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Cory Doctorow

27 Jul

@amnesty

When the #PegasusProject dropped last week, it was both an ordinary and exceptional moment. The report - from @amnesty, @citizenlab, @FbdnStories, and 80 journalists in 10 countries - documented 50,000 uses of @NSOgroup's Pegasus malware.

occrp.org/en/the-pegasus…

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The 50,000 targets of NSO's cyberweapon include politicians, activists and journalists. The Israeli arms-dealer - controlled by Novalpina Capital and Francisco Partners - has gone into full spin mode.

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NSO insists that the report is wrong, but also that it's fine to spy on people, and also that terrorists will murder us all if they aren't allowed to reap vast fortunes by helping the world's most brutal dictators figure out whom to kidnap, imprison and murder.

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

27 Jul

Starship Eros (1980) gameraboy2.tumblr.com/post/657829507…

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

27 Jul

@mrgavinedwards

I've known @mrgavinedwards for decades, and watched him produce a string of weird and imaginative and wholly successful projects, from his books of "mondegreens" (misheard lyrics) to his definitive biography of Mr Rogers:

memex.craphound.com/2019/10/29/kin…

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Back in 1995, Gavin was seized by a weird (and VERY NINETIES) impulse: he created a mixtape called "Having Fun On Stage With Everybody," consisting of all the stuff from canonical concert albums EXCEPT the music.

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Tuning, jokes, banter, emcees exhorting audiences to welcome this band or that to the stage. Gavin figured the natural audience for this odd project was two people - specifically two friends who got off on the same weird audio adventures as he did.

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

27 Jul

Death at Love House (a.k.a. The Shrine of Lorna Love) is a 1976 made-for-television horror movie starring Robert Wagner and Kate Jackson, which aired as the ABC Movie of the Week on September 3, 1976. starrywisdomsect.tumblr.com/post/657817926…

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

26 Jul

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Charter schools are money laundries; Disney parks and aggregate demand management; Oregon's carbon offsets go up in smoke; Surge pricing violates antitrust law; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/07/26/agg…

#Pluralistic

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https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1419683443013611522

Charter schools are money laundries: "The hidden world of charter schools operated for financial gain."

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1419683443013611522

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1419689975163936781

Disney parks and aggregate demand management: My ongoing series on Medium, for an age of supply shocks.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1419689975163936781

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

26 Jul

If you've paid any attention to the resurgent debate over antitrust, you've likely met the "consumer welfare standard," which is the cornerstone of post-Reagan monopoly law, and which is widely (and correctly) blamed for our new gilded age of vast, unaccountable monopolies.

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In the years between the New Deal and the Reagan revolution, the cornerstone of antitrust enforcement was the idea that monopolies are just bad - bad for a clean political process free from excessive corporate corruption.

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The watchword of this kind of antitrust is "harmful dominance" - the idea that monopolies hurt workers, suppliers, bystanders, customers, and the legitimacy of the democratic system itself.

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

26 Jul

The theory behind carbon offsets is that markets created the climate emergency, so markets will solve it. It's a kind of high-stakes denialism, like a lifelong smoker switching to "light" cigarettes after learning they have stage four lung-cancer.

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The climate emergency owes its existence to market doctrine: that firms should manage their affairs to maximize shareholder value, irrespective of the costs that maximization imposes on everyone else.

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By that logic, all corporate crime is the result of "poor incentives" - maimed workers, ruined neighborhoods and toxic spills are the results of underpriced insurance, or fines that are set too low.

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

26 Jul

@Medium

Three weeks ago, I kicked off a new series of weekly essays in my @Medium column, the start of a long series on what we can learn about aggregate demand management and scarcity from the history of queues at Disney theme parks.

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The combination of the pandemic and the climate emergency have entered an era of supply shocks and shortages. The pandemic-related snags will eventually stabilize (for certain values of "eventually") but the climate-driven problems will only get worse.

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Theme parks may seem like an odd lens to look at scarcity, demand, rationing and expectations through, but I think they're a surprisingly reliable microcosm for understanding these issues.

