The lesser prairie chicken was once a common sight in the southern Great Plains, but its numbers are dwindling. Even so, it lost federal protections earlier this year for a second time. Now states and landowners are overseeing conservation efforts.

Today's links

• A year in illustration (2025 edition): I think I'm getting the hang of this?
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: HADOPI is born; Tea Party wants to disenfranchise renters; How to kill TPP; Mozilla ejects Thunderbird; Rosa Parks was a lifelong radical activist.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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A year in illustration (2025 edition) (permalink)

One of the most surprising professional and creative developments of my middle-age has been discovering my love of collage. I have never been a "visual" person – I can't draw, I can't estimate whether a piece of furniture will fit in a given niche, I can't catch a ball, and I can't tell you if a picture is crooked.

When Boing Boing started including images with our posts in the early 2000s, I hated it. It was such a chore to find images that were open licensed or public domain, and so many of the subjects I wrote about are abstract and complex and hard to illustrate. Sometimes, I'd come up with a crude visual gag and collage together a few freely usable images as best as I could and call it a day.

But over the five years that I've been writing Pluralistic, I've found myself putting more and more effort and thought into these header images. Without realizing it, I put more and more time into mastering The GIMP (a free/open Photoshop alternative), watching tutorial videos and just noodling from time to time. I also discovered many unsuspected sources of public domain work, such as the Library of Congress, whose search engine sucks, but whose collection is astounding (tip: use Kagi or Google to search for images with the "site:loc.gov" flag).

I also discovered the Met's incredible collection:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search

And the archives of H Armstrong Roberts, an incredibly prolific stock photographer whose whole corpus is in the public domain. You can download more than 14,000 of his images from the Internet Archive (I certainly did!):

https://archive.org/details/h-armstrong-roberts

Speaking of the Archive and search engine hacks, I've also developed a method for finding hi-rez images that are otherwise very hard to get. Often, an image search will turn up public domain results on commercial stock sites like Getty. If I can't find public domain versions elsewhere (e.g. by using Tineye reverse-image search), I look for Getty's metadata about the image's source (that is, which book or collection it came from). Then I search the Internet Archive and other public domain repositories for high-rez PDF scans of the original work, and pull the images out of there. Many of my demons come from Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros, an 18th century updating of a 11th century demonolgy text, which you can get as a hi-rez at the Wellcome Trust:

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cvnpwy8d

Five years into my serious collage phase, I find myself increasingly pleased with the work I'm producing. I actually self-published a little book of my favorites this year (Canny Valley), which Bruce Sterling provided an intro for and which the legendary book designer John Berry laid out fot me, and I'm planning future volumes:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

I've been doing annual illustration roundups for the past several years, selecting my favorites from the year's crop:

2022:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/25/a-year-in-illustration/

2023:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/21/collages-r-us/

2024:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/07/great-kepplers-ghost/

It's a testament to how much progress I've made that when it came time to choose this year's favorites, I had 33 images I wanted to highlight. Much of this year's progress is down to my friend and neighbor Alistair Milne, an extremely talented artist and commercial illustrator who has periodically offered me little bits of life-changing advice on composition and technique.

I've also found a way to use these images in my talks: I've pulled together a slideshow of my favorite (enshittification-related) images, formatted for 16:9 (the incredibly awkward aspect ratio that everyone seems to expect these days), with embedded Creative Commons attributions. When I give a talk, I ask to have this run behind me in "kiosk mode," looping with a 10-second delay between each slide. Here's an up-to-date (as of today) version:

https://archive.org/download/enshittification-slideshow/enshittification.pptx

If these images intrigue you and you'd like hi-rez versions to rework on your own, you can get full rez versions of all my blog collagesin my "Pluralistic Collages" Flickr set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/albums/72177720316719208

They're licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, though some subelements may be under different licenses (check the image descriptions for details). But everything is licensed for remix and commercial distribution, so go nuts!

