Today's threads (a thread)

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#10yrsago Saudi embassy hired mafiosi to smuggle Turkish PM Erdoğan’s son out of Italy ahead of money laundering charges https://web.archive.org/web/20160311095055/https://awdnews.com/top-news/rome’s-police-spokesman-saudi-embassy-helped-erdoğan’s-son-to-escape-the-police-custody-using-a-forged-saudi-passport-and-disguised-as-an-arab-diplomat

#10yrsago Photos from Bring Your Own Bigwheel 16 https://www.jwz.org/photos/2016-03-27-bigwheel/

#10yrsago How to Talk About Videogames: a book that is serious (but never dull) about games https://memex.craphound.com/2016/03/28/how-to-talk-about-videogames-a-book-that-is-serious-but-never-dull-about-games/

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[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#10yrsago Names that break databases https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160325-the-names-that-break-computer-systems

#10yrsago Cops arrest public defender who was representing her client, face no discipline https://www.techdirt.com/2016/03/23/complaint-board-finds-police-officers-violated-policy-arresting-public-defender-who-demanded-they-stop-questioning-her-clients/

#10yrsago Vulnerability in recorders used by 70+ manufacturers’ CCTV systems has been known since 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20160322204109/https://kerneronsec.com/2016/02/remote-code-execution-in-cctv-dvrs-of.html

#10yrsago Ransomware hackers steal a hospital. Again. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/03/hospital-declares-internet-state-of-emergency-after-ransomware-infection/

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[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#10yrsago STUCK: Public transit’s moment arrives just as public spending disappears https://web.archive.org/web/20160327040633/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-immobile-masses-why-traffic-is-awful-and-public-transit-is-worse

#10yrsago East Harlem’s secret museum of gorgeous junk rescued from NYC’s trash https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fascinating-photos-from-the-secret-trash-collection-in-a-new-york-sanitation-garage

#10yrsago Heatmaps of the human body in varying emotional states https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1321664111

#10yrsago Man exonerated after video shows unprovoked police beating, cops insist all is well https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/video-clears-texas-man-of-assaulting-cop-did-police-commit-perjury/

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[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#10yrsago What you think about Millennials says a lot about you, nothing about them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ

#10yrsago Jerks were able to turn Microsoft’s chatbot into a Nazi because it was a really crappy bot https://web.archive.org/web/20160325221619/http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-to-make-a-not-racist-bot

#10yrsago When the antibiotics run out, maybe we can use GMO maggots to stave off infection https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12896-016-0263-z

#10yrsago King Arthur’s grave was a hoax invented by cash-strapped 12th C monks https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/03/medieval-monks-used-king-arthurs-grave-as-an-attraction-to-raise-money/

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[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#10yrsago Eating from the trash of New York’s finest grocers and restaurants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJmCUSb-ZVo

#10yrsago Catholic Church-owned insurer has secret files on paedophile priests https://www.theage.com.au/national/secret-archive-of-paedophile-crime-kept-by-catholic-churchs-insurers-20160317-gnlc6k.html

#10yrsago Names that break databases https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160325-the-names-that-break-computer-systems

#10yrsago Cops arrest public defender who was representing her client, face no discipline https://www.techdirt.com/2016/03/23/complaint-board-finds-police-officers-violated-policy-arresting-public-defender-who-demanded-they-stop-questioning-her-clients/

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[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#10yrsago Vulnerability in recorders used by 70+ manufacturers’ CCTV systems has been known since 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20160322204109/https://kerneronsec.com/2016/02/remote-code-execution-in-cctv-dvrs-of.html

#5yrsago Dirty NYPD cops can't lose https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/26/overfitness-factor/#heads-you-lose-tails-they-win

#5yrsago Dreaming and overfitting https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/26/overfitness-factor/#dreamtime

#5yrsago Good news about news co-ops https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/25/facebook-has-a-facebook-problem/#good-news

#5yrsago Zuckerpunch https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/25/facebook-has-a-facebook-problem/#played-for-zuckers

#5yrsago Green investing is a fraud https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/24/greenwashing/#bargaining

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[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#1yrago Trump loves Big Tech https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/24/whats-good-for-big-tech/#is-good-for-america

#1yrago Why I don't like AI art https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/25/communicative-intent/#diluted

#1yrago The AOC-Sanders anti-oligarch tour is all about organizing https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/26/not-me-us/#the-people-no

#1yrago Reality-Based Communities https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/27/use-your-mentality/#face-up-to-reality

#1yrago Big Tech and "captive audience venues" https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/28/street-pricing/#sportball-analogies

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[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

Wednesday's threads: The cost of doing business; and more!

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116288728549787261

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[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

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/

19/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

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."

https://craphound.com/shop/

20/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

Upcoming appearances:

* #Montreal: Bronfman Lecture (McGill), Apr 10
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disrupter-tickets-1982706623885

* #Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, Apr 10
https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/events/4863920260410

* #London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU), Apr 25
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691

* #NYC: Enshittification at Commonweal Ventures, Apr 29
https://luma.com/ssgfvqz8

21/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

Recent appearances:

* Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech

* Launch for Cindy's Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuVCm2PUalU

* Chicken Mating Harnesses (This Week in Tech)
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1074

* The Virtual Jewel Box (U Utah)
https://tanner.utah.edu/podcast/enshittification-cory-doctorow-matthew-potolsky/

* Tanner Humanities Lecture (U Utah)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Yf1nSyekI

23/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

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Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/30/players-of-games/

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24/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

I'm also on Bluesky. Read today's thread there at:

https://bsky.app/profile/did:web:pluralistic.net/post/3micaaszacs27

eof/

[riosdesign@mastodon.social]

@pluralistic The metabolic cost of participating in systems optimized for a different cognitive type is real and largely invisible. What exhausts most people energizes the architects of the game — which is also why the rules stay the way they are. The hagglers don’t experience the market as a burden. They built it to feel like home. Especially the financial architects in tech — they didn’t just learn to haggle. They refined what counts as the table.

[threesigma@mastodon.online]

@pluralistic
This reminds me of another topic you wrote about recently: professional awe.

One reason I wanted to a university professor is for job security: I didn't want to have to constantly worry about getting the next job. In other words, I didn't want to HAGGLE over my employment, and was willing to take low pay to get it. Yet increasingly, tenure is under attack in part because of the hagglers, who demand the right to renegotiate everyone's employment.

[artemis@climatejustice.social]

@ThreeSigma @pluralistic I think you'll find it's because management want to keep cutting everyone's pay and conditions, get rid of tenure, and make as much money as possible. The coasters, those crusty tenured academics who sit there doing the same old same old, do noting to help the case against this.

[hatter@metasocial.com]

@ThreeSigma @pluralistic I guess it always will be (unless your profession can lock employment to only union members - but that's.a whole other mess for those both in and outside the union). Your employer and a potential employee can tailor a deal where both can find a better than average deal from it - that's a win for the university management, and fuck you because they really can, as long as someone is doing your job today, they're probably ok and you're... not their problem.

[j_feral@digipres.club]

@ThreeSigma
RIP Fobazi Ettarh, author of the article articulating vocational awe that Cory cites when referencing this idea. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

[threesigma@mastodon.online]

@pluralistic @artemis
I was astounded by the attitude of many of my feckless colleagues that they deserved their positions and were not in any way the beneficiaries of fortune or circumstance. This easily led to “I got mine” and “I’m keeping my head down until this blows over”.

Not everyone, but too many.