Today's links

• Understaffing as a form of enshittification: A way to shift value from workers, patients and shoppers to investors.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Marvel v "superhero"; What's a photocopier?; "Up Against It"; "Medusa's Web"; AI can't do your job; Coping with plenty; "The Shakedown"; Chickenized reverse-centaurs; France v iTunes; Copyfight discipline; Mystery lobbyists; "Where the Axe is Buried"; Free/open microprocessor; Folk models of computer security; Bug-eyed steampunk mask; Academics embracing Wikipedia.
• Upcoming appearances: Berkeley, Montreal, London, Berlin, Hay-on-Wye.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Understaffing as a form of enshittification (permalink)

At root, enshittification can only take place when companies can move value around. Digital tools make it easier than ever to do this, for example, by changing prices on a per-user, per-session basis, using commercial surveillance data to predict the highest price or lowest wage a user will accept:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Digital "twiddling" represents a powerful system of pumps for moving value around, taking it away from users and giving it to business customers, then taking it from businesses and giving it to users, and then, ultimately, harvesting all the value for the company's shareholders and executives.

Twiddling is powerful because it's fine-grained, allowing businesses to extract more from their most vulnerable customers and workers, while reserving more equitable treatment for more empowered stakeholders who might otherwise take their business elsewhere.

But long before digitization made twiddling possible, businesses that found themselves in a position to make things worse for their customers and workers without facing consequences were accustomed to doing so. Think of the airport shop that sells water for $10/bottle: that's a ripoff whether you're in coach-minus or flying first class, and it's made possible by the TSA checkpoint that makes shopping elsewhere a time-consuming impossibility.

The airport shop is the only game in town – a "monopolist" in economics jargon. When a business has something you really want (or even better, something you need) and it's hard (or impossible) for you to get it elsewhere, they can take value away from you and harvest it for themselves.

The most obvious forms of monopoly extraction are high prices and low wages. Dollar stores are notorious for this, using their market power to procure extremely small packages of common goods in "cheater sizes" that have high per-unit costs (e.g. the cost per ounce for soap), while still having a low price tag (the cost per (small) bottle of soap). These stores are situated in food deserts, which they create by boxing in community grocers and heavily discounting their wares until the real grocers go out of business. They're also situated in work deserts, because driving regular grocers out of business destroys the competition for labor, too. That means they can pay low wages and charge high prices and make a hell of a lot of money, which is why there are so many fucking dollar stores:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

That's the most obvious form of value harvesting, but it's not the only one. There are other costs that businesses can impose on their customers and workers. Think of CVS, the pharmacy monopolist that uses its vertical integration with bizarre, poorly understood middlemen like "pharmacy benefit managers" to drive independent pharmacies out of business:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen

If you've been to a CVS store recently, you have doubtless experienced a powerful form of value-shifting: understaffing. CVS (and the other massive chains in the cartel, like Walgreens) have giant stores with just one or two employees on the floor, often just a cashier and a pharmacist.

This makes them easy pickings for shoplifters, so all their merchandise is locked up in cabinets and when you want to buy something, you have to find the lone employee and get them to unlock the case for you. This is CVS trading your time for their wage-bill.

Then, you're expected to check out your own purchases – shifting labor from workers on CVS's payroll to you – with badly maintained machines that often misfire and require you to wait again for that lone employee to come and override them.

Meanwhile, that employee is absorbing a gigantic amount of frustration and abuse from customers who are paying high prices and enduring long waits – another cost that CVS shifts from their shareholders to someone else (workers, in this case).

Finally, CVS demands that publicly funded police respond to the inevitable shoplifting and other security problems created by running a big-box store with a skeleton crew, shifting costs from the business to everyone in the local tax-base.

In "Not Enough Workers For the Job," The American Prospect's Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein looks at the systemic trend towards understaffing that has swept across every sector of the US economy over the past five years:

https://prospect.org/2026/03/19/understaff-workplace-business-covid-cvs-pharmacies-hotels-grocery-stores/

Kaiser-Schatzlein lays the blame for many of life's frustrations at the feet of this business trend: "long lines, messy grocery aisles, organized theft, high hotel costs, frequent flight cancellations, deadly medication errors at pharmacies, increased use of medical restraints in nursing homes, and, more generally, a palpable and rising dissatisfaction with work."

As you can see from that list, understaffing affects everyone, from people with the wherewithal to buy a plane ticket to vulnerable elderly people who are literally tied to their beds or drugged into stupors for the last years of their lives.

There's academic work to support the idea that understaffing is on the rise, like a 2024 Kennedy School survey of 14,000 workers where a majority said that their workplaces are "always" or "often" understaffed. A 2023 study in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice found that public health institutions need to hire 80% more workers to be adequately staffed. New York's Mt Sinai hospitals paid a $2m fine in 2024 for understaffing its ERs, as well as oncology and labor units. Another study blames understaffing for the rise of use of antipsychotic "chemical handcuffs" in nursing homes:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35926573/

The hits keep coming: the DoT Inspector General says that 77% of air traffic control is understaffed, with NYC ATC staffed at 54% of the correct level. In Texas, county jails have had to reduce their capacity due to understaffing (they have enough beds, but not enough turnkeys). Understaffing is behind much of the unprecedented union surge, with workers at Starbucks, railroads and elsewhere becoming labor militants due to understaffing. 83% of white-collar millennials say they're doing extra work to make up for vacant positions in their organizations. As Starbucks union organizers can attest, workers need unions if they want to have a hope of forcing their bosses to adequately staff their jobsites, so it's not surprising that understaffing has emerged at a time when union density is at rock bottom.

Kaiser-Schatzlein quotes the Kennedy School's Daniel Schneider, who identifies understaffing as a deliberate business strategy. Businesses don't hire enough workers because that makes them more profitable. It's not because "no one wants to work anymore" (though doubtless repeating that fairy tale helps shift the blame for long lines and poor service from real, greedy bosses to imaginary, greedy workers).

Private equity firms lead the charge here, "rolling up" multiple, competing businesses in a sector and then cutting staffing across all of them. Putting all the businesses in a given sector and region under common ownership means that when these businesses hack away at staffing levels, workers and customers have nowhere else to go. This is especially pernicious at nursing homes, where PE companies drastically reduce headcount, putting staff and patients alike at risk:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/31/1139783599/new-york-nursing-home-owners-drained-cash?ft=nprml&f=853198417

Private equity has just about declared victory in its decades-long war on community pharmacies, consolidating pharmacy ownership nationwide into just a few chains that are the poster-children for understaffing. These ghost-ships aren't just frustrating places to shop – they're a danger to their communities. As Kaiser-Schatzlein reports, Ohio fined CVS in 2021 for boarding up the walk-up pharmacies in its stores and forcing customers to use the drive-through, because there was only a single pharmacist on duty.

Without help, the lone pharmacist was unable to process deliveries, so CVS pharmacies' floors were littered with unopened parcels. Patients had to wait over a month to get their prescriptions filled. CVS refused to hire additional staff to process the backlog, and the on-duty staff worked under declining conditions, as the undermaintained air conditioning quit and indoor temperatures soared. Unsurprisingly, these stores had massive staff turnover, which also hampered their efficiency.

Understaffing in pharmacies leads to serious medication errors, which are proliferating across the US, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. The errors are incredible, like the woman who died after getting chemotherapy drugs instead of antidepressants:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/health/pharmacists-medication-errors.html

Pharmacists at chain stores like CVS are at elevated risk for kidney stones because they don't have time for bathroom breaks, so they adopt a practice of not drinking water during their shifts. One CVS pharmacist told Texas regulators, "I am a danger to the public working for CVS."

As ever, covid provides the ideal excuse for shifting value from customers and workers to shareholders. Today's high prices never came down after the "greedflation" that bosses boasted about to shareholders, even as they told customers that it was because of "supply chain shocks":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

Likewise, staffing levels never came back from the covid skeleton crews that we all learned to deal with in the days of widespread acute illness and social distancing. Kaiser-Schatzlein spoke to hotel workers like Jianci Liang, a housekeeper at Boston's Hilton Park Plaza, who described a post-pandemic jobsite with 20 fewer housekeepers: "I sleep with pain, I wake up with pain, I go to work with pain." The Bureau of Labor says that hotel staffing levels are down 16% nationwide.

Prices (and profits) are up, though. Hotels are posting record profits and paying record executive salaries, wrung from facilities where the pools are closed and room cleanings happen on alternate days.

Workers absorb the cost of understaffing in their bodies and their psyches. It's not just physical exhaustion, it's also the abuse that is directly correlated with lower staffing levels. Frustrated customers vent their anger at grocery workers, flight attendants and other front-line workers.

I can't help but see a connection here to the AI bubble, which is fueled by the fantasy of a world without people:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-wheel/#billionaire-solipsism

The billionaire solipsists who have directed hundreds of billions of dollars in AI investment like to rhapsodize about a future where a boss's ideas are turned into products and services without having to be funneled through workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/12/normal-technology/#bubble-exceptionalism

That's why AI has taken over customer service – the multi-hour waits for a customer service rep were always a way of shifting value from customers and workers to shareholders. Businesses could increase staffing at their call centers. Businesses could offer better products and services and reduce the number of people who need customer service. By refusing to do either, they make you wait on the line until you are suffused with murderous rage, and then expect their workers to deal with your anger. Turning the whole thing over to AI makes perfect sense – your problems won't be solved, and they don't have to pay the chatbot at all when you get angry at it:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/06/unmerchantable-substitute-goods/#customer-disservice

"We did this with AI" has become a synonym for "We don't care if this is done well":

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/11/modal-dialog-a-palooza/#autoplay-videos

"We don't care if this is done well" could well be the motto of the understaffing craze. The technical insights that sparked today's AI investment bubble could have happened at any time, but the ensuing investment tsunami is a product of a world dominated by large firms that are "too big to care" about the quality of their products – or their jobs.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Our algorithmic future – Utopia or Armageddon? https://b2fxxx.blogspot.com/2026/03/our-algorithmic-future-utopia-or.html

• The Market Definition Trap https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-market-definition-trap/

• On Spec 2026: New Canadian Literature of the Fantastic https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/edwardwillett/on-spec-2026-new-canadian-literature-of-the-fantastic

• Day 7: Ticketmaster's "Velvet Hammer" https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/day-7-ticketmasters-velvet-hammer

• From Race to the Bottom to Worker Power on the Road https://economicpopulist.substack.com/p/from-race-to-the-bottom-to-worker

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Marvel Comics: stealing our language https://memex.craphound.com/2006/03/18/marvel-comics-stealing-our-language/