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All the books I reviewed in 2025

The underlying image comes from the Library of Congress (a search for "reading + book") (because "reading" turns up pictures of Reading, PA and Reading, UK). I love the poop emoji from the cover of the US edition of Enshittification and I'm hoping to get permission to do a lot more with it.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/02/constant-reader/#too-many-books

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Meta's new top EU regulator is contractually prohibited from saying mean things about Meta

Mark Zuckerberg's ghastly Metaverse avatar is such a gift to his critics. I can't believe his comms team let him release it! The main image is an H Armstrong Roberts classic of a beat cop wagging his finger at a naughty lad on a bicycle. The Wachowskis' 'code waterfall' comes from this generator:

https://github.com/yeaayy/the-matrix

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/01/erin-go-blagged/#big-tech-omerta

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The long game

In my intro to last year's roundup, I wrote about Joseph Keppler, the incredibly prolific illustrator and publisher who founded Puck magazine and drew hundreds of illustrations, many of them editorial cartoons that accompanied articles that criticized monopolies and America's oligarch class. As with so much of his work, Keppler's classic illustration of Rockefeller as a shrimpy, preening king updates very neatly to today's context, through the simple expedient of swapping in Zuck's metaverse avatar.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/20/if-you-wanted-to-get-there/#i-wouldnt-start-from-here

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Facebook's fraud files

I love including scanned currency in my illustrations. Obviously, large-denomination bills make for great symbols in posts about concentrated wealth and power, but also, US currency is iconic, covered in weird illustrations, and available as incredibly high-rez scans, like this 7,300+ pixel-wide C-note:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._hundred_dollar_bill,_1999.jpg

It turns out that intaglio shading does really cool stuff when you tweak the curves. I love what happened to Ben Franklin's eyes in this one. (Zuck's body is another Keppler/Puck illo!)

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/08/faecebook/#too-big-to-care

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There's one thing EVERY government can do to shrink Big Tech

This is another Keppler/Roberts mashup. Keppler's original is Teddy Roosevelt as a club-wielding ("speak softly and carry a big stick") trustbusting Goliath. The crying baby and money come from an H Armstrong Roberts tax-protest stock photo (one of the money sacks was originally labeled "TAXES").

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/01/redistribution-vs-predistribution/#elbows-up-eurostack

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When AI prophecy fails

The chain-gang photo comes from the Library of Congress. That hacker hoodie is a public domain graphic ganked from Wikimedia Commons. This one also includes one of my standbys, Cryteria's terrific vector image of HAL 9000's glaring red eye, always a good symbolic element for stories about Big Tech, surveillance, and/or AI. I love how the HAL 9000 eye pops as the only color element in this one.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/29/worker-frightening-machines/#robots-stole-your-jerb-kinda

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Checking in on the state of Amazon's chickenized reverse-centaurs

Another H Armstrong Roberts remix: originally, this was a grinning delivery man jugging several parcels. I reskinned him and his van with Amazon delivery livery, and matted in the horse-head to create a "reverse centaur" (another theme I return to often). I used one of Alistair Milne's tips to get that horse's head right: rather than trying to trace all the stray hairs on the mane, I traced them with a fine brush tool on a separate layer, then erased the strays from the original and merged down to get a nice, transparency-enabled hair effect.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/traveling-salesman-solution/#pee-bottles

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The mad king's digital killswitch

The Uncle Sam image is Keppler's (who else?). In the original (which is about tariffs! everything old is new!), Sam's legs have become magnets that are drawing in people and goods from all over the world. The Earth-from-space image is a NASA pic. Love that all works of federal authorship are born in the public domain!

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/20/post-american-internet/#huawei-with-american-characteristics

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Microsoft, Tear Down That Wall!

Clippy makes a perfect element for posts about chatbots. It's hard to think that Microsoft shipped a product with such a terrible visual design, but at the same time, I gotta give 'em credit, it's so awful that it's still instantly recognizable, 25 years later.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/15/freedom-of-movement/#data-dieselgate

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A disenshittification moment from the land of mass storage

Another remix of Keppler's excellent Teddy Roosevelt/trustbuster giant image, this time with Ben Franklin's glorious C-note phiz. God, I love using images from money!

