In the most recent issue of Garbage Day, Ryan Broderick writes about how Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” has been embraced by the Trump administration in both governance and in messaging.

The brain-breaking feeling you get watching something like the ASMR video or the time you waste trying to determine whether the image Musk shared is real or not is, like with Project 2025 and the executive orders, by design. It’s meant to initially trigger you and ultimately wear you down.

Stuff like this always makes me think of Hannah Arendt’s comments in this 1974 interview, particularly the last line (emphasis mine):

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie — a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days — but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

And of Toni Morrison on the true function of racism:

It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

Timothy Snyder writing in the aftermath of January 6th:

When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions.

Tags: 2025 Coup · Hannah Arendt · politics · Ryan Broderick · Steve Bannon · Timothy Snyder · Toni Morrison

Today's links

• Pluralistic is five: Blogging as a way of clawing back your attention.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, 2024
• 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.

Pluralistic is five (permalink)

Five years and two weeks ago, I parted ways with Boing Boing, a website I co-own and wrote for virtually every day for 19 years ago. Two weeks later – five years ago from today – I started my own blog, Pluralistic, which is, therefore, half a decade old, as of today.

I've written an annual rumination on this most years since.

Here's the fourth anniversary post (on blogging as a way to organize thoughts for big, ambitious, synthetic works):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#synthesis

The third (on writing without analytics):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three

The second (on "post own site, share everywhere," AKA "POSSE"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/19/now-we-are-two/#two-much-posse

I wasn't sure what I would write about today, but I figured it out yesterday, in the car, driving to my book-launch event with Wil Wheaton at LA's Diesel Books (tonight's event is in Seattle, with Dan Savage):

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

I was listening to the always excellent Know Your Enemy podcast, where the hosts were interviewing Chris Hayes:

https://know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com/episodes/pay-attention-w-chris-hayes-OA3C8ZMp

The occasion was the publication of Hayes's new book, The Sirens' Call, about the way technology interacts with our attention:

https://sirenscallbook.com

The interview was fascinating, and steered clear of moral panic about computers rotting our brains (shades of Socrates' possibly apocryphal statements that reading, rather than memorizing, was destroying young peoples' critical faculties). Instead, Hayes talked about how empty it feels to read an algorithmic feed, how our attention gets caught up by it, sometimes for longer than we planned, and then afterward, we feel like our attention and time were poorly spent. He talked about how reflective experiences – like reading a book with his kid before school – are shattered by pocket-buzzes as news articles came in. And he talked about how satisfying it was to pay protracted attention to something important, and how hard that was.

Listening to Hayes's description, I realized two things: first, he was absolutely right, those are terrible things; and second, I barely experience them (though, when I do, it makes me feel awful). Both of these are intimately bound up with my blogging and social media habits.

15 years ago, I published "Writing in the Age of Distraction," an article about preserving your attention in a digital world so you could get writing done. We live in a very different world, but the advice still holds up:

https://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html

In particular, I advised readers to turn off all their alerts. This is something I've done since before the smartphone era, tracking down the preferences that kept programs like AIM, Apple Mail and Google Reader from popping up an alert when a new item appeared. This is absolutely fundamental and should be non-negotiable. When I heard Hayes describe how his phone buzzes in his pocket whenever there is breaking news, I was actually shocked. Do people really allow their devices to interrupt them on a random reinforcement schedule? I mean, no wonder the internet makes people go crazy. I'm not a big believer in BF Skinner, but I think it's well established that any stimulus that occurs at random intervals is impossible to get used to, and shocks you anew every time it recurs.

Rather than letting myself get pocket-buzzed by the news, I have an RSS reader. You should use an RSS reader, seriously:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

I periodically check in with my reader to see what stories have been posted. The experience of choosing to look at the news is profoundly different from having the news blasted at you. I still don't always choose wisely – I'm as guilty of scrolling my phone when I could be doing something more ultimately satisfying as anyone else – but the affect of being in charge of when and how I consume current events is the opposite of the feeling of being at the beck-and-call of any fool headline writer who hits "publish."

This is even more important in the age of smartphones. Whenever you install an app, turn off its notifications. If you forget and an app pushes you an update ("Hi, this is the app you used to pay your parking meter that one time! We're having a 2% off sale on parking spots in a different city from the one you're in now and we wanted to make sure you stopped whatever you were doing and found out about it RIGHT NOW!") then turn off notifications for that app. Consider deleting it. Your phone should buzz when you're expecting a call, or an important message.

Note I said important message. I also turn off notifications for most of the apps I use that have a direct-messaging function. I check in with my group chats periodically, but I never get interrupted by friends across town or across the world posting photos of lunch or kvetching about the guy who farted next to them on the subway. I look at those chats when I'm taking a break, not when I'm trying to get stuff done. It's really nice to stay on top of your friends' lives without feeling low-grade resentment for how they interrupted your creative fog with a ganked Tiktok video of a zoomer making fun of a boomer for getting mad at a millennial for quoting Osama bin Laden. There's times when it makes sense to turn on group-chat notifications – like when you're on a group outing and trying to locate one another – but the rest of the time, turn it off.