#20yrsago MPAA/RIAA/BSA: No breaking DRM, even if it’s killing you (literally!) https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2006/03/08/riaa-says-future-drm-might-threaten-critical-infrastructure-and-potentially-endanger-liv/

#20yrsago Coping with plenty – stuff gets cheaper, space gets pricier https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/feb/28/retail.shopping

#20yrsago France will let Microsoft play iTunes http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4828296.stm

#20yrsago A new discipline to describe the copyfight https://web.archive.org/web/20060422010702/https://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/002930.html

#20yrsago Right-wing think-tank hates DRM https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/circumventing-competition-perverse-consequences-digital-millennium-copyright-act#

#20yrsago Reasons to take math in high school https://web.archive.org/web/20060610134055/http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i11_math.html

#20yrsago Sun ships free and open microprocessor https://web.archive.org/web/20060221112756/http://opensparc.sunsource.net/nonav/index.html

#20yrsago Octavia Butler scholarship will send people of color to Clarion https://web.archive.org/web/20060406161412/https://carlbrandon.org/butlerscholarship/

#20yrsago Online sexual material is obscene if any community in US objects https://web.archive.org/web/20060505232346/http://www.justicemag.com/daily/item/2590.html

#15yrsago Folk models of home computer security: what we think our PCs are doing https://rickwash.com/papers/rwash-homesec-soups10-final.pdf

#15yrsago Fixers’ Collective: people learning to make broken stuff work again https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2011/0321/The-art-of-the-fix-it

#15yrsago Bug-eyed monster steampunk mask https://bob-basset.livejournal.com/158400.html

#15yrsago Scholars to stop pretending they don’t use Wikipedia; will work out best practices instead https://www.bbc.com/news/education-12809944

#15yrsago Electronic publishing Bingo card from John Scalzi https://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/03/20/the-electronic-publishing-bingo-card/

#15yrsago RIP, Mike Glicksohn, Hugo-winning science fiction fan https://file770.com/mike-glicksohn-1946-2011/

#15yrsago Anti-labor ads celebrate workers taking paycuts and CEOs getting millions https://www.cogdis.me/2011/03/is-this-what-they-really-want.html

#15yrsago Reluctant witness refuses to admit he knows what a photocopier is https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2011/03/identifying_photocopy_machine.html

#15yrsago Tim Wu in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/the-master-switch-tim-wu-internet

#15yrsago Up Against It: smart, whiz-bang space opera pits astro-bureaucrats against rogue AIs https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/18/up-against-it-smart-whiz-bang-space-opera-pits-astro-bureaucrats-against-rogue-ais/

#10yrsago Howto: start a fire with a lemon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv2vT665bGI

#10yrsago First order of business for hard-right government: canceling Croatia’s answer to The Daily Show https://balkaninsight.com/2016/03/17/satiric-show-pulled-from-croatian-tv-for-intolerance-03-17-2016/bi/all-balkan-countries/

#10yrsago FBI issues car-hacking warning, tells drivers to keep their cars’ patch-levels current https://www.wired.com/2016/03/fbi-warns-car-hacking-real-risk/

#10yrsago BART’s twitter manager drops truth-bombs, world cheers https://gizmodo.com/i-would-like-to-buy-a-drink-for-the-poor-soul-who-ran-t-1765477706

#10yrsago Chelsea Manning gets the US Army to cough up its “insider threat” training docs https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/18/government-persecuting-whistleblowers-insider-threat-chelsea-manning

#10yrsago Apple engineers quietly discuss refusing to create the FBI’s backdoor https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/technology/apple-encryption-engineers-if-ordered-to-unlock-iphone-might-resist.html

#10yrsago Russia moots ban on discussions about VPNs, reverse proxies, and other anti-censorship techniques https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-holders-want-site-block-circumvention-advice-banned-160319/

#10yrsago Medusa’s Web: Tim Powers is the Philip K Dick of our age https://memex.craphound.com/2016/03/18/medusas-web-tim-powers-is-the-philip-k-dick-of-our-age/

#10yrsago Meet the Commercial Energy Working Group, a lobby group that won’t say who it lobbies for https://web.archive.org/web/20160320150011/https://theintercept.com/2016/03/20/mysterious-powerful-lobbying-group-wont-even-say-who-its-lobbying-for/

#5yrsago Support Amazon workers today https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/20/against-amazon-union-busting/#what-rhymes-with-bezos

#5yrsago Department of Truth https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/20/against-amazon-union-busting/#dot

#5yrsago The political possibility of cities https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/21/ex-urbe/#arcology-politics

#5yrsago Aviation bailout cost $666k/job https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/18/news-worthy/#aa

#5yrsago Impunity for NYPD cops who brutalized BLM protesters https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/18/news-worthy/#nypd-black-and-blue

#5yrsago Help news, not news-barons https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/18/news-worthy/#big-news

#5yrsago Announcing "The Shakedown" https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#monopsony

#5yrsago Chickenized reverse-centaurs https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex

#1yrago You can't save an institution by betraying its mission https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/19/selling-out/#destroy-the-village-to-save-it

#1yrago AI can't do your job https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/18/asbestos-in-the-walls/#government-by-spicy-autocomplete

#1yrago Ray Nayler's "Where the Axe Is Buried" https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/20/birchpunk/#cyberspace-is-everting

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
  https://conference.bioneers.org/

• 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

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

Recent appearances (permalink)

• 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

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1034 words today, 54661 total)

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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Today's links

• Love of corporate bullshit is correlated with bad judgment: Synergizing the strategic inflection points on the global data network.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Bluetooth headsets; Fruit sticker decoder; iPod batteries v DRM; Bruces's SXSW keynote; Piracy isn't funding terrorism; Hope v optimism; Identical twin time-travel prank; Prisoners draw corporate crooks; Spanish junkbots; Sheriff's rape-kit denial; Non-dorky magic; Poetic bureaucrat mourns wolf; SXSW v MPAA; "Burning Days"; NYT paywall; Police rap-battle warning; Unions de-risk labor; "Murder the Truth"
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Love of corporate bullshit is correlated with bad judgment (permalink)

I'm a writer, so of course I care about words! But I'm a writer, so I also think that words are improved by their malleability, duality and nuance.

This is one of the things I love about being a native English speaker – this glorious mongrel language of ours is full of extremely weird words, like "cleave," which means its own opposite ("to join together" and "to cut apart"). English is full of these words that mean their own opposite, from "dust" to "oversight" to "weather":

https://www.mentalfloss.com/language/words/25-words-are-their-own-opposites

This is what you get when you let a language run wild, with meaning determined (and contested) by speakers. Not for nothing, my second language is Yiddish, another glorious higgeldy-piggeldy of a tongue with no authoritative oversight and innumerable dialects.

Semantic drift is a feature, not a bug. It's how we get new words, and new meanings for old words. I love semantic drift! I mean, I'd better, since, having coined "enshittification," I'm now destined to have a poop emoji on my headstone. Having coined a word – and having proposed a precise technical meaning for it – I am baffled by people who make it their business to scold others for using enshittification "incorrectly." "Enshittification" is less than five years old, and we know when and how it was invented. If you like it when I make up a word, you can't categorically object to other people making up new meanings for this word. I didn't need a word-coining license to come up with enshittification, and you don't need a semantic drift license to use it to mean something else.

I wrote a whole danged essay about this, but still, hardly a day goes by without someone trying to enlist me in their project to scold and shame strangers for using the word incorrectly:

The fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something that is bad," without bothering to learn – or apply – the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of "enshittification" is worse than a self-limiting move – it would be a self-inflicted wound.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system

Colloquialization doesn't dilute language, it thickens it. Using a powerful word to describe something else can be glorious. It's allusion, metaphor, simile. It's poesie. It's fine. Bemoaning the "tsunami" of bad news doesn't cheapen the deaths of people who die in real tsunamis. Saying that the Trump administration "nuked" the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau doesn't desecrate the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Calling creeping authoritarianism a "cancer" doesn't denigrate the suffering of people who have actual cancer.

What's more, devoting your energies to "correcting" other people's allusive language makes you a boring, tedious person. Sure, you can have a conversation with a comrade about making inclusive word choices, but interrupting a substantive debate to have that discussion is unserious. The words people use matter (I care a lot about words!) but they matter less than the things people mean. Keep your eye on the prize (metaphorically) (for avoidance of doubt, there is no prize) (both the prize and the eye are metaphors).

(By all means, get angry at people who intentionally use slurs. None of this is to say that you should tolerate – or be subjected to – language that is intended to dehumanize you.)

It's time we admitted that it's no good replacing an offensive term with a phrase that no one understands. Calling it "child sexual abuse material" is a good idea, but no one actually calls it that. The customary phrase is actually "child sexual abuse material, which most people call 'child porn,' but which we should really call 'child sex abuse material.'" If your goal is to avoid saying "child porn" (a laudable goal!), this isn't achieving it.

None of this means that I am immune to being rubbed up the wrong way by other people's language choices. Having been mentored by the science fiction great Damon Knight, I have been infected by many of his linguistic peccadillos, which means that if you say "out loud" in my earshot, I will (mentally) "correct" it to "aloud" (yes, "out loud" is fine, but Damon had a thing about it and it got stuck in my brain).

I am especially perturbed by "business English," the language of the commercial class, their cheerleaders in the press, and (alas) many of their critics. Anytime someone refers to a sector as a "space" (as in "I'm really getting into the AI space") it's like they're making me chew tinfoil. Superlatives like "thought-leader" are so self-parodying I have to check every time someone utters one aloud (see?) to verify that they're not being sarcastic. Objects of derision should be referred to by their surnames, not their given names ("Musk" is vituperative, "Elon" is friendly – though, thanks to the glorious and thickening contradictions of language, calling someone by their surname can also be affectionate). I steer clear of jargon used by firms to lionize themselves, like "hyperscaler."

I share the impulse to impose my linguistic preferences on the people around me. I just (mostly) suppress that impulse and try to focus on substance rather than style, at least when I'm trying to understand others and be understood by them. But yes, I do silently judge the people around me for their word choices – all the time.

That's why I immediately pounced on "The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale: Development, validation, and associations with workplace outcomes," an open access paper in the Feb 2026 edition of Personality and Individual Differences by Shane Littrell, a linguistics postdoc at Cornell:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/400597536_The_Corporate_Bullshit_Receptivity_Scale_Development_validation_and_associations_with_workplace_outcomes

Littrell set out to evaluate "corporate bullshit," a linguistic category that is separate from mere "jargon." Jargon, Littrell writes, is a professional vocabulary that serves a useful purpose: "facilitat[ing] communication and social bonding, increas[ing] fluency, and help[ing] reinforce a shared identity among in-group members."

