Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK Profile picture
Jun 12, 2023 28 tweets 34 min read Read on X
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Podcasting "Ideas Lying Around"; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2023/06/12/onl…

#Pluralistic

1/ A workbench with a pegboard...
Podcasting "Ideas Lying Around": A theory of change based on shovel-ready ideas.



2/  Image: btwashburn (modifie...
Hey look at this

* #Toronto Tenants Are Uniting in a Mass #RentStrike jacobin.com/2023/06/toront…

* France legalizes remotely turning on the camera or microphone of smartphones in criminal investigations www-francetvinfo-fr.translate.goog/societe/justic… (h/t Cooper)

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#20yrsago #TuringMachines aren’t as universal as they could be coherenceengine.com/blog/2003_06_0…

#15yrsago Ancient Roman #D20 for sale, $18,000 christies.com/lot/lot-420538…

#15yrsago #DieselSweeties: the ten-volume free @creativecommons licensed collection edition dieselsweeties.com/ebooks/

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#15yrsago Canadian DMCA is worse than the American one michaelgeist.ca/2008/06/canadi…

#15yrsago Canadian Industry Minister @JimPrentice loads the DMCA, aims it at Canada’s temple, and pulls the trigger web.archive.org/web/2008061212…

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#15yrsago One-click site to tell Amazon that you don’t want #Audible #DRM web.archive.org/web/2008061212…

#15yrsago Sabotage manual from 1944 advises acting like an average 2008 manager web.archive.org/web/2008071519… Simple Sabotage Manual.pdf

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#10yrsago Stopwatching.us: Internet companies and civil liberties groups call for investigation into the surveillance state eff.org/deeplinks/2013…

#10yrsago Edward @Snowden checks out of hotel, whereabouts unknown bbc.com/news/world-us-…

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#10yrsago @bruces Augmented World keynote speech

#10yrsago @hughhowey on why he favors self-publishing salon.com/2013/04/04/hug…

#10yrsago @sesamestreet’s materials for kids with an incarcerated parent web.archive.org/web/2013062906…

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#10yrsago Roundup of responses to the Snowden/@nsa leaks theguardian.com/world/2013/jun…

#10yrsago Photos from #OccupyGezi occupygezipics.tumblr.com/post/527301578…

#10yrsago Greek government shuts down state broadcaster, police force journalists out of the building yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/06/11/ert…

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#10yrsago Former UK drug czar calls banning marijuana and #psychedelics “the worst case of scientific #censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of #Copernicus and #Galileoindependent.co.uk/news/science/t…

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#10yrsago Why are the protesters in #GeziPark? technosociology.org/?p=1349

#5yrsago @Reddit sounds the alarm: the EU internet proposal would end the net as we know it! reddit.com/r/announcement…

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#5yrsago LA’s high-tech, thoughtful water management is cause for cautious optimism about climate adaptation wired.com/story/la-is-do…

#5yrsago Feds indict Florida police chief who framed a teen for burglaries so he could boast about perfect record washingtonpost.com/news/post-nati…

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#5yrsago Empirical evidence for the #PeterPrinciple (or, why bosses are so incompetent) hbr.org/2018/03/resear…

#5yrsago The EU’s terrible #copyright proposal will “carpet bomb” the whole world’s internet with censorship and surveillance newint.org/features/web-e…

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#5yrsago 70+ internet pioneers to the EU: you are transforming the internet into a “tool for automated surveillance and control” eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

#5yrsago The Freeze-Frame Revolution: mutineers unstuck in time, strung out across an aeon memex.craphound.com/2018/06/12/the…

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#5yrsago Eh, too: Canadians will also suffer under the EU’s proposed copyright rules cbc.ca/radio/asithapp…

#5yrsago Norwegian court orders volunteers to take down public domain court verdicts and pay copyright troll’s legal bills wiumlie.no/2018/rettsprak…

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#5yrsago UK security minister proposes “Digital IDs” to enforce online civility independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

#5yrsago Infographic: buying games vs pirating them deviantart.com/dnd01/art/Why-…

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#5yrsago Trump won’t stop tearing up official papers so the White House archives employ a staff to tape them back together for the National Archives politico.com/story/2018/06/…

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#5yrsago British army targeted “stressed” 16-year-olds on exam-results day with Facebook recruitment ads independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…

#1yrago The #GeicoSTD story is the new McDonald's #HotCoffee story pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot…

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Saturday's threads: Links, dumped; and more!



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My latest novel is Red Team Blues, available wherever books are sold!

