the editorial boards of seven predatory journals as proof of their negligence perthnow.com.au/news/wa/the-pe… 23/ Image
#5yrsago Puerto Rico, abandoned by Trump and facing disaster capitalism looting by big business, turns to socialist and anarchist collectives to rebuild nybooks.com/online/2017/11… 24/ Image
#5yrsago America’s private health-care is rationed, but socialized medicine is luxury medicine jacobin.com/2017/11/single…

#5yrsago How technology’s built in “engagement maximization” destroys mental health in the Trump age, and what to do about it memex.craphound.com/2017/11/20/how… 25/ Image
#5yrsago After Roy Moore threatens to sue AL.com, the publisher puts him on notice to preserve all documents for their countersuit

#1yrago Inflation or price-gouging?: Big business loves inflation talk pluralistic.net/2021/11/20/qui… 26/ Image
#1yrago Harvard is full of rich, white low-achievers pluralistic.net/2021/11/18/bip…

#1yrago This is your Congress on drugs: Corruption kills pluralistic.net/2021/11/18/bip…

#1yrago Teamsters transformed pluralistic.net/2021/11/19/hof… 27/ Image
Thursday's threads: Private equity health-care monopolies are on a profitable killing spree; and more!

28/  Image: Rae Allen (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… 29/
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… 30/
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/ 31/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

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

* Conversation with @superwuster, #Informed22/@knightfdn (Miami), 11/30:
informed22.interkinnect.com 32/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Library Learning Experience/@ALALibrary (New Orleans), 1/27-30
2023.alaliblearnx.org/cory-doctorow

* @Aus_Digital Copyright Forum (Canberra), 2/17:
digital.org.au/2022/11/08/doc… 33/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy (Brussels), Mar 2:
brusselsconference.com/registration 34/ Image
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… 35/ 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/2022/11/21/rah… 36/
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. 37/
My latest @Medium column is "Anything That Can’t Go On Forever Will Eventually Stop: Ticketmaster and Ideas Lying Around"

doctorow.medium.com/anything-that-… 38/
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 39/
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… 40/
Today's top sources: @jstruan (superpunch.net). 41/ Image

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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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