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/10/synology/#how-about-nah

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Apple's unlawful evil

Alistair Milne helped me work up a super hi-rez version of Trump's hair from his official (public domain) 2024 presidential portrait. Lots of tracing those fine hairs, and boy does it pay off. Apple's "Think Different" wordmark (available as a vector on Wikimedia Commons) is a gift to the company's critics. The fact that the NYPD actually routinely show up for protests dressed like this makes my job too easy.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply

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Blue Bonds

Another C-note remix. One of the things I love about remixing US currency is that every part of it is so immediately identifiable, meaning that just about any crop works. The California bear comes from a public domain vector on Wikimedia Commons. I worked hard to get the intaglio effect to transfer to the bear, but only with middling success. Thankfully, I was able to work at massive resolution (like, 4,000 px wide) and reduce the image, which hides a lot of my mistakes.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/04/fiscal-antifa/#post-trump

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The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh

Another money scan, this time a hyperinflationary Zimbabwean dollar (I also looked at some Serbian hyperinflationary notes, but the Zimbabwean one was available at a higher rez). Not thrilled about the engraving texture on the HAL 9000, but the Sam Altman intaglio kills. I spent a lot of time tweaking that using G'mic, a good (but uneven) plugin suite for the GIMP.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence

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Rage Against the (Algorithmic Management) Machine

This one made this year's faves list purely because I was so happy with how the Doordash backpack came out. The belligerent worker is part of a Keppler diptych showing a union worker and a boss facing off against one another with a cowering consumer caught in the crossfire. I'm not thrilled about this false equivalence, but I'll happily gank the figures, which are great.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/25/roboboss/#counterapps

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The enshittification of solar (and how to stop it)

I spent a lot of time tweaking the poop emoji on those solar panels, eventually painstakingly erasing the frames from the overlay image. It was worth it.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/23/our-friend-the-electron/#to-every-man-his-castle

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AI psychosis and the warped mirror

One of those high-concept images that came out perfect. Replacing Narcissus's face (and reflection) with HAL 9000 made for a striking image that only took minutes to turn out.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/17/automating-gang-stalking-delusion/#paranoid-androids

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Reverse centaurs are the answer to the AI paradox

The businessman trundling up a long concrete staircase is another H Armstrong Roberts. That staircase became very existential as soon as I stripped out the grass on either side of it. Finding that horse-head took a lot of doing (the world needs more CC-licensed photos of horses from that angle!). The computer in the background comes from a NASA Ames archive of photos of all kinds of cool stuff – zeppelins, spacesuits, and midcentury "supercomputers."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/11/vulgar-thatcherism/#there-is-an-alternative

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Radical juries

Another high-concept image that just worked. It took me more time to find a good public domain oil painting of a jury than it did to transform each juror into Karl Marx. I love how this looks.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/22/jury-nullification/#voir-dire

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LLMs are slot-machines

It's surprisingly hard to find a decent public domain photo of a slot machine in use. I eventually started to wonder if Vegas had a no-cameras policy in the early years. Eventually, the Library of Commerce came through with a scanned neg that was high enough rez that I could push the elements I wanted to have stand out from an otherwise muddy, washed-out image.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/16/jackpot/#salience-bias

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Zuckermuskian solipsism

The laborers come from an LoC collection of portraits of children who worked in coal mines in the 1910s. They're pretty harrowing stuff. I spent a long plane ride cropping each individual out of several of these images.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/#npcs

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Good ideas are popular

The original crowd scene (a presidential inauguration, if memory serves) was super high-rez, which made it very easy to convincingly matte in the monkeys and the Congressional dome. I played with tinting this one, but pure greyscale looked a lot better.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/07/the-people-no-2/#water-flowing-uphill

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By all means, tread on those people

Another great high concept. The wordiness of Wilhoit's Law makes this intrinsically funny. There's a public domain vector-art Gadsen flag on Wikimedia Commons. I found a Reddit forum where font nerds had sleuthed out the typeface for the words on the original.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/26/sole-and-despotic-dominion/#then-they-came-for-me

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AI's pogo-stick grift

The pogo stick kid is another H Armstrong Roberts gank. I spent ages trying to get the bounce effect to look right, and then Alistair Milne fixed it for me in like 10 seconds. The smoke comes from an oil painting of the eruption of Vesuvius from the Met. It's become my go-to "hellscape" background.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/02/inventing-the-pedestrian/#three-apis-in-a-trenchcoat

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The worst possible antitrust outcome

The smoke from Vesuvius makes another appearance. I filled the Android droid with tormented figures from Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights," which is an amazing painting that is available as a more than 15,000 pixel wide (!) scan on Wikimedia Commons.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/03/unpunishing-process/#fucking-shit-goddammit-fuck