Now, there are people I need to hear from urgently, who do get to buzz my pockets when something important comes up – people I'm working on a project with, say, or my wife and kid. But I also have all those people trained to send me emails unless it's urgent. You know the norm we have about calling someone out of the blue being kind of gross and rude? That's how you should feel about making someone's pocket buzz, unless it's important. Send those people emails.

I visit my email in between other tasks and clear out my inbox. If that sounds impossible, I have some suggestions for how to manage it:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/dec/21/keeping-email-address-secret-spambots

Tldr? Get you some mail rules:

1. add everyone you correspond with to an address book called "people I know"

2. filter emails from anyone in the "people I know" address book into a high priority inbox, which you just treat as your regular inbox

3. look at the unfiltered inbox (full of people you've never corresponded with) every day or two and reply to messages that need replying (and those people will thereafter be filtered into the "people I know" inbox)

4. filter any message containing the world "unsubscribe" into a folder called "mailing lists"

5. if you're subscribed to mailing lists that you feel you can't leave because it would be impolite, filter them into a folder called "mailing lists" unless the message contains your name (so you can reply promptly if someone mentions you on the list)

The point here is to manage your attention. You decide when you want to get non-urgent communications, and mail-app automation automatically flags the stuff that you are most likely to want to see. For extra credit: adopt a "suspense file" that lets you manage other peoples' emails to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/26/one-weird-trick/#todo

Now, let's talk about algorithmic feeds. Lots of phosphors have been spilled on this subject, and critics of The Algorithm have an unfortunately propensity to buy into the self aggrandizement of soi-dissant evil sorcerer tech bros who claim they can "hack your dopamine loops" by programming an algorithmic feed. I think this is bullshit. Mind-control rays are nonsense, whether they are being promoted by Rasputin or a repentant Prodigal Tech Bro:

https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/

But I hate algorithmic feeds. To explain why, I should explain how much I love non-algorithmic feeds. I follow a lot of people on several social media services, and I almost never feel the need to look at trending topics, suggested posts, or anything resembling the "For You" feed. Sure, there's times when I want to turn on the ole social TV and see what's on – the digital equivalent of leaving the TV on in a hotel room while I unpack and iron my suit – but those times are rare.

Mostly what I get is a feed of the things that my friends think are noteworthy enough to share. Some of that stuff is "OC" (material they've posted themselves), but the majority of it is stuff they're boosting from the feeds of their friends. Now, I say friend but I don't know the majority of the people I follow. I have a parasocial relationship (these get an undeserved bad rap) with them.

We're "friends" in the sense that I think they have interesting taste. There's people I've followed for more than a decade without exchanging a single explicit communication. I think they're cool, and I repost the cool stuff they post, so the people who follow me can see it. Reposting is a way of collaborating with other people who've opted into sharing their attention-management with you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/27/probably/

Reposting with a comment? Even better – you're telling people why to pay attention to that thing, or, more importantly, why they can safely ignore it if it's not their thing (what Bruce Sterling memorably calls an "attention conservation notice"). This is why Mastodon's decision not to implement quote-tweeting (over a misplaced squeamishness about "dunk culture") was such a catastrophic own-goal. If you're building a social network without an algorithmic suggestion feed (yay), you absolutely can't afford to block a feature that lets people annotate the material they boost into other people's timelines:

https://fediversereport.com/fediverse-report-104/

Remember how I said the affect of going to read the news is totally different (and infinitely superior) to the affect of having the news pushed to you? Same goes for the difference between getting a feed of things boosted and written by people you've chosen to follow, and getting a feed of things chosen by an algorithm. This is for reasons far more profound than the mere fact that algorithms use poor signals to choose those posts (e.g. "do a lot of people seem to be arguing about this post?").

For me, the problem with algorithmic feeds is the same as the problem with AI art. The point of art is to communicate something, and art consists of thousands of micro-decisions made by someone intending to communicate something, which gives it a richness and a texture that can make art arresting and profound. Prompting an AI to draw you a picture consists of just a few decisions, orders of magnitude fewer communicative acts than are embodied in a human-drawn illustration, even if you refine the image through many subsequent prompts. What you get is something "soulless" – a thing that seems to involve many decisions, but almost all of them were made by a machine that had no communicative intent.

This is the definition of "uncanniness," which is "the seeming of intention without intending anything." Most of the "meaning" in an AI illustration is "meaning that does not stem from organizing intention":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

The same is true of an algorithmic feed. When someone you follow – a person – posts or boosts something into their feed, there is a human intention. It is a communicative act. It can be very communicative, even if it's just a boost, provided the person adds some context with their own commentary or quoting. It can be just a little communicative, too – a momentary thumbpress on the boost button. But either way, to read a feed populated by people, rather than machines, is to be showered with the communicative intent of people whom you have chosen to hear from. Perhaps you chose unwisely and followed someone whose communications are banal or offensive or repetitious. Unfollow them.

