Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
May 17, 2023 25 tweets 33 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: The IRS will do your taxes for you (if that's what you prefer); and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/05/17/fre…

#Pluralistic

1/ A vintage drawing of Uncle ...
The IRS will do your taxes for you (if that's what you prefer): After years of expensively purchased delay, Turbotax and its fellow tax-profiteers are losing the fight to make you pay them to tell the government what it already knows.



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Hey look at this

* #AntiPiracy Outfit Wipes ACE’s ‘#WatchLegally’ Page From Google torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-ou… (h/t @slashdot)

* dome sweet dome mcmansionhell.com/post/717478586…

* #NEWSPAPERS AND THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE edge.org/conversation/c… (h/t @TodayinTabs)

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#15yrsago Ballad of a #TCPResetPacket arstechnica.com/staff/2008/05/…

#15yrsago @bruces’s visionary novel Distraction: still brilliant a decade later memex.craphound.com/2008/05/17/bru…

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#10yrsago #Gawker reporter claims to have seen video of Toronto Mayor #RobFord #SmokingCrack gawker.com/for-sale-a-vid…

#10yrsago Company that oversees US “six-strikes” copyright shakedown has its company status revoked torrentfreak.com/six-strikes-an…

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#5yrsago Star of racist deli rant identified as Trump-donating NYC lawyer #AaronSchlossberg gothamist.com/news/enraged-w…

#5yrsago Rising levels of a banned chemical are threatening the #OzoneLayer (again) washingtonpost.com/news/energy-en…

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#5yrsago #StudentDebt crisis watch: pay $18,000 of your $24,000 loan, owe $24k bustle.com/p/ive-paid-180…

#5yrsago For decades it was an open secret that patients of #USC’s only full-time gynecologist were complaining about sexual assaults during exams latimes.com/local/californ…

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#5yrsago It’s laughably simple to buy thousands of cheap, plausible Facebook identities buzzfeednews.com/article/charli…

#5yrsago A collaborative bibliography of “#EconomicScienceFictionedgeryders.eu/t/economic-sci…

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#5yrsago The £7 billion #Carillion collapse has the UK government talking about breaking up the Big Four accounting firms independent.co.uk/news/business/…

#5yrsago America’s new aristocracy: the 9.9% and their delusion of #HereditaryMeritocracy theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

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#5yrsago New York surpasses Brexit London as the world’s second-hottest luxury property market mansionglobal.com/articles/hong-…

#1yrago How #BigPharma bribed docs to overprescribe #opioids pluralistic.net/2022/05/17/dol…

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Yesterday's threads: Rent control works; and more!



12/  Image: ozz13x (modified) h...
My latest novel is Red Team Blues, available wherever books are sold!

Signed copies at @DarkDel:

darkdel.com/store/p2873/We…

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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/

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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* 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…

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

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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…

* Otherland event for Red Team Blues, 6/8 (#Berlin)
otherland-berlin.de/de/event-detai…

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Recent appearances:

* Shakedowns, Shell Games & Silicon Valley Shenanigans @MMTpodcast
pileusmmt.libsyn.com/170-cory-docto…

* Chokepoint Capitalism's Arts Stranglehold @USNewsBeat
radiopublic.com/news-beat-GKkd…

* Enshittification 2: How Big Tech curdled @onthemedia
wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/s…

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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/2023/05/17/fre…

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

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My latest @Medium column is "Google's AI Hype Circle: We have to do Bard because everyone else is doing AI; everyone else is doing AI because we're doing Bard"

doctorow.medium.com/googles-ai-hyp…

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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…

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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

Nov 25
The core of the prepper fantasy: "What if the world ended in the *precise* way that made *me* the most important person?"

1/ A heavily armed and armored figure with the head of a foolishly grinning 19th century newsie. He stands in the atrium of a pink, vintage mall.
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/2024/11/25/mal…

2/
The ultra-rich fantasize about emerging from luxury bunkers with an army of mercs and thumbdrives full of bitcoin to a world in ruins that they restructure using their "leadership skills."

