Mastodawn

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai

IT'S THE LAST DAY to pre-order my next book, *The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI*, through my Kickstarter. Help me continue to prove that DRM-free isn't just the *right* way to reach an audience, it's also the *best* way to reach them:

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116690535297593260

AI automates delusional reinforcement: Destructive diagnostics.

Hey look at this

* Hell is other people – so billionaires are using AI to replace them https://www.thenerve.news/p/cory-doctorow-column-ai-inconvenient-humans-billionaires-sam-altman-bezoz-migrants

* The Manhattan Institute Helped Kill DEI. Now It’s Coming for Protests https://www.wired.com/story/the-manhattan-institute-helped-kill-dei-now-its-coming-for-protests/

* Remote Work Leaves Younger Workers Sidelined https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/06/remote-work-leaves-younger-workers-sidelined/

* Zerowriter https://zerowriter.ink/

* Good Reason to Kill #79: Disputed Seating at Kindergarten Graduation https://www.loweringthebar.net/2026/05/good-reason-to-kill-79-disputed-seating.html

#20yrsago Gay Days at Disney World draws 140,000 participants https://web.archive.org/web/20060626125509/http://gaydays.com/calendar/

#20yrsago Blue Coat censorware company blocks Boing Boing for criticizing censorware https://memex.craphound.com/2006/06/03/blue-coat-censorware-company-blocks-bb-for-criticizing-censorware/

#15yrsago UN report says 3 Strikes copyright termination is illegal https://web.archive.org/web/20110605030049/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5834/125/

#15yrsago Wisconsin GOP plotting to nominate spoiler Democratic candidates in recall elections https://web.archive.org/web/20110604111734/http://www.politicususa.com/en/secret-tape-wisconsin-gop

#15yrsago MI6 hackers replace al Qaeda bomb recipes with pirated cake recipes https://web.archive.org/web/20110603115453/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8553366/MI6-attacks-al-Qaeda-in-Operation-Cupcake.html

#15yrsago $10,000,000 in venture capital for grilled-cheese sandwich “platform” https://venturebeat.com/technology/the-melt-flip-sequoia

#15yrsago Walled gardens vs makers https://web.archive.org/web/20150723092624/http://makezine.com/2011/06/01/walled-gardens-vs-makers/

#15yrsago Keyboard whose keys are raised in proportion to their frequency of use https://web.archive.org/web/20110604155657/https://itp.nyu.edu/~mk3321/itp_blog/?p=779

#15yrsago 3D model for reproducing house-keys https://www.science.org/content/article/experimental-error-fetus-dont-fail-me-now

#15yrsago Toronto artist turns abandoned bike into sculpture, City threatens fine for “storing bike on public property” https://web.archive.org/web/20110604181734/http://blogthegood.tumblr.com/post/6039831308/re-cycling

#10yrsago DoD public relations’ highest-ranking civilian gets community service for stealing license plates and harassing neighbor’s nanny https://web.archive.org/web/20160603071800/https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-warning-left-on-a-nannys-car-license-plates-stolen-and-a-top-pentagon-official-in-big-trouble/2016/06/01/50699a3a-2816-11e6-a3c4-0724e8e24f3f_story.html

#10yrsago US government agency’s own numbers predict virtually no gains from TPP https://www.techdirt.com/2016/06/02/official-us-international-trade-commission-predicts-negligible-economic-benefits-tpp/

#10yrsago EFF: FBI & NIST’s tattoo recognition program exploited prisoners, profiled based on religion, gave sensitive info to private contractors https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/06/tattoo-recognition-research-threatens-free-speech-and-privacy

#10yrsago Ronald Reagan was Donald Trump, until he was president https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/05/ronald-reagan-was-once-donald-trump.html

#10yrsago The Steampunk Roadster: Jake von Slatt’s final steampunk project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpI4GT4sTAY

#10yrsago Every Heart a Doorway: Seanan McGuire’s subversive, gorgeous tale of rejects from the realms of faerie https://memex.craphound.com/2016/06/02/every-heart-a-doorway-seanan-mcguires-subversive-gorgeous-tale-of-rejects-from-the-realms-of-faerie/

#10yrsago Prestigious Pets of Dallas wants $1M from customers who said they overfed a fish https://web.archive.org/web/20160603133604/http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/1-star-yelp-review-on-gordy-the-pet-fish-being-overfed-nets-1m-lawsuit/

#10yrsago Airport security officer was alleged war criminal, arrested for lying about participation in “genocidal acts” https://www.loweringthebar.net/2016/06/war-criminal-resume.html

