
What industry calls "personalized pricing" is really *surveillance* pricing: using digital tools' flexibility to change the price for each user, and using surveillance data to guess the worst price you'll accept:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/
--
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/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/#veena-dubal
1/
βNurses demand the removal of immigration enforcement agents from communities, the abolition of ICE, and accountability for this administrationβs crimes against all residents of the United States,β read the January 23 statement from National Nurses United (NNU), which represents over 225,000 registered nurses nationwide."
Crises precipitate change. That's no reason to induce a crisis, but you'd be a fool to let a crisis go to waste. Donald Trump is the greatest crisis of our young century, and the EU looks set to squander the opportunity, to its own terrible detriment.
--
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/2026/04/04/digital-subjugation/#greenlands-next
1/
They pay $34 for burgers. Should their fire department service be free? Opening a new fire department in one of NYC's richest neighborhoods has some of America's pettiest journalists asking silly questions in headlines again.π€‘
The article acknowledges the fire department analogy, then blows past it.π€·πΏββοΈ
The solve for "Sometimes when a service like free childcare is available to all, marginalized communities get squeezed out," is "Address that racism."
It's not "Therefore waste incredible amounts of time and money trying to means test something that society should just make available to all.π€‘"
"America will never give up the moon again.π€‘"
What an embarrassing statement.π€¦πΏββοΈ
What a scathing indictment of the childishness and futility of an anti-science nation being in a space race.
What does "give up the moon" even mean?
Other countries sending scientists while we angrily hug a moon flag.
Anthropic's developers made an extremely basic configuration error, and as a result, the source-code for Claude Code - the company's flagship coding assistant product - has leaked and is being eagerly analyzed by many parties:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586778
--
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/2026/04/02/limited-monopoly/#petardism
1/
This car costs $8500. Not a typo. Less than 10 racks. And you don't have to put gas in it.
But we can't have it in the US, because we'd rather have racism and argue about solved problems like birthright citizenship, and should Black people be allowed to vote.
So you get Cybertrucks instead. Enjoy!

As November Kelly has pointed out, the weirdest thing about Trumpismo is how the man seethes and rails against a game that is thoroughly rigged in America's favor, because he resents having to pretend to play the game *at all*:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/26/i-dont-want/#your-greenback-dollar
--
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/2026/04/01/minilateralism/#own-goal
1/