Cory Doctorow

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)
@doctorow.

Archived at pluralistic.net

I post long threads. If you don't like these in your timeline but want to read them, I suggest unfollowing me here and subscribing to my RSS, or my newsletter, or any of my various long-form feeds. Links at https://pluralistic.net.

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pluralistic_at_mamot.fr@mostr.pub

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Last Notes

2024-10-29 19:35:13

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The more discussion a post generates, the more users Facebook recommends it to.
These are *very* effective engagement bait. Almost all AI slop gets *some* free engagement in the form of arguments between users who don't know they're commenting an AI scam and people hectoring them for falling for the scam. This is like the free square in the middle of a bingo card.
21/

2024-10-29 19:33:09

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All the money pouring into the system - from investors, from customers, from easily gulled big-city mayors - is chasing things that AI is objectively *very bad at* and those things also cause much more harm than AI slop. If you want to be a good AI critic, you should devote the majority of your focus to these applications. Sure, they're not as visually arresting, but discrediting them is *financially* arresting, and that's what really matters.
10/

2024-10-29 19:33:02

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By contrast, when we focus on AI applications that do the most direct harm - policing, health, security, customer service - we *also* focus on the AI applications that make the most *money* and drive the most investment.
AI hasn't attracted hundreds of billions in investment capital because investors love AI slop.
9/

2024-09-18 13:06:47

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@npub15g0…e07m Nope!

2024-09-18 13:06:25

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On September 24th, I'll be speaking in person at the Boston Public Library!
https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/66cf2d8bf520192f005fcc50
--
The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865946/thelostcause
eof/

2024-09-18 13:05:46

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My ebooks and audiobooks (from Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) 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."
https://craphound.com/shop/
8/
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2024-09-18 13:05:24

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Yesterday's threads: Christopher Brown's 'A Natural History of Empty Lots'; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113153459297641949
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2024-09-18 13:04:25

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On September 24th, I'll be speaking in person at the Boston Public Library!
https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/events?startDate=2024-09-24&endDate=2024-09-24
--
The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865946/thelostcause
2/

2024-09-18 13:03:55

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: There's no such thing as "shareholder supremacy"; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/18/falsifiability/
#Pluralistic
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2024-09-16 13:05:48

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Anti-cheat, gamers, and the Crowdstrike disaster; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/16/gamer-gate/
#Pluralistic
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2024-09-04 20:00:35

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@npub1sxf…nxme Thank you!

2024-09-04 17:28:52

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Marshmallow Longtermism; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/04/deferred-gratification/
#Pluralistic
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2024-08-14 12:43:49

Walmart didn't just *happen*. The rise of Walmart - and Amazon, its online successor - was the result of a specific policy choice, the decision by the Reagan administration not to enforce a key antitrust law. Walmart may have been founded by Sam Walton, but its success (and the demise of the American Main Street) are down to Reaganomics.
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2024-08-12 23:27:29

ngl, I didn't realize just how toxic German anti-anti-semitism was until a German gentile with a "von" in his name called me - a Jew - an antisemite on the basis that criticizing the finance sector was "structurally antisemitic"
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats

2024-08-12 18:49:28

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The paradox of choice screens; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/12/defaults-matter/
#Pluralistic
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2024-08-06 20:05:43

787 words (33912 total) on Enshittification (a nonfiction book about platform decay) #DailyWords

2024-08-05 16:15:53

Here's an open secret: the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation, because if we called finance tactics by their plain-language names, it would be obvious that the sector exists to defraud the public and loot the real economy.
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2024-08-01 16:27:05

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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* Albacon (Albany/remote), Sep 13-15
https://albacon.org/2024/
* TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10
https://tusconscificon.com/
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2024-08-01 16:26:25

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My ebooks and audiobooks (from Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) 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."
https://craphound.com/shop/
8/
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/887/698/803/657/536/original/be7549504c0fd1c4.jpg

2024-08-01 16:25:57

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Yesterday's threads: The largest campaign finance violation in US history; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/112882515466847648
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2024-08-01 16:25:44

