Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Become unoptimizable; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/20/billionaireism/
1/
Discussion
Loading...
@pluralistic the point about friction really struck a chord with me. It's all just entropy really. The rich can only have their entropy free lives by increasing the levels of entropy everywhere else for all of us.
Also the thing about nurses' pay made me so angry. That is why I spend my spare time getting people into unions. (Another way for people to become collectively unoptimisable I suppose!)
@pluralistic typo: algorthmic wage discrimination":
@pluralistic
Billionaires as wanna-be "... Frazetta warlords with a harem in every fortress" - brilliant.
Billionaires as wanna-be "... Frazetta warlords with a harem in every fortress" - brilliant.
@pluralistic To be a little more clear, that's not what this article is about, but it's an especially laugh-inducing snippet.
@pluralistic Return of the Nightmarish Zuckerdoll. Your war on peaceful sleep continues.
Hey look at this
* DOJ Insider Blows the Whistle on Pay-to-Play Antitrust Corruption https://prospect.org/power/2025-08-19-doj-insider-blows-whistle-pay-to-play-antitrust-corruption/
* CEO pay at top US companies accelerates at fastest pace in four years https://archive.is/es4bc
* Tea’s Founder Convinced Women to Spill Their Secrets, Then Exposed Them to the World https://www.404media.co/how-teas-founder-convinced-millions-of-women-to-spill-their-secrets-then-exposed-them-to-the-world/
* Robinhood Tries to Rebrand Sports Betting as Investing https://gizmodo.com/robinhood-tries-to-rebrand-sports-betting-as-investing-2000645176
* The State of Independent Technology Research 2025 https://independenttechresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/The-State-of-Independent-Technology-Research-Power-in-Numbers.pdf
3/
#20yrsago Penguin-suited activists crash Microsoft’s Berlin parliament presentation https://netzpolitik.org/2005/microsoft-im-parlament/
#10yrsago LA artists who earn their livings through the Internet https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/18/magazine/23mag-culturesidebar.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
#10yrsago MPAA loves fair use so much they don’t want to share it with the rest of the world https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/will-hollywoods-whining-thwart-better-tpp-copyright-rules
#10yrsago Chastity belts were a joke, then a metaphor, then a hoax https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/everything-youve-heard-about-chastity-belts-is-a-lie
4/
#10yrsago Jeb Bush: the NSA isn’t spying on us enough https://web.archive.org/web/20150819062605/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeb-bush-nsa_55d39f5fe4b055a6dab1d777?utm_hp_ref=tw&kvcommref=mostpopular
#5yrsago Austerity breeds Nazis https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/19/a-band-apart/#austerity
#5yrsago Yale admin: "Prepare for death" https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/19/a-band-apart/#boola-boola
#5yrsago Hedge fund won't return Citi's accidental $175m deposit https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/19/a-band-apart/#keepsies
#5yrsago Spikey https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/19/a-band-apart/#listen-up
#5yrsago Orwell prize winner trapped in orwellian nightmare https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/19/a-band-apart/#fuck-the-algorithm
5/
#5yrsago Thomas Hawk's Talking Heads https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/19/a-band-apart/#talkingheads
#5yrsago Amazon's Monopoly Tollbooth https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/19/a-band-apart/#amazon-tollbooth
#1yrago Corporate Bullshit https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/19/apologetics-spotters-guide/#narratives
6/
Yesterday's threads: Charlie Jane Anders' "Lessons in Magic and Disaster"; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115055827957033749
7/
~5 more replies (not shown)
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/
8/
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."
9/
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/
10/
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
11/
bonfire.cafe
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
Automatic federation enabled