There are several iconic lines in the 1975 blockbuster movie, Jaws. For example, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” has been repeated or paraphrased in numerous films.

My personal favorite is when Quint, the crusty old fisherman played by Robert Shaw, tells Matt Hooper, the know-it-all young scientist played by Richard Dreyfuss, “Well, it proves one thing Mr. Hooper. It proves that you wealthy college boys don’t have the education enough to admit when you’re wrong.”

I’ll admit that, as the only one of seven siblings without a college degree, I used to favor common sense and traditional wisdom over academic intellectualism. Now that I am older – READ: old – I try to look at things from as many different perspectives as I can. However, I generally prefer scientific method over traditional wisdom or gut feelings.

It seems universally true that most people, including me, don’t want to admit when they are wrong. In “Why Some People Will Never Admit That They’re Wrong” published in Psychology Today, Guy Winch writes,

No one enjoys being wrong. It’s an unpleasant emotional experience for all of us. The question is how do we respond when it turns out we were wrong. (...)

Some of us admit we were wrong and say, ‘Oops, you were right. (...)

Some of us kind of imply we were wrong, but we don’t do so explicitly or in a way that is satisfying to the other person. ... We accept responsibility fully or partially (sometimes, very, very partially), but we don’t push back against the actual facts.

But what about when a person does push back against the facts, when they simply cannot admit they were wrong in any circumstance? What is it in their psychological makeup that makes it impossible for them to admit they were wrong, even when it is obvious they were? And why does this happen so repetitively – why do they never admit they were wrong?

The answer is related to their ego; their very sense of self.

I am a lifelong Democrat. Sometimes I’ve defended a Democrat, or Democrats, because of party loyalty, even when I pretty much knew they were wrong. For example, in 1998 President Bill Clinton was impeached primarily for lying under oath and obstructing justice while trying to conceal his extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. I mostly excused Bill Clinton on the flimsy grounds that, although it was wrong for him to lie, it was understandable and excusable and even honorable for him to want to spare his wife and daughter and even the nation from the shame and tawdriness implicit in the sexual affair.

Nowadays, however, I have zero respect for Bill Clinton. I admit that I was wrong to excuse his lies and bad behavior. I will further admit that many years passed before I was able to make that admission. As a journalist, I have to be thick-skinned. But maybe my ego was more fragile than I thought.

Winch continues,

Some people have such a fragile ego, such brittle self-esteem, such a weak ‘psychological constitution,’ that admitting they made a mistake or that they were wrong is fundamentally too threatening for their egos to tolerate. Accepting they were wrong, absorbing that reality, would be so psychologically shattering that their defense mechanisms do something remarkable to avoid doing so – they literally distort their perception of reality to make it (reality) less threatening. Their defense mechanisms protect their fragile ego by changing the very facts in their mind, so they are no longer wrong or culpable.

Indeed, rather than admit that Bill Clinton was a sleazy lying adulterer, I shifted the blame to America’s puritanical history and resultant prudishness, arguing that progressive European nations like France or Italy wouldn’t have a problem with their president lying about an extramarital affair. In a modern civilized culture, that’s what one does in such a situation, right? Er ... no, that’s not right.

Not everyone who voted for Donald Trump identifies with the MAGA movement. Some are lifelong Republicans who always vote for Republicans, just as I’m a lifelong Democrat who always votes for Democrats.

In Gallup News, Jeffrey Jones writes that a “new high of 45% in U.S. identify as political independents; more independents lean Democratic than Republican, giving Democrats edge in party affiliation for first time since 2021.”

He continues, “The recent increase in independent identification is partly attributable to younger generations of Americans (millennials and Generation X) continuing to identify as independents at relatively high rates as they have gotten older. In contrast, older generations of Americans have been less likely to identify as independents over time. Generation Z, like previous generations before them when they were young, identify disproportionately as political independents.”