Most importantly, follow the people who are followed by the people you follow. If someone whose taste you like pleases or interests you time and again by promoting something by a stranger to your attention, then bring that stranger closer by making them someone you follow, too. Do this, again and again, and build a constellation of people who make you smile or make you think. Just the act of boosting and virtually handling the things those people make and boost gets that stuff into your skin and your thoughts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/31/divination/

This is the good kind of filter bubble – the bubble of "people who interest me." I'm not saying that it's a sin to read an algorithmic feed, but relying on algorithmic feeds is a recipe for feeling empty, and regretful of your misspent attention. This is true even when the algorithm is good at its job, as with Tiktok, whose whole appeal is to take your hands off the wheel and give total control over to the autopilot. Even when an algorithm makes many good guesses about what you'll like, seeing something you like isn't as nice, as pleasing, as useful, as seeing that same thing as the result of someone else's intention.

And, of course, once you let the app drive, you become a soft target for the cupidity and deceptions of the app's makers. Tiktok, for example, uses its "heating tool" to selectively boost things into your feed – not because they think you'll like it, but because they want to trick the person whose content they're boosting into thinking that Tiktok is a good place to distribute their work through:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

The value of an algorithmic feed – of an intermediated feed – is to help you build your disintermediated, human feed. Find people you like through the algorithm, follow them, then stop letting the algorithm drive.

And the human feed you consume is input for the human feed you create, the stream of communicative acts you commit in order to say to the world, "This is what feels good to spend my attention on. If this makes you feel good, too, then please follow me, and you will sit downstream of my communicative acts, as I sit downstream of the communicative acts of so many others."

The more communicative the feeds you emit are, the more reward you will reap. First, because interrogating your own attention – "why was this thing interesting?" – is a clarifying and mnemonic act, that lets you get more back from the attention you pay. And second, because the more you communicate about those attentive insights, the more people you will find who are truly Your People, a community that goes beyond "I follow this stranger" and gets into the realm of "this stranger and I are on the same side in a world of great peril and worry":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Which brings me back to this blog and my fifth bloggaversary. Because a blog is a feed, but one that is far heavier on communications than a stream of boosted posts. Five years into this iteration of my blogging life (and 24 years into my blogging life overall), blogging remains one of the most powerful, clarifying and uplifting parts of my day.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Trump Enforcers Affirm Lina Khan's Approach to Antitrust https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/trump-enforcers-affirm-lina-khans

• The Tech Barons have a blueprint drawn in crayon. They have not thought any of this through. https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/the-tech-barons-have-a-blueprint (h/t Programmable Mutter)

• Why Massachusetts Isn’t California https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/02/18/the-big-idea-cory-doctorow-5/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Strindberg and Helium: Depressive playwright and ecstatic balloon sidekick https://www.strindbergandhelium.com

#20yrsago Clickthrough licenses considered harmful https://web.archive.org/web/20050218111548/http://eff.org/wp/eula.php

#20yrsago HOWTO defeat the DRM on your coffee-maker https://web.archive.org/web/20050221035427/http://www.epinions.com/content_3875643524

#15yrsago Writers describe the positive impact of D&D on their lives https://web.archive.org/web/20100221130607/https://www.suvudu.com/2010/02/writers-reminisce-about-dungeons-dragons.html

#15yrsago School district admits installing covert webcam activation software on student laptops, denies wrongdoing https://www.businessinsider.com/school-that-spied-on-students-with-laptop-cameras-says-it-was-security-feature-2010-2

#15yrsago New York’s small-town kangaroo courts: hives of abusive unchecked authority https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/nyregion/25courts.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

#10yrsago An Internet of Things that do what they’re told https://web.archive.org/web/20150221031525/http://radar.oreilly.com/2015/02/an-internet-of-things-that-do-what-theyre-told.html

#10yrsago Canada’s new surveillance bill eliminates any pretense of privacy https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/02/total-information-awareness-disastrous-privacy-consequences-bill-c-51/

#10yrsago Livestream: students occupy Newark school superintendent’s office to protest forced privatization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skhwmmODjWU

#5yrsago Ios is now a vehicle to deliver unblockable adware https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#thinkdifferent

#5yrsago Rental car immobilizes itself when driven out of cellular range https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#immobilized

#5yrsago Capitalism without capitalists https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#gutflora

#5yrsag Bernie Sanders is a clear favorite among "regular Democrats." https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#civilwar

#5yrsago Trump's border wall defeated by 99 pesos' worth of rebar https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#rebar-r-us

#5yrsago Rethinking "de-growth" and material culture https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#antikondo

#5yrsago Machine learning doesn't fix racism https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#gigo

#5yrsago The Woman Who Loved Giraffes https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

#1yrago Middlemen without enshittification https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Seattle: Picks and Shovels with Dan Savage, Feb 19
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

• Toronto: Picks and Shovels at Another Story, Feb 23
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/picks-shovels-cory-doctorow-tickets-1219803217259

• Toronto: Ursula Franklin Lecture, Feb 24
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2025-ursula-franklin-lecture-cory-doctorow-tickets-1218373831929

• NYC: Picks and Shovels with John Hodgman, Feb 26
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-john-hodgman-picks-and-shovels-tickets-1131132841779

• Penn State: Picks and Shovels, Feb 27
  https://www.bellisario.psu.edu/assets/uploads/CoryDoctorow-Poster.pdf

