Today's threads (a thread)
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#10yrsago NSA and GCHQ’s crappy Big Data techniques may be killing thousands of innocents https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/
#10yrsago Hackers steal a hospital in Hollywood https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/fbi-lapd-investigating-hollywood-hospital-cyber-attack/88301/
#10yrsago Watch: a home machinist makes a clock from scratch, right down to the screws and washers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXzyCM23WPI
#10yrsago Matt Ruff’s “Lovecraft Country,” where the horror is racism (not racist) https://memex.craphound.com/2016/02/16/matt-ruffs-lovecraft-country-where-the-horror-is-racism-not-racist/
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#10yrsago NYPD wants to make “resisting arrest” into a felony https://web.archive.org/web/20160205061338/http://justice.gawker.com/nypd-has-a-plan-to-magically-turn-anyone-it-wants-into-1684017767
#10yrsago Best wine-pairings for Girl Scout Cookies https://www.vivino.com/en/wine-news/girl-scout-cookies-and-wine--we-paired-them-and-the-results-are-amazing
#10yrsago John Oliver on states’ voter ID laws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHFOwlMCdto
#10yrsago Morbid and risque Valentines of yesteryear https://memex.craphound.com/2016/02/15/morbid-and-risque-valentines-of-yesteryear/
#10yrsago App Stores: winner-take-all markets dominated by rich countries https://www.cariboudigital.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Caribou-Digital-Winners-and-Losers-in-the-Global-App-Economy-2016.pdf
#10yrsago Skulls carved from vegetable matter https://dimitritsykalov.com/#intro
9/
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#10yrsago NYPD wants to make “resisting arrest” into a felony https://web.archive.org/web/20160205061338/http://justice.gawker.com/nypd-has-a-plan-to-magically-turn-anyone-it-wants-into-1684017767
#10yrsago Best wine-pairings for Girl Scout Cookies https://www.vivino.com/en/wine-news/girl-scout-cookies-and-wine--we-paired-them-and-the-results-are-amazing
#10yrsago John Oliver on states’ voter ID laws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHFOwlMCdto
#10yrsago Morbid and risque Valentines of yesteryear https://memex.craphound.com/2016/02/15/morbid-and-risque-valentines-of-yesteryear/
#10yrsago App Stores: winner-take-all markets dominated by rich countries https://www.cariboudigital.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Caribou-Digital-Winners-and-Losers-in-the-Global-App-Economy-2016.pdf
#10yrsago Skulls carved from vegetable matter https://dimitritsykalov.com/#intro
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#5yrsago Privacy Without Monopoly (podcast) https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/15/ulysses-pacts/#paternalism-denied
#5yrsago Billionaires think VR stops guillotines https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/15/ulysses-pacts/#motivated-reasoning
#5yrsago ADT insider threat https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/15/ulysses-pacts/#temptations-way
#5yrsago Big Pharma will claim opioid fines as tax-deductions https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/14/a-fine-is-a-price/#deductible
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#5yrsago Privacy Without Monopoly (podcast) https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/15/ulysses-pacts/#paternalism-denied
#5yrsago Billionaires think VR stops guillotines https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/15/ulysses-pacts/#motivated-reasoning
#5yrsago ADT insider threat https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/15/ulysses-pacts/#temptations-way
#5yrsago Big Pharma will claim opioid fines as tax-deductions https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/14/a-fine-is-a-price/#deductible
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Friday's threads: Trump antitrust is dead; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116062509846666680
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Friday's threads: Trump antitrust is dead; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116062509846666680
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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
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My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
12/
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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
--
My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
12/
My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
13/
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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
13/
My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
14/
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My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
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Upcoming appearances:
* #SaltLakeCity: Enshittification at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Tanner Humanities Center), Feb 18
https://tanner.utah.edu/center-events/cory-doctorow/* #Montreal (remote): Fedimtl, Feb 24
https://fedimtl.ca/* #Oslo (remote): Seminar og lansering av rapport om «enshittification»
https://www.forbrukerradet.no/siste-nytt/digital/seminar-og-lansering-av-rapport-om-enshittification/* #Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5
https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/15/
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Upcoming appearances:
* #SaltLakeCity: Enshittification at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Tanner Humanities Center), Feb 18
https://tanner.utah.edu/center-events/cory-doctorow/* #Montreal (remote): Fedimtl, Feb 24
https://fedimtl.ca/* #Oslo (remote): Seminar og lansering av rapport om «enshittification»
https://www.forbrukerradet.no/siste-nytt/digital/seminar-og-lansering-av-rapport-om-enshittification/* #Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5
https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/15/
Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #Victoria: Enshittification at Russell Books, Mar 4
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-is-coming-to-victoria-tickets-1982091125914* #Barcelona: Enshittification w Simona Levi (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/* #Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
https://conference.bioneers.org/* #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* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-216/
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #Victoria: Enshittification at Russell Books, Mar 4
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-is-coming-to-victoria-tickets-1982091125914* #Barcelona: Enshittification w Simona Levi (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/* #Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
https://conference.bioneers.org/* #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* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-216/
Recent appearances:
* Panopticon :3 (Trashfuture)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/panopticon-3-150395435* America's Enshittification is Canada's Opportunity (Do Not Pass Go)
https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/americas-enshittification-is-canadas* Everything Wrong With the Internet and How to Fix It, with Tim Wu (Ezra Klein)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-doctorow-wu.html* How the Internet Got Worse (Masters in Business)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXlkuVhxMo* Enshittification (Jon Favreau/Offline):
https://crooked.com/podcast/the-enshittification-of-the-internet-with-cory-doctorow/17/
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Recent appearances:
* Panopticon :3 (Trashfuture)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/panopticon-3-150395435* America's Enshittification is Canada's Opportunity (Do Not Pass Go)
https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/americas-enshittification-is-canadas* Everything Wrong With the Internet and How to Fix It, with Tim Wu (Ezra Klein)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-doctorow-wu.html* How the Internet Got Worse (Masters in Business)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXlkuVhxMo* Enshittification (Jon Favreau/Offline):
https://crooked.com/podcast/the-enshittification-of-the-internet-with-cory-doctorow/17/
You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!
Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/
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#10yrsago NSA and GCHQ’s crappy Big Data techniques may be killing thousands of innocents https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/
#10yrsago Hackers steal a hospital in Hollywood https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/fbi-lapd-investigating-hollywood-hospital-cyber-attack/88301/
#10yrsago Watch: a home machinist makes a clock from scratch, right down to the screws and washers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXzyCM23WPI
#10yrsago Matt Ruff’s “Lovecraft Country,” where the horror is racism (not racist) https://memex.craphound.com/2016/02/16/matt-ruffs-lovecraft-country-where-the-horror-is-racism-not-racist/
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@pluralistic wait, this guy re-did the Antikythera Mechanism step-by-step in video? Welp, here goes my morning.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2
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Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: The online community trilemma; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/
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@pluralistic small correction: the paper is from 2022 already, but Mako blogged about it just now

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You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!
Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/
--
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is ad-/tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🦹
️️". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!--
You can also get a fulltext RSS feed, licensed CC BY 4.0:
eof/
@pluralistic A game theory explanation of this, that I read a while back, is that communities play a complex version of the iterated prisoner's dilemma - which has a very successful strategy of being nice to people unless they're shitty to you - but as the community grows it devolves into an independent series of simple prisoner's dilemmas (which have a dominant strategy of being a dick) as the proportion of repeated interactions between individuals drops. So this is why big subreddits are toxic but small ones retain community.
Community schisms are also super interesting - Zachary's Karate Club being a canonical example.
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R AodeRelay shared this topic