Charles Booker has a new campaign ad, and it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen. Watch it below, then hit that Share button and let’s make it go viral.

It is an odd thing, looking back on your life, trying to recognize in the mirror of memory the people you used to be, finding them strangers: the person who kissed your first kiss, the person who drank your last drink, the person who had your best idea, the person who made your worst mistake, the person who over and over mistook fear for love, the person who thought orange was a good idea. Somehow, you have to grow arms long enough to wrap them around all those people and a heart wide enough to hold each of them with quiet compassion. Somehow, you have to both mourn and celebrate that you were them but they are no longer you.

It has been an odd thing, looking back on twenty years of The Marginalian — the record of half a lifetime of learning how to live. It called for a ritual — to honor those past persons, to celebrate the constant reconfiguration of the self.

And so: I took the first page of each of the first twenty chapters of my first book, Figuring — who wrote that book? — beginning with the prelude (Chapter 0), and applied my bird divination process to the text, letting the words refigure themselves into something new, something I have learned about life along the way of living, some piece of advice I needed to hear whispered by my own unconscious. The process itself is a lovely reminder that life is like language — it is not the words you have, your givens, but how you configure them that makes meaning, makes beauty, makes poetry. And the loveliness of life is that we are endlessly reconfigurable, brightly capable of rewriting the story with each sentence of living.

Enlisting the help of two of my greatest teachers — clay, which is constantly teaching me how to hold on while letting go and how to say “YES” to life, and lichen, which has a great deal to teach us about loneliness, patience, and resilience — I made twenty ceramic bowls glazed in the color scheme of The Marginalian, with some blue for its existential value and its lens on the universe, and I cast the words in them with resin over lichen from places I have lived over the years, from Bulgaria to Patagonia.

To celebrate the monumental role chance plays in any given life, without which none of us would be who we are, or here at all, I am giving these away in a pay-what-you-wish raffle: To enter, make a donation in any amount that is right for you by December 31, so long as you end it with the decimal .20. (The loveliness of a lottery, which is an antipode to the rich-getting-richer ugliness of an auction, is that your odds are equal whether you enter with $1.20 or $10,000.20 — the only difference is by how much you support this ongoing labor of love.)

donating = loving

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.

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The Marginalian has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s most inspiring reading. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Folks participating in the Republican hajj to Highland Heights this weekend to witness President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump spew his usual filth and slander will undoubtedly be subjected to one feature above all.

Lies. Lies like no one has ever heard before. A flood of lies that will make the infamous Johnstown disaster seem like a rainy day. He will lie about gas prices, he will lie about inflation and, of course, he will lie about the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

As critic Mary McCarthy once wrote of playwright Lillian Hellman, “…every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’”

Pick a subject and Donald J. Trump will lie about it. The curious thing is that many attending Saturday’s rally are secretly, or, perhaps, not so secretly, hoping Trump uncorks a gusher of lies that out-duels Old Faithful, offering an opportunity to act like yokels at a hoochie-coochie show when he smears the same people they despise with whoppers that, for most, are impossible to believe.

Now, there’s no debating the claim that lying holds an honored position in American politics since the founding of the republic, involving Democrats and Republicans alike. You can’t find a campaign free of bamboozling and it’s undoubtedly a tradition that will extend far into the future.

But Trump is the Babe Ruth of lying. He has transformed prevaricating into an art form, stretching the truth to limits not previously explored. During this parade, in what has been characterized as a “midterm rally’’ intended to generate GOP turnout for upcoming House and Senate races, Trump is crossing the country leaving the truth battered on the side of the road.

There are too many lies to list here. But perhaps the grandaddy of them all during the tour came in Arizona on Wednesday in Bullhead City, when he accused, with no evidence, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, of being in the pocket of drug lords.

“Your Governor, Katie Hobbs, does the bidding of the cartels,’’ he told the crowd. “People say she’s paid off by the cartels. I wouldn’t be surprised. What she does, it doesn’t make sense. Something has to be between her and the cartels, because she’s causing tremendous death in your state.”

Then he called Hobbs “a dumb person’’ just for laughs, indicating the level of high political discourse the president has been engaging in.

