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.

Public Key

npub1yxzkmtuyctjw2pffp6e9uvyrkp29hrqra2tm3xp3z9707z06muxsg75qvv

NIP-05 Address

pluralistic_at_mamot.fr@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszrptd47zv9e89q55savj7xzpmq4zm3sp749acnqc3zl8lp8ad7rgpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qeecf24

Publishing to

relay.mostr.pub

Author Public Key

npub1yxzkmtuyctjw2pffp6e9uvyrkp29hrqra2tm3xp3z9707z06muxsg75qvv

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Last Notes

2024-11-16 08:19:19

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@nprofile…p3wf @nprofile…qgql Thank you.

2024-11-06 01:06:59

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#10yrsago Chip-and-PIN cards let nearby fraudsters steal $1M at a time https://www.wired.com/2014/11/chip-n-pin-foreign-currency-vulnerability/
#5yrsago After decades of corporate theft, Spinal Tap is finally getting paid by Universal https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/spinal-tap-universal-music-settle-copyright-dispute-1203393300/
#5yrsago Jeannette Ng was right: John W Campbell was a fascist https://locusmag.com/2019/11/cory-doctorow-jeannette-ng-was-right-john-w-campbell-was-a-fascist/
#5yrsago “Christian” hospital charges its own nurse $900,000 for her premature baby https://www.propublica.org/article/how-one-employer-stuck-a-new-mom-with-a-bill-for-her-premature-baby
6/
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2024-11-06 01:06:39

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#20yrsago Brands aren’t worth as much as we thought https://web.archive.org/web/20041107050607/https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/brands_pr.html
#15yrsago EU kills 3-strikes proposal (yay!) but all is not well (eek!) https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2009/11/05/Europe-only-goes-half-way-in-protecting-internet-rights/
#15yrsago The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook: inspirational kids’ science comic https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/05/the-secret-science-alliance-and-the-copycat-crook-inspirational-kids-science-comic/
#10yrsago EFF leadership change: Cindy Cohn to head organization https://www.eff.org/press/releases/cindy-cohn-become-effs-new-executive-director-2015
#10yrsago 1980 D&D ad asserts that RPGs are woman-friendly https://twitter.com/JonBolds/status/518044059240124417
5/
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2024-11-06 01:06:13

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Hey look at this
* ‘No social life, no plans, no savings’: Americans aren’t reaping benefits of booming US economy https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/04/americans-not-benefiting-from-booming-economy (h/t /r/LateStageCapitalism)
* The End Of Independent Publishing And Giant Freakin Robot https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/independent-ends.html (h/t Duke)
* Steve Jobs Killed Music DRM - Why Not Movies? https://unbound.news/jobs-killed-music-drm-why-not-movies-2/ (h/t Terry)
4/
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2024-11-06 01:06:02

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How to have cancer: Unleash the Karen.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113433156715928400
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2024-11-06 01:05:45

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This weekend (November 8-10), I'll be in Tucson, AZ: I'm the Guest of Honor at the Tuscon science fiction convention:
https://tusconscificon.com/
2/

2024-11-06 01:05:07

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).
NOTE: I DID NOT BUY A BLUE TICK. IT WAS NONCONSENSUALLY ADDED TO MY ACCOUNT.
Inside: How to have cancer; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/06/carcinoma-angels/
#Pluralistic
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2024-10-29 19:36:34

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This feels right to me. The corollary of mistrusting your neighbors, of course, is trusting only yourself and your family. Or, as Margaret Thatcher liked to say, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."
27/

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 19:35:07

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The funnel goes:
i. Create outrage and hence broad reach;
ii, A small percentage of those who see the post will click through to the SEO site;
iii. A small fraction of *those* users will click a low-quality ad;
iv. The ad will pay homeopathic sub-pennies to the spammer.
The revenue per user on this kind of scam is next to nothing, so it only works if it can get very broad reach, which is why the spam is so designed for engagement maximization.
20/

2024-10-29 19:34:54

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According to Lorenz, variations on this slop are topping very large Facebook discussion forums totalling millions of users, like "Movie Character...,USA Story, Volleyball Women, Top Trends, Love Style, and God Bless." These posts link to SEO sites laden with programmatic advertising.
19/

2024-10-29 19:33:26

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AI slop has turned Facebook into an anaerobic lagoon of botshit, just the laziest, grossest engagement bait, much of it the product of rise-and-grind spammers who avidly consume get rich quick "courses" and then churn out a torrent of "shrimp Jesus" and fake chainsaw sculptures:
https://www.404media.co/email/1cdf7620-2e2f-4450-9cd9-e041f4f0c27f/
12/