• Doylestown, PA: Picks and Shovels at the Doylestown Bookshop, Mar 1
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1146230880419

• Baltimore: Picks and Shovels with Maximillian Alvarez, Mar 2
  https://redemmas.org/events/cory-doctorow-presents-picks-and-shovels/

• DC: Picks and Shovels with Matt Stoller, Mar 4
  https://www.loyaltybookstores.com/picksnshovels

• Richmond, VA: Picks and Shovels with Lee Vinsel, Mar 5
  https://fountainbookstore.com/events/1795820250305

• Virtual: With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It (Indiana University), Mar 7
  https://events.iu.edu/mediaiub/event/1783095-with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshitti

• Austin: Picks and Shovels at First Light Books, Mar 10
  https://thethirdplace.is/event/cory-doctorow-picks-shovels-1

• Burbank: Picks and Shovels with Wil Wheaton, Mar 13
  https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3257/Thu%2C_Mar_13th_6_pm%3A_Pick_%26_Shovel%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#/

• Europa Park: Cloudfest, Mar 17-20
  https://cloudfest.link/

• San Diego: Picks and Shovels at Mysterious Galaxy, Mar 24
  https://www.mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow

• Virtual: Picks and Shovels at Imagine! Belfast, Mar 24
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189

• Chicago: Picks and Shovels with Peter Sagal, Apr 2
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/44853

• Chicago: ABA Techshow, Apr 3
  https://www.techshow.com/

• Bloomington: Picks and Shovels at Morgenstern, Apr 4
  https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorow

• PDX: Teardown 2025, Jun 20-22
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025

• New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Picks and Shovels with Yanis Varoufakis and David Moscrop (Jacobin)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIDep7Z4LM

• Forthright Radio
  https://forthright.media/2025/02/14/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels/

• The Writer's Voice
  https://www.writersvoice.net/2025/02/black-history-month-aaron-robertson-the-black-utopians-also-cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels/

Latest books (permalink)

• • 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 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "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). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "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. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "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

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books (permalink)

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

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

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

• The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Picks and Shovels virtual launch with Yanis Varoufakis and David Moscrop, presented by Jacobin https://craphound.com/novels/redteamblues/2025/02/16/picks-and-shovels-virtual-launch-with-yanis-varoufakis-and-david-moscrop-presented-by-jacobin/

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

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

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

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

ISSN: 3066-764X

“They get the one starving kid in Sudan that isn’t going to have a USAID bottle, and they make everything DOGE has done about the starving kid in Sudan.” — a White House official.

I’ve been a USAID contractor for most of the last 20 years. Not a federal employee; a contractor. USAID does most of its work through contractors. I’ve been a field guy, working in different locations around the world.

If you’ve been following the news at all, you probably know that Trump and Musk have decided to destroy USAID.  There’s been a firehose of disinformation and lies.  It’s pretty depressing.  

So here are a couple of true USAID stories — one political, one personal.


The political one first.  I worked for years in the small former Soviet republic of Moldova.



Moldova happened to be one of the few parts of the old USSR suitable for producing wine.  The other was Georgia, in the Caucasus.

The Soviets, in their central planning way, decided that both Moldova and Georgia would produce wine — but Georgia would produce the good stuff, intended for export and for consumption by Soviet elites.  Moldova would produce cheap sweet reds, which is what most Russians think wine is.

So for decades, Moldova produced bad wine and nothing but bad wine.  But Russians liked it, so that was okay.

Then the USSR collapsed.  And, well, Moldova continued to produce nasty cheap sweet reds, because that was all they could do.   By the turn of the century, wine was Moldova’s single biggest cash export.  And about 80% of that wine went straight to Russia.

This continued through the 1990s and into the early 2000s.  Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia.  Back in 2003 or so, he wasn’t invading Russia’s neighbors… but he was already swinging a big stick in Russia’s “near abroad”, the former Soviet republics that he thought should still be under Russia’s thumb.  Which absolutely included Moldova.

So whenever the Moldovan government annoyed or offended Putin… or whenever he just wanted to yank their chain… the Russian Ministry of Health would suddenly discover that there was a “problem” with Moldovan wine.  And imports would be frozen until the “problem” could be resolved.  Since wine was Moldova’s biggest export, and most wine went to Russia, this meant that Russia could inflict crippling damage on Moldova’s economy literally at will.  

This went on for over a decade, with multiple Moldovan governments having to defer to Moscow rather than face crippling economic damage.

Enter USAID.  Over a period of a dozen years or so, USAID funded several projects to restructure the Moldovan wine industry. 

They brought in foreign instructors to teach modern methods.  They worked with the wine-growers to develop training courses.  They provided guarantees for loans so that farmers could buy new equipment.  They helped Moldovan farmers get access to new varieties of grapes… you get the idea.

(By the by, the wine project was not my project. But it was literally up the street from my project.  It was run by two people I know and deeply respect — one American, one Moldovan — so I had a ring-side seat for much of this.)