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

26 Jul

Critiques of #CharterSchools usually focus on poor quality education (disproportionately affecting racialized and poor people) and dangerous ideology (the movement is funded by billionaire dilettantes and religious maniacs), and with good reason!

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Charters hand public funds to private institutions with minimal oversight. Public money should not go to schools that endorse slavery and indigenous genocide, nor schools that deny evolution and claim humans and dinosaurs co-existed.

web.archive.org/web/2018060400…

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Charter students know they're getting substandard educations - that's why the 2019 valedictorians for Detroit’s Universal Academy used their speech to denounce the school, its curriculum and administrators.

freep.com/story/news/edu…

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

16 Jul

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Interop and the Public Interest Internet; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/07/16/pid…

#Pluralistic

NOTE: I am on holidays until July 26

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https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1416076971079979008

Interop and the Public Interest Internet: To fight network effects, reduce switching costs.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1416076971079979008

#5yrsago Trump makes it easy to forget what a dumpster fire all the other GOP nomination hopefuls were lrb.co.uk/v38/n15/eliot-…

#1yrago A new contract for land pluralistic.net/2020/07/16/tex…

#1yrago What's in Blueleaks pluralistic.net/2020/07/16/tex…

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

16 Jul

When we talk about the internet's problems and solutions, we tend to focus on Big Tech, the monopolizers who dominate our digital lives. That's only natural.

But there's another internet, one that deserves our attention: The Public Interest Internet.

eff.org/issues/public-…

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If you'd like an unrolled 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/2021/07/16/pid…

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The Public Interest Internet is a "wider, more diverse, more generous world. Often run by volunteers, frequently without any institutional affiliation, sometimes tiny, often local, but free for everyone online to use and contribute to, this internet preceded big tech."

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

15 Jul

The Valley of Gwangi (1969) gameraboy2.tumblr.com/post/656793278…

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

15 Jul

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Facebook's alternative facts; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/thr…

#Pluralistic

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https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1415710278994456576

Facebook's alternative facts: If you don't like your transparency portal's data, shut it down.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1415710278994456576

#20yrsago UK lobbyists want "respecting copyright" curriculum in schools web.archive.org/web/2001071813…

#20yrsago Gary Larson on online comics sharing web.archive.org/web/2001061008…

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

15 Jul

Facebook acquired a company called Crowdtangle in 2016; it makes a social media analytics tool that the press has used to monitor subject-matter trends on Facebook, especially in the runup to the 2020 elections.

Facebook just gutted Crowtangle.

nytimes.com/2021/07/14/tec…

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If you'd like an unrolled 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/2021/07/15/thr…

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@nytimes

Crowdtangle had operated as a semiautonomous unit within Facebook, primarily used by media companies to track the social media performance of their stories. A turning point came when the @nytimes's @kevinroose figured out how to rank posts that included links to the real web.

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

14 Jul

mckitterick.tumblr.com/post/656728674…

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

14 Jul

The Hobbit (1977) gameraboy2.tumblr.com/post/656724339…

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

14 Jul

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Facebook employees stalk users; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2021/07/14/who…

#Pluralistic

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https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1415367856347176964

Facebook employees stalk users: Moral hazard vs the ACCESS Act.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1415367856347176964

#20yrsago Spam blacklist MAPS starts charging for access slashdot.org/story/01/07/13…

#20yrsago Original Hotwired guidelines web.archive.org/web/2001072200…

#5yrsago North Carolina adopts the nation’s worst police bodycam law abc11.com/1422569/

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Cory Doctorow

@doctorow

14 Jul

@sheeraf

In @sheeraf and @ceciliakang's "An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination," the authors recount the company's long history of insider threats in which employees (mostly men) used the company's tools to stalk people (mostly women).

harpercollins.com/products/an-ug…

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If you'd like an unrolled 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/2021/07/14/who…

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The stalking targets included both strangers and intimate partners - for example, an engineer used FB's tools to locate his partner after she fled their shared vacation hotel room in order to "confront her."

businessinsider.com/facebook-fired…

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