Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: AI's pogo-stick grift; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/02/inventing-the-pedestrian/
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Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: AI's pogo-stick grift; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/02/inventing-the-pedestrian/
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Hey, German-speakers! Through a very weird set of circumstances, I ended up owning the rights to the German audiobook of my bestselling 2022 cryptocurrency heist technothriller Red Team Blues and now I'm selling DRM-free audio and ebooks, along with the paperback (all in German and English) on a Kickstarter that runs until August 11:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-auf-deutsche-drm-freie
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AI's pogo-stick grift: The hard part is operating in an unpredictable, adversarial, unstructured world.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114960595184618147
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Hey look at this
* A business model for hyperactive smoke alarms https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1945959030851035223.html (h/t Gregory Cherlin)
* Britain’s New Left-Wing Party May Be Devastating for Labour https://jacobin.com/2025/08/britain-new-left-wing-party/
* Making America Epstein Again https://prospect.org/power/2025-08-01-making-america-epstein-again/
* Thirty-Two Short Stories About Death in Prison https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/thirty-two-stories-jeffrey-epstein-prison-death/596029/ (h/t Gregory Cherlin)
* LIDER MIT PALESTINE https://lidermitpalestine.bandcamp.com/album/lider-mit-palestine-new-yiddish-songs-of-grief-fury-and-love (h/t Roz Doctorow)
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#20yrsago Chevron being sued in US for hiring Nigerian death squads https://web.archive.org/web/20050812002406/http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/12285441.htm
#20yrsago Airport security wand delivers debilitating shocks https://web.archive.org/web/20051226123609/http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7777&feedId=online-news_rss20
#15yrsago Shades of Milk and Honey: Kowal’s debut novel is a drawing-room romance with magic and art https://memex.craphound.com/2010/08/02/shades-of-milk-and-honey-kowals-debut-novel-is-a-drawing-room-romance-with-magic-and-art/
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#1yrago The reverse-centaur apocalypse is upon us https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/02/despotism-on-demand/#virtual-whips
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Yesterday's threads: Mattie Lubchansky's 'Simplicity'; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114955381141596739
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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
--
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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Upcoming appearances:
* #SanDiego: ACM Collective Intelligence keynote, Aug 5
https://ci.acm.org/2025/speakers/cory-doctorow/
* #Ithaca: AD White keynote (Cornell), Sep 12
https://deanoffaculty.cornell.edu/events/keynote-cory-doctorow-professor-at-large/
* #DC: Enshittification at Politics and Prose, Oct 8
https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825
* #SanFrancisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
* #NewOrleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
* #SanFrancisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
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A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate