Today's links

• The technopolitics of ad-tech: Spying is good for tech, context is good for publishers.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: PNH x Mike Ford; Singapore v Far East Economic Review; Publishing v bestsellers; Architecture v security; Vista v everyone; Free Bieber; Belarus sells the sugar bowls; OCCUPY GEORGE; Grey type sucks; Spinal Tap v studio math; Terry Pratchett x $10t coin; Boy Scouts x copyright maximialism; Canadian Tories x DRM; Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan; ACLu v secret laws; Fined for suing the cops who shot you; Chicago PD steals millions for cop toys; Turing's Law; Copyleft v Vizio; Trump's killswitch.
• Upcoming appearances: Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Vienna, Kilkenny, Oxford, Sheffield, Virtual, Oxford, Montreal.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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The technopolitics of ad-tech (permalink)

"Technopolitics" are the politics embedded in technology. The Ur-text of technopolitics is "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" by the rock critic turned scholar Langdon Winner:

https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf

With "Do Artifacts," Winner demands that we move beyond the idea of technologies having "intended consequences" and "unintended consequences" and towards a political economy of tech. In service to this, he divides the politics of artifacts into three categories:

I. Artifacts that have politics embedded in them by their creators, like Robert Moses's infamous bridges over the Long Island parkways. According to Moses biographer Robert Caro, Moses deliberately specified that these bridges must be too low for a city bus to pass under, in a bid to block Black people from traveling from New York City to the beaches he'd developed on Long Island.

Today those bridges are more than a century old, and they are still too low for city buses to pass under them, and this continues to mean that people who don't own private vehicles find it more difficult to get to the beach, and as it's still the case that race is a predictor of low incomes, those are still racist bridges.

II. Artifacts whose politics are accidental but unavoidable. Winner cites a kind of tomato harvester that vastly improved the efficiency of tomato pickers. These harvesters became very popular, which allowed tomato farmers to lay off large numbers of agricultural workers, and also allowed them to price the mechanically harvested tomatoes so cheaply that they crowded out other kinds of tomatoes.

Because these machines created a large pool of unemployed workers, they shifted power from labor to capital, and because these picking machines were too rough for all but the hardest varietals of tomato, they changed the flavor profile of tomatoes in America for the worse, towards a bland, tough tomato.

These picking machines were not designed to make workers poorer, nor were they designed to make tomatoes taste worse, but because of their technical characteristics, this was the unavoidable outcome, the inextricable politics of these machines.

III. Artifacts whose politics are intrinsic to their design. Here, Winner contrasts solar panels with nuclear reactors. Solar panels may require highly centralized industrial systems to produce, but once they are in the field, solar panels are compatible with looser, less coordinated political arrangements. A world of small anarchist communes is fully compatible with solar energy.

Contrast this with nuclear reactors: the prudent ongoing operation of a reactor requires a highly centralized state that is capable of fielding reliable, trustworthy independent inspectors. This state must also be capable of exercising the coercive power to shut down badly maintained or incompetently operated reactors.

The politics of nukes are the politics of a centralized, powerful state; the politics of solar are less determined. Solar is compatible with a wide variety of political systems, including (but not limited to) weak, decentralized states.

(For a further exploration of "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" I highly recommend Ginger Coons' reading guide:)

https://www.not-so-obvious.net/reading-do-artifacts-have-politics/

I really like Winner's framework for exploring technopolitics, but I have my own gloss on it. Winner's framework doesn't explicitly contemplate the idea of technological countermeasures. For example, what if someone were to design a city bus that was low enough to fit under Robert Moses's bridges? At that point, they'd cease to be "racist bridges," and merely become "bridges built by a racist":

https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-technopolitics/

Which brings me to the technopolitics of ad-tech. Lots of people think that advertising is "the original sin of the internet," setting in motion the surveillance dystopia that is closing in on us from all sides today:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/17/mercenary-spyware/#discover-tech

I think this is wrong. I think that finding ways to communicate ideas and pitches to the general public is fine. Without some channel for reaching people with ideas and propositions they may not be familiar with, it would be infinitely harder to reach people for political causes. It would also be harder for new books, movies and music to find new audiences. It would be much harder to get people out to your independent craft fair, your zine show, or your No Kings march.

For me, the internet's original sin isn't advertising, it's surveillance. Contrary to what you have been told – and pax Winner's framework – the internet is fully compatible with privacy:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/31/losing-the-crypto-wars/#surveillance-monopolism

It wasn't the internet's technopolitics that made it a surveillance nightmare. It was just plain politics. Specifically, our politicians decided to stop enacting and enforcing privacy laws. The last consumer privacy law we got in America was a bill that made it illegal for video store clerks to disclose your VHS rentals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

(As I type these words, the Supreme Court is poised to eliminate even that dried-up old crumb of privacy protection:)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/10/supreme-court-privacy-rights-case-bork-kavanaugh.html

The widespread phenomenon of ad-tech companies spying on us is the result of the decision to allow them to do so. That decision has had innumerable negative downstream effects, such as skyrocketing "surveillance prices":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/11/nothing-personal/#instacartography

And collapsing "surveillance wages":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

It's created vast surveillance databases that are critical to Trump's racist pogroms, providing dossiers and precise location data on the people ICE kidnaps to Salvadoran slave-labor camps:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/10/ice-tech/#foreseeable-outcomes

Surveillance also promotes oligarchy. Without surveillance, oligarchs must give up more of their fortunes to keep the public happy, because the alternative is spending even more money on guards to keep the public from building guillotines on their lawns. Surveillance lets oligarchs make targeted strikes on restive radicals, which is much cheaper than broad-spectrum policies that make us all better off and neutralize the case for guillotines:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/26/autostabilizer/#slicey-bois

These are the technopolitics of surveillance, not advertising. There is nothing about advertising that demands surveillance. For centuries, advertising was not meaningfully linked to surveillance. The decision to fuse surveillance with advertising was just that – a decision, not an inevitability.