Bullshit, meanwhile, is "semantically, logically, or epistemically dubious information that is misleadingly impressive, important, informative, or otherwise engaging." There's a whole field of bullshit studies, with investigations into such exciting topics as "pseudo-profound bullshit" (think: Deepak Chopra).

Littrell borrows from that field and others to investigate corporate bullshit, formulating a measurement index he calls the "Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale." In a series of three experiments, Littrell sets out to determine who is the most susceptible to corporate bullshit, and what the correlates of that receptivity are.

Littrell concludes that corporate bullshitters themselves are pretty good at identifying bullshit (they have a high "Organizational Bullshit Perception Score"). In other words, bullshitters know that they're bullshitting. When a corporate leader declares that:

This synergistic look at our thought leadership will ensure that we are decontenting and avoiding reputational deficits with our key takeaways as effectively as we can in order to sunset our resonating focus.

they know it's nonsense.

This reminded me of the idea that cult leaders tell obvious lies to their followers as a way of forcing them to demonstrate their subservience. When Trump demands that his followers wear clown shoes:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-is-obsessed-with-these-145-shoes-and-won-t-let-anyone-leave-without-a-pair/ar-AA1XOEBm

Or that they pretend that "mutilization" is a word:

https://www.wonkette.com/p/is-trumps-save-america-fck-america

He's engaging in a dominance play that forces his feuding princelings and their lickspittles to humiliate themselves and reaffirm his supremacy.

There are plenty of rank-and-file workers inside corporations who have high OBPSes and know when they're being bullshitted, but Littrell also identifies a large cohort of low-OBPS workers who are absolutely taken in by corporate bullshit.

Here we get to a fascinating dichotomy. Both the low-OBPS and high-OBPS workers can be described as being "open minded," but "open" has a very different meaning for each group. Workers who are good at spotting bullshit score high on open-mindedness metrics like "willingness to engage" and "willingness to reflect," both characteristic of the "fluid intelligence" that makes workers good at solving problems and doing a good job.

Meanwhile, workers who are taken in by bullshit are "open minded" in the sense that they are bad at analytical reasoning and thus easily convinced. These people test poorly on metrics like "logical reasoning" and "decision-making," and score high on "overconfidence in one's intellectual and analytic abilities." They are apt to make blunders that "expose organizations to financial, reputational, or legal risks."

But they're also exactly the workers who score high on "job satisfaction," "trust in one's supervisor," and "degree to which they are inspired by corporate mission statements." These people are so open minded that their brains start to leak out of their ears. Or, as Carly Page put it in The Register: "jargon sticks around not just because executives enjoy using it, but because many people respond to it as if it were genuine insight":

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/15/corporate_jargon_research/

This creates a feedback loop where bosses get rewarded for using empty and maddening phrases, and their workforce gets progressively more skewed towards people who are bad at spotting bullshit and at exercising their judgment on the job. It's quite a neat – and ugly – explanation of why bullshit proliferates within organizations, and how organizations come to be completely overrun with bullshit.

This is a fascinating research paper, and while I've focused on its conclusions, I really suggest going and reading about the methodology, especially the tables of "corporate bullshit" phrases they generated for their experiments (Tables 1, 2 and 3). This is some eldritch horror bullshit:

By solving the pain point of customers with our conversations, we will ideate a renewed level of end-state vision and growth-mindset in the market between us and others who are architecting to download on a similar balanced scorecard.

What's more, these are all based on real examples of corporate bullshit from leaders at large corporations, with a few words rotated to synonyms drawn from the business-press.

I'm a writer. I really do care about language. Sure, I get frustrated with scolds who rail against semantic drift or engage in petty, pedantic corrections, but not because words don't matter. They matter, a lot. But language isn't math (which is why double negatives are intensifiers, not negators). It can obscure (as with bullshit) or it can enlighten (as with poesie) or it can enable precision (as with jargon). Arguments about language matter, but what matters about them isn't subjective aesthetics, nor is it a peevish obsession with "correctness." What matters is the way that language operates on the world (and vice versa).

Hey look at this (permalink)

• The public will pay https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-102/

• Enshittified UX https://www.awwwards.com/sites/enshittified-ux

• The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

• Immutable https://www.pbs.org/video/immutable-lw8ctv/

• Why Are We Still Doing This? https://www.wheresyoured.at/why-are-we-still-doing-this/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Eighth graders build giant awesome gymnasium rollercoaster https://web.archive.org/web/20060329110502/https://www.sgvtribune.com/news/ci_3606933

#20yrsago Bluetooth headset combined with headphones https://www.techdigest.tv/2006/03/itech_clip_m_1.html

#20yrsago HOWTO decode the sticker-numbers on fruit https://megnut.com/2006/03/14/read-the-numbers-on-your-fruit/

#20yrsago DRM shortens iPod battery life https://web.archive.org/web/20060319201837/http://www.mp3.com/features/stories/3646.html

#20yrsago McD’s employees’ secret recipes for improvised meals https://mcdonalds-talk.livejournal.com/158400.html

#20yrsago UK to US: we’ll only buy open-source fighter jets https://web.archive.org/web/20060420192203/https://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2152035/joint-strike-fighter

#20yrsago Bruce Sterling’s SXSW keynote MP3 https://web.archive.org/web/20060330072143/https://server1.sxsw.com/2006/coverage/SXSW06.INT.20060314.BruceSterling.mp3

#20yrsago UK Open University opens its courseware https://web.archive.org/web/20060610125235/https://oci.open.ac.uk/

#20yrsago Europe seeking to make open mapping impossible – help! https://web.archive.org/web/20060503172457/https://publicgeodata.org/Open_Letter

#20yrsago MPAA rep gets slammed at SXSW https://www.powazek.com/2006/03/000571.html

#20yrsago Canadian recording industry: P2P isn’t bad for business https://web.archive.org/web/20060408232202/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/component/option,com_content/task,view/id,1168/Itemid,85/nsub,/

#15yrsago First-person account from surgeon who removed his own appendix https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/antarctica-1961-a-soviet-surgeon-has-to-remove-his-own-appendix/72445/

#15yrsago New York Times paywall: wishful thinking or just crazy? https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/17/new-york-times-paywall-wishful-thinking-or-just-crazy/

#15rsago Android app pwns cardkey entry systems, opens all the locks https://web.archive.org/web/20110317132608/http://www.cybersecurityguy.com/caribou.html

#15yrsago Glenn Grant’s Burning Days: old school cyberpunk stories from the nostalgic contrafuture https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/17/glenn-grants-burning-days-old-school-cyberpunk-stories-from-the-nostalgic-contrafuture/

#15yrsago World’s largest spam botnet goes down (for now?) https://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/03/rustock-botnet-flatlined-spam-volumes-plummet/

#15yrsago Piracy doesn’t fund the mob or terrorists https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/even-commercial-pirates-now-have-to-compete-with-free/

#15yrsago Tennessee to outlaw collective bargaining for teachers https://web.archive.org/web/20110320023746/https://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/protesters-arrested-following-disruption-committee-hearing

#15yrsago Four Color Fear: delightful horror comics from the pre-Code era https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/16/four-color-fear-delightful-horror-comics-from-the-pre-code-era/

#10yrsago Screw optimism, we need hope instead https://web.archive.org/web/20160318215827/https://littleatoms.com/society/cory-doctorows-manifesto-hope

#10yrsago Four sets of identical twins pull an epic NYC subway car time-machine prank https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Gq7Q3B9xU

#10yrsago Hack-attacks with stolen certs tell you the future of FBI vs Apple https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/to-bypass-code-signing-checks-malware-gang-steals-lots-of-certificates/

#10yrsago Captured: a book of prison inmate drawings of CEOs and other too-big-to-jail criminals https://thecapturedproject.com/

#10yrsago From dingo babysitter to net neutrality hero: Tom Wheeler’s legacy https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/how-a-former-lobbyist-became-the-broadband-industrys-worst-nightmare/

#10yrsago Poet/bureaucrat’s moving report of the 1921 demise of America’s most notorious wolf https://web.archive.org/web/20160327105045/https://www.fws.gov/news/Historic/NewsReleases/1921/19210103.pdf

#10yrsago Barnes & Noble wipes out Nook ebook, replaces it with off-brand “study guide” https://web.archive.org/web/20160316120232/https://www.teleread.com/barnes-noble-stole-first-e-book-ever-bought/

#10yrsago Scarfolk’s lost 1970s budget announcement lays bare the modern Tory strategy https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/2016/03/scarfolks-annual-budget-announcement.html

#10yrsago Junkbots from Madrid, recycled from iconic Spanish packaging https://web.archive.org/web/20160321103729/http://www.pitarquerobots.es/

#10yrsago First-ever Tor node in a Canadian library https://web.archive.org/web/20160319035440/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/canadian-librarians-must-be-ready-to-fight-the-feds-on-running-a-tor-node-western-library-freedom-project

#10yrsago How to do impromptu magic tricks without being a dork https://www.thejerx.com/blog/2016/3/14/project-slay-them

#10yrsago Sheriff says rape kits are irrelevant because most rape accusations are false https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2016/03/rape_kit_system_unnecessary_si.html

#10yrsago Redaction fail: U.S. government admits it went after Lavabit looking for Snowden https://www.wired.com/2016/03/government-error-just-revealed-snowden-target-lavabit-case/

#10yrsago McAfee shovelware emits tracking beacons https://web.archive.org/web/20160909030152/https://duo.com/blog/bring-your-own-dilemma-oem-laptops-and-windows-10-security

#10yrsago Cops in small MA town warn about roving rap-battle challengers https://www.kron4.com/news/cops-warn-residents-of-men-challenging-others-to-rap-battles/

#10yrsago Rather than banning “lobbying” by academics, UK government should encourage it https://web.archive.org/web/20160310100844/https://www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/ban-academics-talking-to-ministers-we-should-train-them-to-do-it

#10yrsago Russia’s military uses gigantic wooden comedy props for punishment https://semperannoying.tumblr.com/post/122390977886/semperannoying-russian-army-punishments-1

#10yrsago Study: people who believe in innate intelligence overestimate their own https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/03/think-intelligence-is-fixed-youre-more-likely-to-overestimate-your-own/

#5yrsago SNAPDRAGON https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/17/there-once-was-a-union-maid/#coming-out

#5yrsago How unions de-risk work https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/17/there-once-was-a-union-maid/#solidarity-forever

#5yrsago Meet the new music boss, same as the old music boss https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/16/wage-theft/#excessive-buyer-power

#5yrsago The People's Parity Project https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/16/wage-theft/#ppp

#5yrsago SMS security is flaming garbage https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/16/wage-theft/#override-service-registry

#1yrago David Enrich's "Murder the Truth" https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/17/actual-malice/#happy-slapping

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
  https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/

• Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
  https://conference.bioneers.org/

• 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

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

Recent appearances (permalink)

• 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

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1002 words today, 52553 total)

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Today's links

• William Gibson vs Margaret Thatcher: The Street Finds Its Own Alternatives For Things.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Prison for spamming; Dotcom layoffs; Ethernet action-figures; UK libel reform; "Poe's Detective"; God's customer service center; "Making Hay"; Alexa privacy Valdez.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

William Gibson vs Margaret Thatcher (permalink)

William Gibson is one of history's most quotable sf writers: "The future is here, it's not evenly distributed"; "Don't let the little fuckers generation-gap you"; "Cyberspace is everting"; and the immortal: "The street finds its own uses for things":

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson

"The street finds its own uses" is a surprisingly subtle and liberatory battle-cry. It stakes a claim by technology's users that is separate from the claims asserted by corporations that make technology (often under grotesque and cruel conditions) and market it (often for grotesque and cruel purposes).

