Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: In praise of vultures; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/06/champerty-loves-company/
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Post
Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: In praise of vultures; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/06/champerty-loves-company/
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"vultures look aggressive and whatnot, but when you actually get rid of vultures out of an ecosystem, all sorts of things go haywire."
For literal vultures, you get things like rabies, leopard attacks on humans, and failure of sky burials.
I'm coming to #Guelph, Ontario this Friday (May 😄 to deliver the Musagetes Lecture:
https://riverrun.ca/whats-on/guelph-lecture-on-being-2026/
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@pluralistic the beetlejuice suit… 🥰🔥‼️
@pluralistic Hey, my favourite antisocial media runs on arcane CoSy software written by people* at University of Guelph in the early 1980s :-)
Background: common MoDem speeds around that time were 300 bits per second. Not much faster than some people type. Efficiency was crucial :-)
*I'm useless at names, but I think one of them was Dave Godfrey
In praise of vultures: They screw you because they can.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116527238498498125
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Hey look at this
* Why Reddit blocked my daily visit to its mobile website https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/05/why-reddit-blocked-my-daily-visit-to-its-mobile-website/
* "The Score Is Four/and Next Time More" https://rickperlstein.substack.com/p/the-score-is-fourand-next-time-more
* Bodyform | Never Just a Period https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpFYcj2sJ3A
* Getting Digital Fairness Right: EFF's Recommendations for the EU's Digital Fairness Act https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/dos-and-donts-eus-digital-fairness-act-effs-recommendation-regulating-digital
* DHS Demanded Google Surrender Data on Canadian’s Activity, Location Over Anti-ICE Posts https://www.wired.com/story/dhs-demanded-google-surrender-data-on-canadians-activity-location-over-anti-ice-posts/
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#25yrsago Torvalds responds to Microsoft's Craig Mundie https://web.archive.org/web/20011019132822/http://web.siliconvalley.com/content/sv/2001/05/03/opinion/dgillmor/weblog/torvalds.htm
#25yrsago Bankrupt Argentina considers banning proprietary code and switching to free software https://web.archive.org/web/20010614131152/https://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,43529,00.html
#20yrsago Danny Hillis on how games are(n’t) like a theme park https://web.archive.org/web/20060513182649/https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/disney.html
#20yrsago Mission Impossible opening marked by anti-Scientology flyover https://web.archive.org/web/20060514000636/http://hailxenu.net/
#20yrsago SmartFilter targets Distributed Boing Boing – how to defeat it https://memex.craphound.com/2006/05/04/smartfilter-targets-distributed-boing-boing-how-to-defeat-it/
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#15yrsago John Ashcroft assumes charge of “ethics and professionalism” for Blackwater https://web.archive.org/web/20110507103749/https://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/blackwaters-new-ethics-chief-john-ashcroft/
#15yrsago Rumsfeld and other US officials say torture didn’t help catch bin Laden https://web.archive.org/web/20110505012303/https://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/surveillance-not-waterboarding-led-to-bin-laden/
#15yrsago Rental laptops equipped with spyware that can covertly activate the webcam and take screenshots https://web.archive.org/web/20110506130156/http://www.ajc.com/business/pa-suit-furniture-rental-933410.html
#15yrsago Parallel machine made out of 17 stitched-together Apple //e’s https://web.archive.org/web/20110504194313/http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/AppleCrateII.html
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#15yrsago Sarah Palin and James Lankford: giving $4 billion of taxpayer money to oil companies doesn’t matter https://web.archive.org/web/20110505220640/https://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/03/palin-lankford-oil-subsidies/
#15yrsago Stephen Harper violated election laws https://web.archive.org/web/20110701000000*/http://www.examiner.com/canada-headlines-in-canada/stephen-harper-breaks-election-rules-campaigns-on-radio-on-election-day
#15yrsago History and future of bin Ladenist extremism https://www.juancole.com/2011/05/obama-and-the-end-of-al-qaeda.html
#10yrsago Belushi widow & Aykroyd produce Blues Brothers animated series https://deadline.com/2016/05/the-blues-brothers-animated-comedy-series-dan-aykroyd-1201748389/
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#10yrsago Chinese censorship: arbitrary rule changes are a form of powerful intermittent reinforcement https://www.techdirt.com/2016/05/04/why-growing-unpredictability-chinas-censorship-is-feature-not-bug/
#10yrsago US government and SCOTUS change cybercrime rules to let cops hack victims’ computers https://www.wired.com/2016/05/now-government-wants-hack-cybercrime-victims/
#10yrsago After advertiser complaints, Farm News fires editorial cartoonist who criticized John Deere & Monsanto https://web.archive.org/web/20160505042150/https://www.kcci.com/news/longtime-iowa-farm-cartoonist-fired-after-creating-this-cartoon/39337816
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#10yrsago Outstanding rant about establishment pearl-clutching over Trump https://web.archive.org/web/20160505033357/https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/george-will-is-a-haughty-dipshit-1774449290
#10yrsago The Planet Remade: frank, clear-eyed book on geoengineering, climate disaster, & humanity’s future https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/04/the-planet-remade-frank-clear-eyed-book-on-geoengineering-climate-disaster-humanitys-future/
#5yrsago Qualia https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/04/law-and-con/#law-n-econ
#5yrsago Whales decry the casino economy https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/04/law-and-con/#all-bets-are-off
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Yesterday's threads: The three armies fighting for the post-American world; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116522052495715879
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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 latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
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My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, 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:
* #Guelph: Musagetes Lecture, May 8
https://riverrun.ca/whats-on/guelph-lecture-on-being-2026/
* #Barcelona: Internet no tiene que ser un vertedero (Global Digital Rights Forum), May 13
https://encuentroderechosdigitales.com/en/speakers/
* Virtual: How to Disenshittify the Internet with Wendy Liu (EFF), May 14
https://www.eff.org/event/effecting-change-enshittification
* #Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow
* #Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 18
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow-in-der-friesenstrasse-23-kreuzberg-praesentiert-von-otherland.html
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html
* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2
* SXSW #London, Jun 2
https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901
* #NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html
* #Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales
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Recent appearances:
* Enshittification (99% Invisible)
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/
* Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor
* When Do Platforms Stop Innovating and Start Extracting? (InnovEU)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccDR0YaMt8
* Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612
* The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P
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