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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Jan 31, 2023 • 25 tweets • 26 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Canada's privatised shadow civil service; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mck…

#Pluralistic 1/ The legislative chamber of ...
From Feb 8-17, I'll be in Australia, touring my book *Chokepoint Capitalism* with my co-author, Rebecca Giblin. We'll be in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, and I hope to see you!

pluralistic.net/2023/01/30/i-c… 2/ Image
Canada's privatised shadow civil service: Tories claim governments are incompetent, Liberals prove it.

3/ Image: Sam (modified) https...
Hey look at this

* Sci-Fi Short Film "Uprising!"

* 11 of the Sleaziest Snake Oil Ads From Trump's #TruthSocial gizmodo.com/donald-trump-t…

* every small city has that one dictator chic house mcmansionhell.com/post/707909502… 4/ Image
#20yrsago Patron Saint sought for Internet cnn.com/2003/TECH/inte…

#20yrsago #SpaceShuttle runs #FreeSoftware and #OpenProtocols news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technolog…

#15yrsago Amazon buys #Audible, promises to kill #DRM if we complain washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content… 5/ Image
#10yrsago #Noisebridge hackerspace explains fair use to Dreamworks noisebridge.net/wiki/Dreamwork…

#10yrsago 25 years of legal #abortion in #Canada torontoist.com/2013/01/r-v-mo…

#10yrsago Copyright, plagiarism and the Internet theguardian.com/technology/blo… 6/ Image
#10yrsago Whitepaper on the #3DPrinting, patents, trademarks and copyrights web.archive.org/web/2013020109…

#5yrsago Investors throw $300m at dog-walking startup that hired ex-CEO of fraudulent anti-fraud company Lifelock businessinsider.com/wag-raises-300… 7/ Image
#5yrsago Australian government’s worst-ever state-secrets leak: accidentally selling filing cabinets full of classified docs in a surplus store abc.net.au/news/2018-01-3… 8/ Image
#5yrsago Automating Inequality: using algorithms to create a modern “digital poor-house” memex.craphound.com/2018/01/31/aut… 9/ Image
#5yrsago Tory Council Leader’s son gets plum job with government contractor, teen constituent damned as an “appalling little child” for asking about it kingstonmatters.wordpress.com/2018/01/31/res… 10/ Image
#5yrsago #CDC chief Brenda Fitzgerald quits after outed for buying into a tobacco company thehill.com/policy/healthc…

#5yrsago In-depth investigation of the Alibaba-to-Instagram pipeline for scammy crapgadgets with excellent branding jennyodell.com/museumofcapita… 11/ Image
#1yrago Podcasting about #Pixsy, the copyleft trolls who tried to shake me down pluralistic.net/2022/01/31/hee…

#1yrago Grappling with Big Wrestling pluralistic.net/2022/01/31/hee… 12/ Image
Yesterday's threads: The real scandal is overclassification; The Australian Chokepoint Capitalism Tour; and more!

13/ 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… 14/
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… 15/
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/ 16/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

* 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…

* Future of Arts/Culture/Tech, @ACMI, (#Melbourne), 2/14
acmi.net.au/whats-on/in-co… 17/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* ANU/@canberratimes Meet The Author (#Canberra), 2/16
anu.edu.au/events/in-conv…

* @Aus_Digital Copyright Forum (#Canberra), 2/17:
digital.org.au/2022/11/08/doc… 18/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #Antitrust, Regulation & Political Economy (#Brussels), 3/2:
brusselsconference.com/registration 19/ Image
Recent appearances:

* @davidpakmanshow


* TikTok Isn’t For Creators Anymore (@Slate ICMY)
slate.com/podcasts/icymi…

* Lunch on Laotian food (Eating the Fantastic)
scottedelman.com/2023/01/27/cor… 20/ 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/2023/01/31/mck… 21/
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 "'Conversational' AI Is Really Bad At Conversations"

doctorow.medium.com/conversational… 22/
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 23/
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). 24/
Today's top sources: @yvessmith (nakedcapitalism.com). 25/ Image

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
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

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