"The street finds its own uses" is a statement about technopolitics. It acknowledges that yes, there are politics embedded in our technology, the blood in the machine, but these politics are neither simple, nor are they immutable. The fact that a technology was born in sin does not preclude it from being put to virtuous ends. A technology's politics are up for grabs.

In other words, it's the opposite of Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." It's an assertion that, in fact, the master's tools have all the driver-bits, hex-keys, and socket sets needed to completely dismantle the master's house, and, moreover, to build something better with the resulting pile of materials.

And of course the street finds its own uses for things. Things – technology – don't appear out of nowhere. Everything is in a lineage, made from the things that came before it, destined to be transformed by the things that come later. Things can't come into existence until other things already exist.

Take the helicopter. Lots of people have observed the action of a screw and the twirling of a maple key as it falls from a tree and thought, perhaps that could be made to fly. Da Vinci was drawing helicopters in the 15th century:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo%27s_aerial_screw

But Da Vinci couldn't build a helicopter. No one could, until they did. To make the first helicopter, you need to observe the action of the screw and the twirling of a maple key, and you need to have lightweight, strong alloys and powerful internal combustion engines.

Those other things had to be invented by other people first. Once they were, the next person who thought hard about screws and maple keys was bound to get a helicopter off the ground. That's why things tend to be invented simultaneously, by unrelated parties.

TV, radio and the telephone all have multiple inventors, because these people were the cohort that happened to alight upon the insights needed to build these technologies after the adjacent technologies had been made and disseminated.

If technopolitics were immutable – if the original sin of a technology could never be washed away – then everything is beyond redemption. Somewhere in the history of the lever, the pulley and the wheel are some absolute monsters. Your bicycle's bloodline includes some truly horrible ancestors. The computer is practically a crime against humanity:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/the-traitorous-eight-and-the-battle-of-germanium-valley/

A defining characteristic of purity culture is the belief that things are defined by their origins. An artist who was personally terrible must make terrible art – even if that art succeeds artistically, even if it moves, comforts and inspires you, it can't ever be separated from the politics of its maker. It is terrible because of its origins, not its merits. If you hate the sinner, you must also hate the sin.

"The street finds its own uses" counsels us to hate the sinner and love the sin. The indisputable fact that HP Lovecraft was a racist creep is not a reason to write off Cthulhoid mythos – it's a reason to claim and refashion them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/09/the-old-crow-is-getting-slow/#i-love-ny

The claim that sin is a kind of forever-chemical contaminant that can't ever be rinsed away is the ideology of Mr Gotcha:

We should improve society somewhat.

Yet you participate in society. Curious!

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

In its right-wing form, it is Margaret Thatcher's "There is no alternative":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/15/piketty-pilled/#tax-justice

Thatcher demanded that you accept all the injustices and oppressions of capitalism if you enjoyed its fruits. If capitalism put a roof over your head and groceries in your fridge, you can't complain about the people it hurts. There is no version of society that has the machines and practices that produced those things that does not also produce the injustice.

The technological version of this is the one that tech bosses peddle: If you enjoy talking to your friends on Facebook, you can't complain about Mark Zuckerberg listening in on the conversation. There is no alternative. Wanting to talk to your friends out of Zuck's earshot is like wanting water that's not wet. It's unreasonable.

But there's a left version of this, its doppelganger: the belief that a technology born in sin can never be redeemed. If you use an LLM running on your computer to find a typo, using an unmeasurably small amount of electricity in the process, you still sin – not because of anything that happens when you use that LLM, but because of LLMs' "structural properties," "the way they make it harder to learn and grow," "the way they make products worse," the "emissions, water use and e-waste":

https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/acting-ethical-in-an-imperfect-world/

The facts that finding punctuation errors in your own work using your own computer doesn't make it "harder to learn and grow," doesn't "make products worse," and doesn't add to "emissions, water use and e-waste" are irrelevant. The part that matters isn't the use of a technology, it's the origin.

The fact that this technology is steeped in indisputable sin means that every use of it is sinful. The street can find as many uses as it likes for things, but it won't matter, because there is no alternative.

When radical technologists scheme to liberate technology, they're not hoping to redeem the gadget, they're trying to liberate people. Information doesn't want to be free, because information doesn't and can't want anything. But people want to be free, and liberated access to information technology is a precondition for human liberation itself.

Promethean leftists don't reject the master's tools: we seize them. The fact that Unix was born of a convicted monopolist who turned the screws on users at every turn isn't a reason to abandon Unix – it demands that we reverse-engineer, open, and free Unix:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/#praxis

We don't do this out of moral consideration for Unix. Unix is inert, it warrants no moral consideration. But billions of users of free operating systems that are resistant to surveillance and control are worthy of moral consideration and we set them free by seizing the means of computation.

If a technology can do something to further human thriving, then we can love the sin, even as we hate the sinners in its lineage. We seize the means of computation, not because we care about computers, but because we care about people.

Artifacts do have politics, but those politics are not immutable. Those politics are ours to seize and refashion:

https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf

"The purpose of a system is what it does" (S. Beer). The important fact about a technology is what it does, not how it came about. Does a use of a technology harm someone? Does a use of a technology harm the environment?

Does a use of a technology help someone do something that improves their life?

Studying the origins of technology is good because it helps us avoid the systems and practices that hurt people. Knowing about the monsters in our technology's lineage helps us avoid repeating their sins. But there will always be sin in our technology's past, because our technology's past is the entire past, because technology is a lineage, not a gadget. If you reject things because of their origins – and not because of the things they do – then you'll end up rejecting everything (if you're honest), or twisting yourself into a series of dead-ends as you rationalize reasons that the exceptions you make out of necessity aren't really exceptions.

(Image: Dylan Parker, CC BY-SA 2.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Gone (Almost) Phishin’ https://ma.tt/2026/03/gone-almost-phishin/

• The Foilies 2026 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/foilies-2026

• Why Voters Should Support Senator Klobuchar’s ‘‘Antitrust Accountability and Transparency Act’’ https://www.thesling.org/why-voters-should-support-senator-klobuchars-antitrust-accountability-and-transparency-act/

• Bombshell Document Details Watergate-Style Corruption at the Antitrust Division https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-bombshell-document

• Sodium-ion batteries hit the Midwestern grid in first-of-its-kind pilot https://electrek.co/2026/03/11/sodium-ion-batteries-hit-the-midwestern-grid-in-first-of-its-kind-pilot (h/t Slashdot)

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Prison for spamming https://it.slashdot.org/story/01/03/15/1325251/spammers-face-jail-time

#25yrsago 1040 for laid-off dot com workers https://web.archive.org/web/20010603113932/http://www.girlchick.com/erin/Pics/DotCom1040.jpg

#25yrsago Sony ships a PalmOS device https://web.archive.org/web/20010331181042/http://www.sony.co.jp/sd/CLIE/index_pc.html

#25yrsago “You Own Your Own Metadata” https://www.feedmag.com/templates/default_a_id-1648

#20yrsago Action-figures made from Ethernet cable https://basik.ru/handmade/2066/

#15yrsago Poor countries have more piracy because media costs too much — report https://web.archive.org/web/20110310042425/http://piracy.ssrc.org/the-report/

#15yrsago Bahrain’s royals declare martial law https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/15/bahrain-martial-law-protesters-troops

#15yrsago Libel reform in the UK: telling the truth won’t be illegal any longer? https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/15/libel-law-reforms

#15yrsago My weird femur printed in stainless steel https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/tags/femur

#15yrsago War on the PC and the network: copyright was just the start https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/15/computers-incorporate-spyware-dangers

#15yrsago Poe’s Detective: audio editions of Poe’s groundbreaking detective stories https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/15/poes-detective-audio-editions-of-poes-groundbreaking-detective-stories/

#15yrsago New York slashes hospital spending, but can’t touch multimillion-dollar CEO paychecks https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/nyregion/16about.html?_r=1&hp

#10yrsago Leaked memo: Donald Trump volunteers banned from critizing him, for life https://web.archive.org/web/20160315161328/http://www.dailydot.com/politics/donald-trump-volunteer-contract-nda-non-disparagement-clause/

#10yrsago Open letter from virtually every leading UK law light: Snooper’s Charter not fit for purpose https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/mar/14/investigatory-powers-bill-not-up-to-the-task

#10yrsago Life inside God’s customer service prayer call-centre https://web.archive.org/web/20160317153851/http://www.tor.com/2016/03/15/your-orisons-may-be-recorded/

#10yrsago The post-Snowden digital divide: the ability to understand and use privacy tools https://journal.radicallibrarianship.org/index.php/journal/article/view/12/27

#10yrsago Some future for you: the radical rise of hope in the UK https://thebaffler.com/salvos/despair-fatigue-david-graeber

#10yrsago America’s universities: Hedge funds saddled with inconvenient educational institutions https://web.archive.org/web/20160309093147/https://www.thenation.com/article/universities-are-becoming-billion-dollar-hedge-funds-with-schools-attached/

#10yrsago Office chairs made out of old Vespa scooters https://belybel.com/

#5yrsago STREAMLINER https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/15/free-markets/#streamliner

#5yrsago Free markets https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/15/free-markets/#rent-seeking

#5yrsago Making Hay https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/15/free-markets/#making-hay

#1yrago Amazon annihilates Alexa privacy settings, turns on continuous, nonconsensual audio uploading https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/15/altering-the-deal/#telescreen

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
  https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/

• Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
  https://conference.bioneers.org/

• 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

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

Recent appearances (permalink)

• 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

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1018 words today, 50532 total)

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Today's links

• Tools vs uses: Don't fall for it.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Amazon coders x Amazon warehouse workers; Bruces's ETECH speech; Steven King x unions; Tax-free S&P 500 companies; Make Pop Rocks; "Ain't Misbehavin'"; "Car Hacker's Handbook"; Pirates in Iceland.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Tools vs uses (permalink)

When you think of a legal loophole, you probably imagine a drafting error (or perhaps a sneaky insertion) that creates an advantage for a specific person or group of people.