Any time we forget this, we let spying tech bosses off the hook. After all, if advertising demands surveillance, then tech bosses are just the avatars of the great forces of history, prisoners of the imperative to spy in order to advertise. By remembering that surveillance advertising is a choice, we put the blame squarely where it belongs: on the guillotineable oligarchs who made that choice, and amassed spectacular fortunes thereby.

Surveillance is political, but surveillance advertising has its own distinct technopolitics, and to understand those technopolitics, we must contrast them with the technopolitics of contextual advertising. Up until a decade or two ago, contextual advertising was simply called "advertising." Contextual advertising is the practice of running refrigerator ads next to articles on cooking and kitchen remodeling; ads for roadside restaurants on highway billboards; ads for Disney vacations in parenting magazines.

Your intuition probably insists that context advertising is less effective than surveillance advertising. After all, surveillance advertising allows a running shoe company to target users who are training for a marathon no matter where they are and no matter what they're doing. Surely this translates into increased "conversions" (clicks and/or purchases, depending on who you're talking to)?

It does, but not by much. Advertisers get about 5% more value from surveillance ads than they do from context ads:

https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/05/WEIS_2019_paper_38.pdf

Partly, that's because surveillance ad companies grossly overrate the efficacy of surveillance advertising:

https://peoples-things.ghost.io/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype/

But surveillance advertising's anemic returns to advertisers are down to another aspect of the system: its tendency towards monopolization:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023)

Surveillance is a capital-intensive activity: spying on billions of people as they move through the digital and physical world is incredibly expensive. That is a good part of the reason that online advertising has collapsed into the Meta/Google duopoly, who control about 80% of display advertising.

The harms of surveillance monopolies have a severely distorting effect on policy debates. For example, it's led some anti-monopolists to call for government-issued surveillance identifiers that follow us from birth to death in order to facilitate commercial spying to foster more competition in surveillance:

https://www.thesling.org/what-to-do-about-googles-dominance-of-online-advertising/

Here's the thing about monopolists: they cheat. Google and Meta have an illegal, collusive arrangement to rig the advertising market, overcharging advertisers and underpaying publishers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

The ad-tech giants have taken in hundreds of billions that they simply can't account for. It's disappeared down a fraud-hole:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/25/lying-spies/#spying-liars

All of this has driven the majority of web users to install a privacy-blocker (like EFF's Privacybadger.org), meaning that surveillance ads are disproportionately likely to not even show up in a reader's browser:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

So while it's possible that, in a state of nature, a surveillance ad would outperform a context ad, delivering more sales for advertisers and more revenue for publishers, the monopolistic tendency of ad-tech means that publishers earn less from surveillance ads (because more users block them, and because monopolistic ad-tech platforms extract higher commissions), and advertisers see fewer sales from them (because more users block them, and because monopolistic ad-tech platforms extract higher prices).

Context ads, meanwhile, are always going to give power to publishers, because publishers will always understand the materials they publish better than any ad-tech platform could. Commissioning, editing and publishing an article, podcast or video gives a publisher unique and inalienable insight into that material.

Surveillance data about audiences is a kind of ambient vapor floating around websites and places and payments that has to be condensed through a heroic and expensive effort that gives power to whichever company can muster the capital and infrastructure to do so. Meanwhile, information about the content of publishers' offerings arrives pre-refined into ingots that are already in publishers' own possession.

It's possible to run "programmatic ads" without surveillance. Rather than building an ad-tech stack through which publishers transmit sensitive information about their audiences ("Who will pay me to advertise to this 18-34 year old man-child from the outer boroughs who owns an Xbox and has recently researched gonorrhea symptoms?"), we can build systems through which publishers transmit information about their own materials ("Who will advertise to a user with a New York IP address who is reading an article comparing running shoe brands?").

Not only is this possible, but it actually generates more revenues for publishers than the surveillance-based ad-tech stack:

https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/24/data-from-dutch-public-broadcaster-shows-the-value-of-ditching-creepy-ads/

On top of that, publishers who don't gather personal information about users also don't need to show their users those awful pop-up ads asking their permission to gather their data. Everyone hates those notices, and they are yet another negative aspect of surveillance advertising that disappears with the switch to context ads.

An ad-tech stack for context ads is far less prone to monopolization. Such a stack can be "federated," with multiple "demand-side platforms" (the part of the system that advertisers use to place bids for the right to show their ads) all communicating with the same "supply-side platform" (the part of the system publishers use to transmit opportunities to place ads).

This is also in the technopolitics of context ads: they do not tend toward the "efficiencies of scale" that lead to abusive monopolistic middlemen who steal from publishers and advertisers and sell out the public to fascists who want to arrest them and deport them to Salvadoran slave-labor camps.

When the ad-tech sector is composed of smaller companies that are more competitive with one another, it is much harder for any of them to collude to rig the market. That fierce competition also means it's harder to create a cozy conspiracy to lobby together to block privacy laws, and it leaves the companies with lower margins and less retained earnings to spend on those lobbying efforts.

Surveillance ads also promote all kinds of parasitic businesses. The fact that a publisher can serve ads related to users rather than the subject of their media means that sensationalistic and deceptive websites can sell ads that run against content that's totally unrelated to advertisers' products and services. And because it's cheaper to produce lies and garbage, these publishers can undercut the ad prices demanded by high quality outlets and let advertisers reach the same users. This is the whole reason that "chumboxes" exist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbox

Just as nuclear power favors a centralized state, surveillance advertising:

• favors middlemen over publishers and advertisers;

• tends toward monopoly;

• favors low-quality media over high-quality production;

• impedes the passage of privacy laws;

• provides authoritarian states with an off-the-books, warrantless source of surveillance data.

And just as solar allows for decentralized, anti-authoritarian societies, context advertising:

• favors publishers over middlemen and advertisers;

• tends towards pluralism and diversity of voices;

• favors high-quality media by reserving the lion's share of the rewards to the producers;

• does not rely on a weak privacy environment;

• does not militate for "democratizing spying" by issuing every person with a permanent advertising identifier.

There's nothing (necessarily) wrong with building systems to tell people about things you want them to know. There's nothing (necessarily) wrong with paying for media with ads. It's possible for both of these things to go awry, but they are not in and of themselves bad. They have contingent technopolitics.