The big one was, they worked with the Moldovans on what we call market linkages.  That is, they helped them connect to buyers and distributors in Europe, and figure out ways to sell into the EU.  I say this was the big one, because on one hand the EU is the world’s largest market for wine!  But on the other hand, exporting wine into the EU is really hard.  There are a bunch of what we call NTBTs — “non-tariff barriers to trade”.  For starters, your wine has to be guaranteed clean and safe according to the EU’s very high standards.  That means it has to consistently pass a bunch of sanitary and health tests, and also your production methods have to be certified.  Then there are a bunch more requirements about bottling, labelling and packaging. 

The EU regulates the hell out of all that stuff.  Like, the “TAVA” number?  There’s a minimum font size for that.  If you print it too small, it’ll be bounced right back to you.  The glass of the bottle?   Has to be a sort that EU recycling systems can deal with.  The adhesive behind the label?  It can be rejected for being too weak (labels fall off) or too strong (recycling system can’t remove it).  There are dozens of things like that.

And then of course they had to do marketing.  Nobody in Europe had heard of Moldovan wines!  Buyers and distributors had to be talked into taking a chance on these new products.  This meant the Moldovan exporters needed lines of credit to stay afloat.  This in turn meant that Moldovan banks had to be talked into… you get the idea.

This whole effort took over a decade, from the early 2000s into the teens.

And in the end it was a huge damn success.  With USAID help, the Moldovan wine industry was completely restructured.  Moldova now exports about $150 million of wine per year, which is a lot for a small country — it’s over $50 per Moldovan.  And it went from exporting around 80% of its wine to Russia, to around 15%.  Most Moldovan wine (around 60%) now goes to the EU, with an increasing share going to Turkey and the Middle East.  



(If you’re curious: their market niche is medium to high end vins du table.  Not plonk, not fancy, just good midlist wines.  I can personally recommend the dryer reds, which are often much better than you’d expect at their price point.)

Russia tried the “ooh we found a sanitary problem” trick one last time a few years ago.  It fell completely flat.  Putting aside that it was an obvious lie — if something is safe for the EU, believe me, it is safe for Russia — Moldovan wine exporters had now diversified their markets to the point that losing Russian sales was merely a nuisance.  In fact, the attempt backfired: it encouraged the Moldovans to shift their exports even further away from Russia and towards the EU.

So that’s the political story.  Russia had Moldova on a choke chain.  Over a dozen years or so, USAID patiently filed through that chain and broke Moldova loose.  Soft power in action.  It worked.

Nobody knows this story outside Moldova, of course. 

Okay, that’s the political story.  Here’s the personal one.

Some years ago, I moved with my family to a small country that was recovering from some very unpleasant history.  They’d been under a brutal ethnically-based dictatorship for a while, and then there was a war.  So, this was a poor country where many things didn’t work very well.

While we were there, my son suddenly fell ill.  Very ill.  Later we found out it was the very rapid onset of a severe bacterial infection.  At the time all we knew was that in an hour or two he went from fine to running a super high fever and being unable to stand up. Basically he just… fell over. 

Wham, emergency room.  They diagnosed him correctly, thank God, and gave correct treatment: massive and ongoing doses of antibiotics.  But he couldn’t move — he was desperately weak and barely conscious — and there was no question of taking him out of the country.  We had to put him in the local hospital for a week, on an IV drip, until he was strong enough to come home.

If you’ve ever been in a hospital in a poor, post-war country… yeah at this point someone makes a dumb joke about the NHS or something.  No.  We’re talking regular blackouts, the electricity just randomly switching off.  Rusting equipment, crumbling concrete, cracked windows.  A dozen beds crammed into a room that should hold four or five. Everything worn and patched and held together with baling wire and hope.   

We’re talking so poor that the hospital didn’t have basic supplies.  Like, you would go into town and buy the kid’s medication, and then you’d also buy syringes for injections — because the hospital didn’t have syringes — and then you’d come back and give those thing to the nurse so that your kid could get his medication. 

In the pediatric ward, they were packing the kids in two to a bed. Because they didn’t have a lot of rooms, and they didn’t have a lot of beds. And kids are small, yeah?  

But there we were.  So into the hospital he went.  Here’s a photo:

— Take a moment and zoom in there.  Red-white-and-blue sticker, there on the bed?  It says “USAID:  From The American People”.

Every hospital bed in that emergency room had been donated by USAID.  I believe they were purchased secondhand in the United States, where they were old and obsolete.  But in this country… well, they didn’t have enough beds, and the beds that they had were fifty years old.  Except for those USAID beds.  Those were (relatively) modern, light and adjustable but sturdy, and easily mobile.  The hospital staff were using them to move kids around, and they were getting a lot of mileage from them.

And of course, every USAID bed had that sticker on it.  And so did some other stuff.  There was an oxygen system that a sick toddler was breathing from.  USAID sticker.  Couple of child-sized wheelchairs.  USAID stickers.  Secondhand American stuff — USAID was under orders to Buy American whenever possible — but just making a huge, huge difference here.

As I said, it was crowded in there.  Lots of beds, lots of kids, lots of anxious parents.  So we got to talking with the other parents, as one does.  A couple of people had a little English.  And so my wife mentioned that we were here working on a USAID project…

…and god damn that place lit up like an old time juke box.  “USAID!”  “USAID!”  People were pointing at the stickers, smiling.  “USAID!”   “America, very good!”  “Thank you!”  “USA!  USA!”  “Thank you!”