For example: Trump's 2017 "Big Beautiful Tax Cut" bill passed after its 479 pages were covered in hand-scrawled amendments and additions, which were not read or reviewed by lawmakers prior to voting:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/12/02/handwriting-wall-and-page-senate-passes-tax-bill/915957001/

But one change that was widely known was Senator Ron Johnson's last-minute amendment to create deductions for "pass through entities." Johnson announced that he would block the bill if his amendment didn't go through. That amendment made three of Johnson's constituents at least half a billion dollars: Uline owners Dick and Liz Uihlein and roofing tycoon Diane Hendricks (who collectively donated $20m to Johnson's campaign).

All told, the Trump tax bill generated windfalls worth more than $1b for just 82 households, all of whom donated lavishly to the lawmakers who inserted incredibly specific amendments that benefited them, personally:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#shitty-man-of-history-theory

Here's another example: in 1999, a Congressional staffer named Mitch Glazier secured a last-minute, one-line amendment to the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act that took away musicians' ability to claim back the rights to their sound recordings after 35 years through a process called "Termination of Transfer":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Glazier#Work_for_hire

This amendment whacked one group of musicians particularly hard: the Black "heritage acts" who had been coerced into signing unbelievably shitty contracts in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, who were increasingly using termination to get those rights back. For these beloved musicians, termination meant the difference between going hungry and buying a couple extra bags of groceries every month (if this sounds familiar, it might be because you read about it in my 2024 novel The Bezzle):

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865892/thebezzle/

Glazier's treachery was so outrageous that Congress actually convened a special session to repeal his amendment, and Glazier slunk out of Congress forever…so that he could take a job at $1.3m/year as CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, where he squats to this day, insisting that he is fighting for musicians' rights:

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131669037

These are the traditional loopholes – obscure codicils in legislation that allow their beneficiaries to enrich themselves at others' expense. But there's another, equally pernicious kind of loophole that gets far less attention: a loophole that neutralizes a beneficial part of a law, taking away a right that the law seems to confer.

I have spent most of my adult life fighting against one of these rights-confiscating reverse loopholes: the "exemptions" clause to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA 1201), which might just be the most dangerous technology law on the books:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/14/sole-and-despotic/#world-turned-upside-down

Under DMCA 1201, it's a felony – punishable by a 5-year sentence and a $500k fine – to bypass an "access control" for a copyrighted work. This means that altering the software (that is, "a copyrighted work") in a device you own – a car, a tractor, a hearing aid, a smart speaker, a printer, a phone, a console, etc, etc – is a crime, even if your alteration does not break any other laws.

For example: there is no law requiring you to buy your printer ink from the company that sold you your printer. However, the cartel of companies that control the inkjet market all use software that is designed to block generic ink. You could turn this code off, but that would be a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, which means that, in practice, it's a felony to put generic ink in your printer. Jay Freeman calls it "felony contempt of business model."

When the DMCA was being debated, lawmakers faced fierce criticism over this clause, so they inserted a "safety valve" into the law that was supposed to prevent the kind of abuse that allows printer companies to force you to pay $10,000/gallon for ink.

That escape valve is called the "triennial exemptions process." Every three years, the US Copyright Office invites submissions for "exemptions" to DMCA 1201. They've granted lots of these – the right to circumvent access controls on video games for preservation purposes, on DVDs for film criticism, and on various kinds of electronics for repair.

This process may strike you as a little cumbersome – do you really have to wait up to three years to pay a lawyer to beg the government for the right to make a legal use of your own property? But this is a reverse loophole, and that means that this isn't merely cumbersome, it's farcical.

You see, the exemptions that the Copyright Office grants through the triennial process aren't tools exemptions, they're use exemptions. That means that when the Copyright Office grants an exemption giving you the right to jailbreak your car so that you can make sense of the manufacturer's diagnostic codes and turn your "check engine" light into a specific, actionable diagnosis.

You have that right. Your mechanic does not have that right. You have the right to jailbreak your car and fix it.

But it's worse than that: your right to jailbreak your car does not mean that anyone else gets the right to make a tool that allows you to make that use. You have a use exemption, but there is no tool exemption. That means that you, personally, must reverse-engineer the firmware in your car, identify a fault in the code, and leverage that to personally write software to turn the diagnostic codes into diagnoses. You are not allowed to talk to anyone else about this. You're not allowed to publish your findings. You're certainly not allowed to share the tool you create with anyone else.

This is true of all the exemptions the Copyright Office grants. If you're a film professor who's been given the right to jailbreak DVDs, you are expected to write your own DVD decrypting software, without help from anyone else, and if you manage it, you can't tell anyone else how you did it. If you're an iPhone owner who's been granted the right to jailbreak your phone and install a different app store, then you, personally, must identify a vulnerability in iOS and develop it into an exploit that you are only allowed to use on your own devices. Every other iPhone owner has to do the same thing.

DMCA 1201 has been copy-pasted into law-books all over the world. In Europe, it came in through Article 6 of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive (EUCD6). When Norway implemented this law, lawmakers included a bunch of use exemptions in a bid to placate the fierce opposition they faced. One of these exemptions allowed blind people to jailbreak ebooks so they could be used with Braille printers, screen readers, and other assistive devices.

In 2003, I traveled to Oslo to debate the minister responsible for the bill. He proudly trumpeted this exemption, so I started asking him questions about it:

How do blind people get the software that jailbreaks their ebooks so they can make use of this exemption? Am I allowed to give them that tool?

No, the minister said, you're not allowed to do that, that would be a crime.

Is the Norwegian government allowed to give them that tool? No. How about a blind rights advocacy group? No, not them either. A university computer science department? Nope. A commercial vendor? Certainly not.

No, the minister explained, under his law, a blind person would be expected to personally reverse-engineer a program like Adobe E-Reader, in hopes of discovering a defect that they could exploit by writing a program to extract the ebook text.

Oh, I said. But if a blind person did manage to do this, could they supply that tool to other blind people?

Well, no, the minister said. Each and every blind person must personally – without any help from anyone else – figure out how to reverse-engineer the ebook program, and then individually author their own alternative reader program that worked with the text of their ebooks.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

I don't know for sure how many blind Norwegians have managed to take advantage of this use exemptions, but I'm pretty certain it's zero.

Canada's anticircumvention law was passed in 2012 through Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act. Like EUCD6, C-11 has all the defects of America's anticircumvention law. In 2024, Parliament passed a national Right to Repair law (Bill C-244) and a national Interoperability law (Bill C-294). Both of them grant use exemptions to Bill C-11 – they allow Canadians to jailbreak their devices to fix them or extend their functionality with interoperable code and hardware. But neither bill has a tools exemption, which means that they are useless, since they only grant Canadians the individual, personal right to jailbreak, but they don't allow Canadian businesses or tinkerers or user groups to make the tools that Canadians need to exercise the use rights that Parliament so generously granted:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

Reverse loopholes are incredibly wicked. They exist solely to muddy the waters, to trick people into thinking that problems have been solved while those problems continue to fester. Hardly a week goes without my hearing from someone who's happened upon the use exemptions built into anticircumvention laws around the world and have come to the reasonable conclusion that if a law gives you the right to do something, it must also give other people the right to help you do it.

Lawmakers who pass these reverse loopholes know what they're doing. They're chaffing the policy airspace, ramming through unpopular legislation under cover of a blizzard of misleading legalese.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Being a Luddite Is Cool and All, but Have You Seen the Hilarious Tapestries These New Looms Are Making? https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/being-a-luddite-is-cool-and-all-but-have-you-seen-the-hilarious-tapestries-these-new-looms-are-making

• They Didn’t Want to Have C-Sections. A Judge Would Decide How They Gave Birth. https://www.propublica.org/article/florida-court-ordered-c-sections?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-newsletter

• F-Droid says Google’s Android developer verification plan is an ‘existential’ threat to alternative app stores https://thenewstack.io/f-droid-says-googles-android-developer-verification-plan-is-an-existential-threat-to-alternative-app-stores/

• Meta to Shut Down Instagram End-to-End Encrypted Chat Support Starting May 2026 https://thehackernews.com/2026/03/meta-to-shut-down-instagram-end-to-end.html

• The Removed DOGE Deposition Videos Have Already Been Backed Up Across the Internet https://www.404media.co/the-removed-doge-deposition-videos-have-already-been-backed-up-across-the-internet/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Full text of Bruce Sterling’s ETECH speech from last week https://web.archive.org/web/20060406025248/http://www.viridiandesign.org/2006/03/viridian-note-00459-emerging.html

#20yrsago HOWTO build a glowing throne out of 4k AOL CDs https://web.archive.org/web/20060408174929/https://stupidco.com/aol_throne_intro.html

#20yrsago How Sweden’s “Pirate Bay” site resists the MPAA https://web.archive.org/web/20060423222220/https://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70358-0.html

#15yrsago Stephen King sticks up for unions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1vW1zPmnKQ

#15yrsago Largest Wisconsin protests ever: 85,000+ people in Madison’s streets https://web.archive.org/web/20110319152841/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/12/wisconsin-protesters-refu_n_834927.html

#15yrsago Why Borders failed https://www.quora.com/Borders-Books/Why-is-Barnes-Noble-performing-well-as-a-business-while-Borders-has-filed-for-bankruptcy/answer/Mark-Evans-9

#15yrsago HOWTO make Pop Rocks https://www.instructables.com/Pop-Rocks/

#15yrsago Ain’t Misbehavin’: subject index to democratic parenting https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/14/aint-misbehavin-subject-index-to-democratic-parenting/

#10yrsago 50 reasons the TPP is terrible beyond belief https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2016/03/the-trouble-with-the-tpp-day-50-the-case-against-ratifying-the-trans-pacific-partnership/

#10yrsago More high-profile resignations at Breitbart, after abused reporter thrown under Trump’s bus https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/michelle-fields-ben-shapiro-resign-from-breitbart#.vlbZ4YxLe

#10yrsago If Iceland held its elections today, the Pirate Party would win https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-to-dominate-icelan-parliament-survey-finds-160314/

#10yrsago The Car Hacker’s Handbook: a Guide for Penetration Testers https://memex.craphound.com/2016/03/14/the-car-hackers-handbook-a-guide-for-penetration-testers/

#10yrsago USA uses TPP-like trade-court to kill massive Indian solar project https://web.archive.org/web/20160314085012/http://theantimedia.org/preview-of-the-tpp-america-just-blocked-a-massive-solar-project-in-india/