I have mixed feelings about Independents. On one hand, I believe there are clear and distinct differences between the two major parties that make it easy for me to choose to be a Democrat. I focus mainly on what the Democratic party represents and not on individual candidates. On the other hand, I can understand and empathize with voters — especially younger voters — who are fed up with, and even exhausted by, the rancor and vitriol between the two major parties.

Moreover, identifying as an Independent allows voters the freedom to micromanage their political beliefs and decisions – as opposed to accepting the “party line” adopted and promoted by either of the two major parties. In short, party loyalty comes with a price – that Independents presumably don’t have to pay.

Independent voters in critical swing states such as Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania were key to Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election. (Those same Independent voters also helped several Democrats win their Senate races.) Considering President Trump’s abysmally low approval ratings — on tariffs and the economy, healthcare, gas and energy prices, the federal budget, immigration, Iran, Ukraine — I can’t help but wonder if some of them now regret voting for Trump.

One anonymous man who voted for Trump in 2024 admitted that things were “not going well. I was looking yesterday and, you know, Americans have lost over $1 trillion in their wealth in the last year, while the top 1% has gained over $10 trillion. And it’s like, that’s not exactly what was supposed to be happening.”

Or is it? I would argue strongly that this is exactly what Trump wants – the rich are getting richer, while the rest of us are not.

Regardless of his motives, Trump has seriously soured the American economy, and his tariffs and policies have hurt the economies of numerous friendly countries such as Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, Germany and other European allies. Yet Trump’s MAGA base continues to confuse their stubborn loyalty and blindness to the truth with inner strength and moral conviction.

It’s commonly known that we all make mistakes. Although it’s painful, we need to admit our mistakes, learn what we can from them, and resolve to make amends for them if possible.

And that includes MAGA Trump voters.

--30--

If this was worth reading, please share by clicking this button. It helps us grow! &&&

Thoughts on this? Leave them in the comments below.

I wanna talk about Cameron’s The Terminator and Carpenter’s The Thing, but first, let’s get it out of the way —

If you know anything at all about me in this Current Era, it is that I am vehemently opposed to generative AI. I do not use it. I will not use it. It does not exist for me in any form — the only “use” I had of it recently was writing my Vital Cat Update, which copied from Google’s search engine AI off its main search page. Otherwise, I don’t touch the stuff. I don’t even know how to access it. I couldn’t tell you how to use Chat GPT or Claude or any of that. My copy of Word is one with Copilot not inside it, and I had to change my subscription to get there. I turn off Apple Intelligence in every instance I can. I am against AI because it steals our work, which it then uses to steal our jobs, which it further uses to steal our water and our electricity.

Which is to say, it is here to steal our future.

So, I’m against it! It sucks moist open ass.

But there’s a delightful (read: not at all delightful!!) new perniciousness afoot, and that requires us to talk a little about the novel Shy Girl, by an author who I won’t even name because whatever she did or did not do, I do not think directing theoretical harassment toward said author is really valuable, nor is it the point. The problem isn’t one book. The problem is the whole system.

To keep it as brief as I can, what happened was, to my understanding:

Shy Girl was a self-published novel. A horror novel. It came out a year or so ago, on its own, I think? It did well enough, I guess, though I don’t know that it set the world on fire — but somehow a publisher, Hachette, picked it up for traditional publication and it was to come out soon. Ten months ago, there appeared to be accusations that the book read like it was written by generative AI in whole or in part. Those conversations continued and appeared to boil over right around now-ish, and the current narrative is that the author did not herself use generative AI, but employed an editor who made changes to the book using generative AI, changes that the author did not — review? Did not catch? I don’t know for sure.

Certainly some aspect of this may be wrong, or new details may come out, and if you have corrective details, please sling ’em in the comments below.

That is the situation currently.

---

To switch tracks a bit, though you’ll soon see (or already can predict) where this is going: I’ve in the last several months seen an uncomfortable number of instances, usually on Threads, where someone will look at a photograph or a video or a piece or art or graphic design and they will assert, with dogmatic certainty, that is AI.