This went on longer than most of us would find comfortable.  When it finally settled down… actually, it never really did entirely settle down.  For the whole time our son was there, we had people — parents, nurses, even the hospital janitor — smiling at us and saying “USAID!”  “Very good!”  “Thank you!”

I’m not prone to fits of patriotic fervor.  But I’m not going to lie: right then it felt good to be American.

Anyway, USAID stories.  I could go on at considerable length.  This is my career, after all!  I could tell more stories, or comment and gloss at greater length on these.

But this is long enough already.  More some other time, perhaps.

Today's links

• America and "national capitalism": How the EU should respond to Trumpism.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015
• 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.

America and "national capitalism" (permalink)

Thomas Piketty's 2013 unexpected bestseller (a 750 page economics book translated from French!) Capital in the 21st Century, offers a very convincing explanation of our political decay, and it continues to serve this purpose as the decay undergoes alarming acceleration:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

Let me sketch out that argument really briefly for you here. Absent any kind of government intervention, markets make investors richer than workers (AKA "the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of return from growth" or "r > g"). This is true even for extremely powerful workers who get very, very rich indeed. Piketty illustrates this in many ways, but my favorite is the Parable of Bill Gates, Liliane Bettencourt and Bill Gates (again).

Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1975 and he stepped down as CEO in 2000. In the intervening 25 years, he built the company into the most profitable firm in human history and grew very, very rich. This is Market Lore Canon: found a successful company, grow rich.

Now, Bill Gates started with a bunch of money – he comes from a wealthy family – but he grew his personal fortune over those years in extraordinary ways, and not by investing it, but rather, by founding a company and working at it.

Now consider Liliane Bettencourt, who, during Bill Gates period as Microsoft CEO, was the richest woman in Europe. Bettencourt was born very, very rich, heiress to the L'Oreal fortune. Unlike Gates, Bettencourt didn't have a job. She just sat around, while financial planners invested her family money. Over the 25 years when Bill Gates was growing Microsoft from zero to the most successful company in planetary history, Bettencourt made more money than Gates. Gates made his money by doing something. Bettencourt made her money by emerging from a very lucky orifice and just hanging around.

But here's the kicker: after Bill Gates quit Microsoft, he became a professional investor. He stopped doing a job and started investing in companies where other people were working. Over the next 13 years, Bill Gates (investor) made more money than Bill Gates (Microsoft CEO) made in his 25 years of doing a job. He also made more than Liliane Bettencourt.

That's what r > g means: that even the most successful worker in human history can't make as much as a person who merely has a lot of money, and the more money you have, the more money you make.

If you think about this for a second, you can see how it'll play out: in economies both good and bad, the people who emerge from lucky orifices will get wealthier than anyone else, wealthier than the people who do things that grow the economy. And because they're getting wealthier faster than the economy grows, they come to command ever-larger shares of the economy, so that even when the pie gets bigger, their slices gets bigger still, and the remainder that we all share isn't just proportionally smaller – it's actually smaller. We don't just have less relative to the rich – we have less relative to our parents.

For Piketty, this is an iron law of markets, born out by analysis of hundreds of years' worth of capital flows. He devotes many of those 750 pages showing how even the most profitable sectors of the economy at any given time are disproportionately benefiting investors, even relative to the most successful managers and workers at any given time. This is where oligarchy comes from: it is the natural end-state of a market economy.

But (Picketty continues), oligarchy is intrinsically destabilizing. For one thing, once the fortunes of Bill Gates' or Liliane Bettencourt's are large enough, growing them by even, say 1% requires that some capital come from other rich people, because 1% of Bill Gates's holdings will eventually exceed 100% of the holdings of everyone who isn't insanely rich. So, over time, rich people eventually have to fight with each other in order to keep getting richer – see, for example, World War I.

That's not the only way extreme wealth inequality creates political instability. Once the 1% are sufficiently wealthy, they capture government, and the only policies that can be enacted are those that don't gore some aristocrat's ox, and once the rich become super rich, they own all the oxen. So sensible policies that are needed to ensure an orderly, stable society (for example, limiting war bond repayments to a sustainable level that won't bankrupt the economy to make wealthy bondholders even richer) become impossible, and then you get societal collapse (see, for example, World War II).

The backbone of C21 is a time-series of 300 years' worth of global capital flows, painstakingly assembled by Piketty and his grad students. This time series shows the same pattern emerging over and over: as the rich get richer, they capture more and more of the state's policy-making apparatus, triggering more wealth-friendly policies, which make them even richer, and makes their grip on policy stronger. This continues until inequality reaches a tipping point, and then you get a rupture, like the French Revolution, or the World Wars. These are orgies of capital destruction, and because nearly all the capital is in the hands of the rich, when the dust settles, they emerge with much less capital and much less power. Society is shattered, but it is more equal, and this means that we can once again make good policies that help us rebuild a society that benefits everyone, not just the rich (the French call the 30 years following WWII "the 30 glorious years").