Trump’s choice of Highland Heights for one of these confabs is rather curious. Truist Arena on the Northern Kentucky University campus, on Louie B. Nunn Drive, after a former Kentucky Republican governor, is located in a region where Republicans aren’t expected to face many problems this Nov. 3. It is the area that in May featured a famous Trump victory — his hand-picked choice in the 4th Congressional District primary, Ed “Stooge’’ Gallrein, a nobody, defeated the incumbent, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, who was on Trump’s bad side, thanks to about $25 million spent on Gallrein’s behalf.

It’s likely Trump will spend a few moments maligning Massie; he may have decided to travel here to do just that. Otherwise, the only other race in Northern Kentucky that bares attention is the Senate showdown to replace the retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Louisville, another Trump favorite, involving Rep. Andy “It’s Not A Sin To Be White’’ Barr, R-Lexington, and the Democrat, former state representative Charles Booker, of Louisville.

Barr is thought to have a reasonably easy ride to election, so, perhaps, Trump is coming in so the two can trade tips on how to stage a racist campaign.

The race that Kentucky Republicans are nervous about is actually occurring in the 6th Congressional District, where former Republican state senator Ralph Alvarado faces former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo, the Democrat. Trump endorsed Alvarado during the primary campaign but polls are indicating a very close race with Dembo modestly ahead in some surveys.

Trump might have provided more of a pick-me-up for the GOP by appearing in Lexington. Or it could be his approval number — the most recent poll from Economist/YouGov, released Monday, shows it at 39 percent with 60 percent disapproval — may have led the Alvarado forces to beg him to stay away. Ralph will likely attend the festivities to get a shout-out but that may be about it.

The real reason for appearing in Northern Kentucky might be across the river. Cincinnati media will be on hand to cover the event on Saturday, traditionally a pretty slow news day, and carry the goings-on to Ohio where several high-profile races are being played out. Trump was recently up in Youngstown and this gives him an opportunity to show his face to viewers in Southwest Ohio.

In the Buckeye State, former senator Sherrod Brown, who lost a re-election bid two years ago, maintains a slight lead over incumbent Sen. John Husted. A recent CNN poll had Brown ahead by about six points but others show Husted with a slight edge. The race for governor is also tight, with some recent surveys showing Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy ahead and others giving the nod to Democrat Amy Acton.

Regardless, in addition to the avalanche of lies, attendees can look forward to the usual Trump horse manure that he always provides in substantial servings. He will hurl slurs at all foes who come to mind. (I’m checking in at Draft Kings to catch the odds on Massie and maybe Gov. Andy Beshear, who hopes to take his place in the White House.) Trump will further provide plenty of obscenities to wake the folks up, and, if they’re lucky, he’ll dance to “YMCA,’’ which truly is one of the most grotesque sights an American has ever been forced to witness.

And it will all be done in what Trump has described as “the weave,’’ where he bounces and skips from one incomprehensible subject to another, with few, if anybody, understanding what the hell he’s talking about, before arriving at some grand conclusion where he declares himself king of the world.

It’s ridiculous.

“Friends of mine that are, like English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen,’” Trump has said.

Now, even you folks who are Trumpsters out there, do you believe a word of this? For one thing, he has no friends, save for the late Jeffrey Epstein, and we all know how that turned out.

And, if he had friends, would any of them be English professors? And if he did have friends who are English professors, would any of them consider his idiotic musings “the most brilliant thing’’ they’ve ever seen?

As a bonus feature, those attending might be lucky enough to witness the President of the United States providing a review of male body parts.

In Youngstown, Trump spoke quite admiringly of Husted’s rear end, for no particular reason.

No, this is not a joke.

Trump said he found himself examining Husted’s athletic physique.

“And I looked, and I watched up and down. And I looked at his ass…’’ Trump said.

Now, and no offense to anyone who might be so infatuated, as a straight guy, I have rarely felt the urge to ogle and then comment on another man’s backside. In fact, I have never done that, nor do I expect to in the future.

Yet, here is the president of the United States reviewing and praising Sen. Jon Husted’s keister.

How in God’s world can anyone take this man seriously?

--30--

Written by Bill Straub, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. Cross-posted from the NKY Tribune.