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#5yrsago A modest proposal to solve no-deal Brexit: insure all losses with the pensions of Brexit supporters https://web.archive.org/web/20190205121528/https://twitter.com/Sime0nStylites/status/1092343448483651589
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2024-08-01 16:24:58

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Hey look at this
* #FakeYou An Activist’s Guide to Defeating Disinformation https://xnet-x.net/en/fakeyou-disinformation-free-download/
* What is the Fediverse? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzYozbNneVc
* We need a new internet https://www.fierce-network.com/cloud/op-ed-we-need-new-internet
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2024-08-01 16:24:47

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Why is this Canadian university scared of you seeing its Privacy Impact Assessment?: What is Langara College so afraid of?
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/112887604174918531
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2024-08-01 16:23:32

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Why is this Canadian university scared of you seeing its Privacy Impact Assessment; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/01/eruditio-libertas-est/
#Pluralistic
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2024-07-31 23:04:53

911 words (30817 total) on Enshittification (a nonfiction book about platform decay) #DailyWords
Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!
https://clarionwriteathon.com/members/profile.php?writerid=293388

2024-07-29 19:06:44

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@npub1ktc…5seh You have fallen prey to the fediverse's first - and longest-standing urban legend. Alas, that is NOT how unlisting works.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/16/how-to-make-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads/

2024-07-22 13:55:13

Another day, another American Airlines flight delayed by four hours (at least!) due to "maintenance issues" with no compensation offered.
Hey, Pete Buttigieg, isn't this an "unfair or deceptive practice" per USC40 Section 41712(a)?

2024-07-20 12:20:08

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It made me realize why I dislike AI art so much, on a deep, aesthetic level. The point of an image generator is to buffer the intention of the prompter (which might be genuinely creative and bursting with personality) in layers of automated decision-making that flense the final product of any hint of the mind that caused its creation.
27/

2024-07-20 12:19:54

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Reading Karl's reflections on the antilibrary crystallized something for me that I've been thinking about for a quarter-century, since I interviewed Gibson at the Penguin offices in north Toronto. It snapped something into place that I've trying to fit since encountering Henry's thoughts on the "eeriness" of AI work and the intent without an intender.
26/

2024-07-18 13:06:40

Wonky A
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2024-07-01 14:02:08

Happy Closing the Quarterly Books Day to all who celebrate and a big fuck you to Paypal for *still* not having a "download the previous quarter's transactions" link at the top of the page at the start of each new quarter.

2024-06-27 17:16:21

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I've been talking about fair use with laypeople for more than 20 decades. I've met so many people who possess the unshakable, serene confidence of the *truly* wrong, like the people who think fair use means you can take x words from a book, or y seconds from a song and it will always be fair, while anything more will never be.
2/

2024-06-18 17:06:34

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It's been twenty years since my Microsoft DRM talk: It looks like you're trying to avert the DRM apocalypse...
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/112638622882677902
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2024-06-17 04:46:40

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"We Politely Decline Ingredient Substitutions"
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2024-06-17 04:46:02

"We do not guarantee steaks cooked medium well or above"
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2024-06-13 20:55:12

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The health industry's invisible hand is a fist; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/
#Pluralistic
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2024-06-13 20:33:18

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The hospital system responded by "upcoding' patients: if you showed up with a broken leg and a history of coronary disease, they would code you as a heart patient *and* someone who needed a cast. They'd collect both lump sums, slap a cast on you, and wheel you out the door:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4195137/
9/

2024-06-13 20:33:08

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In the 1980s, Reagan's court sorcerers decreed that they could fix health care with something called "Prospective Payment Systems," which would pay hospitals a lump sum for treating conditions, rather than reimbursing them for each procedure, using competition and profit motives to drive "efficiency."
8/

2024-06-13 20:32:51

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That's the story of the American health industry in a nutshell. Rather than accepting that people won't shop for the best emergency room while unconscious in an ambulance, or that the "clearing price" of "not dying of cancer" is "infinity," the cult insists that America's worst-in-class, most expensive health system just needs *more* capitalism to turn it into a world leader.
7/