#10yrsago These 27 profitable S&P 500 companies paid no tax last year https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/03/07/27-giant-profitable-companies-paid-no-taxes/81399094/

#10yrsago Family: police high-fived after tasering our handcuffed relative to death https://web.archive.org/web/20160312165903/https://www.ajc.com/news/news/crime-law/family-of-victim-in-coweta-county-taser-death-seek/nqhcm/

#1yrago The future of Amazon coders is the present of Amazon warehouse workers https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/13/electronic-whipping/#youre-next

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
  https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/

• Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
  https://conference.bioneers.org/

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

• London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU)
  https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

Recent appearances (permalink)

• 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

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America ( words today, total)

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/
https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Today's links

• Corrupt anticorruption: Notes from a target-rich environment.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Tentacle sphere; EU Venn; Obama v cryptography; Trump v protesters; Amazon coders x Amazon warehouse workers; Bruces's ETECH speech; Steven King x unions; Tax-free S&P 500 companies.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Corrupt anticorruption (permalink)

An amazing thing happened this week: a whopping bipartisan Senate majority (89:10!) passed Elizabeth Warren's housing bill, which severely limits private equity companies' ability to buy single-family homes to turn into rental properties:

https://prospect.org/2026/03/13/elizabeth-warrens-amazingly-progressive-housing-bill/

It's a big deal. Since the Great Financial Crisis, US home ownership has fallen sharply, while corporate landlordism has skyrocketed. Rents are through the roof, and private equity bosses boast about gouging their tenants, with the CEO of Blackstone's Invitation Homes ordering the lickspittles to "juice this hog" with endless junk fees and calculated negligence:

https://www.aol.com/juice-hog-real-estate-companies-080301813.html

The corporate takeover of the housing market didn't fall out of the sky. It was a policy of the Obama administration, which directed the mass selloff of homes (foreclosed on by bailed-out banks) to corporate buyers:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-senate-votes-to-block-private

Sunsetting the American dream of home-ownership is the final straw. After all, once America killed off labor rights, the only path to wealth accumulation left for working people was assuming crippling debt to buy a house in hopes that its value would go up forever:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

The affordability crisis isn't solely a matter of high shelter costs (we see you, grocery greedflation, health care and education!), but housing costs are totally out of control. Mamdani's earth-shaking mayoral campaign centered affordability, with housing taking center stage:

https://gothamist.com/news/mamdani-wants-to-take-buildings-from-bad-nyc-landlords-this-bill-could-make-it-happen

Trump – whose most important skill is his ability to sense vibe-shifts in his base – noticed, and started to make mouth sounds about tackling the affordability crisis, specifically blaming private equity landlords for high rents:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-stops-wall-street-from-competing-with-main-street-homebuyers/

But this isn't just a story about a stopped clock being right every now and again. It's a story about boss-politics anti-corruption, in which anti-corruption is pursued to corrupt ends.

From 2012-2015, Xi Jinping celebrated his second term as the leader of China with a mass purge undertaken in the name of anti-corruption. Officials from every level of Chinese politics were fired, and many were imprisoned. This allowed Xi to consolidate his control over the CCP, which culminated in a rule-change that eliminated term-limits, paving the way for Xi to continue to rule China for so long as he breathes and wills to power.

Xi's purge exclusively targeted officials in his rivals' power-base, kneecapping anyone who might have blocked his power-grab. But just because Xi targeted his rivals' princelings and foot-soldiers, it doesn't mean that Xi was targeting the innocent. A 2018 paper by an economist (Peter Lorentzen, USF) and a political scientist (Xi Lu, NUS) concluded that Xi's purge really did target corrupt officials:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181222163946/https://peterlorentzen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Lorentzen-Lu-Crackdown-Nov-2018-Posted-Version.pdf

The authors reached this conclusion by referencing the data published in the resulting corruption trials, which showed that these officials accepted and offered bribes and feathered their allies' nests at public expense.

In other words, Xi didn't cheat by framing innocent officials for crimes they didn't commit. The way Xi cheated was by exclusively targeting his rivals' allies. Lorentzen and Lu's paper make it clear that Xi could easily have prosecuted many corrupt officials in his own power base, but he left them unmolested.

This is corrupt anti-corruption. In an environment in which everyone in power is crooked, you can exclusively bring legitimate prosecutions, and still be doing corruption. You just need to confine your prosecutions to your political enemies, whether or not they are more guilty than your allies (think here of the GOP dragging the Clintons into Epstein depositions).

14 years later, Xi's anti-corruption purges continue apace, with 100 empty seats at this year's National People's Congress, whose former occupants are freshly imprisoned or awaiting trial:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78xxyyqwe7o

I don't know the details of all 100 prosecutions, but China absolutely has a corruption problem that goes all the way to the upper echelon of the state. I find it easy to believe that the officials Xi has targeted are guilty – and I also wouldn't be surprised to hear that they are all supporters of Xi's internal rivals for control of the CCP.

As the Epstein files demonstrate, anyone hoping to conduct a purge of America's elites could easily do so without having to frame anyone for crimes they didn't commit (remember, Epstein didn't just commit sex crimes – he was also a flagrant financial criminal and he implicated his network in those crimes).

It's not just Epstein. As America's capital classes indulge their incestuous longings with an endless orgy of mergers, it's corporate Habsburg jaws as far as the eye can see. These mergers are all as illegal as hell, but if you fire a mouthy comedian, you can make serious bank:

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/7/18/cbs-cancels-colberts-late-show-amid-pending-paramount-skydance-merger

And if you pay the right MAGA chud podcaster a million bucks, he'll grease your $14b merger through the DoJ:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/13/khanservatives/#kid-rock-eats-shit

And once these crooks merge to monopoly, they embark on programs of lawlessness that would shame Al Capone, but again, with the right podcaster on your side, you can keep on "robbing them blind, baby!"

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-wild-day-as-trump-doj-settles-with

The fact that these companies are all guilty is a foundational aspect of Trumpism. Boss-politics antitrust – and anti-corruption – doesn't need to manufacture evidence or pretexts to attack Trump's political rivals:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/13/khanservatives/#kid-rock-eats-shit

When everyone is guilty, you have a target-rich environment for extorting bribes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/tiktok-investors-set-to-pay-10-billion-fee-to-trump-administration.html

Just because the anti-corruption has legit targets, it doesn't follow that the whole thing isn't corrupt.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• The 49MB Web Page https://thatshubham.com/blog/news-audit

• The Big Idea: Cindy Cohn https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/12/the-big-idea-cindy-cohn/

• Good Time Fun Wheel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSkeBUcKP4A

• The Washington Post Is Using Reader Data to Set Subscription Prices. How Does That Work? https://washingtonian.com/2026/03/12/the-washington-post-is-using-reader-data-to-set-subscription-prices-how-does-that-work/

• EFF Launches New Fight to Free the Law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/eff-launches-new-fight-free-law

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Full text of Bruce Sterling’s ETECH speech from last week https://web.archive.org/web/20060406025248/http://www.viridiandesign.org/2006/03/viridian-note-00459-emerging.html

#20yrsago HOWTO build a glowing throne out of 4k AOL CDs https://web.archive.org/web/20060408174929/https://stupidco.com/aol_throne_intro.html

#20yrsago How Sweden’s “Pirate Bay” site resists the MPAA https://web.archive.org/web/20060423222220/https://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70358-0.html

#15yrsago Stephen King sticks up for unions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1vW1zPmnKQ

#15yrsago Largest Wisconsin protests ever: 85,000+ people in Madison’s streets https://web.archive.org/web/20110319152841/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/12/wisconsin-protesters-refu_n_834927.html

#15yrsago Sphere of tentacles https://web.archive.org/web/20110315170007/http://www.niradar.com/portfolio.asp?portfolio_id=325&off_set=8&selected_id=58734&pointer=16

#15yrsago Venn diagram illustrates all the different European unions, councils, zones and suchlike https://web.archive.org/web/20110313034335/http://bigthink.com/ideas/31556

#10yrsago Obama: cryptographers who don’t believe in magic ponies are “fetishists,” “absolutists” https://web.archive.org/web/20160312000011/https://theintercept.com/2016/03/11/obama-wants-nonexistent-middle-ground-on-encryption-warns-against-fetishizing-our-phones/

#10yrsago Donald Trump hires plainclothes security to investigate and interdict protesters https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/donald-trump-rally-protester-crack-down-220407?lo=ap_b1

#1yrago Firing the refs doesn't end the game https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/12/epistemological-void/#do-your-own-research

#1yrago The future of Amazon coders is the present of Amazon warehouse workers https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/13/electronic-whipping/#youre-next

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
  https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/

• Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
  https://conference.bioneers.org/

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

• London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU)
  https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

Recent appearances (permalink)

• 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

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1035 words today, 49526 total)

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/
https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Today's links

• Three more AI psychoses: Everybody calm down.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: "Jules, Penny and the Rooster"; Superinjunction; Harper Lee's kids v cheap paperbacks; 3D printed cat battle-armor; Black sf.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Three more AI psychoses (permalink)

"AI psychosis" is one of those terms that is incredibly useful and also almost certainly going to be deprecated in smart circles in short order because it is: a) useful; b) easily colloquialized to describe related phenomena; and c) adjacent to medical issues, and there's a group of people who feel very strongly any metaphor that implicates human health is intrinsically stigmatizing and must be replaced with an awkward, lengthy phrase that no one can remember and only insiders understand.

So while we still can, let us revel in this useful term to talk about some very real pathologies in our world.

Formally, "AI psychosis" describes people who have delusions that are possibly induced, and definitely reinforced and magnified, by a chatbot. AI psychosis is clearly alarming for people whose loved ones fall prey to it, and it has been the subject of much press and popular attention, especially in the extreme cases where it has resulted in injury or death.

It's possible for AI psychosis to be both a new and alarming phenomenon and also to be on a continuum with existing phenomena. Paranoid delusions aren't new, of course. Take "Morgellons Disease," a psychosomatic belief that you have wires growing in your body, which causes sufferers to pick at their skin to the point of creating suppurating wounds. Morgellons emerged in the 2000s, but the name refers to a 17th-century case-report of a patient who suffered from a similar delusion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Letter_to_a_Friend

Morgellons is both a 400 year old phenomenon and an internet pathology. How can that be? Because the internet makes it easier for people with sparsely distributed traits to locate one another, which is why the internet era is characterized by the coherence of people with formerly fringe characteristics into organized blocs, for better (gender minorities, #MeToo) and worse (Nazis).

Morgellons is rare, but if you suffer from it, it's easy for you to locate virtually every other person in the world with the same delusion and for all of you to reinforce and egg on your delusional beliefs.

