Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Charlie Jane Anders' "Lessons in Magic and Disaster"; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/19/revenge-magic/
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Charlie Jane Anders' "Lessons in Magic and Disaster.": Families, they fuck you up (magically).
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115055802935558838
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Hey look at this
* Google admits anti-competitive conduct involving Google Search in Australia https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/google-admits-anti-competitive-conduct-involving-google-search-in-australia
* The twilight of tech unilateralism https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-twilight-of-tech-unilateralism
* MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/
* ‘Ad Blocking is Not Piracy’ Decision Overturned By Top German Court https://torrentfreak.com/ad-blocking-is-not-piracy-decision-overturned-by-top-german-court-250819/
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#20yrsago US CD/DVD bootlegging is not run by organized crime https://memex.craphound.com/2005/08/18/us-cd-dvd-bootlegging-is-not-run-by-organized-crime/
#20yrsago Lem’s tensor algebra poem, annotated https://web.archive.org/web/20051107014429/http://cheesedip.com/2005/08/18/lem_love__tensor_algebra.php
#20yrsago Hunter S Thompson’s ashes to be sent high on fireworks https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/22/us/ashestofireworks-sendoff-for-an-outlaw-writer.html
#20yrsago Southern Baptist guide to non-gay Disney movies https://web.archive.org/web/20050917042544/http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=21416
#20yrsago ItPlaysDoom: catalog of devices capable of running Doom https://web.archive.org/web/20070226184902/http://www.itplaysdoom.com/
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#10yrsago Women of the Haunted Mansion cosplayers at SDCC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJptS52CZIw
#10yrsago Gallery of deserted Chinese amusement parks https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/aug/14/china-deserted-amusement-parks-stefano-cerio
#10yrsago New pornoscanners are also useless, cost $160 million https://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/airport-security-price-for-tsa-failed-body-scanners-160-million-121385.html
#10yrsago Gender and sf awards: who wins and for what http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/08/data-books-and-bias.html
#10yrsago The End of the Internet Dream: the speech that won Black Hat (and Defcon) https://web.archive.org/web/20150818104913/https://medium.com/backchannel/the-end-of-the-internet-dream-ba060b17da61
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#10yrsago Piracy vs the MPAA: yet another box-office record smashed https://www.techdirt.com/2015/08/18/hollywood-keeps-breaking-box-office-records-while-still-insisting-that-internet-is-killing-movies/
#10yrsago Stephen Hawking’s speech synthesizer now free/open software https://www.wired.com/2015/08/stephen-hawking-software-open-source/
#10yrsago Defector from Kremlin’s outsourced troll army wins 1 rouble in damages https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33972122
#10yrsago Chuck Wendig’s Zeroes: a hacker technothriller in the War Games lineage https://memex.craphound.com/2015/08/18/chuck-wendigs-zeroes-a-hacker-technothriller-in-the-war-games-lineage/
#10yrsago Dismaland: Banksy’s (?) swipe at Disneyland https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/aug/18/banksy-weston-super-mare-dismaland
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#10yrsago Giant dump of data purports to be from Ashleymadison.com https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/data-from-hack-of-ashley-madison-cheater-site-purportedly-dumped-online/
#10yrsago Iran arms deal prosecution falls apart because of warrantless laptop search https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/08/warrantless-airport-laptop-search-dooms-iran-arms-sales-prosecution/
#10yrsago The (real) hard problem of AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mukaRhQTMP8
#10yrsago Airport security confiscates three year old’s fart gun https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/toddler-has-his-minions-fart-gun-confiscated-at-dublin-airport-for-posing-security-threat-10457743.html
#5yrsago South Africa's copyright and human rights https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/18/fifth-pig/#3-steps
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~7 more replies (not shown)
#5yrsago Upbeat surveillance marketing https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/18/fifth-pig/#hikvision
#5yrsago Fed cops substitute dollars for warrants https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/18/fifth-pig/#ppp
#5yrsago Deindustrialization is a market failure https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/18/fifth-pig/#deindustrialization
#5yrsago Mr Cook, Tear Down That Wall https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/18/fifth-pig/#no-true-scotsman
#5yrsago "Fuck the algorithm" https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/18/fifth-pig/#a-levels
#5yrsago The Fifth Pig https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/18/fifth-pig/#5th-pig
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Yesterday's threads: Zuckermuskian solopsism; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115050503901792195
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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:
* #Ithaca: AD White keynote (Cornell), Sep 12
https://deanoffaculty.cornell.edu/events/keynote-cory-doctorow-professor-at-large/
* #DC: Enshittification at Politics and Prose, with Rohit Chopra, 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
http://www.contraflowscifi.org/
* #Chicago: Enshittification with Kara Swisher (Chicago Humanities), Oct 15
https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2025/10-15-2025-kara-swisher-and-cory-doctorow-on-enshittification/
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #SanFrancisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20
https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25
* #Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469
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