Today's links

• Load-bearing: Digital sovereignty vs AI.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Anthrax penmanship; Stolen WEBGEEK license plate; Arizona Republic endorses Clinton, gets death threats; Against the great forces of history.
• Upcoming appearances: Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Vienna, Kilkenny, Oxford, Sheffield, Virtual, Oxford, Montreal.
• 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.

Load-bearing (permalink)

You find the weirdest stuff inside your walls. Our house was built in 1949 and we're its third owner, and I have no idea what those other people were doing, but at one point someone installed a junction box full of live, bare wires that they filled with crumpled newspaper (!); and don't get me started on the decision not to put vapor barriers in the kitchen windows (we were one good shake away from the entire front of the house falling down when we discovered that one, and while it cost us an extra $19,000 to fix, that was still cheaper than rebuilding the whole front of the house).

Plus there was the unpermitted drainage system installed down the side of the house that must have attracted some (undocumented) planning inspector negativity; at least, that's the only reason I can think of for someone to have filled those drains with concrete (!!), a fact we discovered during the first heavy rainfall after moving in, when the water rose to shin-height (!!!).

But the weirdest and most nerve-wracking mysteries were the "structural" members of dubious quality, placement and utility. Some of them only seemed to be holding stuff up, but on closer inspection turned out to be free-floating 2x4s, not anchored to anything. On more than one occasion, our builders have moved jacks into position and removed those random uprights, only to discover that they weren't holding anything up.

Say what you will about this method, but it is decisive: if you remove a vertical member and nothing falls down, you can be pretty sure that wasn't a load-bearing member.

(This is a metaphor about AI.)

You can be forgiven for rolling your eyes when the subject of "digital sovereignty" comes up. Rhetorically, "digital sovereignty" is a coded way for a politician to say, "We should build a fuckton of AI data-centers while bypassing any environmental review":

https://datacentremagazine.com/technology-and-ai/keir-starmers-2bn-pledge-how-the-uk-plans-to-advance-ai

But AI has nothing to do with digital sovereignty. It is not load-bearing. All it takes to understand this is a little thought-experiment. Imagine that we removed all the chatbots from Canada, or the UK, or the EU, or the USA. What would fall down?

Nothing important.

Every public administrative body – national, regional and local – would continue to function. Every firm – large and small – would continue to trade. Households would be unscathed, save for their youngest members, who would suffer the indignity and tedium of having to do their own homework again.

Which is not to say that "digital sovereignty" is a nothingburger. The walls of our nations are filled with load-bearing digital members. It's just that these are the most boring, regular-degular-ass technologies imaginable.

Like Microsoft Office 365. Take away M365 and every ministry collapses, every firm shutters, and many if not most households will be in serious trouble.

And here's the thing: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella paid $1m out of his own pocket to join the murderer's row of tech CEOs who sat behind Trump on the inaugural dais:

https://apnews.com/article/trump-inauguration-tech-billionaires-zuckerberg-musk-wealth-0896bfc3f50d941d62cebc3074267ecd

Microsoft donated $10 million to Trump's Epstein Memorial Ballroom:

https://www.geekwire.com/2026/leaked-list-shows-what-microsoft-amazon-and-other-tech-giants-are-giving-for-the-white-house-ballroom/

Microsoft provides the back-end administrative infrastructure for Trump's racist pogroms (take away M365 and ICE would collapse):

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/17/ice-microsoft-technology-immigration-crackdown

The CEO of Microsoft France admitted that if Trump ordered the company to spy on French citizens' data (or the data of the French government), his company would comply, in secret:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/microsoft-cant-keep-eu-data-safe-from-us-authorities/

And here's the kicker: Microsoft has terminated the M365 and Outlook access of international public officials whose official acts made Trump angry, starting with the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who lost his accounts after he swore out the genocide warrant for Netanyahu:

https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Microsofts-ICC-email-block-reignites-European-data-sovereignty-concerns

This is a white-hot, 278-alarm digital sovereignty dumpster-fire. M365 – as well as cloud software from Oracle, Google, Apple, Amazon and other US tech giants that have fused themselves with the Trump regime in exchange for tax breaks and antitrust forbearance – is load-bearing, and worse, those 2x4s are filled with termites and dry-rot.