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Conservatism considered as a movement of bitter rubes

Boy, I love this one. The steamship image is from the Met. The carny barker is a still of WC Fields, whose body language is impeccable. It took a long-ass time to get a MAGA hat in the correct position, but I eventually found a photo of an early 20th C baseball player and then tinted his hat and matted in the MAGA embroidery.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/22/all-day-suckers/#i-love-the-poorly-educated

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Your Meta AI prompts are in a live, public feed

These guys on the sofa come from Thomas Hawke, who has recovered and scanned nearly 30,000 "found photos" – collections from estates, yard-sales, etc:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-taken-desc&safe_search=1&tags=foundphotograph&user_id=51035555243%40N01&view_all=1

The Shining-esque lobby came from the Library of Congress, where it is surprisingly easy to find images of buildings with scary carpets.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/19/privacy-breach-by-design/#bringing-home-the-beacon

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Strange Bedfellows and Long Knives

Another great high-concept that turned out great. I think that matting the Heritage Foundation chiselwork into the background really pulls it together, and I'm really happy with the glow-up I did for the knives.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/21/et-tu-sloppy-steve/#fractured-fairytales

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Are the means of computation even seizable?

I spent so long cutting out this old printing press, but boy has it stood me in good stead. I think there's like five copies of that image layered on top of each other here. The figure is an inside joke for all my Luddite trufan pals out there, a remix of a classic handbill depicting General Ned Ludd.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/14/pregnable/#checkm8

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Mark Zuckerberg announces mind-control ray (again)

I was worried that this wouldn't work unless you were familiar with the iconic portrait photo of Rasputin, but that guy was such a creepy-ass-looking freak, and Zuck's metaverse avatar is so awful, that it works on its own merits, too.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/#credulous-dolts

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Mike Lee and Jim Jordan want to kill the law that bans companies from cheating you

The original image was so grainy, but it was also fantastic and I spent hours rehabbing it. It's a posed, comedic photo of two Australian miners in the bush cheating at cards, rooking a third man. The Uncle Sam is (obviously) from Keppler.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/29/cheaters-and-liars/#caveat-emptor-brainworms

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Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

This one got more, "Wow is that ever creepy" comments than any of the other ones. I was going for Chatty Cathy, but that Zuck metaverse avatar is so weird and bad that it acts like visual MSG in any image, amplifying its creepiness to incredible heights.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/18/chatty-zucky/#is-you-taking-notes-on-a-criminal-fucking-conspiracy

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Machina economicus

The image is from an early illustrated French edition of HG Wells's War of the Worlds. I love how this worked out, and a family of my fans in Ireland commissioned a paint-by-numbers of it and painted it in and mailed it to me. It's incredible. If I re-use this, I will probably swap out the emoji for the graphic from the book's cover.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/14/timmy-share/#a-superior-moral-justification-for-selfishness

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How the world's leading breach expert got phished

I don't understand how composition works, but I know when I've lucked into a good composition. This is a good composition! I made this on the sofa of Doc and Joyce Searles in Bloomington, Indiana while I was in town for my Picks and Shovels book tour.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/05/troy-hunt/#teach-a-man-to-phish

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Anyone who trusts an AI therapist needs their head examined

I worked those tentacles for so long, trying to get Freud/Cthulhu/HAL's lower half just right. In the end, it all paid off.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/01/doctor-robo-blabbermouth/#fool-me-once-etc-etc

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You can't save an institution by betraying its mission

The "fireman" is an image from the Department of Defense of a soldier demoing a flamethrower (I hacked in the firefighter's uniform). I spent a lot of time trying to get a smoky look for the foreground here, but I don't think it succeeded.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/19/selling-out/#destroy-the-village-to-save-it

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Trump loves Big Tech

The two guys in the jars (John Bull and a random general I've rebadged to represent the EU) come from an epic Keppler two-page spread personifying the nations of the world as foolish military men. While many of the figures are sadly and predictably racist (you don't want to see "China"), these guys were eminently salvageable, and I love their expressions and body-language.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/24/whats-good-for-big-tech/#is-good-for-america

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The future of Amazon coders is the present of Amazon warehouse workers