And sometimes, it is, or appears to be.

And other times, it definitely isn’t.

I’ve seen people look at a beautiful, very real but also very-processed photo, and say with their whole chest, that shit is AI, and sometimes that’s started a small little avalanche of people asserting similarly. And in more than one instance, I’ve seen the creator come back and post how that photo predates the current generation of gen-AI — it’s just a photo that looks either really good because of Lightroom or really overprocessed because someone wanted a slick HDR effect, or whatever.

This has also happened with writing.

---

It started with the emdash.

It was asserted, with Great Authority, that emdash use was a strong signifier of a piece of writing being AI.

The artbarf robots, they said, love that little emdash sumbitch so much, so so much, that they just can’t help themselves.

Needless to say, that made my bowels go to ice water because —

Holy shit, I love the emdash, too.

In fact, most Current Era writers I know love love love a fucking emdash.

But instead of making me sympathetic toward the artbarf robots — “Aww, it loves the same things I do!” — it only made me hate the artbarf robots more, because the reason the piece-of-shit AI loves an emdash is because it stole all our work, and all our work features a lot of goddamn emdashes.

It doesn’t use emdashes.

We use emdashes, and it stole our work and then mimics us.

Emdashes and all.

---

So now, with Shy Girl, what do I see?

I see some folks putting forth the “signs” that told them that Shy Girl was very obviously AI-written, and those signs include a number of stylistic choices.

And when I say stylistic choices, they are not choices that generative AI made, because generative AI doesn’t make choices. It just eats and regurgitates.

We make choices, as authors. Narrative ones, stylistic ones, and so forth.

But this list of signs and symptoms and AI portents included stylistic choices that I myself absolutely one hundred percent make. Same as the emdash. I’ve seen people say that AI loves metaphors, AI loves certain kinds of repetition, it loves adjectives no wait it loves adverbs no wait it loves alliteration no wait–

Of course, again, as with choices, AI doesn’t love a fucking thing, because AI isn’t alive, it isn’t intelligent, it isn’t aware. The key word is always artificial. It fakes it. It fakes choices. It fakes preferences. It fakes love. And it is able to fake it because it stole those choices and preferences from us.

---

I saw The Terminator last night on the big screen. I’ve seen it before, obviously — seen it many, many times. Seen all of them! Even the stinky ones. But I think this was my first seeing that one on the big screen. (It’s of course excellent, if occasionally a little corny and showing its age.)

But one place where it isn’t showing its age is how it still issues a sharp warning about AI — it’s long been held as a kind of bellwether for that particular threat, right? It’s an early iteration of the Torment Nexus meme. That warning has told us, hey, AI is going to get smart, get mean, it’s going to inhabit robots who want to kill us, it’s going to tangle itself up in our systems and decide that we’re a threat and drop a batch of nukes on our heads.

But I think one of the warnings in the movie(s) didn’t really register for me back then, but it damn sure registers now —

What happens in the movie? The AI is going to pretend to be us, and it’s going to be get harder and harder to tell the difference. It’s going to wear our faces. Only dogs will be able to sniff it out. It can steal our voices — so when we call home to talk to Mom, maybe the Mom we think we’re talking to us actually dead, and it’s a soulless Cyberdene drone on the other end there.

That makes me think of John Carpenter’s The Thing, because it, too, understands that same threat, but worse — it understands the fear of being amongst your people except one of those people isn’t your people. Ohhh, no. It’s an Impostor, an alien being clothed in the raiment of your friend’s flesh, and soon you’ll be paranoid about who is alien and who is human, and you’ll have to work very hard to find a way to figure out just who is who — all that without accidentally killing a friend, or failing to kill the thing that wants to eat your face and then wear it.

Sound familiar?

The AI — artistically! — is us.

It steals our artistic skin.

It wears it, pretends to be us.

And it gets harder and harder to tell what’s us, and what’s it.