Digital sovereignty is as real as real can be. It just has nothing to do with AI. AI isn't load-bearing. Boring-ass tech monopolist cloud software is…and we can not trust it:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

Hey look at this (permalink)

• (not) solitaire https://notsolitaire.com/

• Steering AI Beyond Automation https://www.normaltech.ai/p/steering-ai-beyond-automation

• Wealth Inequality in America Drawn to scale https://dreamagainusa.org/

• Sally Rooney books withdrawn in UK over Palestine Action support https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmx23q4g307vo

• Trump’s Great Gift to Chinese Automakers https://prospect.org/2026/10/15/trumps-great-gift-to-chinese-automakers-ev-sales-oil-diesel/

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Anthrax terrorist's handwriting https://web.archive.org/web/20011017003926/http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/20011016/ts/mdf70100.html

#20yrsago Help find stolen WEB GEEK license plate https://web.archive.org/web/20061017222733/https://www.backupbrain.com/2006_10_15_archive.html#a004964#a004964

#15yrsago UK media swallowed the “adult content” filter line https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/17/adult-content-filters-good-parenting

#10yrsago Arizona Republic editor responds to death threats following Clinton endorsement https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/2016/10/16/publisher-response-to-threats-after-republic-endorsement-clinton-trump/92058964/

#5yrsago Against the great forces of history https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/17/against-the-great-forces-of-history/

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Vancouver: Read, Resist, Repair, Rejoice (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 19
  https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/01

• Victoria: Munro's Books, Oct 20
  https://www.munrobooks.com/events/6113620261020

• Vancouver: Life After AI (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 22
  https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/46

• Ottawa: Life After AI (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 24
  https://writersfestival.org/event/life-after-ai

• Vienna: TED AI, Oct 28-30
  https://tedai-vienna.ted.com/

• Kilkenny (Kilkenomics), Nov 6-8
  https://kilkenomics.com/

• Vancouver: Enshittification (Sid Williams Theatre Society), Nov 10
  https://www.sidwilliamstheatre.com/events/cory-doctorow-talks-enshittification/

• Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
  https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/

• Oxford: Ministry of the Future, Nov 23
  https://ministryforthefuture.co.uk/events.html

• Sheffield: Reverse Centaur at Juno Books, Nov 25
  https://www.outsavvy.com/event/40274/cory-doctorow-in-conversation

• Virtual: Enshittification, AI, and the Future of Technology (UBC Master of Educational Technology), Nov 28
  https://met.ubc.ca/2026/09/met-speaker-series-cory-doctorow-enshittification-ai-and-the-future-of-technology/

• Oxford: Bennett Oxford Symposium on Open Code in Science, Dec 9
  https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/events/2026-bennett-institute-symposium/

• Montreal: World Science Fiction Convention, Sep 2-6
  https://montreal2027.ca/en

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Life After AI (Brain Bar)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPPa43-n0vI

• Terms of Service with Clare Duffy (CNN)
  https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/terms-of-service-with-clare-duffy/episodes/458ce968-af5d-11f0-b539-13ed2afe25f8

• AI, Work, and Power (Software Engineering Daily)
  AI, Work, and Power https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/podcasts/cory-doctorow-on-ai-work-and-power/

• AI, Corporate Power, and the Fight for Worker Control (Plutopia)
  https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-ai-corporate-power-and-the-fight-for-worker-control/

• How to Think About AI—Before It’s Too Late (Daniel Solove)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0xR3uEgGcc

Latest 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/

• "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 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, April 20, 2027

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

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

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 503 (26039 total).

• "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. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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Blast, the Ethereum layer-2 created by the team behind the Blur NFT marketplace, is shutting down less than three years after launch. In the announcement, they disclosed that its costs now exceed its revenue and that it sees "no credible path" to fixing that. Despite once boasting of more than $2 billion in total value locked in June 2024, generating revenue from network usage of around $3.5 million, that revenue has collapsed to less than $2,000 last month.

• Tweet by Blast
• "Once a $2 billion Ethereum layer-2, Blast is shutting down after assets plunge 98%" , CoinDesk

It’s time to de-privatize the US government. “The problem is not just that privatization is often inefficient because it adds a nontransparent layer of profiteering on top of government functions. The problem is that government loses basic capacity.”