But, if this society doesn't include some kind of mechanism to address the fact that capital is still growing faster than the economy – even a post-war boom economy – then eventually the share of wealth held by the rich will reach a tipping point, and we'll see policies that benefit the wealthy crowding out policies that support human thriving, and the rich will get richer, and they will feud with each other, and society will destabilize, and we will face collapse.

So, let's talk about Ronald Reagan! By the late 1970s, the share of wealth held by the top 10% had grown significantly from its post-war low point. With all that excess capital, the rich started spending money to promote candidates and policies that would make them richer. At a certain point, they have enough money to buy Reagan's presidency, and we get a deregulatory bonfire: lower taxes for the rich, looser rules for finance, fewer protections for workers, less spending on social programs.

This makes the rich richer, even as wages stagnate. The next 40 years are a procession of ever-more-wealth-friendly policies and politicians – not just the Bush years, but also Bill Clinton's welfare bill and Obama's foreclosure crisis – and the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. Monopolies consume the American economy. GDP goes up, because the corporate sector is super consolidated and it's jacking up prices and slashing wages, leaving more for profits and dividends.

Society grows progressively less stable. Policies that benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else – ignoring the climate emergency, slashing the safety net, starving infrastructure, etc – dominate. Inequality worsens. No one can afford a house, health care, or university. Your life's savings are stolen by a subprime mortgage, or a pension-fund raid, or bitcoin grift. Instability worsens. Policies that benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else – endless imperialist wars, noncompete agreements, private equity rollups – multiply. Wages stagnate. Inequality increases. The rich get richer. One political party is captured by finance ghouls. The other one is also captured by finance ghouls, but welds them into a coalition that includes virulent, apocalyptic racists.

Which brings us to today, and Trump, and imminent collapse, and Elon Musk and his child soldiers, and JD Vance, and the whole fucking thing.

Today, Piketty posted some pointed thoughts on the situation in Europe in the face of rising American fascism and belligerence:

https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2025/02/18/trump-national-capitalism-at-bay/

It's common for Americans to write off Europe because its "economy isn't growing" the way the US economy is. Piketty points out that this is a mirage: American economic growth is due to rising prices and plummeting wages, which is great for the share price of giant American companies whose cartels and monopolies make everyone except the tiny number of Americans with substantial stock market portfolios much poorer: "When measured in terms of purchasing power parity, the reality is very different: the productivity gap with Europe disappears entirely."

Once you adjust US economic figures to account for this, it's clear that America truly is in decline – the real US GDP has lagged China's since 2016. China now has an adjusted GDP that 30% higher than America's, and it's on track to double US GDP by 2035.

The US is losing control of the rest of the world, and Trump is accelerating this phenomenon. Take de-dollarization: the US (and only the US) can make as many US dollars as it wants, so for so long as things around the world (oil, say) are available for sale in USD, the US can buy them on better terms than any other country in the world:

https://stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/trade-isnt-money-for-nothing

What's more, the fact that dollar-clearing takes place at the Federal Reserve gives the US the ability to spy on and control other countries around the world (think of US SWIFT sanctions on Russia after the Ukraine invasion, or the vulture capitalists who forced Argentina to pay up even after it defaulted on its debts). Trump's pro-bitcoin policies are intrinsically anti-dollar policies. The rest of the world was already increasingly nervous about the way that the US dollar is a vehicle for soft power around the world, we're already seeing a lot of oil denominated in rubles, and now Trump is encouraging the growth of a shadow currency that will make it even easier for transactions to take place without dollars (notably, cryptocurrency will help America's ultra-rich evade even more taxes, and commit even more bribery):

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/what-happens-when-economic-coercion

Trump is also waging war on the CIA and NSA. Good riddance, sure – but these are also major sources for projecting US power around the world – think of the NSA's mass surveillance program, in alliance with the "5 Eyes" countries whom Trump is setting out to alienate.

Then there's trade. The US has pushed pro-oligarchic policies on the world through its trade deals. To access US markets, foreign governments must enact punitive laws that make it easier for US giants to loot their economy, like IP laws:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

and investor-state dispute settlements:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/27/korporate-kangaroo-kourts/#corporate-sovereignty

Not all the profits of giant US companies arise from ripping off 99% of Americans. Some of those profits come from ripping off foreigners, but that's only possible because foreign governments have passed looter-friendly policies in exchange for tariff-free access to US markets. Now that the US is shutting that down, there's no reason to allow America to continue stealing from your citizens.

As Piketty says, Trump dreams of a "national capitalism." National capitalism is a disaster, even compared to global capitalism:

the strength of national capitalism lies in glorifying power and national identity while denouncing the illusions of carefree rhetoric about universal harmony and class equality. Its weakness is that it clashes with power struggles and forgets that sustainable prosperity requires an educational, social and environmental investment that benefits all.

National capitalism walls its oligarchs off from the possibility of draining the riches of other countries, limiting them to domestic looting. Eventually, all the wealth in the country is held by its looter class, and the only way they can grow is by attacking each other. No one has more direct, recent experience with this phenomenon than Europe, a wealthy trading bloc of 500m. Trump has demanded that the EU commit 5% of its GDP to building up arms and its standing armies.