#10yrsago In 1977, the CIA’s top lawyer said Espionage Act shouldn’t be applied to press leaks https://web.archive.org/web/20160609234545/https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1977-80v28/pdf/frus1977-80v28.pdf

#10yrsago Tumblr’s shoplifting community is organized, politically conscious, and at war with weightlifters https://www.good.is/issue-37-we-r-cute-shoplifters/

#10yrsago How the Dutch helped CBS cheat on its taxes https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/02/arbitrary-arbitration/#dutch-treat

#10yrsago Amazon running scared from arbitration at scale https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/02/arbitrary-arbitration/#petard

10/

#10yrsago Canada Post drops legal claim over crowdsourced postal code database https://web.archive.org/web/20160603185742/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2016/06/crowdsourcedpostalcodelawsuit/

#10yrsago History podcasters occasionally mention women, butthurt dudes complain it’s “all women” https://web.archive.org/web/20190411115710/https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-you-missed-in-history-cl-21124503/

#10yrsago Corbyn pledges to kill TTIP if elected https://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/02/jeremy-corbyn-i-would-kill-ttip

#10yrsago Democratic “superdelegates” endorse Bernie https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/06/bernie-sanders-superdelegates-223824

11/

#10yrsago Dick Van Dyke, 90: Bernie Sanders is the best candidate for seniors https://web.archive.org/web/20210725072638/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/why-bernie-sanders-is-best-898479/

#10yrsago Flintnation: 33 US cities caught cheating on municipal water lead tests https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/02/lead-water-testing-cheats-chicago-boston-philadelphia

#10yrsago Defense lawyers: the FBI made us use a copy-shop that made secret copies for the government https://web.archive.org/web/20160604065222/https://www.floridabulldog.org/2016/06/u-s-attorneys-office-fbi-accused-of-spying-on-defense-in-fraud-case/

#5yrsago Efficiency is very inefficient https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/03/jitters/#brittleness

#5yrsago I quit https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/03/i-quit/

#5yrsago NYC's driver-owned Uber alternative https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/02/arbitrary-arbitration/#gig-no-more

13/

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116679864065779118

Tuesday's threads: The tedious power of storytelling; and more!

14/

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

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:

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/

15/

Picks and Shovels

New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow returns to the world of Red Team Blues to bring us the origin story of Martin Hench and the most powerful new...

Macmillan Publishers

https://craphound.com/shop/

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."

16/

Upcoming appearances:

* #KansasCity: Facing the Future (Woodneath Library Center), Jun 10
https://www.mymcpl.org/events/119655/facing-future-cory-doctorow

* #LA: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Brian Merchant (Skylight Books), Jun 19
https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-cory-doctorow-presents-reverse-centaurs-guide-life-after-ai-w-brian-merchant

* #MenloPark: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Angie Coiro (Kepler's), Jun 21
https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow-2026

* #Toronto: TBA, Jun 23

17/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #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

* #Philadelphia: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with David Williams (Fitler Club/Philadelphia Citizen), Jun 25
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-book-event-tickets-1990110326559

* #Chicago: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Rick Perlstein (Exile in Bookville), Jun 26
https://exileinbookville.com/events/50628

18/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #SouthBend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/

19/

Recent appearances

* Why the Internet Got Worse and What to Do About It (Jim Rutt) (RIP)
https://www.jimruttshow.com/cory-doctorow-3/

* On Enshittification – and what can be done about it (Re:publica)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhINQgPMVSI

* EFFecting Change: How to Disenshittify the Internet (EFF, with Wendy Liu)
https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-enshittification

* The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/

* Enshittification (99% Invisible)
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/

20/

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Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/04/mission-space/

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21/

Pluralistic: Delusion as a service (04 Jun 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Dr Susi Arnott 2d ago

@pluralistic
If he genuinely reads everything you write, how does @brianeno find time to do all his own good stuff?
Maybe by applying @oblique_strategies
Saluting both parties

Super Default!2d ago

@pluralistic If I was you I’d wear that review jpg on a t-shirt for a while

Periodic 2d ago

@pluralistic I think I just realized why I've found most start-ups so frustrating to work at/with.

"Code is a liability". That's certainly not how most start-ups treat it!

The whole SV start-up mindset requires ignoring liabilities as long as possible. Scale! Revenue growth! Headcount growth! More powerful AI! There's always an excuse to put off any threat that isn't immediate.

I hate having a Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. It's no wonder I clashed with leadership so often.

