They must have hoped the photos would dispel conspiracy theories that he’s dead, or at least incapacitated. But the two proof-of-life pictures taken of Sen. Mitch McConnell and his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, purportedly from his room at a rehabilitation center, have only generated more speculation about what has really happened to the 84-year-old Kentucky Republican, who hasn’t been seen or spoken in public since being hospitalized in mid-June. In both pictures, the typically sharp-minded senator is staring with a vacant smile at the camera, while the 73-year-old Chao has a firm grip on his arm that reads less as affection and more like direction.

In the first, taken July 12, McConnell holds the day’s newspaper, a tradition familiar more commonly seen in hostage photos. Even that pretext was dropped from the second picture, released July 27, which was accompanied by a note from the Senate attending physician insisting that McConnell is working “to rebuild strength and reduce the risk of future falls.” This followed the senator’s continued refusal to say much about what happened besides that he fell down and was “briefly unconscious.” 

McConnell has a long history of dirty tricks — culminating in functionally stealing a Supreme Court nomination from then-President Barack Obama and holding it for Donald Trump — so it’s not surprising that many progressives suspect the former Senate Majority Leader has sinister motives in refusing to step down from his seat. There has also been boundless speculation that he’s using this to gain some illicit power for Republicans. The rumors have gotten so bad that Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s Democratic governor, publicly demanded that McConnell “directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.”

Despite the chatter, it’s almost certain that McConnell isn’t doing this to benefit Republicans in the Senate. In commentary for MS NOW, independent journalist Lindsay Beyerstein pointed out the senator’s absence means “the GOP is down a vote in a closely divided Senate.” Trump’s struggle to get his attorney general nominee Todd Blanche across the finish line is a reminder of how every vote counts for the party. 

But it’s hard to fault conspiracy theorists when it really does seem that McConnell — or whoever is making decisions for him — is hiding something. Efforts to convince the public that he is communicative backfired when people noticed that the Republicans claiming to have spoken with him appeared to be working from the same script. As Beshear noted last week, even McConnell’s doctor noticeably avoided addressing whether the senator can “speak, reason, or carry out” his duties. Already set to retire at the end of the year, it’s becoming clear that McConnell is never coming back to the Senate chambers. 

Despite the conspiracy theories, the likeliest reason to conceal McConnell’s condition is more pathetic than calculating: It’s hard for these powerful old men and their families to let go of power.

In their controversial book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” Jake Tapper and Alex Johnson examined the role that ego and status play in keeping politicians in office long after they’re capable of doing the job. The writers uncovered evidence that Biden’s delusions were bolstered by both his family and his top staff, who seemed loathe to give up the elevated status and power that comes from being close to the president. This impression has only deepened in recent weeks, as Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has been on a bizarre media tour for no other apparent purpose than squeezing his famous last name for one more bout of attention.

This is why there’s been such a focus on Chao’s role in her husband’s health drama, starting with the clothes she’s wearing in the proof-of-life photos which are being examined and analyzed for clues.

“I can’t imagine Elaine, one of the most put-together people in existence, releasing a pic wearing a thin shirt over a visible black bra, UNTUCKED,” writer Jeff Yang, who claims to know the Chao family, argued on Bluesky about the second photo taken from McConnell’s hospital room. Others argued that the shirt is too cheap-looking to be something Chao, who is every inch the wealthy socialite, would wear.

To be fair to Chao, she is a private person; most of our perception of her fashion comes from glimpses of her at public events. In the real world, people don’t typically dress to visit a medical facility the same way they do for work. Nonetheless, internet sleuths sussed out that the shirt Chao is wearing on the July 26 photo appears to be the same one she was seen wearing on July 15. But whatever her level of responsibility, it’s not surprising that McConnell’s wife is the center of many conspiracy theories. It wasn’t that long ago that then-First Lady Jill Biden was engaged in ham-fisted efforts to deny and downplay her husband’s inability to do his job.

