Cory DoctorowToday's threads (a thread)
Inside: American education has all the downsides of standardization, none of the upsides; Hey look at this; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/16/flexibility-in-the-margins/
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Catch me in #Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM:
https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/in-person-an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/
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I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for *The Bezzle*, sequel to *Red Team Blues*, narrated by #WilWheaton! Pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover. There's also bundles with *Red Team Blues* in ebook, audio or paperback:
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American education has all the downsides of standardization, none of the upsides: A common core, but no commons.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111767080526301851
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Cory Doctorow (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image We moved to America in 2015, in time for my kid to start third grade. Now she's a year away from graduating high school (!) and I've had a front-row seat for the US K-12 system in a district rated as one of the best in the country. There were ups and downs, but high school has been a *monster*. -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/16/flexibility-in-the-margins/#a-commons 1/
Hey look at this
* Among Linguists, the #WordOfTheYear Is More of a Vibe https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/crosswords/linguistics-word-of-the-year.html
* The #FTC Just Blocked Four Mergers in a Month. Here’s How Its Latest Win Fits Into the Broader Campaign to Revive #Antitrust https://www.thesling.org/the-ftc-just-blocked-four-mergers-in-a-month-heres-how-its-latest-win-fits-into-the-broader-campaign-to-revive-antitrust/
* The charges against #Binance https://blog.mollywhite.net/binance-script/
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#20yrsago Developing nations shouldn’t respect US #copyright unless farm subsidies end https://www.wired.com/2004/01/a-taste-of-our-own-poison/
#20yrsago Self-parking #Prius https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/look-no-hands-car-parks-itself-1134918.php
#20yrsago #Disney selling off #CelebrationFlorida https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/16/us/disney-is-selling-a-town-it-built-to-reflect-the-past.html
#15yrsago #Zimbabwean $100 trillion note https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/01/16/zimbawe.currency/index.html
#15yrsago UK MPs to hide their expenses from #FreedomOfInformation requests https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/jan/15/freedom-of-information-expenses
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A Taste of Our Own Poison
A modest proposal: Hold Hollywood hostage till we kill farm subsidies. When America was poor, its citizens “stole.” We took the intellectual property of Dickens and other foreign artists without paying for it. We didn’t call it stealing, but they did. We called it a sensible way for a developing nation to develop. Eventually, we […]
#10yrsago Building a fully open, transparent laptop https://makezine.com/article/maker-news/building-an-open-source-laptop/
#10yrsago Why the sum of all positive integers is -1/12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww
#10yrsago #NSA harvests 200M of SMSes every day with untargeted, global “#Dishfire” program https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-sweep
#10yrsago Congress calls on Schneier to give it answers that the NSA won’t https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/01/today_i_briefed.html
#10yrsago How to have a healthy relationship with technology https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/16/digital-failures-software
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#10yrsago What’s the most profitable price for an ebook? https://blog.luzme.com/2014/01/10-things-may-know-ebook-prices/
#10yrsago #CopyrightTroll dodging disbarment by resigning from the bar? https://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2014/01/15/how-to-avoid-disbarment-disbar-yourself/
#10yrsago The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, a graphic novel by Isabel Greenberg https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/15/the-encyclopedia-of-early-earth-a-graphic-novel-by-isabel-greenberg/
#10yrsago Leaked: environmental chapter of the secret #TransPacificPartnership treaty https://wikileaks.org/tpp-enviro/
#10yrsago #BoothBabes are bad for business https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/booth-babes-dont-convert/
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10 Things You May Not Know About Ebook Prices
How much should you pay for an ebook? $9.99? $0.99? $0? And how much should you price your ebooks? I’m going to tell you what people have actually paid for their ebooks, based on some hard data from Luzme. You can set the price of your book to be anything you want; what really matters is what someone will pay for it! This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. Last year, Luzme captured a large amount of ebook price data and reader pricing preferences.