But surveillance ads have completely unavoidable, absolutely ghastly technopolitics. Surveillance ads are bad for publishers, for advertisers, and for democracy. We should ban surveillance ads:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

(Image: Jess, CC BY-SA 4.0, modified).

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Trump DOJ Launches Bogus TV News Antitrust Probe
  https://economicpopulist.substack.com/i/220751828/trump-doj-launches-bogus-tv-news-antitrust-probe

• US Rep proposes bill to give video game buyers “ownership,” not “a license” https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/10/us-rep-proposes-bill-to-give-video-game-buyers-ownership-not-a-license/

• Saviour or Scoundrel? https://scholarsphere.psu.edu/resources/14308c3b-4f2a-4f39-a365-192c0206f886

• Tiny Little Office https://tinylittleoffice.com/

• Future? No Thanks! – an ecosocialist game https://futurenothanks.com/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Patrick Nielsen Hayden interviews Mike Ford https://user.well.com/engaged.cgi?c=inkwell.vue&f=0&t=126

#20yrsago Singapore bans Far East Economic Review https://web.archive.org/web/20061010002951/https://www.feer.com/articles1/2006/0610/free/p006.html

#20yrsago Publishing isn’t bestseller-driven https://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/conventional_un/

#20yrsago Why architecture and security don’t mix https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/architecture_an.html

#20yrsago Vista licence: Microsoft’s abusive relationship with you https://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/19/forbidding_vistas_windows_licensing_disserves_the_user.html

#20yrsago Boy Scouts of America Concerned About Copyright https://web.archive.org/web/20061110065012/http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi%3Ffile%3D/news/archive/2006/10/20/entertainment/e110452D84.DTL

#15yrsago Canadian Tories admit that Canadians don’t want DRM rules, push for them anyway https://web.archive.org/web/20111022210131/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6071/125

#15yrsago Visualizing Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich https://web.archive.org/web/20111021103517/http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/9-9-9-in-one-really-long-graph/

#15yrsago Free Bieber: campaign to kill proposed law that would send you to prison for 5 years for singing copyrighted music on YouTube https://web.archive.org/web/20111020145336/http://freebieber.org/

#15yrsago Belarusian central bank auctions off its sugar bowls https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/19/belarus-central-bank-sells-office-furniture

#15yrsago Dataviz as defacement: OCCUPY GEORGE https://web.archive.org/web/20111022022046/http://www.occupygeorge.com/

#15yrsago HOWTO avoid a copyright shakedown legal threat: be famous, a politician, a cop, a soldier or a corpse https://torrentfreak.com/undercover-cops-and-politicians-escape-bittorrent-lawsuit-111013/

#10yrsago Popular design guides are responsible for plague of grey type https://web.archive.org/web/20170914051800/https://www.wired.com/2016/10/how-the-web-became-unreadable/

#10yrsago Digital Defenders: a free open-licensed booklet for kids about privacy and cryptography https://edri.org/files/privacy4kids_booklet_web.pdf

#10yrsago Public universities and even the US Navy have sold hundreds of patents to America’s most notorious troll https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/inside-intellectual-ventures-portfolio-nearly-500-university-patents

#10yrsago Airportraits: composite photos of all the daily takeoffs from the world’s airports https://mikekelley.art/?category=airportraits

#10yrsago Rich people can afford to buy more sleep than poor people https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/the-rich-can-sleep-in-thanks-to-better-transit/

#10yrsago Harry Shearer sues studio over Spinal Tap, says he’s received $98 in royalties over 30 years https://web.archive.org/web/20161224224142/https://www.yahoo.com/movies/harry-shearer-files-125-million-spinal-tap-fraud-suit-copyright-termination-150031664.html

#10yrsago ACLU asks court to reveal 23 secret surveillance laws https://web.archive.org/web/20161019224447/https://theintercept.com/2016/10/19/aclu-wants-secret-surveillance-laws-made-public/

#10yrsago Montana judge unrepentant after sentencing man to 60 days for repeatedly raping his own 12 year old daughter https://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/19/us/montana-judge-incest-case-trnd/index.html

#10yrago Turkish court fines bystander/tourist who sued police for shooting out his eye https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/kyrgyz-tourist-wounded-in-gezi-protests-ordered-to-pay-debt-to-turkish-state–104964

#10yrsago By stealing from innocents, Chicago PD amassed tens of millions in a secret black budget for surveillance gear https://web.archive.org/web/20160929143255/https://chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-department-civil-forfeiture-investigation/Content?oid=23728922

#10yrsago Turing’s law: UK to retroactively pardon thousands of men prosecuted for having sex with men https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37711518

#5yrsago The monopoly strategy behind the Google/Microsoft mobile patent wars https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/vizio-vs-the-world/#capital-as-power

#5yrsago Copyleft lawsuit against Vizio will allow anyone to defend the commons https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/vizio-vs-the-world/#dumbcast

#5yrsago The true, Terry Pratchett-esque origins of the trillion-dollar coin https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/19/moist-von-lipwig/#gimmick-v-gimmick

#1yrago The mad king's digital killswitch https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/20/post-american-internet/#huawei-with-american-characteristics

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

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

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

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

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

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

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Latest books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

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

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

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 574 (7730 total).

• "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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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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Facebook CEO and noted alien presence on Earth Mark Zuckerberg took one sip of Guinness and gave the world a face that Famous Campaigns immediately turned into a spec ad for the famous beer brand.

The inevitable billboard: three frames of Zuck trying to process the stout followed by "It's not for everyone. — Read the rest

The post Spec Guinness ad captures the brilliance of stout and lets Mark Zuckerberg be the punchline appeared first on Boing Boing.

TIRANA — Student demonstrations in Tirana spiraled out of control Wednesday as protesters clashed with police for over 10 hours, setting buildings on fire, entering government institutions and looting.

While Albania has seen daily protests since the end of May over opposition to a Jared Kushner-linked resort in the south of the country, on Tuesday, students took to the streets over conditions in universities and dorms, the cost of living, and grievances over governance.