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Like the aging politicians themselves, family members often benefit from the status and power they get through their famous relatives. Chao is no different. Not only did she serve in the Cabinets of Trump, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, Chao was also appointed to government positions by Ronald Reagan, and she continues to engage in power-brokering around the world. When McConnell was rushed to the hospital in June, she was in China having meetings with high-ranking officials, including the country’s vice president Han Zheng. The trip was so important that she didn’t cut it short to return to her husband’s side. Whatever dealings she has with foreign leaders, she surely gains leverage from her connection to such a powerful man. 

We don’t have any specifics on what McConnell and Chao are hiding or why, but after the Biden debacle, it’s silly to pretend such these cover-ups are implausible. If anything, they’re starting to feel like the norm. The late Dianne Feinstein, who served as senator from California for 31 years, faced intense scrutiny and accusations about her obviously failing health before her death in September 2023. The following year, it was revealed that GOP Texas Rep. Kay Granger had been absent from Congress and living in a dementia ward for months. Earlier this year, Rep. Tom Kean Jr, R-N.J., disappeared for months with no explanation, and when he returned, he only shared vague details about a mental health episode after the growing outrage became impossible to ignore. In the past year, six members of Congress have died in office, and while a couple were surprises, most of them had health issues they minimized or ignored until it was too late. 

It’s hard not to feel some sympathy for these politicians, and even for McConnell, who has long been especially private and, as reporter Andrew Egger noted on a recent Bulwark podcast, “had a very stage-managed political presence even when things were doing great.” Rare is the person who faces impending mortality with total grace and humility, and being in denial about it, at least some of the time, is a normal part of aging. But McConnell, like Biden and others before him, has a level of presumption that is not acceptable in what is supposed to be a democratic system. Politicians on both sides of the aisle get so accustomed to the power and privilege of their office that they seem to forget it doesn’t actually belong to them, but to the people they are elected to serve. 

This is especially troubling when we have an 80-year-old president who is clearly in decline but yearns to be regarded as a king or even a god, and apparently to serve an illegal third term in office. The Trump situation is not helped when so many other politicians, including the previous president, have acted entitled to hold office well beyond what’s reasonable. Dying in office should be a rare and surprise occurrence, not a norm that our authoritarian president can exploit. 

The post Mitch McConnell is never coming back to the Senate appeared first on Salon.com.

Right-wing media looks to have made a profound miscalculation. They put Hunter Biden through an unrelenting public pressure cooker, convinced that by turning a private citizen’s darkest personal rock bottom into a daily political circus, they could break both the man and his family. Now, seven years into his sobriety, Biden has picked up a podcast mic and won’t stop talking. The man whom the right spent years trying to destroy is now walking into rooms they open up for him — and setting them on fire from the inside.

For the better part of the past decade, conservative media made a concerted effort to turn Biden into the ultimate avatar of political corruption: the degenerate failson as a symbol of Democratic rot. During his father Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, the right devoted extensive attention to Hunter’s overseas business dealings, particularly his role on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and allegations stemming from a laptop Hunter owned that surfaced in GOP hands shortly before the election. The laptop story became a defining example of modern media dynamics after the major social media companies temporarily limited distribution of an October 2020 New York Post article that included information taken from the laptop, a decision that conservatives still cite as evidence of a massive, multi-institution coverup. Republican lawmakers spent endless congressional hours investigating his digital footprint, but were ultimately unable to establish that the elder Biden had engaged in a criminal bribery scheme tied to his son’s business activities. 

The meandering story is what makes the current public rehabilitation of Hunter Biden one of the stranger spectacles in American politics. Right-wing media turned him into a household name to hurt his father, and now that notoriety is precisely what gives him leverage. 

Having emerged from severe addiction, public humiliation and federal prosecution, Biden is now truth-telling about his past and single-handedly roasting the right wing’s bad-faith outrage ecosystem on its own home turf. This year alone Biden has sat for hours-long interviews with independent outlets that cater to the very audience the GOP spent a decade cultivating against his family. He talked to Andrew Callaghan’s Channel 5, whose YouTube following runs past three million and skews toward people who trust almost nothing coming out of U.S. institutions. He talked to Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor who spent years amplifying allegations against him. Ryan then hooked him up with MAGA podcaster Candace Owens, who once called him a degenerate who belonged in prison. 

