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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Dec 13, 2022 • 23 tweets • 20 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Web apps could de-monopolize mobile devices; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kit…

#Pluralistic 1/ London's Canary Wharf, a high-rise business district that is
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/
Web apps could de-monopolize mobile devices: It's 2022 and we're still fighting the browser wars.

3/
Hey look at this

* On Stable Diffusion oblomovka.com/wp/2022/12/12/…

* Gold nano-coating works like an anti-fog heating element for glasses newatlas.com/materials/anti… (h/t @Slashdot)

* The Trumpification of Elon Musk wired.com/story/donald-t… 4/
#15yrsago HOWTO defeat the shoe-scanner at Heathrow schneier.com/blog/archives/…

#10yrsago City buses across America now covertly recording passengers’ conversations wired.com/2012/12/public…

#10yrsago Literacy privilege, or, why grammar nazis are dicks paintingthegreyarea.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/lit… 5/
#10yrsago BRING ME THE 3D PRINTED HEAD OF CORY DOCTOROW thingiverse.com/thing:37605

#5yrsago Net Neutrality is only complicated because monopolists are paying to introduce doubt newint.org/blog/2017/12/1… 6/
#5yrsago Mirai’s creators plead guilty, reveal that they created a DDoS superweapon to get a competitive edge in the Minecraft server industry wired.com/story/mirai-bo… 7/
#5yrsago Climate change has created massive blooms of ecologically disruptive jellyfish, but luckily they’re delicious vice.com/en/article/wjz…

#5yrsago Gawker alumni are crowdfunding to outbid Peter Thiel for control of Gawker’s assets kickstarter.com/projects/21360… 8/
#5yrsago Group behind voter ID, stand your ground, ag-gag, private prison, anti-muni-wifi, and killing Obamacare now planning rules for jailing pipeline protesters desmog.com/2017/12/11/ale… 9/
#5yrsago 12 Michigan cops, looking for a 40-year-old white woman, draw guns on 11 year old black girl and put her in cuffs web.archive.org/web/2017121222… 10/
#5yrsago Journalists receive forged lawsuit docs hoaxing a nonexistent sexual harassment suit against Chuck Schumer axios.com/2017/12/16/sch… 11/
Yesterday's threads: Orphaned neurological implants; and more!

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/1… 12/ Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wik
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… 13/
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… 14/
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/ 15/
Upcoming appearances:

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

* Chokepoint Capitalism: Can It Be Defeated? (@UCLLaws), 2/1
ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/20…

* @Aus_Digital Copyright Forum (Canberra), 2/17:
digital.org.au/2022/11/08/doc… 16/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy (Brussels), 3/2:
brusselsconference.com/registration 17/
Recent appearances:

* @dartsandletters:
dartsandletters.ca/2022/12/12/ep7…

* @bubtroubpodcast (Part 2)
bubbletroublepodcast.com/chokepoint-cap…

* Corporate Power (@privacyint)
media.privacyinternational.org/w/fKu4rZFZMCFZ…

* Taylor Swift, Ticketmaster, and Chokepoint Capitalism (@zingales)
capitalisnt.com/episodes/taylo… 18/
Recent appearances (cont'd):

* Plurality and democracy with @AudreyT (Liberté!)
19/
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/2022/12/13/kit… 20/
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 "Plato Would Ban Ad-Blockers: He was a dick."

doctorow.medium.com/plato-would-ba… 21/
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 22/
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… 23/

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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 5
You guys, I don't want to bum you out or anything, but I think there's a good chance than some self-described capitalists *aren't really into capitalism*.

Sorry.

1/ A giant, complicated, mechanical printing press. Looming over it is an 18th-century demon from the Compendium Rarissimum Totius Artis Magicae; it is a eating severed human leg, and waving another leg in the air. In the background rise dark red flames. The printer has a Brother logo.
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/2025/03/05/pri…

2/
Take incentives: Charlie Munger, capitalism's quippiest pitchman, famously said, "Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome."

3/
Read 50 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Mar 3
I get a special pleasure from citing Milton Friedman. I like to imagine that as I do, he groans around the red-hot spit protruding from his jaws, prompting howls of laughter from the demons who pelt him with molten faeces for all eternity.

1/ Oil derricks superimposed against a 'code waterfall' as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movies. In the foreground is Trump's hair.
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/2025/03/03/fri…

2/
If you're lucky enough not to know about Friedman, here's the short version. Friedman was a kind of court sorcerer to Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Augusto Pinochet, and other assorted authoritarian, hard-right leaders who set us on the path to the hellscape we inhabit today.

3/
Read 56 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Feb 20
The commercial surveillance industry is almost totally unregulated. Data brokers, ad-tech, and everyone in between - they harvest, store, analyze, sell and rent every intimate, sensitive, potentially compromising fact about your life.

1/ A towering figure with the head of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' surmounted by Trump's hair, wearing a tailcoat with a Google logo lapel pin. It peers through a magnifying glass at a distressed, tiny Uncle Sam figure perched in its monstrous palm. 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/2025/02/20/pri…

2/
Late last year, I testified at a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hearing about a proposed new rule to kill off data brokers, who are the lynchpin of the industry:



3/pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the…
Read 41 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Feb 18
In 2013, Thomas Piketty had an unexpected bestseller (a 750 page economics book translated from French!) *Capital in the 21st Century*.

1/ A Gilded Age editorial cartoon of a frowning Uncle Sam giving a blood transfusion to a gargantuan business-man whose waistcoat is labeled 'protected monopolies.' The businessman's head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background has been replaced with a halftoned EU flag whose blue field is covered in circuit-board traceries. The floor beneath the figures is an abstract, pinkish pattern. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed....
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/2025/02/18/pik…

2/
It offers a very convincing explanation of our political decay, and it continues to serve this purpose as the decay undergoes alarming acceleration:



3/memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/tho…
Read 62 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Feb 17
Theory-free inference is a hell of a drug. For years, Big Data advocates - the larval form of today's AI weirdos - have insisted that if you have enough data, you can infer causal relationships between complex phenomena without ever having to understand how x causes y.

1/ https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/17/caliper-ai/#racism-machine A phrenological illustration of a man's face in profile, with his skull divided up into sections with illustrations of what each area is meant to govern, e.g., appetite, artistic aptitude, aggression, ardor. A pair of gleaming silver calipers, wielded by the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' measures the figure's skull. 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/2025/02/17/cal…

2/
Thus, we can slay the dread "correlation is not causation" beast. This is cousin to Milton Friedman's famous economic catechism:



3/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in…
Read 36 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Feb 12
Remember the Tiktok ban? I know, it was ten million years ago (in Musk years, anyway), so it may have slipped your mind, but let me remind you: Congress passed a law saying Tiktok was banned. Trump said he wouldn't enforce the law. The end.

1/ An official portrait of the US Supreme Court, with the justices sitting and standing before a red velvet curtain. Their faces have been replaced with the green 'Mr Yuck' logo. Floating in the middle of the image, obscuring several judges, is the Tiktok logo, with Trump's hair.
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/2025/02/12/you…

2/
No, really. I mean, sure, there's a bunch of bullshit about whether Trump will pick up the ban again after Tiktok's grace period ends, depending on whether they sell themselves to his creepy wax museum pal Larry Ellison. Maybe he will.

3/
Read 39 tweets

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