3/
Read 42 tweets
Nov 23
> A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
>
> THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

Supposedly, these lines were included in a 1979 internal presentation at IBM; screenshots of them routinely go viral:



1/ An EU flag made up of circuit tracery. In the foreground is a huge figure in a top hat, with a sour expression, peering through a magnifying lens. In the figure's palm is a man on a pennyfarthing bike with a courier backpack. Behind them, the EU flag is disintegrating to reveal a code waterfall as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis' 'Matrix' movies. In the opposite corner, a cyclist is entering the frame: she wears Victorian garb, and her head is a 'hacker in a hoodie' cliche image.  Image: EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/files/issues/eu-flag-11_1.png  CC BY 3.0 http://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/2024/11/23/hac…

2/
The reason for their newfound popularity is obvious: the rise and rise of algorithmic management tools, in which your boss is an app.

3/
Read 42 tweets
Nov 21
Since Trump hijacked the Supreme Court, his backers have achieved many of their policy priorities: legalizing bribery, formalizing forced birth, and - with the *Loper Bright* case, neutering the expert agencies that regulate business:



1/ jacobin.com/2024/07/scotus…A pair of balance scales high over the US Capitol Building. On one platform is a shouting banker holding a money-bag. On the other is a lap technician holding a giant testube larger than his torso, filled with various electronic gadgets. He uses tongs to hold a giant atomic motif over the tube's mouth. From behind the Capitol emerges an elephant in GOP logo livery, with the hair of Donald Trump. On the right is a gigantic telescoping platform terminating in a high-tech command chair from which a man observes the balance scales. Behind them is the DC cityscape, stretching off to the horizon.
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/2024/11/21/pol…

2/
What the Supreme Court began, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are now poised to finish, through the "Department of Government Efficiency," a fake agency whose acronym ("DOGE") continues Musk's long-running cryptocurrency memecoin pump-and-dump.

3/
Read 61 tweets
Nov 15
When the GOP trifecta assumes power in just a few months, they will pass laws, and those laws will be terrible, and they will cast long, long shadows.

1/ https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/14/radical-extremists/#sex-pest  An e-waste dump. In the foreground are two waste-barrels. A limp Canadian flag emerges from the left barrel; the nude head and shoulders of a grinning Tony Clement emerge from the right barrel.  Image: JeffJ (modified) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tony_Clement_-_2007-06-30_in_Kearney,_Ontario.JPG  CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/  --  Jorge Franganillo (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duga_radar_system-_wreckage_of_electronic_devices_(37885984654).jpg  CC BY 2.0 https://creat...
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/2024/11/15/rad…

2/
This is the story of how another far-right conservative government used its bulletproof majority to pass a wildly unpopular law that continues to stymie progress to this day.

3/
Read 57 tweets
Nov 4
Science fiction isn't collection of tropes, nor is it a literary style, nor is it a marketing category. It can *encompass* all of these, but what sf really is, is an *outlook*.

1/ The Harpercollins cover for Neal Stephenson's 'Polostan.'
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/2024/11/04/bom…

2/
At the core of sf is an approach to technology (and, sometimes, science): sf treats technology as a kind of crux that the rest of the tale revolves around.

3/
Read 39 tweets
Nov 1
"Switching costs" are one of the great underappreciated evils in our world: the more it costs you to change from one product or service to another, the worse the vendor, provider, or service you're using today can treat you without risking your business.

1/ A painting of Moses parting the Red Sea, with taerrified and grateful Israelites around his feet and an onrushing army of charioteers in pursuit. Moses has been replaced with a vintage editorial cartoon depicting Uncle Sam as a stern cop holding out a billyclub, on his breast is the crest of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. The roiling Red Sea has been overlaid with a US $100 bill.
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/2024/11/01/ban…

2/
Businesses set out to keep switching costs as high as possible. Literally. Mark Zuckerberg's capos send him memos chortling about how Facebook's new photos feature will punish anyone who leaves for a rival service with the loss of all their family photos.

3/
Read 43 tweets

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