Biden’s media strategy is dangerous and fascinating. He has described his media blitz as partly about addiction recovery and partly about strategy. Independent podcasts and YouTube channels have replaced the legacy media gatekeepers that used to referee these fights, and Biden figured out faster than most Democratic operatives that the audience he needed to reach was sitting in exactly the media ecosystem built to hate him. “No one gives a shit with what anybody says on CNN,” he told one interviewer, arguing that years of investigations and public scrutiny had lowered expectations to the point where audiences were surprised simply to hear him speak coherently at length. His approach appears designed to replace years of secondhand portrayals with direct exposure. 

Biden’s rapid growth on X further underscores this tactical evolution. Joining Elon Musk’s platform just days before his interview with Owens dropped, Biden began tweeting with relentless energy, sometimes authoring over 100 posts a day. Commentators quickly dubbed him a “MAGA whisperer” as he systematically dismantled right-wing talking points and exposed media figures he accused of building careers off bad-faith attacks. When CNN anchor Jake Tapper published a scathing review of Jill Biden’s memoir — which defended the former president’s fitness for office — Hunter immediately went on the offensive, blasting Tapper and corporate media for what he viewed as complicity in weaponizing personal family dynamics for television ratings.

Biden’s new approach mixes vulnerability with nuclear-grade anger. Instead of avoiding controversy, he frequently addresses it head on. On a Barstool Sports podcast this week, he joked about signing a laptop and openly discussed his struggles with crack cocaine addiction. For a movement that has invested years in hyping “Hunter’s laptop” as a civilization-ending scandal, seeing the man himself turn it into a potential merchandising opportunity should be humiliating.

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On that same Barstool appearance, he delivered an expletive-filled rant about Donald Trump’s entire family: “F**k him. F**k his sons. F**k his daughter. I mean it, all of them, the whole family, down to the grandchildren. I hope for the rest of time that I am on this earth, that their names live in ignominy.” Biden backed that rage up with a substantive critique, pointing out that the Trump sons received $3.2 billion in Defense Department contracts in just 18 months and that son-in-law Jared Kushner, despite holding no government position, is reportedly receiving more than $110 million from the Saudis, tied to nuclear enrichment authorization and billions in investment funds. 

But Biden is also reaching out beyond the right-wing media ecosystem. He has appeared on NPR’s “Newsmakers,” podcasts hosted by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Don Lemon, and the “I’ve Had It” podcast with hosts Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan. Yet his aggressive, unapologetic posture does not spare Democrats. He has openly torched party leaders who pressured his father to abandon his 2024 reelection bid following the president’s disastrous debate performance, specifically calling out Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as a “piece of s**t” for his role in pushing his father aside. “I’m not running for anything, so I can say whatever the f**k I want,” Hunter Biden declared, giving voice to millions of frustrated progressives who are sick and tired of watching Democratic leaders play by polite, outdated rules while right-wing extremists burn down democratic norms. 

It makes you wonder: Had the party embraced Biden’s willingness to fight back early on, perhaps they could have deployed one of the most effective anti-MAGA communicators in the country to stop Trump’s return.

To be certain, Biden’s media strategy has generated intense criticism, especially his decision to sit down with the extreme, far-right activist Nick Fuentes. The interview, filmed in a Philadelphia studio dressed up to resemble a seedy motel in a wink at the laptop scandal, quickly became a viral sensation, generating millions of views. During the interview, which reportedly nearly escalated into a physical confrontation, the two found common ground, trading skepticism about American support for Israel, with Fuentes framing his objections as political rather than religious, a distinction that will comfort no one who has watched what he actually says about Jews. When discussing their public reputations, Biden joked, “I’m a crackhead,” to which Fuentes replied, “I’m a racist,” prompting Biden to shoot back, “Mine is true!”

