Post · Bonfire

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: The far right grows through "disaster fantasies"; Upcoming books; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/25/mall-ninja-prophecy/

#Pluralistic

A heavily armed and armored figure with the head of a foolishly grinning 19th century newsie. He stands in the atrium of a pink, vintage mall.

Steve Dinn @steve@social.dinn.ca · 16 hours ago

@pluralistic I get what you're saying, but where were the preppers during COVID? Why was there nothing but denialism from the right instead of "I told you so" and "I'll be in my bunker until this blows over"?

Gentleman Technologist @GentlemanTech@cyberplace.social · 20 hours ago

@pluralistic as a non-American I'm always fascinated by the fear involved here. People arming themselves with assault weapons to "protect their family". From whom?

Are there any actual documented incidents of an American family being saved from anything by someone wielding an assault rifle?

There are, of course, many documented incidents of family members killing themselves or each other with assault weapons. But that doesn't seem to figure in the logic here.

Who are they scared of?

Captain Button @cptbutton@dice.camp · yesterday

@pluralistic

Cory Doctorow expresses much better than I could the reflection I've had that conspiracy theories are perversely hopeful. If all the problems in the world are caused by [them], all you need to do is get rid of [them], and the world becomes a utopia. As opposed to wrestling with difficult problems that have no easy solutions.

Johnlocke23 @johnlocke23@mas.to · yesterday

@pluralistic Your post today really reminded me of Dan Olson's "In Search of a Flat Earth" video from 2020. He really connected the way that conspiracy people hate confronting real problems with difficult solutions, and instead they focus on made up (but simple!) conspiracies where there is a clear "bad guy" to blame and hate.

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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The far right grows through "disaster fantasies": Armageddon tired of this bullshit.

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113540989362227877

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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Hey look at this

* Supreme Court allows multibillion-dollar class action to proceed against Meta https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-meta-facebook-lawsuit-9173ad92e11df4b2a565418e419dfb88

* If MMT is wrong, why is it so much better at predicting the economy - and economic disaster? https://dougaldlamont.substack.com/p/if-mmt-is-wrong-why-is-it-so-much (h/t Naked Capitalism)

* Europress Optical Sorting Machine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbSww5SBqN4 (h/t @hackaday)

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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#15yrsago EULAs + Arbitration = endless opportunity for abuse https://archive.org/details/TheUnconcionabilityOfArbitrationAgreementsInEulas

#15yrsago Wikipedia’s facts-about-facts make the impossible real https://web.archive.org/web/20091116023225/http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol20/?pg=16

#15yrsago How Britain’s Pirate Finder General is trying to save the Analog Economy at the Digital Economy’s expense https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/nov/26/digital-economy-file-sharing-mandelson

#15yrago Musician’s open letter, sung to Peter Mandelson, Britain’s Pirate-Finder General https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_P4lJD_OPI

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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#15yrsago Scientist explains why climate scientists talk trash https://rifters.com/crawl/?p=886

#10yrsago The clown-prince of DHS checkpoint refusal videos https://www.youtube.com/user/ttoutpost/featured

#10yrsago Song for Shaker: free the last UK Gitmo prisoner! https://standwithshakeraamer.tumblr.com

#10yrsago Vodafone made millions helping GCHQ spy on the world https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/new-snowden-docs-gchqs-ties-to-telco-gave-spies-global-surveillance-reach/

#10yrsago Uberdystopian: the surge-priced nightmare future https://www.vice.com/en/article/one-day-i-will-die-on-mars/

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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#10yrsago Essential reading: the irreconcilable tension between cybersecurity and national security https://opencanada.org/the-cyber-security-syndrome/

#10yrsago Strong Female Protagonist Book One https://memex.craphound.com/2014/11/26/strong-female-protagonist-book-one/