2024-06-13 20:32:41

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For members of the "efficient market" cult, reality's stubborn refusal to behave the way it does in their thought experiments is a personal affront. Panged by cognitive dissonance, the cult members insist that any market failures in the real world are illusions caused by not doing capitalism hard enough. When deregulation and markets fail, the answer is *always* more deregulation and more markets.
6/

2024-06-13 20:32:33

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It's the kind of simplified model that works when we're hypothesizing about perfectly spherical cows of uniform density on a frictionless surface, but ceases to be useful when it encounters a messy world of imperfect rationality, imperfect information, monopolization, regulatory capture, and other unavoidable properties of reality.
5/

2024-06-13 20:32:25

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These higher prices tempt new sellers into the market, until demand is met and prices fall and production is stabilized at the level that meets demand.
But this elegant, self-regulating system rarely survives contact with reality.
4/

2024-06-13 20:32:06

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Our decisions to accept or refuse prices are the data that feeds this distributed computer, and the signals these decisions send about our desires triggers investment decisions by sellers, which guides the whole system to "equilibrium" in which we are all better off.
There's some truth to this: when demand for something exceeds the supply, prices tend to go up.
3/

2024-06-13 20:30:59

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Capitalism's most dogmatic zealots have a mystical belief in the power of markets to "efficiently allocate" goods and services. For them, the process by which goods and services are offered and purchased performs a kind of vast, distributed computation that "discovers the price" of everything.
2/

2024-06-12 17:57:58

788 words (10551 total) on Enshittification (a nonfiction book about platform decay) #DailyWords

2024-06-10 13:44:33

Let's take a sec here and notice something *genuinely great* happening in the US government: the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's stunning, unbroken streak of *major*, muscular victories over the forces of corporate corruption, *with* the backing of the Supreme Court (yes, *that* Supreme Court), and which is only speeding up!
1/
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2024-06-08 18:23:24

Selfie.
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2024-06-07 18:59:46

I can believe Elvis faked his death and went to work as a fry-cook, but this? This strains credulity.
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/576/869/656/324/540/original/b44fd3289d43b833.jpg

2024-06-06 18:37:51

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: UK publishers suing Google for $17.4b over rigged ad markets; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/06/stealing-money-not-content/
#Pluralistic
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2024-06-04 00:47:07

* Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay. Today's progress: 884 words (5023 words total).

2024-05-27 16:53:32

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Same with cons - there's a great scene in the *Leverage: Redemption* heist show where an experienced con-artist explains to a novice that the most convincing hustle is the one where you wait for the mark to tell *you* what they think you're doing, then run with it (scambaiters and other skeptics will recognize this as a relative of the "cold reading," where a "psychic" uses your own confirmations to flesh out their predictions).
8/

2024-05-27 16:53:25

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Think of Qanon drops: the mystical nonsense was *just* close enough to sensical that a vulnerable audience was compelled to try and untangle them, and ended up imparting more meaning to them than the hustler who posted them ever could have dreamt up.
7/

2024-05-27 16:53:14

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Getting us to care about things that don't matter is how novels and movies work, but it's also how cults and cons work.
Cult leaders and con-artists know that they're engaged in mind-to-mind combat, and they make liberal use of Jim's hack of leaving blank spots for the mark to fill in.
6/

2024-05-27 16:52:59

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The deaths of Romeo and Juliet were less tragic than the death of the yogurt you had for breakfast. That yogurt was alive and now it's dead, whereas R&J never lived, never died, and *don't matter*:
https://locusmag.com/2014/11/cory-doctorow-stories-are-a-fuggly-hack/
Hijacking a stranger's empathic response is intrinsically adversarial. While storytelling is a benign activity, its underlying mechanic is *extremely dangerous*.
5/

2024-05-23 17:53:07

I have been a published writer since I was 17, and never in all those years have I encountered worse editorial suggestions than the automated ones generated by Microsoft Office365.
Makes Clippy look like EB White.