2024-10-29 19:33:19

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All that said: AI slop is real, there is a lot of it, and just because it doesn't warrant priority over the stuff AI companies actually *sell*, it still has cultural significance and is worth considering.
11/

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/

2024-10-29 19:32:51

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My point is that "worrying about AI" is a zero-sum game. When we train our fire on the stuff that isn't important to the AI stock swindlers' business-plans (like creating AI slop), we should remember that the AI companies could halt all of that activity and not lose a dime in revenue.
8/

2024-10-29 19:32:39

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*Those* AIs are prone to inventing things the doctor never said, inserting them into the record that the doctor is supposed to review, but remember, the only reason the AI is there at all is that the doctor is being asked to do so much paperwork that they don't have time to treat their patients:
https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14
7/

2024-10-29 19:32:27

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But it's potentially lethal when the AI is a transcription engine that doctors have to use to feed notes to a data-hungry electronic health record system that is optimized to commit health insurance fraud by seeking out pretenses to "upcode" a patient's treatment.
6/

2024-10-29 19:32:08

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When AI is used to perform high-velocity "decision support" that is supposed to inform a "human in the loop," it quickly overwhelms its human overseer, who takes on the role of "moral crumple zone," pressing the "OK" button as fast as they can. This is bad enough when the sacrificial victim is a human overseeing, say, proctoring software that accuses remote students of cheating on their tests:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat
5/

2024-10-29 19:31:59

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When AI is used to replace customer service representatives, it systematically defrauds customers, while providing an "accountability sink" that allows the company to disclaim responsibility for the thefts:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs
4/

2024-10-29 19:31:46

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Any time AI is used to predict crime - predictive policing, bail determinations, Child Protective Services red flags - they magnify the biases already present in these systems, and, even worse, they give this bias the veneer of scientific neutrality. This process is called "empiricism-washing," and you know you're experiencing it when you hear some variation on "it's just math, math can't be racist":
https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/23/cryptocidal-maniacs/#phrenology
3/

2024-10-29 19:31:34

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The real AI harms come from the actual things that AI companies sell AI to do. There's the AI gun-detector gadgets that the credulous Mayor Eric Adams put in NYC subways, which led to 2,749 invasive searches and turned up *zero* guns:
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nycs-subway-weapons-detector-pilot-program-ends/
2/

2024-10-17 23:11:47

Avoid cults, join ours to learn how!
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/113/325/290/124/600/324/original/fe6effe7ffd93468.jpg

2024-09-19 14:49:01

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Thinking the unthinkable; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/19/just-stop-putting-that-up-your-ass/
#Pluralistic
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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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2024-09-06 14:41:49

THERE IS LITTLE DANGER OF RUNNING OUT OF AIR
OR OF THIS ELEVATOR DROPPING UNCONTROLLABLY.
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/113/091/129/337/180/434/original/fe9cb0895b733b4b.jpg

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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2024-08-07 13:56:14

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not democratize it; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/
#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/
12/
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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/
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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
4/
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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
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/807/638/695/073/760/original/e4476359187bfa2c.jpg

2024-07-14 22:38:53

The 2600mobile
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/787/229/433/944/313/original/0f85ab002c9cfa68.jpg
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https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/787/236/882/313/590/original/b9c1004d5ebbf433.jpg

2024-07-14 14:26:35

Welcome to New York!
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/785/303/337/835/535/original/c756bff010047e82.jpg

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.

2024-06-28 13:17:30

This is a legitimately useful image explaining how Turing completeness drives mass adoption, and how that mass adoption will drive inconceivable investment leading to Moore's Law-style advances in power, miniaturization and cost-savings.
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/694/429/083/415/535/original/6404a7e9f12333b3.png

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/

2024-06-21 19:26:22

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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:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/21/off-the-menu/#universally-loathed
2/

2024-06-21 19:25:48

Spotify's relationship to artists can be kind of confusing. On the one hand, they pay a laughably low per-stream rate, as in homeopathic residues of a penny. On the other hand, the Big Three labels get a *fortune* from Spotify. And on the other other hand, it makes sense that rate for a stream heard by one person should be less than the rate for a song broadcast to thousands or millions of listeners.
1/
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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"
https://static.mamot.fr/media_attachments/files/112/630/142/287/936/061/original/430fe0853c5f4701.jpg

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.
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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!
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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).

2024-05-30 01:21:36

820 words (2457 total) on Enshittification (a nonfiction book about platform decay) #DailyWords

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

2024-05-17 18:35:38

Eternal vigilance is the price of travel
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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/

2024-05-04 22:53:32

Cyberpunk trifecta
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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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2024-04-29 19:19:23

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Cigna's nopeinator; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/
#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.
34/

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 10:44:52

Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Precaratize bosses; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/
#Pluralistic
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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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