Biden defended the pairing on social media in terms that sound almost reasonable — until you remember who he is talking about. He argued that people who profit from keeping Americans separated have built a business model on it, and that he would sit down with anyone who sees Trump as an enemy, regardless of what else they believe. He was explicit that Fuentes’ views on race and women are indefensible, and that what Fuentes has said about the Holocaust and Nazism cannot be defended. But he argued that one issue — stopping Trump — mattered more than any daylight between him and a man who leads an online movement built substantially on racial grievance. 

This is a coherent argument. It is also the argument every troll counts on succeeding, because it leads and allows audiences to conclude that platforming extremist speech and views like Fuentes’ is a savvy tactical maneuver rather than what it actually is: a laundering operation. In this particular wash cycle, Fuentes needed laundering a great deal more than Biden needed an outlet. 

The instinct to give Fuentes and people like him a bigger microphone under the banner of anti-Trump unity deserves more skepticism. There is no common ground with someone whose political project is ethno-nationalist authoritarianism, and treating a two-hour conversation as evidence that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” echoes the bad faith politics that lets extremists claim they were misunderstood or “just joking” the whole time. It’s just whitewashing bigotry for clicks. 

But Hunter Biden’s choice to sit with Fuentes exposes something crucial about our current media environment. At a moment when fascism is organizing through podcasts and X feeds, he has stumbled into a role Democrats should have desperately filled: that of a loud, media-savvy fighter who doesn’t care about decorum. By owning his flaws and speaking directly to the public, Biden has stripped the right-wing outrage machine of its primary power source.

The post Right-wing media can’t quit Hunter Biden appeared first on Salon.com.

President Donald Trump returned to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Friday night, three months after gunfire abruptly ended the original event, delivering an hourlong speech that opened with a solemn tribute to the victims and first responders before gradually giving way to familiar grievances, campaign-style riffs and renewed attacks on political rivals and the media.

“As I said three months ago, the show must go on,” Trump told the roughly 700 guests gathered under heightened security at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria, where the annual dinner was rescheduled after the April shooting. He praised the Secret Service officers and law enforcement personnel who responded that night, calling the attack “an assault on our democracy itself” and declaring that “we do not yield to political violence.”

Trump acknowledged he had abandoned the harsher speech he originally planned before the attack.

“I was so psyched, I was going to rip people,” he said, adding that “something changed.” Moments later, however, he promised the audience “we’ll do a little ripping if you don’t mind,” signaling a shift away from the night’s opening message of resilience.

From there, the speech frequently wandered between jokes, political attacks and extended tangents. Trump ribbed journalists about wearing bulky bulletproof vests, revisited complaints about media coverage, praised White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and joked about another presidential campaign despite the Constitution’s two-term limit.

One of the night’s longest detours centered on Trump’s planned White House ballroom. Standing inside the Waldorf ballroom, which he built when the property operated as the Trump International Hotel, the president touted bulletproof glass, future drone defenses, underground security upgrades and Czech crystal chandeliers before predicting future White House Correspondents’ dinners would someday be held in the new venue.

The speech later drifted through a wide range of subjects, including UFC events at the White House, an upcoming Washington auto race, Bruce Springsteen, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former President Joe Biden, CNN anchors Kaitlan Collins and Jake Tapper, Sen. Adam Schiff and Rosie O’Donnell, often blurring the line between correspondents’ dinner remarks and a campaign rally.

Trump also congratulated New York Times reporter Tyler Pager, one of the journalists whose subpoena over reporting on the Qatari-donated Air Force One replacement was withdrawn by the Justice Department a day earlier, even as he renewed complaints about what he called “fake news” coverage. The president argued that speaking directly with reporters can improve stories, while insisting many outlets continue to treat him unfairly.

After one hour and four minutes, Trump closed out his speech by donning a “Trump 2028” red hat to continue to tease a possible third term.

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The rescheduled dinner was smaller and more tightly controlled than April’s event, with a single entrance, multiple security screenings and no traditional red carpet. The association honored Secret Service agent Victor Gonzalez, who was shot in his protective vest while confronting the gunman, along with Washington Hilton employees who helped guests during the attack.