2024-05-22 22:30:33

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@npub1s7y…u8ak They're the ones having the sale. It's available everywhere, though.

2024-05-22 19:16:11

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For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel *The Lost Cause* (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Cause-Cory-Doctorow-ebook/dp/B0BQGGP2XT/
2/

2024-05-22 19:15:26

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: How finfluencers destroyed the housing and lives of thousands of people; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/
#Pluralistic
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2024-05-21 13:51:02

Oh, fuck you, British Airways.
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/479/400/864/590/398/original/cdae8e393b826699.png

2024-05-07 07:26:06

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Or maybe you (like me) have a low-vision disability that makes low-contrast type difficult to impossible to read, and maybe the page's creator is a thoughtless dolt who's chosen light grey-on-white type, or maybe they've fallen prey to the absurd urban legend that not-quite-black type is somehow more legible than actual black type:
https://uxplanet.org/basicdesign-never-use-pure-black-in-typography-36138a3327a6
11/

2024-05-02 14:32:58

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: CDA 230 bans Facebook from blocking interoperable tools; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/02/kaiju-v-kaiju/
#Pluralistic
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2024-05-01 17:37:11

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Boeing's deliberately defective fleet of flying sky-wreckage; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/01/boeing-boeing/
#Pluralistic
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2024-04-22 07:27:18

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It's not by giving them money. Paying for a service does not make a company fear you, and anyone who thinks they can buy a platform's loyalty by paying for a service is a simp. A corporation is an immortal, transhuman colony organism that uses us as inconvenient gut-flora: no matter how much you love it, it will *never* love you back. It *can't* experience love - only fear.
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2024-04-22 07:27:11

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MLK said that "the law can't make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me." It's *impossible* to get tech bosses to believe you deserve care and decency, but you *can* stop them from abusing you. The way to do that is by making them fear you - by abolishing the laws that create lock-in, by legally enshrining a right to privacy, by protecting competition.
33/

2024-04-19 10:34:17

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This isn't a new development. Back when Clinton destroyed welfare, his justification was that "handouts" make workers lazy. The way to goad workers off their sofas (and the welfare rolls) and into jobs was to instill fear in them:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/welfare-childhood/555119/
3/

2024-04-19 10:33:58

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Let's talk about some of those accusations. Remember the moral panic over the CARES Act covid stimulus checks? Hyperventilating mouthpieces for the ruling class were on every cable network, complaining that "no one wants to work anymore." The barely-submerged subtext was their belief that the only reason people show up for work is that they're afraid of losing everything - their homes, their kids, the groceries in their fridge.
2/

2024-04-17 12:23:00

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The true post-cyberpunk hero is a noir forensic accountant: Blair Fix, Henry Farrell and Maria Farrell know more about Marty Hench than I do.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/112286478224407685
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2024-04-17 12:22:33

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I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel *The Bezzle*! Catch me TONIGHT (Apr 17) in CHICAGO, then Torino (Apr 21), Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour
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2024-04-17 12:21:30

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The true post-cyberpunk hero is a noir forensic accountant; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/17/panama-papers-fanfic/
#Pluralistic
1/
Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The true post-cyberpunk hero is a noir forensic accountant; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/17/panama-papers-fanfic/
#Pluralistic
1/

2024-04-17 12:10:02

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I've read plenty of noir fiction and I'm a long-term finance-leaks obsessive, but until I read Fix's article, it never occurred to me that a forensic accountant was actually squarely within the noir tradition. Hench's perfect noir fit is either a happy accident or the result of a subconscious intuition that I didn't know I had until Fix put his finger on it.
9/

2024-04-17 12:09:55

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This is how the tax authorities work, after all. Anyone who followed the coverage of the big finance leaks knows that the most shocking revelation they contain is how *stupid* the ruses of the ultra-wealthy are. The IRS *could* prevent that tax-fraud, they just choose not to. Not for nothing, I call the Martin Hench books "Panama Papers fanfic."
8/