Morgellons isn't the only delusion that the internet reinforces, of course. "Gang stalking delusion" is a belief in a shadowy gang of sadistic tormentors who sneak hidden messages into song lyrics and public signage and innuendo in overheard snatches of other people's conversations. It is an incredibly damaging delusion that ruins people's lives.

Gang stalking delusion isn't new, either – as with Morgellons, there are historical accounts of it going back centuries. But the internet supercharged gang stalking delusion by making it easy for GSD sufferers to find one another and reinforce one another's beliefs, helping each other spin elaborate explanations for why the relatives, therapists, and friends who try to help them are actually in on the conspiracy. The result is that GSD sufferers end up ever more isolated from people who are trying mightily to save them, and more connected to people who drive them to self-harm.

Enter chatbots. Ready access to eager-to-please LLMs at every hour of the day or night means that you don't even have to find a forum full of people with the same delusion as you, nor do you have to wait for a reply to your anguished message. The LLM is always there, ready to fire back a "yes-and" improv-style response that drives you deeper and deeper into delusion:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/17/automating-gang-stalking-delusion/

It's possible that there are delusions that are even more rare than GSD or Morgellons that AI is surfacing. Imagine if you were prone to fleeting delusional beliefs (and whomst amongst us hasn't experienced the bedrock certainty that we put something down right here, only to find it somewhere else and not have any idea how that happened?). Under normal circumstances, these cognitive misfires might be fleeting moments of discomfort, quickly forgotten. But if you are already habituated to asking a chatbot to explain things you don't understand, it might well yes-and you into an internally consistent, entirely wrong belief – that is, a delusion.

Think of how often you noticed "42" after reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or how many times "6-7" crops up once you've experienced a baseline of exposure to adolescents. Now imagine that an obsequious tale-spinner was sitting at your elbow, helpfully noting these coincidences and fitting them into a folie-a-deux mystery play that projected a grand, paranoid narrative onto the world. Every bit of confirming evidence is lovingly cataloged, all disconfirming evidence is discounted or ignored. It's fully automated luxury QAnon – a self-baking conspiracy that harnesses an AI in service to driving you deeper and deeper into madness:

That's the original "AI psychosis" that the term was coined to describe. As Sam Cole notes in her excellent "How to Talk to Someone Experiencing 'AI Psychosis,'" mental health practitioners are not entirely comfortable with the "psychosis" label:

https://www.404media.co/ai-psychosis-help-gemini-chatgpt-claude-chatbot-delusions/

"Psychosis" here is best understood as an analogy, not a diagnosis, and, as already noted, there is a large cohort of very persistent people who make it their business to eradicate analogies that make reference to medical or health-related phenomena. But these analogies are very hard to kill, because they do useful work in connecting unfamiliar, novel phenomena with things we already understand.

It's true that these analogies can be stigmatizing, but they needn't be. As someone with an autoimmune disorder, I am not bothered by people who would also describe ICE as an autoimmune disorder in which antibodies attack the host, threatening its very life. I am capable of understanding "autoimmune disorder" as referring to both a literal, medical phenomenon; and a figurative, political one. I have never found myself confusing one for the other.

"AI psychosis" is one of those very useful analogies, and you can tell, because "AI psychosis" has found even more metaphorical uses, describing other bad beliefs about AI. Today, I want to talk about three of these AI psychoses, and how they relate to one another: the investor AI delusion, the boss AI delusion, and the critic AI delusion.

Let's start with the investors' delusion. AI started as an investment project from the usual suspects: venture capitalists, private wealth funds, and tech monopolists with large cash reserves and ready access to loans during the cheap credit bubble. These entities are accustomed to making large, long-shot bets, and they were extremely motivated to find new markets to grow into and take over.

Growing companies need to keep growing, but not because they have "the ideology of a tumor." Growing companies' imperative to keep growing isn't ideological at all – it's material. Growth companies' stock trade at a high multiple of their "price to earnings ratio" (PE ratio), which means that they can use their stock like money when buying other companies and hiring key employees.

But once those companies' growth slows down, investors revalue those shares at a much lower PE multiplier, which makes individual executives at the company (who are primarily paid in stock) personally much poorer, prompting their departure, while simultaneously kneecapping the company's ability to grow through acquisition and hiring, because a company with a falling share price has to buy things with cash, not stock. Companies can make more of their own stock on demand, simply by typing zeroes into a spreadsheet – but they can only get cash by convincing a customer, creditor or investor to part with some of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/06/privacy-last/#exceptionally-american

Tech companies have absurdly large market shares – think of Google's 90% search dominance – and so they've spent 15+ years coming up with increasingly absurd gambits to convince investors that they will continue to grow by capturing other markets. At first, these companies claimed that they were on the verge of eating one another's lunches (Google would destroy Facebook with G+; Facebook would do the same to Youtube with the "pivot to video").

This has a real advantage in that one need not speculate about the potential value of Facebook's market – you only have to look at Facebook's quarterly reports. But the downside is that Facebook has its own ideas about whether Google is going to absorb its market, and they are prone to forcefully make the case that this won't happen.

After a few tumultuous years, tech giants switched to promoting growth via speculative new markets – metaverse, web3, crypto, blockchain, etc. Speculative new markets are speculative, and the weakness of that is that no one can say how big those markets might be. But that's also the strength of those markets, because if no one can say how big those markets might be, then who's to say that they won't be very big indeed?

There's a different advantage to confining your concerns to imaginary things: imaginary things don't exist, so they don't contest your public statements about them, nor do they make demands on you. Think of how the right concerns itself with imaginary children (unborn babies, children in Wayfair furniture; children in nonexistent pizza parlor basements, children undergoing gender confirmation surgery). These are very convenient children to advocate for, since, unlike real children (hungry children, children killed in the Gaza genocide, children whose parents have been kidnapped by ICE, children whom Matt Goetz and Donald Trump trafficked for sex, children in cages at the US border, trans kids driven to self-harm and suicide after being denied care), nonexistent children don't want anything from you and they never make public pronouncements about whether you have their best interests at heart.

But as the AI project has required larger and larger sums to keep the wheels spinning, the usual suspects have started to run out of money, and now AI hustlers are increasingly looking to tap public markets for capital. They want you to invest your pension savings in their growth narrative machine, and they're relying on the fact that you don't understand the technology to trick you into handing over your money.

There's a name for this: it's called the "Byzantine premium" – that's the premium that an investment opportunity attracts by being so complicated and weird that investors don't understand it, making them easy to trick:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/13/the-byzantine-premium/

AI is a terrible economic phenomenon. It has lost more money than any other project in human history – $600-700b and counting, with trillions more demanded by the likes of OpenAI's Sam Altman. AI's core assets – data centers and GPUs – last 2-3 years, though AI bosses insist on depreciating them over five years, which is unequivocal accounting fraud, a way to obscure the losses the companies are incurring. But it doesn't actually matter whether the assets need to be replaced every two years, every three years, or every five years, because all the AI companies combined are claiming no more than $60b/year in revenue (that number is grossly inflated). You can't reach the $700b break-even point at $60b/year in two years, three years, or five years.

Now, some exceptionally valuable technologies have attained profitability after an extraordinarily long period in which they lost money, like the web itself. But these turnaround stories all share a common trait: they had good "unit economics." Every new web user reduced the amount of money the web industry was losing. Every time a user logged onto the web, they made the industry more profitable. Every generation of web technology was more profitable than the last.

Contrast this with AI: every user – paid or unpaid – that an AI company signs up costs them money. Every time that user logs into a chatbot or enters a prompt, the company loses more money. The more a user uses an AI product, the more money that product loses. And each generation of AI tech loses more money than the generation that preceded it.

To make AI look like a good investment, AI bosses and their pitchmen have to come up with a story that somehow addresses this phenomenon. Part of that story relies on the Byzantine premium: "Sure, you don't understand AI, but why would all these smart people commit hundreds of billions of dollars to AI if they weren't confident that they would make a lot of money from it?" In other words, "A pile of shit this big must have a pony underneath it somewhere!"

This is a great narrative trick, because it turns losing money into a virtue. If you've convinced a mark that the upside of the project is a multiple of the capital committed to it, then the more money you're losing, the better the investment seems.

So this is the first AI psychosis: the idea that we should bet the world's economy on these highly combustible GPUs and data centers with terrible unit economics and no path to break-even, much less profitability.

Investors' AI psychosis is cross-fertilized by our second form of AI psychosis, which is the bosses' AI psychosis: bosses' bottomless passion for firing workers and replacing them with automation.

Bosses are easy marks for anything that lets them fire workers. After all, the ideal firm is one that charges infinity for its outputs (hence the market's passion for monopolies) and pays nothing for its inputs (e.g. "academic publishing").

This means that the fact that a chatbot can't do your job isn't nearly as important as the fact that an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a chatbot that can't do your job. Bosses keep replacing humans with defective chatbots, with catastrophic consequences, like Amazon's cloud service crashing:

https://www.techradar.com/pro/recent-aws-outages-blamed-on-ai-tools-at-least-two-incidents-took-down-amazon-services

Bosses are haunted by the ego-shattering knowledge that they aren't in the driver's seat: if the boss doesn't show up for work, everything continues to operate just fine. If the workers all stay home, the business grinds to a halt. In their secret hearts, bosses know that they're not in the driver's seat – they're in the back seat, playing with a Fisher Price steering wheel. AI dangles the possibility of wiring that toy steering wheel directly into the drive-train, so that the company's products go directly from the boss's imagination to the public without the boss having to ask people who know how to do things to execute their cockamamie schemes:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-wheel/#billionaire-solipsism

This is a powerfully erotic proposition for bosses, the realization of the libidinal fantasy in which sky-high CEO salaries can be justified by the fact that everything that happens in the company is truly, directly attributable to the boss. Like the delusional person who can be led deeper and deeper into a fantasy world by a chatbot, a boss's delusion that they are worth thousands of times more than their workers makes them easy prey for a chatbot salesman that pushes them deeper and deeper into that delusion, until they bet the whole company on it.

Now we come to the third and final novel AI psychosis, the critics' psychosis, that AI is an abnormally terrible technology. This is a species of "criti-hype," which is when critics repeat the hyped-up claims of the companies they're targeting, but as criticism (think of all the people who believed and uncritically amplified the ad-tech industry's self-serving claims of being able to control our minds by "hacking our dopamine loops"):

https://peoples-things.ghost.io/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype/

AI is a normal technology. The people who made it, and the circumstances under which it was made, are normal. Its uses and abuses are normal. That doesn't make it good, but it does make it unexceptional:

https://www.normaltech.ai/p/a-guide-to-understanding-ai-as-normal

The exceptional part of AI isn't the technology, it's the bubble. There's nothing about AI per se that makes it exceptionally prone to devouring our natural resources, or endangering our jobs, or abetting war crimes. That's all because of the bubble, and the bubble relies on the idea that AI is exceptional, not normal. Repeating and amplifying claims about AI's exceptionalism helps the AI companies, because they rely on exceptionalism to keep the capital flowing and the bubble inflating.

