Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Nov 29, 2022 28 tweets 24 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The Big Four accounting firms are one (more) scandal away from collapse; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/11/29/gre…

#Pluralistic 1/ Two business-suited male fi...
Tomorrow (Nov 30), @superwuster and I are appearing in conversation to discuss monopoly and creative labor markets at the @knightfdn's #Informed22 conference in #Miami:

informed22.interkinnect.com 2/
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/… 3/ Image
The Big Four accounting firms are one (more) scandal away from collapse: Mutually assured destruction at the heart of the economy.

4/  Image: Vectorportal.com (m...
Hey look at this

* The Consequences of Radical Patent-Regime Change papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

* Jansen's Linkage youtube.com/shorts/PBuOBGf… (h/t Hackaday)

* The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler vulture.com/article/octavi… (h/t @nelson) 5/ Image
#15yrsago Science Fiction Writers of America reinstates E-Piracy Committee — new name, same chairman memex.craphound.com/2007/11/29/sci…

#15yrsago Universal Music CEO’s fears illustrated in funny webcomic web.archive.org/web/2007113002… 6/ Image
#10yrsago America’s “Six Strike” copyright punishment system on hold until 2013 torrentfreak.com/six-strikes-an…

#10yrsago Big Tobacco will have to run a national advertising campaign apologizing for lying about health risks from smoking web.archive.org/web/2013103115… 7/ Image
#10yrsago Bill O’Reilly-watching climate-change-denier is moved to tears by polar melting documentary

#10yrsago Grey Album remastered by golden-eared engineer forbes.com/sites/leorgali… 8/ Image
#5yrsago Net Neutrality is just for starters: municipal networks are the path to paradise wired.com/story/net-neut…

#5yrsago Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren introduce a bill to provide $146B in aid to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands theintercept.com/2017/11/28/ber… 9/ Image
#5yrsago Incentives matter: America’s for-profit medical industry thrives on massive wastage, unnecessary procedures, overbilling and overtreating propublica.org/article/a-hosp… 10/ Image
#5yrsago US Army doxes itself, reveals $100 million NSA spy program that got flushed before it was ever used ibtimes.com/army-spent-100…

#5yrsago Student debt: more people, paying more money, and mounting year on year jacobin.com/2017/11/studen… 11/ Image
#5yrsago Mass incarceration and disenfranchisement of brown people was the key to GOP control in Alabama, but thanks to criminal justice reform, black people can vote against child-molester Roy Moore salon.com/2017/11/29/roy… 12/ Image
#5yrsago Morgan Stanley, with a long rapsheet for corporate crimes, says Jeremy Corbyn holding them to account would hurt them worse than the worst Brexit theguardian.com/politics/2017/…"> 13/ Image
#5yrsago Comcast flushed its 3 year old net neutrality promise down the memory hole the instant the FCC announced its plan to allow network discrimination arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20… 14/ Image
#1yrago The once and future mass-resignation and what it means for working people pluralistic.net/2021/11/29/ord… 15/ Image
Yesterday's threads: How monopoly enshittified Amazon; and more!

16/ Image
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… 17/
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… 18/
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/ 19/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

* Conversation with @superwuster, #Informed22/@knightfdn (Miami), 11/30:
informed22.interkinnect.com

* Chokepoint Capitalism: A Conversation/@Northeastern/@BurnesCenter/@NU_CAMD (Boston/webcast), 12/5
northeastern.zoom.us/webinar/regist… 20/ 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… 21/ 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/2022/11/29/gre… 23/
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. 24/
My latest @Medium column is "Poe vs. Property: A detective story of shifting rationalizations"

doctorow.medium.com/poe-vs-propert… 25/
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 26/
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… 27/
Today's top sources: @yvessmith (nakedcapitalism.com). 28/ Image

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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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