Cory Doctorow NONCONSENSUAL BLUE TICK's Threads

Dec 12 • 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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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/2024/12/11/nim…

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Dec 6 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 42 tweets • 8 min read

> 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:

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

Nov 21 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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 • 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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Oct 23 • 42 tweets • 8 min read

If Trump's norm-breaking is a threat to democracy (and it is), what should Democrats do? Will breaking norms to defeat norms only accelerate the collapse of norms, or do we fight fire with fire, breaking norms to resist the slide into tyranny?

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Oct 21 • 86 tweets • 16 min read

One of the most consequential series of investigative journalism of this decade was the @Propublica series that @eisingerj helmed, in which Eisinger and colleagues analyzed a trove of leaked IRS tax returns for the richest people in America:

1/ propublica.org/series/the-sec…

Oct 18 • 33 tweets • 6 min read

Nothing's more frustrating that watching the GOP smash norms and decency to advance policies that harm millions of Americas, unless it's that, plus Democratic officials stamping their feet and saying, "C'mon guys, *play fair*."

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Oct 15 • 42 tweets • 9 min read

Billionaires are *pretty confident* that they can't be taxed - not just that they *shouldn't* be taxed, but rather, that it is *technically impossible* to tax the ultra-rich. They're not shy about explaining why, either - and neither is their army of lickspittles.

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Oct 12 • 47 tweets • 11 min read

It's Saturday and any fule kno that this is the day for a linkdump, in which the links that couldn't be squeezed into the week's newsletter editions get their own showcase. Here's the previous 23 linkdumps:

1/ pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Oct 3 • 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: Prime's enshittified advertising; and more!

Archived at:

#Pluralistic

1/ pluralistic.net/2024/10/03/mot…

.@TorBooks has just published two new, free "Little Brother" stories: "Vigilant," about creepy surveillance in distance education:

reactormag.com/spill-cory-doc…

And "Spill," about oil pipelines and indigenous landback:

reactormag.com/vigilant-cory-…

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Oct 2 • 55 tweets • 11 min read

Epic Systems makes the dominant electronic health record (EHR) system in America; if you're a doctor, chances are you're *required* to use it. For each hour a doctor spends with a patient, they spend *two* hours on clinically useless bureaucratic data-entry on an Epic EHR.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

2/pluralistic.net
pluralistic.net/2024/10/02/upc…

Oct 1 • 56 tweets • 11 min read

The American Dream, such as it is, used to be *two* dreams, one based on work and solidarity, the other on asset appreciation and disconnected individualism. We killed the first one.

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