“The right to peaceful protest is a foundation of democracy and the state’s obligation to guarantee it. But violence cannot be a means of expressing dissatisfaction, nor should the use of force by the police exceed the limits of the law and proportionality,” President Bajram Begaj said in a public statement Wednesday. He called for the youth to engage in dialogue with him.

Starting outside the Ministry of Education on Wednesday morning, masked individuals threw stones, paving slabs, bottles and improvised pyrotechnics at the institution. They ripped up metal railings from the side of the road and used them to batter the iron gates of the building. After several hours, police with batons, tear gas guns, water cannons, and riot gear moved in, forcibly removing protesters and citizens from the vicinity.

Over the following hours, the situation escalated further as protestors set fire to benches, trees, and several buildings. They breached the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Finance, damaged several private businesses and billboards, then moved to the main boulevard and encircled the prime minister’s office. They later broke into shopping centers and banks.

Economy Minister Delina Ibrahimaj condemned the “burning and destruction of institutional premises,” calling them “unacceptable acts.”

As of Wednesday evening, at least 40 demonstrators had been arrested and dozens of injuries had been reported by protestors, civilians, and the police. Several journalists reported being prevented from conducting their work by police who physically blocked them or seized their equipment. On Tuesday evening, one young man had his legs broken and required emergency surgery following an altercation with police.

The situation remains tense as protestors, mostly in masks, and police continue to battle it out on the city’s main boulevard, home to several parliament buildings, the president’s office, and the prime minister’s office.

The U.S. Embassy in Tirana warned its citizens to be vigilant and avoid areas impacted by the protest, noting that it could spread. Explosions and sirens continue to be heard throughout the city center on Wednesday evening.

Meanwhile, the delegation of the European Union to Albania stated it has taken note of allegations of excessive violence by police against protestors and journalists and expects the police to prioritize full investigations. The EU delegation also called for de-escalation from both sides.

This crunchy, light fennel and orange salad features thinly shaved fennel, fragrant chunks of orange and a refreshing mix of both lemon and orange juice that complements the aromatic fennel. It makes a great side dish for light and hearty dishes alike! A Recipe for Citrus Season When summer berries, stone fruit, and watermelon recede […]

When you’ve been a legendary guitarist for over 30 years, you receive certain perks. That was certainly the case in 2021 for Tom Morello. Not only was he “instrumental in getting Randy Rhoads into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” but he was also one of only a handful of people to hold his guitar. The iconic guitarist died in a plane accident on March 19, 1982, at only 25. Despite Rhoads dying so early in his career, he’s among the most influential guitarists of all time.

Each year, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame launches an exhibit featuring items from that year’s inductees. In 2021, the exhibit featured Dave Grohl’s 1068 transparent Lucite Dan Armstrong Ampeg Guitar, Carol King’s black Baldwin Acrosonic spinet piano, Todd Rundgren’s embroidered purple suit from 1978, Billy Preston’s Casio Voice Arranger VA-10, and more legendary items. Among those, the exhibit featured Randy Rhoads’ asymmetrical white Jackson-Rhoads Concorde Guitar.

In an October 2026 interview with Classic Rock, Morello discussed the one thing we weren’t allowed to do with this legendary guitar. “His sister, who’s lovely, is very protective of all the stuff. It’s sealed away somewhere in a secret vault, and no one knows where it is. I’d asked her if I could see it, and she said, ‘Nobody sees it.’ You gotta respect that.”

“But then she texts me one day and says, ‘Randy’s guitar is on its way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and it’s going to be at my house this afternoon if you’d like to come by and see it.’ But I was away on tour, so I couldn’t go.” But this wouldn’t be Morello’s only chance to see the guitar up close.

‘The Strap Had Smoke From 1982 Left in It’

Morello goes on to explain, “Cut to about a year later, and she texts me saying the guitar is at her house that afternoon, on its way back from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and now, would I like to go see it? His mom didn’t want anyone else to ever play it again, but I got to hold it. That was pretty emotional for me. The crazy thing was that the leather guitar strap still smelled of cigarette smoke. He was performing up until the day he died, so the strap had smoke from 1982 left in it.”

It makes you wonder if Rhoads was truly the last person to ever play this iconic instrument. If Tom Morello can’t even get the pass, who does?

Photo by Didier Messens/Redferns

The post Tom Morello Recalls the One Thing He Was Forbidden to Do With Late Legend Randy Rhoads’ Guitar appeared first on VICE.

The post We’ve tracked $80M of spending on almost 170 AI‑generated political ads this year – it’s weird appeared first on Salon.com.

‘Nearly Every Claim Uttered in These Ads Is False’

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has joined other Democrats this week in demanding answers about President Trump’s midterms campaign ads — which promote nothing but himself — and the apparent use of taxpayer dollars to finance them.

I wrote earlier this week about the top Democratic appropriators in Congress calling for investigations into the ads and confirming reports that the White House moved some $20 million in taxpayer funds out of the Department of Homeland Security to bankroll the vanity project. Raskin and Rep. George Whitesides (D-CA) sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) on Tuesday to look into the reported shuffling of funds.

“Accordingly, we are writing to formally request that the GAO investigate the source, accounts, and total amount of taxpayer funds used by the Executive Office of the President to produce and distribute this advertisement across major television markets and official White House social media channels,” Raskin and Whitesides wrote in the letter to acting Comptroller General Orice Brown and special counsel Charles Baldis.

The two are asking for a formal investigation into how much the advertisements cost, how they have been paid for and whether any federal laws were broken in either the creation of the ads or the use of tax dollars to fund them. Raskin and Whitesides asked both agencies to look into whether the ads are a violation of the Hatch Act, the Anti-Deficiency Act, the Consolidated Appropriations Act or other federal criminal statutes.

“The Trump Administration knows what they are doing is unlawful, as evidenced by their halfhearted attempts to defend their actions. An anonymous White House spokesperson called the ads ‘educational,’ and suggested that they are ‘clearly not political’ because the ‘president is not on the ballot,’” the lawmakers wrote. “Yet just a few short weeks ago, at his poorly-rated Republican National Convention, President Trump pleaded for his rapidly dwindling ranks of supporters to vote, begging them to ‘pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot.’ The White House can’t have it both ways.”

