Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Apr 3, 2023 39 tweets 44 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The problem with economic models; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all…

#Pluralistic 1/ A Tron-like plane of glowing grid-squares. Two spherical cow
I'm kickstarting the #audiobook for my next novel, an anti-finance finance thriller about #SiliconValley scams called *Red Team Blues*. #Amazon's #Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they're #DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible:

redteamblues.com 2/
The problem with economic models: Ideology disguised as math.

3/  Image: bert knottenbeld (modified) https://www.flickr.com/p
Hey look at this

* Nonfunctional pesticide class action, countersuit against whistleblower colinpurrington.com/2021/01/posts-…

* Single-Stair Layouts Won't Fix Housing thenation.com/article/societ…

* Audiobooks Without Audible: Lessons Learned Routing Around Amazon publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/in… 4/
#20yrsago OS X floppy disk RAID web.archive.org/web/2003060111…

#15yrsago Best practices for water imbibing: “Just drink when you’re thirsty” npr.org/2008/04/03/893…

#15yrsago Debating the feasibility of an in-flight #LiquidBomb schneier.com/blog/archives/… 6/
#15yrsago Boston judge: making files available to download isn’t piracy eff.org/deeplinks/2008…

#15yrsago @AirCanada: for $35, we’ll let you talk to customer-service reps who can actually help you with a cancelled flight thestar.com/business/2008/… 7/
#15yrsago Japanese creative packaging design solutions to ugly barcodes darkroastedblend.com/2008/04/japane…

#15yrsago #CharlesManson uses #CreativeCommons licenses web.archive.org/web/2008040310…

#15yrsago China’s instant cities — jaw-dropping National Geo feature web.archive.org/web/2008040210… 8/
#15yrsago Banks refuse to take title on repossessed crappy houses web.archive.org/web/2008040613…

#10yrsago #IainBanks: I’m dying of cancer, this book will be my last theguardian.com/books/2013/apr… 9/
#10yrsago Podcast to mark centennial of #MarcDavis, co-creator of #HauntedMansion, Pirates of the Caribbean mousetalgia.libsyn.com/remembering-ma… 10/
#10yrsago Autonomous sensory meridian response – self-diagnosed neurological condition/superpower that makes you really enjoy whispering independent.co.uk/tech/maria-spe…

#10yrsago Queen goes on austerity footing, receives mere £5M pay-rise from the taxpayers theguardian.com/uk/2013/apr/02… 11/
#5yrsago Offering users transparency and privacy is the only way Big Tech can avoid being turned into content cops dangillmor.medium.com/why-tech-platf…

#5yrsago The technologies that would make the web more participatory medium.com/@anildash/the-… 12/
#5yrsago Eight months ago, @PaneraBread was warned that they were leaking up to 7 million customers’ data. They fixed it yesterday. Kinda. krebsonsecurity.com/2018/04/panera… 13/
#5yrsago Even the telco industry thinks @AjitPai is an asshole for maiming #Lifeline, a broadband subsidy for poor Americans techdirt.com/2018/04/03/fcc… 14/
#5yrsago Analysis of all the elections since Trump produces no clear answers on the class and suburban/urban correlates of flippability fivethirtyeight.com/features/be-sk… 15/
#5yrsago #AlexJones falsely accused a guy of being the Parkland school shooter, so now he’s being sued for more than $1,000,000 thedailybeast.com/falsely-accuse…

#5yrsago 2018 tsunami: Teachers lead mass strikes in four red states that voted for Trump in 2016 thehill.com/homenews/state… 16/
#5yrsago The Manhattan property bubble is bursting ft.com/content/b0ab3f…

#15yrsago Difference between feeling secure and being secure wired.com/2008/04/securi… 17/
#15yrsago Microsoft busted by Indian government for avoiding royalty tax by saying that it sells — not licenses — its software economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/software/…

#15yrsago How an ISP music-license should work eff.org/deeplinks/2008… 18/
#15yrsago Fuji makes you sign bizarre EULA to buy a camera memex.craphound.com/2008/04/02/fuj…

#15yrsago Bush administration: Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to domestic military operations eff.org/deeplinks/2008… 19/
#15yrsago Short story reads like the first page of Snow Crash, recombined and awesome — Leonard Richardson’s “Mallory” futurismic.com/2008/04/01/mal…

#10yrsago Notorious porno copyright trolls #PrendaLaw have a very bad day in court popehat.com/2013/04/02/pre… 20/
#10yrsago Free US court records service #RECAP gets two major features, in Aaron Swartz’s memory web.archive.org/web/2013040314…

#5yrsago A hive of scum and villainy: meet the right-wing “Democrats” the DCCC is planning to win 2018 with jacobin.com/2018/04/democr… 21/
#5yrsago Even insured Americans flock to Mexico for low-cost, high-quality health-care cracked.com/personal-exper…

#5yrsago @IAmJohnOliver on America’s immigration courts, where families are torn apart and young children represent themselves 22/
#5yrsago Here are the moats and walls Facebook has been building for years to defend against #DeleteFacebook vice.com/en/article/vbx…

#5yrsago Governing a decentralized internet without votes medium.com/@nayafia/the-p… 23/
#5yrsago On the junk science and excellent PR of #CambridgeAnalytica memex.craphound.com/2018/04/02/on-…

#5yrsago West Virginia is contagious: mass teacher walkouts in Kentucky and Oklahoma cnn.com/us/live-news/t… 24/
Saturday's threads: Flickr to copyleft trolls: drop dead; and more!

25/
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… 26/
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… 27/
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/ 28/
Upcoming appearances:

* Twiddling, Enshittification and the Latter-Day Robber Barons of the Web, 4/6
eventbrite.com/e/session-73-c…

* Antitrust and Competition Conference - Beyond the Consumer Welfare Standard (#Chicago), 4/20-21
chicagobooth.edu/research/stigl… 29/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues at @MystGalaxyBooks (#SanDiego), 4/25
mystgalaxy.com/event/42523Doc…

* Red Team Blues at @darkdel (#Burbank), Apr 26
darkdel.com/store/p2873/We… 30/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues at @WordfestTweets (#Calgary), 5/11
wordfest.com/2023/event/wor…

* Red Team Blues event with @TimHarford (#Oxford), 5/29
eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctoro… 32/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues event with @cubicgarden (Manchester), 5/31
waterstones.com/events/in-conv…

* @uclcs Peter Kirstein Lecture, 6/1 (#London):
eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirste… 33/
Recent appearances:

* Is Copyright Good For Authors? (@TWiT)


* @culturejourno: What is chokepoint capitalism?
theculturejournalist.substack.com/p/chokepoint-c…

* Techtonic with @markhurst | @WFMU
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cor… 34/
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/2023/04/03/all… 35/
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. 36/
My latest Medium column is "Commafuckers Versus The Commons: Copyleft Trolls Are the Serpents in Our Garden of Ethical Sharing"

doctorow.medium.com/commafuckers-v… 37/
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 38/
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). 39/

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More from @doctorow

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
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
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

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