Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Ellen Ullman's "Close to the Machine."; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/16/beautiful-code/
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@pluralistic
You know what is shitty, enshittified, shitballs? banks adding AI to their applications ...nobody asked for this!
Spherical Bastards!
Bank happily and sinisterly boasting about their newly added "AI assistant" to the mobile banking application.
Banking mobile application showing the newly added A.I agent "Dead Center and In Full Color" so that you instinctively or accidentally-on-purpose press there (dark pattern).
Support me this summer in the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop! This summer, I'm writing "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux that explains how to be an effective AI critic:
https://clarionwriteathon.com/members/profile.php?writerid=293388
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Ellen Ullman's "Close to the Machine.": "Technophilia and Its Discontents."
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114863890097769821
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Hey look at this
* UnitedHealth’s Campaign to Quiet Critics https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/business/unitedhealth-insurance-criticism.html
* When He Calls Your Name https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/when-he-calls-your-name/
* More Woody Guthrie Songs? Yes, From a Trove of Homemade Recordings. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/arts/music/woody-guthrie-tapes-woody-at-home.html (h/t Roz Doctorow)
* The Enshittification of American Power https://www.wired.com/story/enshittification-of-american-power/
* Musk's Perfect World: How would it work? https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/musks-perfect-world-how-would-it (h/t Naked Capitalism)
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#10yrsago Why aren’t ethicists better people? https://web.archive.org/web/20150714200719/http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-often-do-ethics-professors-call-their-mothers/
#10yrsago Laura Poitras sues the US Government to find out why she was repeatedly detained in airports https://theintercept.com/2015/07/13/laura-poitras-sues-u-s-government-find-repeatedly-stopped-border/
#5yrsago PE's three kids in a trenchcoat fraud https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/15/3-frauds-in-a-trenchcoat/#fraud
#5yrsago Biden's $2T climate plan https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/15/3-frauds-in-a-trenchcoat/#gnd-lite
#5yrsago McKinsey waxes fat off coronavirus failures https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/15/3-frauds-in-a-trenchcoat/#failing-up
#5yrsago Spain has been an NSO customer since 2015 https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/15/3-frauds-in-a-trenchcoat/#homage-to-catalonia
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#5yrsago Homeschool to prison pipeline https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/15/3-frauds-in-a-trenchcoat/#judge-mary-ellen-brennan
#1yrago Foxx Nolte's "Hidden History of Walt Disney World" https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/15/disnefried/#dialectics
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Yesterday's threads: When Google's slop meets webslop, search stops; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114859081313037001
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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
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My next nonfiction book is "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," out from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux on October 7:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
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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."
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