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Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
@doctorow
May 11, 2023 • 24 tweets • 29 min read • Read on X
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Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: 'We buy ugly houses' is code for 'we steal vulnerable peoples' homes'; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugl…

#Pluralistic

1/ A Depression-era photo of a...
Tonight (May 11) at 7PM, I'm in #CALGARY for @WordfestTweets with my novel *Red Team Blues*; I'll be hosted by Peter Hemminger at the Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor.

wordfest.com/2023/event/wor…

2/ Image
'We buy ugly houses' is code for 'we steal vulnerable peoples' homes': The pervasive, predatory sleaze of Homevestor, "the #1 homebuyer in the USA."



3/ Image: Homevestors https:/...
Hey look at this

* Andreessen Horowitz's State of #Crypto report: Narrative over numbers newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/andreessen-h…

* The #McMansion as Harbinger of the American Apocalypse thebaffler.com/outbursts/bad-…

* Goodbye, #Dooce waxy.org/2023/05/goodby…

4/ Image
#20yrsago Lying, plagiarising #NYT writer outed, ousted nytimes.com/2003/05/11/nat…

#20yrsago #COGECO’s Terms of Service: Assholes or idiots? memex.craphound.com/2003/05/11/cog…

#10yrsago My Re:publica talk: “It’s not a fax machine connected to a waffle iron”

5/ Image
#10yrsago What makes a project remixable? mako.cc/academic/hill_…

#10yrsago Bike lanes led to 49% increase in retail sales web.archive.org/web/2013031522…

6/ Image
#5yrsago FanFlick Editor: an entry in @EFF’s Catalog of Missing Devices eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

#5yrsago Here are the official lyrics to the #MrSoftee jingle thedailymeal.com/eat/mister-sof…

7/ Image
#5yrsago Bite-Sized #Linux: a zine collecting awesome *nix tutorial webtoons wizardzines.gumroad.com/l/ltywT

#5yrsago West Virginia Senator laughed at the idea that hating on teachers would bite him in the ass – then he lost his job theintercept.com/2018/05/11/wes…

8/ Image
#5yrsago Pentagon sucks up to Trump by censoring mentions of #ClimateChange in its global risks assessment washingtonpost.com/news/energy-en…

#5yrsago Teens are cyberbullying themselves as a form of self-harm npr.org/sections/healt…

9/ Image
#5yrsago Indigenous Canadians sue Canadian government over decades of secret, involuntary, inhumane medical experiments theguardian.com/world/2018/may…

#5yrsago Individual FBI agents can be sued for blackmailing potential informants with no-fly list threats techdirt.com/2018/05/11/cou…

10/ Image
#1yrago The (billionaires') case against billionaires pluralistic.net/2022/05/11/a-d…

11/ Image
Yesterday's threads: Two principles to protect internet users from decaying platforms; and more!



12/ Image: EFF https://www.eff...
My latest novel is Red Team Blues, available wherever books are sold!

Signed copies at @DarkDel:

darkdel.com/store/p2873/We…

13/
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…

14/
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/

15/ Image
Upcoming appearances:

* 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…

16/ 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…

17/ 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…

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

18/ Image
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

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

* 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…

19/ Image
Recent appearances:

* Slurry With The Turd On Top (@JordanJesseGo)
maximumfun.org/episodes/jorda…

* @MarkTLive


* Enshittification Part 1: Why Every Platform Goes Bad (@onthemedia)
wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/s…

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/2023/05/11/ugl…

21/
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - and previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.

My latest Medium column is "Don’t Curb Your Enthusiasm: Marcus Yallow + 50 Years = Marty Hench?"

doctorow.medium.com/dont-curb-your…

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: mail.flarn.com/mailman/listin…

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).

eof/

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More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jul 22
Ever notice how many right wing influencers are on the grift?

1/ A carny barker at a podium, gesticulating with a MAGA cap. He wears a Klan hood, and his podium features products from Nu-skin, Amway and Herbalife. Behind him is an oil-painted scene of a steamship with a Trump Tower logo, at a pier in flames.
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/2025/07/22/all…

2/
Like Alex Jones - that guy is basically Gwyneth Paltrow for conservative bros, selling the same "wellness" crap to a male audience (and not for nothing, Paltrow's victims are reliable boosters for RFK Jr's MAHA movement):



3/theweek.com/speedreads/709…
Read 66 tweets
Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jul 3
As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are *not popular*.

1/ A kneeling figure, shackled hand-and-foot with ball-and-chains at his ankles. His face is that of a turn-of-the-century newsie, grinning broadly under a torn cloth cap. Behind him is a heavily halftoned neon HELP WANTED sign, askew over a indistinct black hellscape ganked from the third panel of Boschs's 'Garden of Earthly Delights.'
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/2025/07/03/sta…

2/
Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is *extremely* unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps.

3/
Read 42 tweets
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

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