The lawmakers also, amusingly, fact check many of the claims Trump makes in the ads to argue that they could not possibly serve as “public service announcements” — like those made during the COVID-19 pandemic — as the White House has claimed.

“President Trump is obviously desperate for the American people to ‘love’ him, a problem that goes beyond your jurisdiction,” they wrote. “But stealing taxpayer dollars to pay for Mr. Trump’s narcissistic ego trips is plainly illegal. Your agencies have an important responsibility to hold accountable members of his Administration who violate the laws and policies under your purview.”

Raskin and Whitesides join their colleagues Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Henry Cuellar (D-TX) as well as Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) in asking questions about what exactly is going on with the egregious shuffling of funds for the ad campaign, seemingly designed to help Republicans win races next month (even though many vulnerable Republicans are trying to put a 10 foot pole between themselves and Trump’s political toxicity at the moment). The top Democratic appropriators are concerned about this because it appears as though the money was moved and used for something outside of its congressionally appropriated purpose — taxpayer dollars that were allocated for Customs and Border Protection in Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill” last year.

The ads have run on major airwaves in recent weeks including Fox, Newsmax, MS NOW, and CBS, and also during NFL games over the weekend.

Obviously, Democrats are concerned about the corruption and violation of federal law. But this trend of Trump inserting himself into the midterms because he’s worried Republicans are going to lose a chamber of Congress simply because he is not on the ballot — and Republican stumbling as they alternately embrace the administration’s failing policies and distance themselves dramatically from the unpopular president — has been a rare moment of levity in our current hellscape.

A new political ad airing this week features clips of President Donald Trump pledging to defeat “communism, socialism and Marxism in America,” and promising “America will never be a communist country.” It cuts to flashing text reading the “largest tax cuts in history” and “reigniting American manufacturing” while a choir repeatedly sings “love me” in the background. The sample is from JMSN’s song “Love Me,” who said on X that he did not authorize license of the song. The UFC’s Dana White chimes in, saying Trump “is the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met, and nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves.”

The 30-second spot seems like any other campaign ad, designed to use emotion to sway voters, but it turns out that taxpayers actually paid for the whole thing, which may not be legal. That’s sparked considerable controversy on Capitol Hill, with both Republicans and Democrats criticizing the ads. The cost of the ad is $430,000 and is running across multiple network TV channels across the country, though the Associated Press reports “The actual amount spent could be significantly more, depending on whether networks classified the ad as a political ad.”

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Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who is not running for reelection, called the ad “inappropriate” and compared it to messaging from former right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

“This may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said on X. “It is a Hatch Act violation for any government employees who worked on it or used government resources to make it. It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns.”

As a result, Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group, filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Office and Office of Special Counsel, alleging “The TV ad boosting the image and character of Donald Trump as well as reiterating Trump’s campaign rhetoric, paid for by taxpayer dollars, and produced and distributed by Trump’s White House staff, appears to be a clear violation of the laws prohibiting the use of taxpayer dollars for propaganda purpose as well as a violation of the Hatch Act.” Public Citizen also noted that they have filed a dozen Hatch Act complaints with OSC over the past year, all of which have been ignored by the agency.

The White House defended the ad and said it is “educational and unapologetically patriotic,” according to AP.

The White House is currently airing this video as an ad during commercial breaks on Fox News.

It looks and sounds like a political spot and includes a disclaimer stating that it is paid for by the U.S. government.

The soundtrack: as images of Trump flash across the screen,… pic.twitter.com/TloS7I9O55

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 24, 2026

The post Pro-Trump “love me” ads paid for by taxpayers appeared first on Salon.com.

In 1967, Kleenex offered pop art pillows in the shape of giant size Kleenex boxes. They cost $2.95 each plus two premium seals cut from Kleenex packages. You could get all three for $8.25 and six seals.

The pillows came in three designs. — Read the rest

The post In 1967, Kleenex sold pillows shaped like giant Kleenex boxes appeared first on Boing Boing.

This recipe, from The Great Book of Chocolate, is one of my favorite recipes in the book. It’s a deep-dark chocolate spread that’s just as welcome on the breakfast table with warm croissants or toast, as it is as an afternoon snack, swiped on a slice of baguette.

The recipe comes from my friend Deb Perelman, of Smitten Kitchen, who came to Paris and made it in my kitchen with me. You can watch the full video here.

Since you’re making it at home, unlike store-bought spreads, you know what’s in this delectable. This recipe uses olive oil, which is healthy and delicious with the dark chocolate. I like to use one that’s fruity, which compliments the chocolate perfectly.

Depending on the type of chocolate you use, and it’s percentage of cacao solids, as well as the ambient temperature of your kitchen, the spread can be a bit firm, or soft, at room temperature. If it’s too firm, you can zap it for a few seconds in the microwave to make it more spreadable. If it’s too soft, it can be chilled briefly. In my kitchen, it’s perfect just as it is at room temperature…and I think you’ll love it too.

Today's links

• Amazon achieves enshittification inception: Cheating on your fraud is a hell of a thing.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Electrolite is back; Mafia rules; Aaronsw on Wikipedia; Proctorio's memory hole.
• Upcoming appearances: Dąbrowa Górnicza, Warsaw, Brighton, London, Budapest, Edmonton, South Bend, Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa.
• 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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Amazon achieves enshittification inception (permalink)

Amazon's own balance sheet presents the most compelling evidence that we are stuck in the Enshittocene, the era in which everything is turning into a pile of shit, because the worst ideas of the worst people now make the most money.

Amazon is a many-tentacled monster, with several prominent lines of business wrapped around the world. There's its logistics and fulfillment business, which is so successful (at the expense of its workers' labor rights, bodies and bathroom breaks) that it is more than fully subsidized by Amazon's platform sellers, the independent merchants who depend on Amazon to sell and deliver their goods.

