Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Dec 19, 2022 37 tweets 35 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Better failure for social media; Hey look at this; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/bet…

#Pluralistic 1/ Moses confronting the Pharaoh, demanding that he release the
#NewYorkers! The state legislature has passed landmark #RightToRepair legislation, but @GovHochul hasn't signed it and it might die. Visit eff.org/rtr to help tell the Governor that we can't afford to wait (and tell your friends in New York, too!). 2/
Better failure for social media: The right of exit, freedom of reach, and technological self-determination.

3/ Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wik
Hey look at this

* Mandelmap poster mandelmap.com/product-page/m… (h/t @Kottke)

* @ProPublica Launches Investigative Editor Training Program propublica.org/article/propub…

* this house may or may not be real mcmansionhell.com/post/703763852… 4/
#20yrsago Libraries get Audible audiobooks web.archive.org/web/2003021211…

#20yrsago Videos of GW Bush cracking jokes with Enron execs about accounting fraud latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

#20yrsago Elcomsoft not guilty on all counts! web.archive.org/web/2003010104… 5/
#20yrsago Technically legal signs for anti-PATRIOT ACT librarians librarian.net/technicality.h…

#20yrsago Disney cartoons not hypnotic enough for boys web.archive.org/web/2003021213…

#15yrsago Abandoned Sun Microsystems building photo-tour web.archive.org/web/2006021110… 6/
#15yrsago Science is linguistic as well as numerical radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/…

#15yrsago HOWTO Make a BristleBot vibrating toothbrush robot evilmadscientist.com/2007/bristlebo…

#15yrsago Kim Stanley Robinson on “Comparative Planetology” bldgblog.com/2007/12/compar… 7/
#15yrsago Great Firewall of China crumbling from within wired.com/2007/10/ff-chi…

#15yrsago @DBtodomundo’s guide to being a musician in the 21st century web.archive.org/web/2008030602…

#15yrsago @DBtodomundo and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke talk music biz wired.com/2007/12/ff-yor… 8/
#15yrsago MTV declares music industry “broken” web.archive.org/web/2007121906…

#10yrsago Lessons from an author who switched from a commercial publisher to an audience-funded Kickstarter book tobiasbuckell.com/how-i-used-kic… 9/
#10yrsago Amazon Replacement Order Scam: anatomy of a social engineering con in action web.archive.org/web/2012123023…

#10yrsago Point of Sale skimmer that prints out real-seeming receipts 10/
#10yrsago If you’re suspected of drug involvement, America takes your house; HSBC admits to laundering cartel billions, loses five weeks’ income and execs have to partially defer bonuses web.archive.org/web/2012122101… 11/
#10yrsago Anonymous declares religious war on Westboro Baptist Church arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

#10yrsago Woman gets stem-cell “wrinkle treatment,” grows extra bones in her eye-socket scientificamerican.com/article/stem-c… 12/
#5yrsago Rich people in Bristol install anti-bird spikes in trees to keep shit off their cars, rendering trees “literally uninhabitable” by local wildlife independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n… 13/
#5yrsago Wells Fargo CEO promises to spend not one cent of the GOP tax gift on investment or wages thinkprogress.org/wells-fargo-ce…

#5yrsago Only Chinese companies will be allowed to map Chinese roads thedrive.com/tech/17001/chi… 14/
#5yrsago Trump’s Department of Labor proposes rule that lets employers steal employees’ tips epi.org/publication/em…

#5yrsago Stop charging AT-ATs (What the Rebellion should do in order to improve its anti-Empire tactics) wired.com/story/star-war… 15/
#5yrsago The Trumpdroid at Disney’s Hall of Presidents looks an awful lot like a hastily modded Hillarybot

#5yrsago Superb science fiction story in the form of a list of failed attempts to stave off climate extinction vice.com/en/article/xwv… 16/
#5yrsago The final draft of the GOP tax plan transfers even more wealth to the 1%: now they get 83% taxpolicycenter.org/publications/d… 17/
#5yrsago CBD is a non-psychoactive compound in marijuana that shows promise in epilepsy and pain therapy, so the DEA wants to class it with heroin arstechnica.com/science/2017/1… 18/
#5yrsago @EFF to US Copyright Office: fix the DRM rules that stop us from fixing our stuff, make fair use, and make IoT gadgets work the way we want eff.org/press/releases…