---

I’ve long said that one of the threats of AI is that it damages the fidelity of our information. Of truth and reality itself! It’s not just that it pumps out misinformation and disinformation — digital illusion and virtual legerdemain! — but rather that its mere existence makes it harder and harder to tell what is truth and what is fiction.

And we’re seeing that now with Shy Girl.

We’re seeing it with photos and videos and artwork.

People are right to hate AI — and the pernicious, insidious presence of AI has made them like the men trapped in that Antarctic base.

They are paranoid that it’s everywhere.

Because, ostensibly, it is. Or they (they being the techbros who are really the man behind the wizard curtain) want it to be. And it has a deleterious, corrosive effect on all that we do and all that we see. It’s like Paramount taking over CBS, or Musk taking over Twitter — it doesn’t matter that it becomes successful, it just matters that they ruin the ability to disseminate good information. To ruin truth.

---

So, what the fuck do we do about all this?

I have no idea. I mean, the obvious thing on the face of it is to keep your own garden free of it. Pledge to use no AI. In all the ways you can avoid it? Avoid it. But that won’t stop someone in the future telling you you’re using it. Or even using an AI detector — which is itself AI! — from “detecting” it. And it won’t stop others from assuring you that this photo or that video or this logo is AI, even when it’s not. That certainty has been ruined.

More to the point, I don’t know what this means for writers, for readers, and for publishing at large. Ideally, publishing gets ahead of this problem and tries to get commitments from writers to not use AI — but therein lies a rub, too, wherein a “no AI” contract looks like a “morality clause.” Without clear definitions, if enough people were to accuse you and your book of being AI — whether at the authorial level, the editorial level, or in some aspect of publishing — they can get it tanked whether or not AI has ever even chastely kissed the work in question. And it doesn’t inspire confidence when a publisher like Hachette published Shy Girl… when already the accusations of AI were afoot. Did they do their due diligence? I don’t know. Maybe! But given the lack of editorial oversight… ennnh, maybe not.

Do I think AI should be published? I do not. I think using AI at any of those levels is not only problematic for the reasons listed above, it also takes opportunity from an Actual Human doing the Actual Work of Being Human. A contract given to some slopwrangler is a contract not given to an actual writer. A fake book will take the place of a real one. It’s stupid fucking robots all the way down when it should be humans.

So, this is a snarled nightmare tangle — one where the existence of AI en masse is becoming its own problem, regardless of whether it’s presence in a single instance of art of writing. We’re just going to have to do our best going forward. We must pledge not to use it — but also try to be very, very cautious kicking other people under the tires of this bus without knowing for absolute sure what we’re accusing someone of doing. As AI gets better, the environment in which it exists is only going to get noisier and more confusing. And we can’t just stick a copper wire into the blood of the book to make it transform into the monster, revealing its True Self.

We just gotta do our best. Be vigilant, be cautious.

And don’t use the AI slop-shitting artbarf techbro bullshit.

---

SIGH.

I do not care for this era of writing and publishing, lemme tell you.

The faster we pop this bubble, the better off we will all be.

Good luck, friends!

And fuck off, robots.

Buy my books or I die in the abyss.

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.

---

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

This is maybe the best baseball catch you’ll ever see. Or the most fun one anyway.

Power outages have become an unfortunate recurring event across much of the country. Last month, for example, a powerful winter storm in the Northeast caused an outage for over 600,000 homes and businesses.

I’ve written before about how you or someone you know needs clean backup power (read: not from a fossil fueled generator). The recent winter storm may just be one of those times, or it may be the next event, whether a winter storm, public safety power shut off for wildfire prevention, hurricane, or another emergency. At that time, I also wrote about how electric vehicles can be a solution in times of power outages, acting like a quiet generator with no direct air pollution emissions through vehicle-to-home (V2H) power flow. Short of V2H, the more limited vehicle-to-load (V2L) functionality that many electric vehicles have can also help in a pinch to power a critical devices, such as a refrigerator or fan. V2L is also great for powering tools at a job site or gear on your next camping trip.