“We are back,” outgoing WHCA President Weijia Jiang told the audience. “We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word.”

By night’s end, the evening had come full circle. What began as a ceremony emphasizing resilience after political violence ultimately settled into the freewheeling, often meandering style that has become a hallmark of Trump’s public appearances, mixing condolences, boasts, policy asides and personal feuds into a single address.

The post Trump at WHCD: “The show must go on” — then “ripping” into the press appeared first on Salon.com.

Today's links

• 2024 (apart from the obvious): Some unforced errors.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Denmark legalizing music trading; Babysuit; Patent Office invites "peer review"; DRM protest at the Bastille; Scientology's "super powers"; Banana Dalek; Florida v pediatricians' gun safety advice; Copyright filters and wage theft; "Who Broke the Internet?" Vatican astronomer v Creationism; Teens, privacy and Facebook; Čapek's graveside robot; Save iTunes; NZ laundered money for Latinamerica's looters; Memex Method.
• Upcoming appearances: Barcelona, Berlin, Hay-on-Wye, London, NYC, Edinburgh.
• 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.

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2024 (apart from the obvious) (permalink)

Just as Hillary Clinton positioned her run as a third term for Obama ("America is already great"), so did Biden (and then Harris) position their campaigns as a second Biden term. As Biden said (in 2019): "Nothing would fundamentally change":

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/

So a vote for Biden would be a vote for another four years of forceful, material support for genocide; another four years of compromise with the Democratic establishment on student debt and healthcare gouging; and another four years of a president who was obviously in mental decline.

Harris's campaign was, "A vote for me is a vote for all of the above (minus the cognitive decline)." Actually, it was worse: by conspicuously failing to campaign on the Biden administration's record on reining in corporate power, a vote for Harris was "A vote for all of the above, minus the mental decline and the antitrust."

Whereas a vote for Trump was a vote for change, a vote to give the establishment a black eye. It was also a vote for genocide and racist pogroms and gangster kleptocracy, which is why many voters stayed home, casting a ballot for America's all-time favorite candidate, "None of the above," while any number of furious people and/or vicious racists turned out for Trump.

There's one book that crystallizes my thoughts on this better than any other: Naomi Klein's 2023 Doppelganger, which analyzes our politics in terms of (warped) "mirror images." One of the mirror world pairings that Klein analyzes is the progressive movement, a coalition of liberals and leftists (led by liberals).

Like every coalition, the two main groups that constitute "the progressives" do not agree on many important issues, though they do have common goals. Both groups support equality for people of all genders and races, but for liberals, an equal world is one that fixes the problem that 150 straight white men own everything by replacing 75 of them with racialized people, women and queer people (whereas the leftist fix is abolishing the system in which 150 people own everything).

Biden set himself up as a peacemaker for this coalition, and his "unity task force" divided up the appointments in his administration between the Warren-Sanders leftists and liberals, including those who clearly belonged to the Manchin-Sinematic universe. This meant that his administration worked at cross-purposes to itself, neutering its boldest initiatives, rendering them impotent.

Take Biden's plan to finally allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharma companies, a move that was very long overdue. Before this, the way the system worked was: pharma companies named a price – any price! – and then Uncle Sucker paid it. No other country in the world operates this way, and, of course, the lion's share of pharma R&D costs are already borne by the American public (or they were, until Musk DOGEd the US research budget to death).

So the American public pays more than anyone else in the world to develop these drugs, and then they pay more than anyone else in the world to buy these drugs. This is madness, and putting an end to it is an obvious political win. But Biden found a way to do it that "balanced" the leftist principle of protecting people from capitalist exploitation with the liberal principle of protecting businesses lest the essential function of developing life-saving drugs become a state activity (rather than a market one).