Signed copies at @DarkDel (US):

darkdel.com/store/p2873/We…

and @ForbiddenPlanet (UK):

forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-tea…

21/
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…

22/
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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Recent appearances:

* How To Save News Media From Our Tech Overlords (@CANADALAND)
canadaland.com/podcast/888-ho…

* Most AI is not artificial or intelligent (with @jamesbridle)


* @machinekillspod
soundcloud.com/thismachinekil…

24/
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/2023/06/12/onl…

25/
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - and previews of upcoming columns and exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.

My latest Medium column is "The Shitty Tech Adoption Curve Has a Business Model"

doctorow.medium.com/the-shitty-tec…

26/
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…

27/
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

Sep 8
This was the plan: America would stop making things and instead make *recipes*, the "IP" that could be sent to other countries to turn into actual *stuff*.

1/ An organ grinder with a monkey. The organ grinder's head has been replaced with a Gilded Age caricature of a sneering millionaire. The monkey's head has been replaced with the head of a miserable child coal miner. The background is a blurred, halftoned view of a vast square in Beijing with a giant official building in the background, and a Chinese flag on a flagpole. On the organ is a blurred portrait of John Philip Sousa.
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/2025/09/08/pro…

2/
This would happen in distant lands without the pesky environmental and labor rules that forced businesses accept reduced profits because they weren't allowed to maim their workers and poison the land, air and water.

3/
Read 77 tweets
Sep 6
Trump's doing a lot of oligarch shit, and while some of it very visible and obvious, other moves, like throwing the door open to "stock buybacks" are technical and obscure.

1/ An old-timey carny barker, waving a cane and shouting. He is standing in front of a vintage photo of the NYSE trading floor.
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/2025/09/06/com…

2/
But it's worth paying attention to this, because this form of stock swindle stands to make billionaires a lot richer (and thus more powerful).

3/
Read 48 tweets
Aug 20
Forget surveillance capitalism - let's talk about *surveillance infantalism*: the drive by the wealthy to spy on you in order to pursue the toddler's goals of getting everything they want from the people around them, without any reciprocal obligations.

1/ Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse avatar's head atop the body of a figure from a earth 20th century editorial cartoon; the figure wears a suit, holds a long fork, and stares into the eyepiece of a microscope. The microscope is attached to a sinister scientific apparatus. The microscope is trained on a tiny human figure, limned in red, who shouts through a megaphone back up into the microscope's lens. The background is a 1980s NASA oil painting of the red, rocky surface of Venus.
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/2025/08/20/bil…

2/
After the Snowden revelations, I started to wonder about something fundamental: why spy at all?



3/theguardian.com/technology/201…
Read 40 tweets
Aug 18
When Elon Musk disagrees with someone, he calls them an "NPC" (non-player character). In video-games, an NPC is a machine-puppeted sprite that engages in predictable movements (e.g. Pac-Man ghosts) and utters some scripted (or AI-generated) dialog:



1/ futurism.com/elon-musk-inte…Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse avatar, perched on a legless nude Ken doll body; its eyes are psychedelic pinwheels. Behind the figure is a group shot of child laborer miners from the 1910s, glitched out, blue tinted, and covered with scan lines. The background is a psychedelic swirl of moody colors. They stand atop a filthy checkerboard floor that stretches off to infinity.
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/2025/08/18/see…

2/
Seeing people as automata is probably a side-effect of sitting in the command-center of a big online service, in which you primarily interact with users as statistical aggregates in an analytics dashboard.

3/
Read 30 tweets
Aug 16
When LLM users describe their experience with their chatbots, the results are so divergent that it can sound like they're describing two completely different products.

1/ A vintage photo of two men in front of a slot machine. The men's heads have been replaced by the heads of hooded figures wearing Guy Fawkes mask. The image is sepia toned: the only color is the pay-line of the slot-machine, which is showing three glaring red eyes of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The slot machine has a sign over the rotor-window that displays the Openai logo and wordmark.   Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg  CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en  --  Frank Schwichtenberg (modified...
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/2025/08/16/jac…

2/
Previously, I've hypothesized that this is because there are two distinct groups of *users*: "centaurs" (people who are assisted by a machine - in this case, people who get to decide when, whether and how to integrate an LLM into their work)...

3/
Read 27 tweets
Aug 13
It's not just that Texas DA Gocha Ramirez charged a woman with murder for having an abortion (not t allowed even in Texas). It's that Ramirez paid for his mistress's abortion, after he impregnated her while having an affair with her *and* her sister:



1/ archive.is/20250812192203…A red, angry mushroom cloud. Sitting atop it, surrounded by blue skies and fluffy clouds, is a smirking business-suited man reclining in an armchair. He wears a MAGA hat and reads a magazine turned to a page showing Donald Trump's face.
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/2025/08/13/the…

2/
This is perfect Magaism, as captured by Wilhoit's Law:

> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.



3/crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/lib…
Read 52 tweets

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