In principle, electric vehicles can do more than backup power V2H and off-grid V2L.  Drivers with a properly equipped electric vehicle and home set-up have the option to use their vehicles routinely in coordination with electricity grid needs to lower their electricity bills through bill credits or incentives. Drivers can do this through managed charging (grid-to-vehicle aka V1G) or bidirectional charging (vehicle-to-grid aka V2G).  

V1G and V2G involve charging up vehicles at times when renewable generation is abundant or when demands on the grid are low. In the case of V2G, vehicles also discharge when the grid needs some extra juice. In so doing, V1G and V2G lower costs for the grid by better utilizing grid resources, including cheaper sources of energy, and by deferring or avoiding grid upgrades that would otherwise need to be made to meet the demand for energy on the grid. Lower grid costs mean relatively lower bills over the long term for all electricity customers. UCS analysis has demonstrated the potential magnitude of V1G and V2G grid savings into the future. (spoiler: it’s in the billions per year!)

I’ll come back to V1G and V2G a little later. First, we need to know, what is the market currently delivering in terms of vehicle functionality and what else may you need to use that functionality?  

Bidirectional charging includes a range of capabilities

To do any kind of bidirectional charging, the vehicle must have both the hardware and software to enable that capability. A key component is a battery management system that allows for discharging the battery for a purpose other than running the electric motors that move the vehicle.

Many new electric vehicles can do V2L bidirectional charging. My Hyundai Ioniq 5, for example, has USB outlets in the cabin, and I have the option of using an adapter for the charging port through which a power cord or extension cord can be plugged in. Some Ioniq 5 trim levels also have a regular wall outlet type receptacle under the back seat. My Ioniq 5 is not, unfortunately, equipped for V2H, but many new vehicles are.

Indeed, the good news is that the market is beginning to deliver V2H capability for home backup power in a growing number of electric vehicle models. And drivers are buying those models: V2H-capable models have grown as a share of electric vehicle sales, reaching over 18 percent in the U.S. in 2025. News from Hyundai outlines plans to start full V2H for home backup power with the Ioniq 9, and meanwhile, Hyundai subsidiary Kia rolled out V2H in 2025 for the Kia EV9. Other available models include Chevy’s Equinox, Balzer,  Silverado, and upcoming 2027 Bolt, as well as the Ford F150 Lightning units that made it off the line before production stopped (over 100,000 of them). There’s the Tesla Cybertruck, Volvo E90, and Polestar 3, too. V2H-capable models from Rivian and BMW are anticipated in the near future.

The most sophisticated end of the bidirectional charging capability range V2G. It allows an EV to discharge power to a driver’s house while the house is actively connected with the grid. Grid-coordinated EV discharge may involve offsetting the house’s electricity needs or exporting power through the house and beyond the electricity meter back to the grid.  This is different from V2H that is set up for backup power purposes only, which you may also see referred to as V2H. (It’s confusing, I know!) The main difference is the kind of connection to the electricity grid you pursue with your local utility. There may also be software to update in the vehicle.

Providing consumers with more options for affordable models with V2H is important. Notably the V2H-capable models mentioned above span a range of price points, including the forthcoming 2027 Bolt on the more affordable end (advertised at around $30,000). However, that V2H capability (and V2G capability for that matter) is not universal in new vehicles is a problem. The majority of drivers purchase on the used market, and consequently are subject to the preferences of new car buyers. If new car buyers choose V2H capable models, then more V2H options will be available on the used market. If they don’t, V2H capability on the used market will remain limited, preventing many drivers from having this important option for clean backup power and other bidirectional charging opportunities. That’s where policy can help by ensuring V2H capability (and better yet, V2G) is offered across all electric vehicle models: if all new models have V2H, the more and more vehicles on the used market will have it over time.

So your electric vehicle is configured for bidirectional charging. What else do you need?

For V2L, you may need the charging port adapter. Some models come with it (check the spec sheet posted in the window!), or it may have to be purchased separately.  