#10yrsago Youtube nukes 7 hours’ worth of science symposium audio due to background music during lunch break https://memex.craphound.com/2014/11/25/youtube-nukes-7-hours-worth-of-science-symposium-audio-due-to-background-music-during-lunch-break/

#10yrsago El Deafo: moving, fresh YA comic-book memoir about growing up deaf https://memex.craphound.com/2014/11/25/el-deafo-moving-fresh-ya-comic-book-memoir-about-growing-up-deaf/

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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#5yrsago Four union organizers fired from Google https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/firing-of-four-google-employees-is-retaliatory-activists-say/

#5yrsago 1941 film shows striking animators brandishing a working guillotine at the Disney studio gates https://web.archive.org/web/20191126175152/https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/that-time-animators-brought-a-guillotine-to-the-disney-1839802702

#5yrsago Christian TV pastor Rick Wiles: Impeachment is a “Jew coup” https://web.archive.org/web/20191127005302/https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2019/11/christian-tv-host-warns-followers-trump-impeachment-is-jew-coup/

#5yrsago In defamation case, Elon Musk will testify that “pedo guy” is a common South African phrase and not an accusation of pedophilia https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-california-dmv-is-making-dollar50m-a-year-selling-drivers-personal-information/

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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#5yrsago Across America, DMVs make millions selling your license data to private eyes — and randos https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-california-dmv-is-making-dollar50m-a-year-selling-drivers-personal-information/

#5yrsago Bloomberg’s $34m presidential campaign ad-buy is 1.1% of the taxes Bernie, Warren and Steyer want him to pay https://newrepublic.com/article/155844/michael-bloomberg-big-hedge-wealth-tax-2020

#5yrsago How to argue with your racist Facebook uncle this Thanksgiving https://action.dccc.org/pdf/knowyourstuffing-2019_print.pdf

#5yrsago Podcast: The Engagement-Maximization Presidency https://ia803104.us.archive.org/30/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_316/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_316_-_The_Engagement-Maximization_Presidency.mp3

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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#5yrsago Networked authoritarianism may contain the seeds of its own undoing https://crookedtimber.org/2019/11/25/seeing-like-a-finite-state-machine/

#5yrsago After Katrina, neoliberals replaced New Orleans’ schools with charters, which are now failing https://www.nola.com/news/education/article_0c5918cc-058d-11ea-aa21-d78ab966b579.html

#5yrsago Talking about Disney’s 1964 Carousel of Progress with Bleeding Cool: our lost animatronic future https://bleedingcool.com/pop-culture/castle-talk-cory-doctorow-on-disneys-carousel-of-progress-and-lost-optimism/

#5yrsago Tiny alterations in training data can introduce “backdoors” into machine learning models https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.06638

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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#5yrsago Leaked documents document China’s plan for mass arrests and concentration-camp internment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/exposed-chinas-operating-manuals-for-mass-internment-and-arrest-by-algorithm/

#5yrsago Hong Kong elections: overconfident Beijing loyalist parties suffer a near-total rout https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3039132/results-blog

#5yrsago Library Socialism: a utopian vision of a sustaniable, luxuriant future of circulating abundance https://memex.craphound.com/2019/11/25/library-socialism-a-utopian-vision-of-a-sustaniable-luxuriant-future-of-circulating-abundance/

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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#1yrago The moral injury of having your work enshittified https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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Saturday's threads: Reverse engineers bust sleazy gig work platform; and more!

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113532777621761509

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Image:
EFF (modified)

CC BY 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ — Image: EFF (modified) CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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My latest nationally bestselling novel is "The Bezzle," an ice-cold revenge story of high-tech finance crime starring the forensic accountant Martin Hench:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Signed copies from Chevalier's Books:

https://www.chevaliersbooks.com/product-page/the-bezzle

My latest nonfiction book is "The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation" from Verso Books:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Signed copies available from Book Soup:

https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245

Both are national bestsellers!

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr · yesterday

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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."

https://craphound.com/shop/

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