Piketty says this is a dead end. As the US is abandoning its role as global rule-of-law haven and transaction clearing house, the EU has an opportunity to become a very different kind of world power:

Europe must heed the calls from the Global South for economic, fiscal and climate justice. It must renew its commitment to social investment and definitively overtake the US in terms of training and productivity, just as it has already done in terms of health and life expectancy. After 1945, Europe rebuilt itself through the welfare state and the social-democratic revolution. This project remains unfinished: on the contrary, it must be seen as the beginning of a model of democratic and ecological socialism that must now be thought through on a global scale.

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; EFF, CC BY 4.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

• The Generative AI Con https://www.wheresyoured.at/longcon/

• The reanimation of pseudoscience in machine learning and its ethical repercussions https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899%2824%2900160-0

• Psst.org https://psst.org (h/t Dr Cheezie)

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Broadcast Flag court date: Feb 22 https://web.archive.org/web/20050219110625/https://www.tvtechnology.com/dailynews/one.php?id=2755

#20yrsago Municipal WiFi: What if the question was, “Should governments be in the electricity business?” https://wifinetnews.com/archives/2005/02/imagine_electricity.html

#15yrsago Anonymous Iranian dissidents launch online comic about Iranian current events https://web.archive.org/web/20100221080816/http://www.zahrasparadise.com/

#15yrsago VIP prison treatment for rich Indonesians convicted of bribery https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/0218/Prison-for-wealthy-Indonesians-puts-Club-Fed-to-shame

#15yrsago Kim Stanley Robinson chapbook: how history works explained in fiction and essay https://memex.craphound.com/2010/02/18/kim-stanley-robinson-chapbook-how-history-works-explained-in-fiction-and-essay/

#10yrsago Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution leaders haunted by dirty-trick harassment campaigns https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2015/0218/Hong-Kong-s-Occupy-leaders-now-face-quiet-but-persistent-harassment

#10yrsago Telegraph’s lead political writer resigns because of censorship of criticism of advertisers, especially HSBC https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/why-i-have-resigned-from-telegraph/

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• LA: Picks and Shovels with Wil Wheaton, Feb 18
  https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Cory-Doctorow-Wil-Wheaton-Author-signing

• Seattle: Picks and Shovels with Dan Savage, Feb 19
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

• Toronto: Picks and Shovels at Another Story, Feb 23
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/picks-shovels-cory-doctorow-tickets-1219803217259

• Toronto: Ursula Franklin Lecture, Feb 24
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189

• NYC: Picks and Shovels with John Hodgman, Feb 26
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-john-hodgman-picks-and-shovels-tickets-1131132841779

• Penn State: Picks and Shovels, Feb 27
  https://www.bellisario.psu.edu/assets/uploads/CoryDoctorow-Poster.pdf

• Doylestown, PA: Picks and Shovels at the Doylestown Bookshop, Mar 1
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1146230880419

• Baltimore: Picks and Shovels with Maximillian Alvarez, Mar 2
  https://redemmas.org/events/cory-doctorow-presents-picks-and-shovels/

• DC: Picks and Shovels with Matt Stoller, Mar 4
  https://www.loyaltybookstores.com/picksnshovels

• Richmond, VA: Picks and Shovels with Lee Vinsel, Mar 5
  https://fountainbookstore.com/events/1795820250305

• Virtual: With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It (Indiana University), Mar 7
  https://events.iu.edu/mediaiub/event/1783095-with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshitti

• Austin: Picks and Shovels at First Light Books, Mar 10
  https://thethirdplace.is/event/cory-doctorow-picks-shovels-1

• Burbank: Picks and Shovels with Wil Wheaton, Mar 13
  https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3257/Thu%2C_Mar_13th_6_pm%3A_Pick_%26_Shovel%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#/

• Europa Park: Cloudfest, Mar 17-20
  https://cloudfest.link/

• San Diego: Picks and Shovels at Mysterious Galaxy, Mar 24
  https://www.mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow

• Virtual: Picks and Shovels at Imagine! Belfast, Mar 24
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189

• Chicago: Picks and Shovels with Peter Sagal, Apr 2
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/44853

• Chicago: ABA Techshow, Apr 3
  https://www.techshow.com/

• Bloomington: Picks and Shovels at Morgenstern, Apr 4
  https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorow

• PDX: Teardown 2025, Jun 20-22
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025

• New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Picks and Shovels with Yanis Varoufakis and David Moscrop (Jacobin)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIDep7Z4LM

• Forthright Radio
  https://forthright.media/2025/02/14/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels/

• The Writer's Voice
  https://www.writersvoice.net/2025/02/black-history-month-aaron-robertson-the-black-utopians-also-cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels/

Latest books (permalink)

• • 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 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "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). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "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. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "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

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books (permalink)

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

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

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

• The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Picks and Shovels virtual launch with Yanis Varoufakis and David Moscrop, presented by Jacobin https://craphound.com/novels/redteamblues/2025/02/16/picks-and-shovels-virtual-launch-with-yanis-varoufakis-and-david-moscrop-presented-by-jacobin/

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

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

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

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

ISSN: 3066-764X