V2H, even just for home backup power, takes a bit more external hardware, including a bidirectional capable charger, control system, and other electronics. This is where additional setup cost comes in, though most of the extra cost would be the same as that of a whole house generator or stationary battery system. Currently, most automakers have only OK’ed their vehicles to push power through their own proprietary system or a single, specific third-party provider. Take, for examples, the General Motors V2H kit (also requires their PowerShift Charger) or the Sunrun system for the Ford F-150 Lightning (requires Ford’s Charge Station Pro and a V2H activation fee for some trim levels).

It’s encouraging to see automakers going beyond vehicle capability to ensure their customers have all the components needed to set up V2H at their homes. At the same time, the walled gardens each automaker has created limits driver choice and prevents them from shopping around for the best price and functionality for a V2H rig. This is another instance in which policy can help by requiring interoperability. And I mean implementation of interoperability, not just capability to adhere to the relevant standards.

If V2H isn’t feasible for you, you still have options

When my household first acquired an electric vehicle, I lived in a rented apartment. Even if my Ioniq 5 was equipped with V2H backup capability, I wouldn’t have been able to install the home setup because I didn’t have access or authority to make changes to my electrical panel. Multiunit housing is a tough nut that needs cracking to unlock V2H for back-up power, as well as vehicle-to-grid opportunities for those who would like to participate. There’s much work to be done to develop solutions for V2H in multiunit housing where access to charging can be a challenge in the first place.

Without a full V2H setup, V2L can still be a lifeline in power outages. As I noted before, V2L can power critical devices to help you through an outage. Aside from the ability to plug in a device, an electric vehicle can be a place to escape from very hot or cold weather while the power is out. I contemplated sleeping in the car with the AC running in a post-hurricane power outage in order to cope with the sweltering weather. That’s not something you can do in a gasoline car parked in a garage due to the tailpipe emissions. Luckily for me, that power outage didn’t last long enough for me and my household to have to camp in the car in order to rest at a safe temperature.

Regardless of whether you personally have an electric vehicle, you may still be able to go to a place where one is providing backup power. A growing area of emergency planning is incorporating electric school buses as a source of backup power for schools, shelters, and other community gathering locations. Check out these examples from Illinois and Oklahoma.

Beyond backup: vehicle-grid integration for bargain bills and a better grid for all

V2H for backup will get many drivers thinking about and using their electric vehicles for more than just getting around. That’s a huge mental shift that was once unthinkable for the hundred or so years that fossil fueled vehicles ruled the road. Once you’ve made the shift in thinking, you might be wondering how else you can leverage your vehicle’s capabilities.

That’s where vehicle-grid integration comes in. If you’re set up for V2H backup, the next step to grid-coordinated bidirectional charging. Whether you stick to offsetting some of your energy use from the grid or go all the way to pushing power to the grid, you could earn you some incentives while supporting the operation of the grid. And don’t forget (one directional) managed charging! The UCS analysis mentioned above shows that actively managed charging, which delays or advances charging based on grid conditions, can create significant benefits all on its own.

The availability of grid-coordinated managed charging and V2H/V2G programs depends on what your local electric utility or third party aggregators offer in your area. I’ll cover more on that another time. For now, I’ll assure you that UCS is working with stakeholders in the vehicle-grid integration space to make sure bidirectional capable vehicles and opportunities to use those vehicles are available to more drivers.

How to enjoy bad but not worse weather

Dig the webcam at Poipu beach, on the south side of Kauai, near where I'll be for a week, starting tomorrow. Also, the turtles, in calmer weather.

I love me a water matrix printer

This fountain in Moravian Square (Moravské náměstí), in the Czechian city of Brno, prints the time in falling water.

Two stories, one slo-mo tragedy

Radio World: How AM and FM station totals have changed in ten years. And Cord Cutter News' story about it.

I dunno why, but I did give it an image

This was my most-visited blog post yesterday.