Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jan 24, 2023 21 tweets 23 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: David Graeber's "Pirate Enlightenment"; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/01/24/zan…

#Pluralistic 1/
David Graeber's "Pirate Enlightenment": The true, swashbuckling lives of matriarchs, anarchists, and pirates at the crossroads of the world.

2/
Hey look at this

* #DebtCeiling Limit is Destructive, Duplicative, and Dumb stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/the-debt-cei…

* 3d-party apps Twitter killed made the site what it is today theverge.com/2023/1/22/2356…

* Predictions Scorecard, 1/1/23 – Rodney Brooks rodneybrooks.com/predictions-sc… (h/t @slashdot) 3/
#15yrsago God Save Stan Lee tee memex.craphound.com/2008/01/24/god…

#15yrsago FBI whistleblower tells librarians about discriminatory practices and bad procedure at the Bureau web.archive.org/web/2008012718… 4/
#10yrsago @Superwuster: “Escape From Tomorrow” doesn’t violate #Disney’s #copyright newyorker.com/culture/cultur…

#5yrsago EU fines Qualcomm over $1 billion for anti-competitive iPhone deal ec.europa.eu/commission/pre… 5/
#5yrsago The #NSA’s new “core values” statement no longer includes “honor,” “honesty” or “openness” https://theintercept.2023-Jan-1 com/2018/01/24/nsa-core-values-honesty-deleted/ 6/
#5yrsago For 100 minutes, more than a million tuned into Sanders’ #MedicareForAll town hall washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost…

#5yrsago California’s lax #usury laws means out-of-state loan sharks are charging desperate Californians 183% APRs latimes.com/business/la-fi… 7/
#5yrsago Florida state cop says he can’t remember why he bought mobile stalking app vice.com/en/article/gyw…

#5yrsago Congressional Budget Office will (eventually) investigate the millions of fraudulent anti-#NetNeutrality comments sent to the FCC theverge.com/2018/1/24/1692… 8/
#5yrsago TWANG! A one-dimensional dungeon-crawler that uses a springy doorstop as a controller

#5yrsago Despite the FCC, more than 750 predominantly conservative US communities have built their own publicly owned ISPs vice.com/en/article/a3n… 9/
Yesterday's threads: Eggflation is just more price-gouging; and more!

10/
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… 11/
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… 12/
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/ 13/
Upcoming appearances:

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

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

* Avid Reader (#Brisbane), 2/8
avidreader.com.au/pages/6834-Cho… 14/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Future of Arts/Culture/Tech, @ACMI, (#Melbourne), 2/14
acmi.net.au/whats-on/in-co…

* @statelibrarynsw (#Sydney), 2/15
sl.nsw.gov.au/events/chokepo…

* ANU/@canberratimes Meet The Author (#Canberra), 2/16
anu.edu.au/events/in-conv… 15/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* #Antitrust, Regulation & Political Economy (#Brussels), 3/2:
brusselsconference.com/registration 16/
Recent appearances:

* The Future of Business, Technology and Society (@PodcastMyBiz)
sixpixels.com/podcast/archiv…

* The Way the Music Died (@Canadaland Commons)
canadaland.com/podcast/monopo…

* @majorityfm with @SamSeder
majorityreportradio.com/2023/01/09/1-9… 17/
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/2023/01/24/zan… 18/
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 "Normalize Dark Corners!"

doctorow.medium.com/normalize-dark… 19/
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 20/
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). 21/

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More from @doctorow

Mar 31
Trumpism is a mixture of grievance, surveillance, and pettiness: "I will never forgive your mockery, I have records of you doing it, and I will punish you and everyone who associates with you for it."

1/ The Las Vegas Sphere as seen by night, with the lights of Vegas behind it. The Sphere itself has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' and centered on it is a Madison Square Garden logo. The Sphere has been topped with Trump's hair.   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/2025/03/31/mad…

2/
Think of how he's going after the (cowardly) BigLaw firms:



3/abovethelaw.com/2025/03/skadde…
Read 66 tweets
Mar 25
A law professor friend tells me that LLMs have completely transformed the way she relates to grad students and postdocs - for the worse. And no, it's not that they're cheating on their homework or using LLMs to write briefs full of hallucinated cases.

1/ Norman Rockwell’s ‘self portrait.’ All the Rockwell faces have been replaced with HAL 9000 from Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ His signature has been modified with a series of rotations and extra symbols. He has ten fingers on his one visible hand.    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/2025/03/25/com…

2/
The thing that LLMs have changed in my friend's law school is *letters of reference*. Historically, students would only ask a prof for a letter of reference if they knew the prof really rated them.

3/
Read 36 tweets
Mar 22
I have an excellent excuse for this week's linkdump: I'm in Germany, but I'm supposed to be in LA, and I'm not, because London Heathrow shut down due to a power-station fire.



1/ mystgalaxy.com/32425DoctorowA bloody mary stacked high with many absurd, over-the-top garnishes.   Image: TDelCoro https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomasdelcoro/48116604516/  CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/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/2025/03/22/omn…

2/
Which meant I spent all day yesterday running around like a headless chicken, trying to get home in time for my gig in San Diego on Monday (don't worry, I sorted it):

3/
Read 50 tweets
Mar 19
Paula Le Dieu is one of the smartest, most committed archivists I know. Many years ago, she shared a neat analogy with me about the paywalling of public archives.

1/ The Columbia University library, a stately, columnated building, color-shifted to highlight reds and oranges. The sky behind it has been filled with flames. In the foreground, a figure in a firefighter's helmet and yellow coat uses a flamethrower to shoot a jet of orange fire.   Image: Ajay Suresh https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajay_suresh/52009406881/  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/2025/03/19/sel…

2/
This phenomenon has become rampant as public institutions have been pushed to seek private funding to close the gaps left by swingeing cuts.

3/
Read 26 tweets
Mar 18
AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman (Elon Musk) can convince your boss (the USA) to fire you and replace you (a federal worker) with a chatbot that can't do your job:



1/ pcmag.com/news/amid-job-…The capital building, crossed by a yellow hazmat tape emblazoned 'DANGER ASBESTOS.' Behind the tape stands a figure in an old-fashioned hazmat suit. In the background are the blown-up faces of a group of grubby, miserable child miners. The capital dome has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.'     Image: Krd (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DASA_01.jpg  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en  --  Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creati...
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/2025/03/18/asb…

2/
If you pay attention to the hype, you'd think that all the action on "AI" (an incoherent grab-bag of only marginally related technologies) was in generating text and images. Man, is that ever wrong.

3/
Read 26 tweets
Mar 15
Even by Amazon standards, this is extraordinarily sleazy: starting March 28, each Amazon Echo device will cease processing audio on-device and instead upload all the audio it captures to Amazon's cloud for processing.

1/ A cylindrical black Alexa speaker on a coffee table; it is wearing a Darth Vader helmet.  Image: Stock Catalog/https://www.quotecatalog.com (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexa_%2840770465691%29.jpg  Sam Howzit (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SWC_6_-_Darth_Vader_Costume_(7865106344).jpg  CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/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/2025/03/15/alt…

2/
This will happen even if you have previously opted out of cloud-based processing:



3/arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/0…
Read 48 tweets

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