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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
Apr 29, 2023 • 29 tweets • 37 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The seductive, science fictional power of spreadsheets; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/04/29/ged…

#Pluralistic

1/ A Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet w...
Tomorrow (Apr 30) at 2PM, I'll be at the #SanFrancisco Public Library with my new book, *Red Team Blues*, hosted by @annaleen@wandering.shop:

sfpl.org/events/2023/04…

2/ Image
The seductive, science fictional power of spreadsheets: Maybe the map IS the territory?



3/ Image
Hey look at this

* Feditrends (popular #fediverse links) feditrends.com (h/t Nelson Minar)

* Jean Baptiste Vérany’s Chromolithographs of #Cephalopods (1851) publicdomainreview.org/collection/ver…

* “Red Team Blues” and the As-You-Know-Bob problem crookedtimber.org/2023/04/27/red…

4/ Image
#20yrsago Business 2.0 publishes its first-ever sf story (mine!) web.archive.org/web/2003043015…

#15yrsago My #email management power-tips theguardian.com/technology/200…

#15yrsago @EFF to #Ballmer: You owe MSN Music customers an apology, a refund and more eff.org/press/archives…

5/ Image
#15yrsago When #trademark becomes a tool for stealing our language theguardian.com/technology/201…

#15yrsago #Malware gets a #EULA arstechnica.com/information-te…

6/ Image
#15yrsago Shelby County, TN Sheriff: watch out for photographers and radical greens, they might be terrorists web.archive.org/web/2008050112…

#10yrsago #MPAA executive admits to tampering with key evidence in Finnish topsite trial torrentfreak.com/mpaa-executive…

7/ Image
#10yrsago Monsters and Legends: kids’ reference book on the origin of monsters memex.craphound.com/2013/04/29/mon…

#10yrsago Icelandic #PirateParty lands three seats in Icelandic parliament arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

8/ Image
#10yrsago @bruces on startups’ role in helping the global rich get richer web.archive.org/web/2013042801…

#5yrsago Facebook warns investors to expect bigger and worse scandals than #CambridgeAnalytica siliconvalley.com/2018/04/27/fac…

9/ Image
#5yrsago 100 US Mayors sign a pledge to boycott ISPs that commit #NetNeutrality violations gizmodo.com/100-us-mayors-…

#5yrsago The @teachersstrikes are spreading labornotes.org/blogs/2018/04/…

10/ Image
#5yrsago The US gave its client states hundreds of millions for anti-terrorism, then crooked UK military contractors ripped it all off federalnewsnetwork.com/acquisition/20…

#1yrago Killing online #surveillance with contextual ads pluralistic.net/2022/04/29/tak…

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#1yrago Renegotiate the web "bargain" by blocking all ads pluralistic.net/2022/04/28/shu…

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Thursday's threads: Convicted monopolist prevented from re-offending; and more!



13/ Image: Microsoft, Activisio...
My latest novel is Red Team Blues, available wherever books are sold!

Signed copies at @DarkDel:

darkdel.com/store/p2873/We…

14/
My latest nonfiction 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…

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:

* Red Team Blues at @SFPublicLibrary with @Annaleen (#SanFrancisco), 4/30
sfpl.org/events/2023/04…

* Red Team Blues at @Powell's with @waxy (#PDX/Cedar Hills Crossing), 5/2
powells.com/book/red-team-…

17/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues at @Powell's with @waxy (#PDX/Cedar Hills Crossing), 5/2
powells.com/book/red-team-…

* Red Team Blues at @BooksIncStores with @mkapor (#MountainView), 5/5
booksinc.net/event/cory-doc…

18/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* @BayBookFest (#Berkeley/#BABF2023), 5/6-7
baybookfest.org/session/cory-d…

* #OSSummit (#Vancouver), 5/10
events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-su…

* @MassyArts Red Team Blues event with @seancranbury (#Vancouver), 5/10
eventbrite.ca/e/red-team-blu…

19/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* @GburgBookFest, (#Gaithersburg) 5/20
gaithersburgbookfestival.org/featured_autho…

* @publicknowledge Emerging Tech keynote (#DC), 5/22
eventbrite.com/e/emerging-tec…

20/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #WEPFest with @RonDeibert, @hockeyesque and @DrNancyOlivieri (#Toronto), 5/23
westendphoenix.com/shop/wepfest-s…

* @HTLGIFestival (#Hay), 5/28
howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-ai-…

* @HTLGIFestival (#Hay), 5/29
howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-dan…

21/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues event with @TimHarford (#Oxford), 5/29
eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctoro…

* Red Team Blues event with @christreilly (#Nottingham), 5/30
waterstones.com/events/an-even…

22/ Image
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…

* @CymeraF, 6/3 (#Edinburgh)
cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-event…

23/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* Red Team Blues with @Marthalanefox at the @bl, 6/5 (#London):
bl.uk/events/an-even…

* @republica keynote, 6/7 (#Berlin)
re-publica.com/de/news/rp23-k…

24/ Image
Recent appearances:

* The Next Chapter/CBC
cbc.ca/player/play/21…

* @mediadeathcult


* Slingshot
thesling.org/video/slingsho…

25/ 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/2023/04/29/ged…

26/
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.

27/
My latest Medium column is "A Collective Bargain: Workplace democracy is a training ground for true national democracy"

doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-b…

28/
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).

eof/

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More from @doctorow

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

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