AI is a normal technology. It's normal for a technology to be invented by unlikable and immoral people and institutions. Not every technology is invented by a shitty person, but shitty people and institutions are well represented (and possibly disproportionately represented) in the history of technology. Charles Babbage invented the idea of general purpose computers as a way of improving labor control on slave plantations:

https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/

Ada Lovelace wasn't interested in making slavery more efficient, but neither was she driven by pure scientific inquiry. She invented programming to help her bet on the horses (it didn't work):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

The silicon transistor was co-invented by William Shockley, one of history's great pieces of shit, a eugenicist who was so committed to exterminating all non-white people that he never managed to ship a commercial product:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/the-traitorous-eight-and-the-battle-of-germanium-valley/

IBM built the tabulators for Auschwitz. HP were the Pentagon's go-to contractors for any tech project that was so dirty no one else would touch it. We only got Unix because Bell Labs committed so many antitrust violations that they weren't allowed to productize it themselves.

It's not exceptional for AI companies to have terrible, piece-of-shit founders. It's not exceptional for these companies to participate in war crimes. It's not exceptional for these founders to want to pauperize workers. It's not exceptional for these companies to lie about their products, bankrupt naive investors through stock swindles, and pitch themselves to investors as a way for capital to win the class war.

None of this means that AI companies are good, it just means that they are not exceptional. And because they aren't exceptional, the same dynamics that govern other technologies apply to AI companies' products. Their utility is a function of what they do, not who made them or how they were sold. The utility of AI products is based on whether people find ways to use them that make them happy – not whether the people who made those technologies are good people, or whether the funding for the technology was fraudulent, or whether other people use the technology to harm others.

Automation comes in two flavors: there's automation that produces things more quickly (and hence more cheaply), and there's automation that makes better things. Generally, capital prefers to use automation to increase the pace at which things are made, while workers prefer to use automation to improve the quality of the things they make.

Think of a hobbyist who pines for an automated soldering machine. That hobbyist longs to make board-level repairs and modifications that require precision that humans struggle to match. The hobbyist is a centaur, using a machine to help achieve human goals.

Now think of a factory owner who invests in an assembly line of the same machines: that boss wants to fire a bunch of workers and make the survivors of the purge take up the slack. The boss want to achieve corporate goals, to "sweat the assets," making maximum use of the soldering machines. The pace at which the line runs is set to be the maximum that the workers can match. The workers on the line are "reverse centaurs" – humans who are pressed into service as peripherals for machines, at a pace that is constantly at the very limit of their endurance.

Reverse centaurs are trapped in capital's automation plan – to make everything faster and cheaper. But that's the result of bosses. It's not the result of technology.

This is not to say that technology is apolitical. Only a fool would imagine that there are no politics embedded in technology. But you'd be a far greater fool if you asserted that the politics of a technology were simple, clear, and immutable.

Nor is this to say that when workers get to decide when and how to use technology, we will always make wise decisions. Perhaps the hobbyist who opts for an automated soldering machine will lose out on the opportunity to refine their hand-eye coordination in ways that will have many other benefits to their practice.

Or perhaps attempting to improve their hand-eye coordination to that point will wreck so many projects that they grow discouraged and give up altogether. Others' choices that seem unwise to you might have perfectly good explanations that aren't visible from your perspective. Ultimately, the world is a better place when workers get to decide which parts of their jobs they want to automate and which parts they want to lean into.

This is an extremely normal technological situation: for a new technology to be promoted and productized by shitty people who have grandiose goals that would be apocalyptic should they ever come to pass – and for some people to find uses of that technology that are nevertheless beneficial to them and their communities.

The belief that AI is an exceptionally bad technology (as opposed to an exceptionally bad economic bubble) drives AI critics into their own absurd culs-de-sac.

There are many, many skilled and reliable practitioners of technical and creative trades who've found extremely reasonable, normal ways in which AI has automated some part of their job. They aren't hyperventilating about how AI has changed everything forever and the world is about to end. They're not mistaking AI for god, or a therapist.

They're just treating AI like a normal technology, like a plugin. Programmers' tools have acquired useful automation plugins at regular intervals for decades – syntax checkers, advanced debuggers, automated wireframe utilities. For many programmers – including several of my acquaintance, whom I know to be both thoughtful and skilled – AI is another plugin, one they find useful enough to be modestly enthusiastic about.

It is nuts to deny the experiences these people are having. They're not vibe-coding mission-critical AWS modules. They're not generating tech debt at scale:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/#graceful-failure-modes

They're just adding another automation tool to a highly automated practice, and using it when it makes sense. Perhaps they won't always choose wisely, but that's normal too. There's plenty of ways that pre-AI automation tools for software development led programmers astray. A skilled, centaur-configured programmer learns from experience which automation tools they should trust, and under which circumstances, and guides themselves accordingly.

It's only the belief that AI is exceptional – exceptionally wicked, but exceptional nevertheless – that leads critics to decide that they are a better judge of whether a skilled worker should or should not use certain automation tools, and to make that judgment not based on the quality of the work in question, but on the moral character of the tool itself.

AI is just normal. The bubble is what drives the environmental costs. If the only LLMs were a couple big data-centers at Sandia National Labs, no one would be particularly exercised about the water and energy demands they represented. Big scientific endeavors – from NASA launches to the large Hadron Collider – often come with immense material and energy needs. The bubble causes massive, wasteful, duplicative efforts that chase diminishing returns through farcical scale.

Nor are AI bros exceptional. The stock swindlers who've blown $700b (and counting) on AI aren't cyber-Svengalis with the power to cloud investors' minds. They're just running the same con that tech has been running ever since its returns started to taper off and survival became a matter of ginning up enthusiasm for speculative new ventures.

That doesn't mean those people aren't awful shits. Fuck those people. It just means that they're normal awful shits. We don't have to burnish their reputations by elevating them to the status of archdemons who taint everything they touch with unwashable sin. Sam Altman isn't Lex Luthor. He's just a conman:

https://open.substack.com/pub/garymarcus/p/breaking-sam-altmans-greed-and-dishonesty?r=8tdk6&utm_medium=ios

The fact that these bros are just normal assholes means that we don't have to treat everything they do as a sin. Scraping the entirety of human knowledge to make something new out of it isn't "stealing." Depending on why you're doing it, it can be archiving, or making a search engine:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

Too many AI critics have started from the undeniable fact that these guys are odious creeps who boast about wanting to ruin the lives of workers and then worked backwards to find the sin. The sin isn't performing mathematical analysis on all the books ever written. That's actually kind of awesome. It's the kind of thing Aaron Swartz used to do – like when he ingested every law review article ever published and used it to trace the way that oil companies' donations to law schools resulted in profs writing articles about why Big Oil can't be held liable for trashing the planet:

https://web.archive.org/web/20111129181943/https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-damages-remunerated-research-and-legal-profession

AI bros' sin isn't making copies of published works. Hammering servers with badly behaved crawlers is a dick move and fuck them for doing it. But if these jerks made well-behaved scrapers that placed no abnormal demand on servers, it's not like their critics would say, "Oh, I guess it's fine, then."

AI bros' sin is running an economy-destroying, planet-wrecking stock swindle whose raison d'etre is pauperizing every worker and transferring 100% of the dying world's wealth to a small cadre of morbidly wealthy, eminently guillotineable plutes. Making plugins? That's not exceptional. It's just normal.

The fact that something is normal doesn't make it good. There's a lot of normal things that I'd like to throw into the Sun. But we don't do ourselves any favors when we amplify our enemies' self-aggrandizing narratives by accusing them of being exceptional, even when we mean "exceptionally evil." They're normal assholes.

Fuck 'em.

(Image: ZeptoBars, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

• E is for…. Enshittification https://www.evanshunt.com/enshittification/

• Calicornication: Postcards of Giant Produce (1909) https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/giant-produce-postcards/

• Organized Money: Why Your Lamp Sucks https://prospect.org/2026/03/11/organized-money-lamps-lighting-mid-century-modeline-history/

• The Live Nation settlement has industry insiders baffled https://www.theverge.com/policy/893272/live-nation-ticketmaster-doj-settlement-states

• Public speakerphone use is officially out of control https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/03/explain-it-like-im-5-why-is-everyone-on-speakerphone-in-public/

Object permanence (permalink)

#15yrsago Notorious financier gets a “super-injunction” prohibiting the press from revealing that he is a banker https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8373535/Sir-Fred-Goodwin-former-RBS-chief-obtains-super-injunction.html

#10yrsago Shortly after her death, Harper Lee’s heirs kill cheap paperback edition of To Kill a Mockingbird https://newrepublic.com/article/131400/mass-market-edition-kill-mockingbird-dead

#10yrsago Web security company breached, client list (including KKK) dumped, hackers mock inept security https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/after-an-easy-breach-hackers-leave-tips-when-running-a-security-company/

#10yrsago Microsoft spams corporate users with messages denigrating their IT departments https://web.archive.org/web/20160309195537/https://www.infoworld.com/article/3042397/microsoft-windows/admins-beware-domain-attached-pcs-are-sprouting-get-windows-10-ads.html

#10yrsago Cycle and Recycle: gorgeous photos of the European recycling process https://www.wired.com/2016/03/paul-bulteel-cycle-recyle-europe-recycles-tons-of-waste-and-its-pretty-gorgeous/

#10yrsago Fellowships for “Robin Hood” hackers to help poor people get access to the law https://web.archive.org/web/20160304221459/https://labs.robinhood.org/fellowship/

#10yrsago 3D printed battle-armor for cats https://web.archive.org/web/20160311224139/http://sinkhacks.com/making-3d-printed-cat-armor/

#10yrsago Great moments in the history of black science fiction https://web.archive.org/web/20160308034421/http://www.fantasticstoriesoftheimagination.com/a-crash-course-in-the-history-of-black-science-fiction/

#1yrago Daniel Pinkwater's "Jules, Penny and the Rooster" https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/11/klong-you-are-a-pickle-2/#martian-space-potato

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
  https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/

• Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
  https://conference.bioneers.org/

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

• London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU)
  https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

Recent appearances (permalink)

• 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

• The Lost Cause
  https://streets.mn/2026/03/02/book-club-the-lost-cause/

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1081 words today, 48461 total)

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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