2024-04-17 12:09:46

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Marty Hench - a forensic accountant who finds the money that has been disappeared through the cells in cleverly constructed spreadsheets - is an unlicensed *tax inspector*. He's finding the money the IRS can't find - only to be reminded, time and again, that this is money the IRS *chooses not to* find.
7/

2024-04-17 12:09:36

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What makes this *noir* is what happens next: the private dick realizes that these were places the cops *didn't want to go*, questions the cops *didn't want to ask* and crimes the cops *didn't want to solve* ("It's Chinatown, Jake").
6/

2024-04-17 12:09:23

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Fix - a radical economist - perfectly captures the correspondence between my hero, the forensic accountant Martin Hench, and the heroes of noir detective novels. Namely, that a noir detective is a kind of unlicensed policeman, going to the places the cops can't go, asking the questions the cops can't ask, and thus solving the crimes the cops can't solve.
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2024-04-15 13:20:18

Corporate crime is notoriously underpoliced and underprosecuted. Mostly, that's because we just choose not to do anything about it. American corporations commit crimes at 20X the rate of real humans, and their crimes are far worse than any crime committed by a human, but they are almost never prosecuted:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card
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2024-04-11 00:02:17

Chuggers v TJ's
#TraderJoes #Signs #Petitions #Fundraising #Panhandlers #TolucaLake
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/249/639/202/115/524/original/3631b098e7acf744.jpg

2024-04-09 23:54:51

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@npub1dzv…5v2p I did Nantes see that coming.

2024-04-09 16:55:21

Your periodic reminder that if you:
a) Dislike long threads and;
b) Follow someone who routinely posts long threads;
that is a YOU problem, which you can solve by unfollowing, and, if need be, blocking that user so they don't show up in your federated timeline.
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/242/295/910/618/188/original/147e7e44574ee0c4.png

2024-04-07 13:08:56

Trypophobia
#switchboard #CatalinaIsland #telecoms
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/230/088/797/151/935/original/71ef72888020998f.jpg

2024-04-06 15:07:03

Give the people what they want
#mobile #mcommerce #AppsAreCrap #AppsAreWebPagesSkinnedInEnoughIPToFelonizeMods #privacy #AccountFatigue #AppFatigue
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/224/889/006/040/626/original/1f511682461754f0.jpg

2024-04-04 13:42:05

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I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel *The Bezzle*! Catch me in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12) and beyond!
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour
eof/
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/213/237/511/395/040/original/55df8b1c8c170a79.jpg

2024-04-03 12:45:49

Can you hear me now?
#payphone
/cc @npub1acq…ctl9
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/207/348/081/948/475/original/a5e1b97761c1b2fe.jpg

2024-04-01 21:16:28

Finally, a deepfake I can get behind:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcajvRZA8E08mP8_JddQQDZ3T25pDmXyW

2024-04-01 14:44:24

Here's a fun AI story: a security researcher noticed that large companies' AI-authored source-code repeatedly referenced a nonexistent library (an AI "hallucination"), so he created a (defanged) malicious library with that name and uploaded it, and thousands of developers automatically downloaded and incorporated it as they compiled the code:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/
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2024-03-24 14:16:52

Rat tales
#nyc #rats
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/151/083/490/272/050/original/93d504002ab44573.jpg

2024-03-20 17:15:57

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Working class Dems who campaign on economics beat Trumpists in elections: But they rarely beat the Dem establishment in primaries.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/112129086333637636
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2024-03-20 17:11:01

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I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel *The Bezzle*! Catch me in Catch me in Toronto THIS FRIDAY (Mar 22), NYC THIS SUNDAY (Mar 24) (with Laura Poitras!), Anaheim (Mar 29-31) and more!
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour
--
Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support @npub1sqf…5skr with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle:
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/cory-doctorow-novel-collection-tor-books-books
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https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/129/124/232/326/530/original/ac826b996d0ae427.jpg

2024-03-20 17:10:10

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Working class Dems who campaign on economics beat Trumpists in elections; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/20/actual-material-conditions/
#Pluralistic
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2024-03-13 14:37:41