This means that it costs Amazon itself nothing to get the merchandise it sells to your door: more than 100% of the cost of operating the fulfillment side of Amazon is covered by the fees it extracts from its independent sellers (who compete with Amazon in many instances, and for whom delivery is a cost center, not a source of profit).

Then there's AWS, Amazon's cloud business. This is another extraordinary success story: every company needs servers, and that's especially true of an e-commerce company like Amazon. By building more servers than it needs, Amazon transformed its own data infrastructure from a cost center into another profit center. Amazon's customers – many of whom are also its competitors – pay Amazon so much to rent space on its servers that Amazon gets its own (prodigious) computing for free, and realizes a profit on top of that.

Taken on their own, these two facts constitute an extraordinary business story: one of the largest corporations in the history of the world has converted its two largest cost centers into profit centers, and those profits are substantially generated by extracting payments from the company's own competitors!

Amazon's logistics and cloud computing are extraordinary, but they are eclipsed by the company's most profitable line of business, which is payola.

"Payola" is a word that old people like me just barely have context for and for anyone under fifty the word is likely a mystery, so a brief explanation is in order.

"Payola" comes from a massive 1950s scandal over bribes that record labels paid to radio DJs and station managers to play their music. Radio stations were given the use of a scarce and precious resource – exclusive control over slices of the only electromagnetic spectrum in the universe – and were expected to program material that the American public would find enjoyable, edifying and educational. In this system, radio stations were expected to make shrewd guesses about the music the public would enjoy the most, and play that.

Because the selection process for the music that DJs played on the American public's spectrum was completely opaque, and because those selections could make fortunes for record labels, the system was ripe for corruption. Labels slipped literal envelopes full of cash and drugs ("payola") into the hands of DJs, station managers and owners, bribing them to turn songs into "hits" by cramming them into Americans' ears. The biggest predictor of a radio hit wasn't whether people liked the song so much that the stations rushed to play it, but rather, how much the labels were willing to spend in bribes to get their song played:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

This was a bad system all around. The American public got worse music. Musicians' own royalties were eroded by the label accountants' practice of charging off bribes to "promotions" they deducted from artists' royalty statements. Radio stations sucked. Labels bid away each other's margins, depriving themselves of operating capital to find and record new music and starving them of free cash flow to pay to musicians, employees and shareholders. As with every instance of corruption, this was a system of concentrated gains and diffuse losses, which is why it continued for so long (decades!) and got so bad before anyone took action to end it.

Amazon's payola isn't about radio play – it's about search. When you search Amazon, the top results do not represent Amazon's best guess about what product will best match your query: rather, Amazon auctions off those top results to its platform sellers. Amazon's search results reflect who paid the biggest bribe, not who has the best product.

To pay for those bribes, platform sellers have to raise prices. Amazon helps them do this, by imposing a "most favored nation" clause on its sellers that requires them to sell on Amazon at a price that matches or beats the price charged everywhere else (Target, Walmart, a mom-n-pop, or the factory store):

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/25/most-favored-nation/#price-fixing

Thus, Amazon imposes an economy-wide tax on nearly every product you buy. Amazon's junk fees average 51-60% of the purchase price of the things you buy there, and because Amazon has captured a supermajority of the richest 10% of Americans (who have almost all pre-paid for a year's shipping through Prime), every seller must sell on Amazon, or forego any hope of selling to most of the country's most prolific shoppers.

Any seller who signs up for Amazon is agreeing to turn over the majority of their sales income to Amazon, and any seller who raises prices to recoup those sums, must raise prices everywhere, at every retail outlet in the country.

AI has made Amazon much better at enforcing Most Favored Nation terms, because AI is actually pretty good at parsing competitors' websites and finding instances of discounting, which Amazon instantaneously punishes by relegating the sellers' product listings to page umpty-billion of Amazon's search results.

There are plenty of junk fees that go into Amazon's 51-60% rake. A large slice comes from fees Amazon charges for access to its (very profitable) logistics system. Failure to use Amazon's fulfillment system also relegates your listings to the dregs of Amazon search results, so sellers pay a massive premium to have their parcels delivered by Amazon, to the exclusion of cheaper alternatives that are just as fast and reliable. That's why Amazon fulfillment is so profitable!

While the Amazon tax is extracted through several types of junk fee, the most profitable junk fee of them all is Amazon's search payola. In fact, search payola is the most profitable business that Amazon operates, full stop.

Payola accounts for more of Amazon's profits than anything else the company does. It's more profitable than all the things Amazon sells directly. It's more profitable than AWS, Amazon's industry-leading cloud service.

Amazon has created a system where the most sales go to the companies that pay the highest bribes, and those companies pass the cost of those bribes onto their customers. The first item on a typical Amazon search results page is 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. The top row is 25% more expensive. The best result is usually on the second screen, somewhere around the 17th position:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/03/subprime-attention-rent-crisis/#euthanize-rentiers

Amazon actively helps its biggest bribers close the sale. Amazon has lots of "comparison shopping" systems built into the service, but one comparison tool is conspicuous by its absence: an "apples to apples" tool that lets you compare unit prices. Amazon's most prolific bribe-payers package their goods in weird quantities, selling everything from batteries to t-shirts to shampoo in larger or smaller quantities than their competitors. Sorting your search results by price doesn't actually tell you who's got the cheapest price per item, because the company with the cheapest AA batteries might be selling a smaller quantity of batteries at a higher price per battery.

Per-unit pricing is standard in retail. Indeed, if you go into a(n Amazon-owned) Whole Foods, you'll find per-unit pricing on the shelf tags, telling you how much the product costs per ounce or fluid ounce. Amazon clearly understands why shoppers would want to compare unit pricing, but offering a per-unit sort option to its search would make the bribery racket a lot less effective, because searchers could just sort by unit price and find the best bargain.

Let me remind you: payola is Amazon's single largest source of profits. When I was researching Enshittification, Amazon's take from payola was in the mid-$30 billions. A year later, when I did tour stops with Tim Wu (who was promoting his excellent book The Age of Extraction), I learned that this number had climbed to more than $50 billion. This year, it's on track to top $80 billion.