Viss 2d ago

@periodic @pluralistic thats like the 'race to acquisition' concept i noticed when i was on twitters security team 2011-2012. they acquired several orgs and i had to do the security assessments on them. all of them were hot garbage. turns out speeding towards mvp at lightspeed and getting acquired is more favorable because when the problems are discovered its someone elses problem. go fast, fuck everything up, sell, get paid, bail, liability is someone elses now

Periodic 1d ago

@Viss @pluralistic Just gotta make it to a liquidity event!

I do not envy your position on a security team. It was all I could do to prevent features from shipping that would cause an outage in 6-12mo. Security was sometimes explicitly ignored.

@periodic @pluralistic oh dude, they asked me back then if they could use hipchat as the team chat. i did a review. i found open s3 buckets of all attachments and i could link them to external companies. i didn thave time to find the actual text of the chats, but all the attachments for the entire platform landed in a massive open s3 bucket. i said this was a massive liability and we should avoid hipchat

"we'll take it under advisement"

it was live 2 days later.

whats even the point?

s00ner🌈1d ago

@Viss @periodic @pluralistic tale as old as time.
Org: We've got a security expert, let's get their opinion on [product]
Expert: I looked into [product] and it has issues with authentication bypass, exposing secrets, and it slaps your mother every Tuesday
Org: oh, okay. We'll accept that risk.

Humbird0 Fandom 1d ago

@jeffers00n @Viss @periodic @pluralistic
It's like they need to be security experts to even understand the risk of having bad security.

@humbird0 @jeffers00n @periodic @pluralistic this is largely because of how corporate america works - the people who make the bad decisions arent the ones who feel the impact of those bad decisions. the engineering staff and middle managers do. so until the exec/board level folks start feeling the pain, nothing will change

Mitch Rose 1d ago

@Viss @periodic

If this place was doing it right, someone with due diligence responsibility would have signed off on the risk of ignoring your expert opinion.
If that's not what happened, hopefully you kept a copy of your opinion handy (including who was informed) when they tried to pin it on you later. Then happily keep collecting your paycheck.

@mrose @periodic well, this was twitter, and my boss at the time was a guy who was later fired for doing nothing when he was supposed to do something. he then went on to a consulting firm to be a 'ciso in residence' but was fired 7 months later. last i heard he went to work for the DNC... and.. well.. you read the news, i wager.

@mrose @periodic he also famously told me that 'java rhino' didnt exist, and told me he would have to 'confirm with his contacts' about it being real shortly after i was hired, as i was explaining that it was a zero-click way to shell victims on every available platform (this was back in the java applet days).

several months later that massive 2012 watering hole attack happened, hitting eveyrone in sf/sv, and it was ... java rhino.

working there was .. a ride.

Mitch Rose 1d ago

@Viss @periodic

and apparently it continues with your post on xchat

@mrose @periodic xchat?

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@bontchev/116698651512805013

Mitch Rose 16h ago

@Viss @periodic

https://universeodon.com/@bontchev@infosec.exchange/116698651549027853

Yes I know the company changed hands, but the stupid remained

Viss 13h ago

@mrose @periodic ah. yeah vess is a different guy, not me. i quit twitter like 3-4 years ago to come here and never looked back. though i did work there 2011-2012, so i have a lot to say about stuff from back then.

Robert [KJ5ELX]

1d ago

@Viss @periodic @pluralistic ah yes. CEO at a former place of employment wanted some software on his ipad to be granted access to our systems. I was really against it because of the holes it would create in our security posture. The HSE director who was also larping as a CyBeRsEcUrItY manager came to my desk and told me, and I quote, "sometimes we have to do things we don't agree with."

So after that I proceeded to create gaping holes in our security posture because Mr. "speed through the parking lot after telling everyone to obey the speed limit" wanted it his own way and he was the boss.

@FuturisticRobert @periodic @pluralistic i know this music

Amoshias 1d ago

@Viss @periodic @pluralistic when talking to a founder of a significant Internet company who cashed out for millions, he said "it only has to work until they buy the company."

@Amoshias @periodic @pluralistic yup. exactly this

sleepy62🍁🛠️ 🖥️ 🔬 🌞2d ago

@periodic @pluralistic

"Code is a liability"

As a maker of code I endorse this message..

Shrimpney 2d ago

@sleepy62 @periodic @pluralistic "make it work, make it right, make it fast" is a workable axiom only insofar as your senior management allow you to proceed to the "right" stage. And they rarely, if ever, will. And your chances of getting to "fast" are negligible.