#5yrsago The Donald Trump droid is live at Disney World’s Hall of Presidents disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2017/12/t… 19/
#5yrsago Ted Chiang: Elon Musk’s fear of runaway AI is a projection of his repressed terror of runaway corporations buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchi… 20/
#5yrsago The Tea Party’s baseless claims of IRS discrimination left the agency on life-support, unable to police dark money gushing through “charities” washingtonpost.com/investigations… 21/
#5yrsago Anatomy of how crooks use financial secrecy in the UK and New Zealand to rip off international investors with impunity interest.co.nz/business/91250… 22/
#5yrsago When Justin Trudeau was in opposition, he voted for Canada’s PATRIOT Act but promised to fix it; instead he’s making it much, much worse citizenlab.ca/2017/12/citize… 23/
#5yrsago As climate deniers claim credit for killing Net Neutrality, the FCC’s internal auditor reveals that Neutracide was based on a lie vice.com/en/article/vby… 24/
#5yrsago EPA employees who spoke out about Trump are having their emails ransacked, and the EPA’s new “monitoring” firm is linked to a GOP oppo research firm nytimes.com/2017/12/17/us/… 25/
#5yrsago China will collect the DNA of every adult in Xinjiang province, where Uyghur people are systematically oppressed techdirt.com/2017/12/18/chi…

#5yrsago Female adolescent macaques practice sex by mounting male deer link.springer.com/article/10.100… 26/
Friday's threads: The antitrust Twilight Zone; and more!

27/
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… 28/
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… 29/
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/ 30/
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… 31/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy (Brussels), 3/2:
brusselsconference.com/registration
fwean 32/
Recent appearances:

* New Books in Public Policy (@PitPolicy):
open.spotify.com/episode/2niuM0…

* How to take back the arts from Big Tech (@TheRealNews)


* @dartsandletters:
dartsandletters.ca/2022/12/12/ep7… 33/
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/2022/12/19/bet… 34/
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 "'Metaverse' means 'pivot to video'"

doctorow.medium.com/metaverse-mean… 35/
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 36/
Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? You can read my work elsewhere, but it is now a #TwitterCrime to tell you how. Please visit my site, pluralistic.net, for links to find me on less-unhinged places (I can only imagine that my days here are numbered). 37/

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More from @doctorow

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
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
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
Feb 11
Let me tell you about the most wasteful US federal government spending I know about. It's a humdinger. You and everyone you know are mired in it for weeks, or perhaps months, every year.

1/ A halftoned 2025 IRS 1040 form. To the left is a bloated billionaire figure in top hat, white gloves and tux, with the pouting face of Elon Musk. With one hand, he is yanking on a lever made out of a gilded dollar-sign. With the other hand, he contemptuously dangles a street urchin. The podium to which the lever is attached bears the Turbotax logo, a white checkmark in a red circle. To the left is a cascade of gold coins, falling out of an upended sack.   Image: Wcamp9 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_-_March_28,_2024_%28cropped%29.jpg  CC BY 4.0 https://creative...
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/2025/02/11/dou…

2/
It will cost you, personally, thousands of dollars over your lifetime. I'm talking about filing your taxes.

Not *paying* your taxes. Paying your taxes is fine.

3/
Read 29 tweets
Feb 5
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

NOTE: I DID NOT BUY A BLUE TICK. IT WAS NONCONSENSUALLY ADDED TO MY ACCOUNT.

Inside: MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing; and more!

Archived at:

#Pluralistic

1/ pluralistic.net/2025/02/04/pow…A vintage ad for Amway Nutrilite supplements; the illustration in the center of the ad has been replaced with a WPA mural depicting trade unionists rising up against capitalism.
This week, Barnes and Noble are offering a 25% discount on pre-order of my next novel, *Picks and Shovels* (use code PREORDERS):



2/ barnesandnoble.com/w/picks-and-sh…Image
MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing: In the mirror world, community organizers are community predators.



3/ Image
Read 29 tweets
Jan 27
If Elon Musk wants to cut $2t from the US federal budget, there's a pretty straightforward way to get there - just eliminate all the beltway bandits who overcharge Uncle Sucker for everything from pharma to roads to (of course) rockets, and make the rich pay their taxes.

1/  A highwayman in a tailcoat and top-hat with Elon Musk's laughing face points a pair of oversized revolvers at a bent-double Uncle Sam, his face a bitter mask; Sam is being crushed under a small mountain of variegated fardels, e.g., large sacks, barrels, and railroad rails. In the background is a halftoned image of a Falcon Heavy rocket plummeting out of the sky, chased by a plume of flame.   Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/52005460639/  CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
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/2025/01/27/bel…

2/
There *is* a ton of federal bloat, but it's not coming from useless programs or overpaid federal employees.

3/
Read 56 tweets

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