Amazon calls this bribery system an "advertising" product, but it's not "advertising" in the sense of the ads that Amazon's platform sellers might have once placed in the local newspaper. It's payola, more akin to the practice of packaged goods companies buying end-caps and whole shelves in the grocery store (a practice that is, in its own way, every bit as corrosive, though no grocery store has Amazon's economy-wide chokehold).

But there is a way in which this payola can be compared to advertising: it competes with advertising. Back in the old days, before a series of K-shaped recoveries created a vast chasm between America's haves and have-nots, before Amazon captured the majority of well-off American households with Prime, people shopped in lots of places, and in those days, companies advertised in publications, not on Amazon. Websites, newspapers, and newspaper websites made billions from those ads. Amazon's payola scheme (along with Google, Facebook and other tech monopolists) has captured almost all of that money.

As Tim Wu points out, the money Amazon makes from payola exceeds the advertising revenue received by all the newspapers in the world by 300%. Alongside that number and its implication for the news media, Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post and turning its editorial page into a sewer of shitty Ayn Rand fanfic barely registers.

This is pure enshittification. Of all the ingenious, innovative ways that Amazon came up with to make money, the most successful is a scam that makes everything you buy more expensive even as it reduces the profits of the companies you're buying from. It's another example of corruption: a system of concentrated gains and diffuse losses – and once again, it's the most profitable thing Amazon does.

And then…Amazon made it worse.

You know how people like to say, "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product?" It's bullshit. The "advertisers" who bribe Amazon for top search placement are the customers here, they're "paying for the product," and they are getting reamed. I don't just mean they're getting screwed by being forced to shell out payola – I mean that Amazon is cheating them on that payola!

Remember: Amazon doesn't just sell search placement; they auction it. Every time you run an Amazon search, the company conducts a special kind of auction called a "sealed-bid second-price auction" (SBSPA):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction

Under an SBSPA, bidders secretly tell the auctioneer the very highest price they're willing to pay. The auctioneer then charges the highest bidder a price equal to the second-highest bid, plus one cent.

This may seem unnecessarily complicated, but it's actually a clever solution to one of the major problems with traditional, "open call" auctions (where bidders call out the prices they're willing to pay until one bid emerges victorious). Say you're at an open call auction where the top bid is $10. You can call out $11, and then the other person will call out $12, and so on and so on. It's tedious and time-consuming. That's bad enough when you're at an estate auction that's unloading hundreds of items, but it's untenable for an eyeblink auction meant to determine search results that the user expects to get in an instant.

In physical auctions the top bidder often clobbers other bidders with a big increase – going from $10 to $50, say. This can end the auction quickly, but it means that the high bidder often overpays for their purchase.

In an SBSPA, every bidder enters their highest price, but none of the other bidders know what that price is. This encourages everyone to name their true highest price, but it protects the top bidder in the instance in which they are willing to pay a much higher price than anyone else.

Say you're that person who raises the bidding from $10 to $50 – you have no way of knowing whether the other bidders would have dropped out at $15 or at $45. If you were the only person who was willing to pay more than $15 for the item, you've just vastly overpaid (by $34.99). But in an SBSPA, you name your true price, but you only pay the price you would have paid if you'd gone through the tedious, expensive, time-consuming process of an open call auction.

Amazon's search auctions are SBSPAs. A merchant tells Amazon the maximum they're willing to pay to be at the top of the search results for a given query, but they pay a price equal to the second-highest bid, plus one cent. This lets auctions run so quickly that they can be used as the basis for ordering a search results page.

That's how it's supposed to work, anyway. The FTC and 22 states just filed a suit against Amazon because Amazon was cheating on its own SBSPA process:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/08/ftc-states-sue-amazon-over-secret-ad-surcharge-scheme

Over the past 7 years, Amazon has been secretly charging the winning bidder an amount equal to their own sealed bid, not the amount that the next-highest bidder was willing to pay (plus a penny):

https://gizmodo.com/ftc-sues-amazon-for-allegedly-duping-advertisers-2000805199

According to the suit, Amazon did this 80% of the time. That is tens of billions of dollars Amazon extracted from platform sellers, who passed those costs onto you, and onto every other retailer in the country (thanks to AI-enforced Most Favored Nation policies).

Amazon's defense is that this is all a big misunderstanding. Platform sellers just didn't understand how a SBSPA worked. Amazon has a special kind of SBSPA where they could unilaterally and secretly charge the winning bidder the maximum price they'd pledged, if, in Amazon's judgment, the closing price for the auction was below "the true market value of the ad placement":

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/ftc-alleges-amazon-illegally-made-20-billion-by-rigging-billions-of-ad-auctions/

This is darkly hilarious. The whole point of an auction is to determine "true market value." That's why neoclassical economists worship auctions as the world's best form of "price discovery" and why economics Nobels are awarded for "auction design":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction_theory

The definition of "true market value" is "the closing price in an auction." Amazon claiming that it secretly jacked people because the auction generated a price that was "below the true market value" of an ad tells you that the whole business is a sham. The point of Amazon's payola scheme is only and ever a way to parasitically extract the maximum amount a platform seller is willing to part with, and by running a fake SBSPA, Amazon was able to trick its customers into revealing those maximum prices.

Cheating on a bribery scheme is a mood. This isn't just enshittification, it's enshittification inception. Amazon managed to enshittify their own enshittification!

This case was brought by Trump's FTC, which means that Amazon can get out of it by paying a chud podcaster to tweet at the president and he'll order them to drop it, just like he did with Ticketmaster:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/13/khanservatives/#kid-rock-eats-shit

But – just as with Ticketmaster – the feds aren't the only parties to the suit. With 22 AGs ("Aspiring Governors") on the suit, there's a chance this will go to trial. We might even learn the identity of the inventor of this enshittification-squared gambit, a veritable Louis Pasteur of enshittification. Assuming that person doesn't go to prison, the Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne can give that sloshing, ambulatory pile of hot liquid garbage a Nobel Prize in Economics.