#10yrsago Blackphone: a privacy-oriented, high-end, unlocked phone https://web.archive.org/web/20140115183757/https://www.blackphone.ch/
#10yrsago #HEADWATER: NSA program for sabotaging #Huawei routers over the Internet https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/01/headwater_nsa_e.html
#10yrsago Judge rules TSA #NoFly procedures unconstitutional https://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/01/judge-rules-for-plaintiff-in-no-fly-case.html
#10yrsago Dirty secrets of America’s most notorious #PatentTroll https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/mphj-exposed-the-real-dirt-notorious-scanner-troll
#10yrsago UK consultation on #OrphanWorks https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/copyright-uk-orphan-works-licensing-scheme
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#5yrsago Even the rightsholders think Europe’s #Article13 is a mess, call for an immediate halt in negotiations https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/even-rightsholders-think-europes-article-13-mess-call-immediate-halt-negotiations
#5yrsago AOC’s debut speech on the Congressional floor: “It is not normal to shut down the government when we don’t get what we want.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-No5ClLS1W8
#5yrsago Vermont official fact-checks mobile carriers’ coverage maps, proves they’re lying like crazy https://www.vermontpublic.org/vpr-news/2019-01-16/state-official-went-roaming-around-vermont-to-test-cell-coverage-claims
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Even the Rightsholders Think Europe’s Article 13 is a Mess, Call for an Immediate Halt in Negotiations
With only days to go before the planned conclusion of the new EU Directive on Copyright in the Single Digital Market, Europe's largest and most powerful rightsholder groups — from the Premier League to the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the Association of Commercial Television in Europe —...
#5yrsago The glass is half-full (of bile over Facebook’s business-model) https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/17/18186045/facebook-pew-research-ad-targeting-consumers-quitting
#5yrsago Privatized energy utilities are burning down their states, but antitrust can make them stop https://www.wired.com/story/to-prevent-wildfires-treat-utilities-like-railroad-barons/
#5yrsago Trump’s #FCC chairman won’t do anything about your cellular company selling your location to bountyhunters because #shutdown https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/ajit-pai-gives-carriers-free-pass-on-privacy-violations-during-fcc-shutdown/
#5yrsago Shutdowns don’t get bad linearly; they get bad exponentially https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/the-shutdown-s-bad-buckle-up-because-it-could-get-much-worse
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#5yrsago Tory voters: are you happy with your purchase? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae5t1CZFCU8
#5yrsago Largest dump in history: 2.7 billion records; 773 million of them unique; 140 million never seen before https://www.wired.com/story/collection-one-breach-email-accounts-passwords/"
#1yrago 1,000,000 stranded #Southwest passengers deserved better from #PeteButtigieg https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/16/for-petes-sake/#unfair-and-deceptive
#1yrago Normalize Dark Corners! https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/15/normalize-dark-corners/
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Tory voters, are you happy with your purchase?
Yesterday's threads: Sympathy for the spammer; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111761024502416095
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Cory Doctorow (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image Today's threads (a thread) Inside: Sympathy for the spammer; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/ #Pluralistic 1/
My latest novel is "The Lost Cause," a solarpunk novel of radical hope in the climate emergency, from Tor Books (US)/Head of Zeus (UK):
Signed, personalized copies available from Dark Delicacies:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/
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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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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:
* Enshittification: The Rise and Fall of Big Tech (#CrashCourseEconomics)
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YsKONp5zRgeF6SVuIOb6hQ#/registration
* Books & Books (#CoralGables, #Florida), Jan 22
https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/in-person-an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/
* Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2024 (#Berlin), Jan 29
https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024
* The Lost Cause at Otherland (#Berlin), Jan 30
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html
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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Enshittification: The Rise and Fall of Big Tech — with Cory Doctorow. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.
In this first Crash Course episode of the new series, we invite writer-activist Cory Doctorow to explore the rise of Rentier and Monopoly Capitalism in the tech sector. Is the platform economy in the last phase of what he calls Enshittification: “First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” - Cory Doctorow We will ask him: * How do big tech companies lock out competition and lock in users? * To explain his concept of Enshittification and relate it to the rise of Rentier and Monopoly Capitalism. * Are there historical parallels to the current trend? If so, what can we learn from them? * Are we entering a new phase of capitalism where the rentier is at the top of the food chain? If platform and productive capital interests are at odds, what possibilities exist for workers and consumers to exploit this rift? * How do we stop further corporate consolidation and monopoly power and build back a different economy?
Recent appearances:
* The Lost Cause (The Writer's Voice)
https://www.writersvoice.net/2024/01/cory-doctorow-the-lost-cause/
* What the Future will Bring (#HomelessRomantic)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Vq8qW2A8I
* Talking "The Lost Cause" with Warren Mosler (#MMTPodcast)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-182-cory-95211955
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I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for *The Bezzle*, sequel to *Red Team Blues*, narrated by #WilWheaton! Pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover. There's also bundles with *Red Team Blues* in ebook, audio or paperback:
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