Biden's solution? A "Build Back Better" plan that would allow the federal government to negotiate up to ten drug prices (and as few as zero drug prices), but the new prices would only kick in after the 2024 election, so no one would see the benefit of this in time for the next general election:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/18/bipartisan-consensus/#corruption

This is a solution that pleases no one – and that's the point. Biden and his team viewed the presidency as an institution for making sure everyone was equally unhappy, a philosophy that Anat Shenker-Osorio calls "pizzaburger politics." This is named for a thought-experiment in which half your family wants pizza and the other half wants burgers, so you serve them "pizzaburgers" and make everyone miserable and declare yourself to have the fair-handed wisdom of Solomon (yes, I'm aware that this analogy has a fatal flaw in that pizzaburgers actually sound delicious, but work with me here).

Biden prided himself on running a pizzaburger presidency, in which every move that satisfied the left of his party was neutralized by a concession to the party's right wing establishment:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/29/sub-bushel-comms-strategy/#nothing-would-fundamentally-change

(Trump enacted a mirror-world version of Biden's pharma price controls: TrumpRx, a program that claims to lower drug prices while those prices actually go up):

https://democrats-energycommerce.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-energycommerce.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/e-c-democrats-trumprx-big-talk-little-savings.pdf

Biden's pizzaburger compromises made everyone unhappy. He appointed generational talents like Lina Khan, Jonathan Kanter and Rohit Chopra to run key agencies charged with crushing corporate power, and then gave lifetime appointments to corporate-friendly judges who blocked their rulemakings and penalties:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/11/us-judge-turns-down-challenge-to-microsoft-merger-with-activision

Of course, it wasn't just Biden's own judicial appointees who stood in his way; from the Supreme Court on down, on issues from student debt cancellation to noncompetes, judges blocked the Biden administration. When this happened, Biden somehow couldn't find his way to his bully pulpit. Rather than working the refs – the way Trump does, in ways that energize his base, stiffens his legislators' resolve and intimidates other judges – Biden tinkered in the margins to find ways to advance half-measures and stayed mum in public.

This compromise-oriented meekness carried over into Biden's relationship with Democratic lawmakers who sold out the American people. Rather than campaigning for the primary opponents of monsters like Fetterman, Sinema and Manchin, Biden worked behind the scenes to broker compromises, delivering yet another inedible pizzaburger (and acting hurt and bewildered when no one thanked him for it). The alternative? Constitutional hardball:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/18/states-rights/#cold-civil-war

It's not clear whether Harris's abbreviated campaign could have made the public case that she would govern in a more muscular fashion as befitted the polycrisis facing the nation, but she didn't even try. A couple Democratic Party insiders of my acquaintance tell me that Biden only agreed to step aside on the condition that Harris not criticize his record. I don't know if that's true, but even within that hypothetical constraint, Harris hardly presented herself as an avatar of change. She carried on Biden's tradition of conspicuously failing to campaign on the significant achievements of Biden's own trustbusters, and put her brother-in-law, the lawyer who helped Uber crush labor rights in California, in charge of her campaign:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/04/us/politics/kamala-harris-tony-west.html

The point of all this is that the American people have, on two occasions, comprehensively rejected the "America is already great"/"Nothing would fundamentally change" politics of a liberal-dominated left/liberal progressive coalition. The senior partners in that coalition have driven the country into a ditch, letting Trump stage a fascist takeover that has us fighting not to win another election, but just to have another one.

Americans are sick of being told that their politicians can't do anything because "they're not the Green Lantern:"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

America isn't already great. If we are to have more elections – much less win them – we will need to mobilize millions of people. You don't do that by telling them to oppose Trumpismo – you get them out in the streets by giving them something to support. That was Mamdani's winning message: "I know what a politician can do, and I will do it":

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/24/mamdani-thought/#public-excellence

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• taken. https://sinceyouarrived.world/taken

• Big Finance Might Be Dooming the SPLC — Even Before Its Day in Court https://theintercept.com/2026/05/08/splc-donations-banks-censorship/

• Four Theses on the Conservative Legal Movement https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/four-theses-on-the-conservative-legal

• Hearts and Minds: An Ambivalent Review of “Project Hail Mary” https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=11659

• Meta Is Dying. It’s About Time. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/opinion/meta-facebook-zuckerberg.html