(Image: Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0, modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Gridfinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridfinity

• US court rules Google will not have to sell ad exchange after losing antitrust case https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/us-court-rules-google-will-not-have-to-sell-ad-exchange-after-losing-antitrust-case/

• Minding the Gaps in Surveillance Pricing Reform https://economicpopulist.substack.com/p/minding-the-gaps-in-surveillance

• Zack Polanski seeks to stand for by-election in former PM Starmer's seat https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cge41ee40vwo

• What Are We Supposed to Call This? https://www.usermag.co/p/what-are-we-supposed-to-call-this

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Electrolite relaunches https://web.archive.org/web/20010927195348/http://www.panix.com/~pnh/electrolite.html

#25yrsago How to play Mafia https://web.archive.org/web/20011113011546/http://www.stud.ntnu.no/studorg/mafia/

#20yrsago How Wikipedia entries get written http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia

#5yrsago Proctorio's awful reviews disappear down the memory hole https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/04/hypervigilance/#radical-transparency

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Dąbrowa Górnicza, Kongres Regeneracja! to interdyscyplinarna, Sep 5
  https://regeneracja.plse.org.pl/

• Warsaw: Romana i Jana Podoskich, Sep 6
  https://wydarzenia.phub.pl/events/0ee0e198-f843-423a-890f-c84ff50a46c0

• Brighton: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8
  https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/

• London: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle's Picadilly), Sep 9
  https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn

• Budapest: Brain Bar, Sep 17
  https://brainbar.com/munkatars/cory-doctorow

• Edmonton: Elbows Up (Edmonton Public Library), Sep 28
  https://www.epl.ca/blogs/post/elbows-up-with-cory-doctorow/

• South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
  https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/

• Hudson, OH: Hudson Library, Oct 7
  https://engagedpatrons.org/EventsExtended.cfm?SiteID=3850&EventID=596952&PK=

• Calgary: Wordfest, Oct 8
  https://wordfest.com/2026/show/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2026/

• Winnipeg: McNally Robinson, Oct 9
  https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/event-18991/An-Evening-with-Cory-Doctorow

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

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

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

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

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• The future of the tech crisis (How the Light Gets In)
  https://iai.tv/video/the-future-of-the-tech-crisis?_auid=2020

• How Tech Platforms Took Over the Economy (Dystopia Now)
  https://sites.libsyn.com/566555/enshittification-and-reverse-centaurs-cory-doctorow-on-how-tech-platforms-took-over-the-economy

• Hope, AI, Fixing the Internet and the Reverse Centaur of it all (Wilosophy)
  https://podcastaddict.com/everyone-relax/episode/231414816

• Deflating the AI Bubble (Do Not Pass Go)
  https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/deflating-the-ai-bubble-with-cory

• Technofeudal Enshittification (Fucking Cancelled)
  https://www.fuckingcancelled.com/p/technofeudal-enshittification-with

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Latest books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

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

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

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 513 (11893 total).

• "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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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.

---

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This Chinese Spinach Salad is a hearty and delicious way to enjoy lots of fresh spinach. Adding tofu skin and peanuts makes it extra tasty and nutrient-dense!  The Art of the Chinese “Cold Dish”    Every year, I like to come up with one or two new “cold dishes” that can be served chilled or room […]

This spicy sun-dried tomato pasta salad recipe is our new go-to for summer BBQs, potlucks, picnics, and easy summer lunches. It is incredibly simple to make, with just 7 basic ingredients. Somehow though, it is crazy addictive!  Inspired by a Local Deli We have this deli here in North Jersey that makes awesome sandwiches, but […]

This is my perfect Cucumber Tomato Salad, with just enough mint to bring out the essence of the cucumbers and grape tomatoes. It’s refreshing and pairs beautifully with all kinds of summer favorites, from grilled meat to seafood!  A Simple Salad to Repeat All Summer Long  When summer comes, I’m always ready to embrace all […]

I had so much fun when Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen came to my kitchen in Paris and made a batch of Chocolate-Olive Oil Spread, a delicious recipe from The Great Book of Chocolate.

The spread is easy (and fun!) to make, and is just one of the more than 50 recipes in the book, which includes Chocolate Mug Cakes, award-winning Blue Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies, Individual Warm Chocolate Cakes, Chocolate Truffles, Homemade Rocky Road, Chili with Chocolate, and lots more.

You can find the recipe for the Chocolate-Olive Oil Spread in my newsletter, too!

Get your copy of The Great Book of Chocolate at your local bookstore or online retailer from one of these links:

Amazon | Bookshop.org | Now Serving | Barnes & Noble | Omnivore | Book Larder | Kitchen Arts & Letters | Bold Fork | Books are Magic | Amazon France | Powell’s | RJ Julia | Strand | Smith & Son Paris | Amazon UK | Politics and Prose | Vivienne Culinary Books | Book Passage | Elliot Bay | Village Books | East End Books | Indigo Canada

This is my go to side salad that I make often, whether it’s for two people, four, six, or ten. A good side salad strikes a balance of ease and satisfaction, and this has become my old reliable for simple dinners at home and entertaining.  The Key Ingredient Is Kind of a Big Dill The […]

This summertime stunner tastes as good as it looks! I had a feeling my Burrata with Tomatoes and Basil would be good with peaches instead of tomatoes, and wow, it’s great. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

The recipe features sliced peaches, fresh arugula and basil, creamy burrata, and toasted pistachios, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It’s a vibrant sweet-and-savory combination that you can serve as a salad or an appetizer.

I love fresh, simple summer recipes like these because they look and taste gourmet but require no cooking at all. This beautiful recipe is ready in 15 minutes!

Continue to the recipe...

The post Peach and Burrata Salad appeared first on Cookie and Kate.

This Shallot Vinaigrette makes even the most basic pile of mixed greens out of the box taste wonderful. A liberal drizzle of this salad dressing feels like you’re sitting down at a nice restaurant, and it couldn’t be simpler to make!  Our New Go-To Salad Dressing I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m […]

We’ve been making this Hot Dog Potato Salad for years. It’s perfect for summer gatherings with family and friends when you need a satisfying and tasty side dish!  This recipe is a great new way to savor hot dogs, particularly when maybe you don’t have quite enough for each person at the table to have […]