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Scraping is how we preserve the web:
https://archive.org/web/
Scraping is how journalists rescue their work from media companies after private equity owners shut them down and delete their archives:
https://slate.com/business/2024/02/messenger-gawker-vice-media-layoffs-sites-deleted-why.html
Scraping is how we'll get new, better search-engines that filter out the botshit, scams and SEO nonsense:
https://kagi.com/
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2024-03-13 14:37:31

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Meanwhile, every time a worker - or their ally - is tricked into calling scraping "stealing," they do the bosses' job for them. And the bosses - being remorseless seekers of return to capital - don't care about the collateral damage in their war on scraping.
Scraping is how we find out if Facebook is making money by selling paid political disinformation:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/06/get-you-coming-and-going/#potemkin-research-program
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2024-03-13 14:37:21

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Creative workers don't have the same problem with AI as the media companies that want to drive down their wages, and the "solution" that media corporations favor isn't going to do a damned thing for workers - but it'll do plenty *to* them.
The media companies providing training data for Apple's "ethical" AI model will use it in exactly the same way that the media companies who're slavering over the "nonethical" AI models want to use them.
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2024-03-13 14:37:13

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Remember, AI companies make money by selling models to companies hoping to fire their workers. But for that to work, *companies* have to plan on making money by firing their workers and replacing them with AI. If no company was interested in this proposition, we wouldn't have to worry about AI. Capital and labor are not on the same side.
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2024-03-13 14:36:59

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The promise of a new, broader copyright banning scraping, mathematical analysis and writing code is like the promise of DRM: ia prison masquerading as a fortress.
Because if that new copyright controlling training *is* created, media companies will immediately amend those one-sided, take-it-or-leave-it contracts to demand that every creative worker sign over that new right to them. Hell, they're *already* doing this in anticipation of that change:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d37za/voice-actors-sign-away-rights-to-artificial-intelligence
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2024-03-13 14:36:14

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Today, Apple is offering tens of millions to media companies for access to creative works in order to train models. These media companies require overbroad, one-sided contracts with creative workers that give them the power to sell their work to Apple:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/technology/apple-ai-news-publishers.html
Media companies aren't on their workers' side in just the same way that Amazon wasn't on publishers' side.
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2024-03-13 14:35:57

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More than a year ago, I predicted that the very same companies that are suing over AI training would happily *sell* their data to AI companies. They don't want "no AI" - they want "AI that they control":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids
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2024-03-13 14:35:42

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If we end up changing the law to make scraping, mathematical analysis, and publication of that analysis without permission illegal, it won't do anything to stop the media corporations suing AI companies from building models with the intent of firing workers and replacing them with software.
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2024-03-13 14:35:31

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That's a monstrous proposition - and that's before we get to the part where their products *aren't anywhere near good enough* to do your job, but their salesmen are *absolutely* good enough to convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI model that totally *fails* to do your job.
But while the corporations that pay artists may hate the idea of AI companies scraping their archives, they *hate paying the creative workers that fill those archives every bit as much*.
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2024-03-13 14:35:10

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The thing is, it's not really controversial among copyright experts to say that these activities *are* fair use. Scraping isn't stealing - not legally and not ethically. Scraping is good, actually:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/
Which is not to say that artists don't have a legit - and serious - beef with AI companies. Their pitch is: "train our products on your workers' skilled output, fire your workers, replace them with our products."
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2024-03-13 14:34:51

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Not that entertainment companies are always on the side of the angels. Today, entertainment companies - publishers, stock photo companies, etc - are chasing "AI" companies through the courts, seeking to eliminate the fair use status of making transient copies of works, performing mathematical analysis on those copies, and turning the results of that analysis into software:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/how-we-think-about-copyright-and-ai-art-0
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2024-03-13 14:34:43

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Jeff Bezos is a canonical protector-turned-jailer. By tricking publishers into *permanently* shackling their products to technology he controlled, he was able to shift billions in value from their side of the ledger to his own - and he did it by telling them he was keeping publishers safe!
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