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Denmark plans to legalize music trading https://edition.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/05/07/denmark.downloads.idg/index.html

#20yrsago Babysuit https://web.archive.org/web/20060513013815/https://www.gildlilies.com/pop_ups/phillip_toledano_kaleidoscope.htm

#20yrsago Patent office will ask the public to “peer review” inventions https://web.archive.org/web/20060512051743/http://www.dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/

#20yrsago Report from France’s DRM protest at Place de la Bastille https://web.archive.org/web/20170902135411/https://tofz.org/?dir=Paris%2Fevents%2FMarch

#20yrsago Interactive maps show your city’s floodline when the sea rises https://flood.firetree.net/

#20yrsago Scientology to open “Super Power” training center in FL https://web.archive.org/web/20060522112457/http://www.sptimes.com/2006/05/06/Tampabay/Scientology_nearly_re.shtml/
#20yrsago Homemade radios http://www.duntemann.com/radiogallery.htm

#20yrsago Vatican astronomer denounces Creationism as “paganism” https://web.archive.org/web/20060517013332/http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=674042006

#20yrsago Canada’s New Democratic Party embraces copyfighting musicians https://web.archive.org/web/20060520024734/http://www.ndp.ca/page/3713

#15yrsago Teens and privacy online: using Facebook is compatible with valuing privacy https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/05/09/how-teens-understand-privacy.html

#15yrsago Ann Arbor library acquires lending, sharing and copying rights to Creative Commons music catalog https://annarborchronicle.com/2011/04/28/ann-arbor-library-signs-digital-music-deal/

#15yrsago Tin robot on Karel Čapek’s grave https://www.gilesorr.com/travels/Prague2011/BestPrague.20110421.6142.GO.CanonSX10.html

#15yrsago Just look at this banana Dalek. https://web.archive.org/web/20110716022131/https://www.daleksoftheday.com/2011/05/banana-dalek.html

#15yrsago NRA and Florida gag pediatricians: no more firearm safety advice for parents https://www.npr.org/2011/05/07/136063523/florida-bill-could-muzzle-doctors-on-gun-safety

#10yrsago Conservative economics: what’s happened to the UK economy after a year of Tory rule https://web.archive.org/web/20160509113126/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/what-has-happened-to-the-economy-under-the-tories-in-six-charts-a7017131.html

#10yrsago Save iTunes: how the W3C’s argument for web-wide DRM would have killed iTunes https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-itunes

#10yrsago America’s courts are going dark https://www.justsecurity.org/30920/courts-going-dark/

#10yrsaogo Australian government issues report calling for copyright and patent liberalisation https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/australian-productivity-commission-slams-protectionist-copyright-and-patent-laws

#10yrsago Panama Papers: New Zealand is the go-to money launderer for crooked Latin Americans https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/panama-papers/303356/nz-at-heart-of-panama-money-go-round

#10yrsago Safe Patient Project: searchable spreadsheet tells Californians whether their doc is on probation, and why https://web.archive.org/web/20160507002350/http://consumersunion.org/research/california-doctors-on-probation/

#5yrsago The Memex Method https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

#5yrsago How copyright filters lead to wage-theft https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/08/copyfraud/#beethoven-just-wrote-music

#1yrago Who broke the internet? https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who-broke-the-internet/#bruce-lehman

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Barcelona: Internet no tiene que ser un vertedero (Global Digital Rights Forum), May 13
  https://encuentroderechosdigitales.com/en/speakers/

• Virtual: How to Disenshittify the Internet with Wendy Liu (EFF), May 14
  https://www.eff.org/event/effecting-change-enshittification

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

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 18
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow-in-der-friesenstrasse-23-kreuzberg-praesentiert-von-otherland.html

• 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

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

• NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
  https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

• Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
  https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
  https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/

• Enshittification (99% Invisible)
  https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/

• Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

• When Do Platforms Stop Innovating and Start Extracting? (InnovEU)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccDR0YaMt8

• Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
  https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612

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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

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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, April 20, 2027

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

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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. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "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

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

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

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