Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK's Threads

Jan 18 • 101 tweets • 19 min read

We're less than a month into 2025 and I'm already overwhelmed by my backlog of links! Herewith, then, is my 25th linkdump post, a grab-bag of artful transitions between miscellaneous subjects. Here's the previous 24:

1/ pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

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/2025/01/18/rag…

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Jan 15 • 57 tweets • 9 min read

Five years ago, Trump touted his "big, beautiful" replacement for NAFTA, the "free trade agreement" between the US, Mexico and Canada. Trump's NAFTA-2 was called the USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada Agreement) and it was pretty similar to NAFTA, to be honest.

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Jan 14 • 59 tweets • 12 min read

During the Napster wars, the record labels *seriously* pissed off millions of internet users when they sued over 19,000 music fans, mostly kids, but also grannies, old people, and dead people.

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Jan 11 • 61 tweets • 14 min read

The social function of the economics profession is to explain, over and over again, that your boss is actually right and that you don't really want the things you want, and you're secretly happy to be abused by the system.

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Jan 9 • 95 tweets • 16 min read

My next novel is *Picks and Shovels*, out next month. It's tells the origin story of Martin Hench, my hard-charging, scambusting, high-tech forensic accountant, in a 1980s battle over the soul of a PC company:

1/ us.macmillan.com/books/97812508…

Jan 8 • 24 tweets • 15 min read

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

NOTE: I DID NOT BUY A BLUE TICK. IT WAS NONCONSENSUALLY ADDED TO MY ACCOUNT.

Inside: The Brave Little Toaster; and more!

Archived at:

#Pluralistic

1/ pluralistic.net/2025/01/08/sir…

*Picks and Shovels* is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton:

2/martinhench.com

Dec 20, 2024 • 30 tweets • 6 min read

There was never any question as to whether Trump would implement Project 2025, the 900-page brick of terrifying, unhinged policy prescriptions edited by the Heritage Foundation. He would *not* implement it, because he *could* not implement it. No one could. It's impossible.

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Dec 18, 2024 • 49 tweets • 9 min read

Running a business is risky: you can't be sure how many customers you'll have, or what they'll ask for. Guess wrong and you'll either have too few workers for the crowd, or you'll pay workers to stand around. This is true even when your "business" is a "hospital."

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Dec 12, 2024 • 61 tweets • 12 min read

Postmortems and blame for the 2024 elections are thick on the ground, but amidst all those theories and pointed fingers, one explanation looms large and credible: the American housing emergency. If the system can't put a roof over your head, that system needs to go.

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Dec 6, 2024 • 67 tweets • 11 min read

After 9/11, we were told that "no cost was too high" when it came to fighting terrorism, and indeed, the US did blow *trillions* on forever wars and regime change projects and black sites and kidnappings and dronings and gulags that were supposed to end terrorism.

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Dec 5, 2024 • 23 tweets • 5 min read

The Canadian national identity involves a lot of sneering at the US, but when it comes to oligarchy, Canada makes America look positively amateurish.

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Dec 4, 2024 • 69 tweets • 15 min read

The Biden administration disappointed, frustrated and enraged in so many ways, including abetting a genocide - but one consistent bright spot over the past four years was the unseen-for-generations frontal assault on corporate power and corporate corruption.

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Nov 25, 2024 • 42 tweets • 7 min read

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

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Nov 23, 2024 • 42 tweets • 8 min read

> A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
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> 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:

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https://x.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1385565737167724545?lang=en

Nov 21, 2024 • 61 tweets • 10 min read

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…

Nov 15, 2024 • 57 tweets • 10 min read

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.

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Nov 4, 2024 • 39 tweets • 7 min read

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*.

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Nov 1, 2024 • 43 tweets • 9 min read

"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.

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Oct 29, 2024 • 57 tweets • 12 min read

I think it behooves us to be skeptical of stories about AI driving people to believe wrong things and commit ugly actions. Not that I like the AI slop that is filling up our social media, but when we look at the ways that AI is harming us, slop is pretty low on the list.

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Oct 26, 2024 • 53 tweets • 10 min read

Two decades ago, I was part of a group of nerds who got really interested in how each other managed to do what we did. The effort was kicked off by @mala, who called it "Lifehacking" and I played a small role in getting that term popularized:

1/ craphound.com/lifehacksetcon…

Oct 24, 2024 • 32 tweets • 7 min read

A paradox: in 1970, most Americans found it relatively easy to afford a house, and the average US house cost 5.9x the average US income. In 2024, Americans find it nearly impossible to afford a house, and the average American house costs...5.9x the average American income.

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