The background is a photo of the interior of a tape-robot that I snapped in the data-centre at the Human Genome Project when I was out on assignment for Nature magazine. It remains one of the most striking images I've ever captured. It was way too hard to find a horse's head from that angle for the "reverse centaur." If there are any equestrian photographers out there, please consider snapping a couple and putting them up on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/13/electronic-whipping/#youre-next

Gandersauce

I'm not thrilled with how the face worked out on this one, but people love it. If I'm giving a speech and I notice the audience elbowing one another and pointing at the slides and giggling, I know this one has just rotated onto the screen.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/08/turnabout/#is-fair-play

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Premature Internet Activists

I spent a lot of time cleaning up and keystoning Woody Guthrie's original sticker, which can be found at very high resolutions online. Look for this element to find its way into many future collages.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/13/digital-rights/#are-human-rights

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It's not a crime if we do it with an app

The two figures come from Keppler; the potato field is from the Library of Congress. Putting HAL eyes on the potatoes was fiddly work, but worth it. Something about Keppler's body language and those potato heads really sings.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loading

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The cod-Marxism of personalized pricing

I don't often get a chance to use Chinese communist propaganda posters, but I love working with them. All public domain, available at high rez, and always to the point. It was a lot of work matting those US flags onto the partially furled Chinese flags, but it worked out great.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor

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Occupy the Democratic National Committee

I love this sad donkey, from an old political cartoon. Given the state of the Democratic Party, I get a lot of chances to use him, and more's the pity.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/10/smoke-filled-room-where-it-happens/#dinosaurs

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Social media needs (dumpster) fire exits

This one's actually from 2024, but I did it after last year's roundup, and I like it well enough to include it in this year's. I think the smoke came out pretty good!

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes

(Images: TechCrunch, Ajay Suresh, Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0; Cryteria, UK Parliament/Maria Unger, CC BY 3.0; Bastique, Frank Schwichtenberg, CC BY 4.0; Japanexperterna.se, CC BY-SA 2.0; Ser Amantio di Nicolao, CC BY-SA 3.0; Armin Kübelbeck, Zde, Felix Winkelnkemper, CC BY-SA 4.0; modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• David Byrne: Tiny Desk Concert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNmcF6eRE7w

• Hundreds of Porsche Owners in Russia Unable to Start Cars After System Failure https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/12/02/hundreds-of-porsche-owners-in-russia-unable-to-start-cars-after-system-failure-a91302

• The Enshittification of Plex Is Kicking Off, Starting with Free Roku Users https://gizmodo.com/the-enshittification-of-plex-is-kicking-off-starting-with-free-roku-users-2000694283

• What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2026? https://publicdomainreview.org/features/entering-the-public-domain/2026/

• Mastodon CEO change, 2026 reset https://www.manton.org/2025/12/02/mastodon-ceo-change-reset.html

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Sony Rootkit Roundup IV https://memex.craphound.com/2005/12/02/sony-rootkit-roundup-iv/

#20yrsago How can you tell if a CD is infectious? https://web.archive.org/web/20051205043456/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004228.php

#20yrsago France about to get worst copyright law in Europe? https://web.archive.org/web/20060111033356/http://eucd.info/index.php?2005/11/14/177-droit-d-auteur-eucdinfo-devoile-le-plan-d-attaque-des-majors

#15yrsago UNC team builds 3D model of Rome using Flickr photos on a single PC in one day https://readwrite.com/flickr_rome_3d_double-time/

#15yrsago Schneier’s modest proposal: Close the Washington monument! https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2010/12/close_the_washington.html

#15yrsago Tea Party Nation President proposes taking vote away from tenants https://web.archive.org/web/20101204012806/https://thinkprogress.org/2010/11/30/tea-party-voting-property/

#15yrsago What it’s like to be a cocaine submarine captain https://web.archive.org/web/20120602082933/https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-colombian-coke-sub-former-drug-smuggler-tells-his-story-a-732292.html

#10yrsago A profile of America’s killingest cops: the police of Kern County, CA https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/01/the-county-kern-county-deadliest-police-killings

#10yrsago The word “taser” comes from an old racist science fiction novel https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/30/history-of-word-taser-comes-from-century-old-racist-science-fiction-novel

#10yrsago HOWTO pack a suit so it doesn’t wrinkle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug58yeMqNCo

#10yrsago Newly discovered WEB Du Bois science fiction story reveals more Afrofuturist history https://slate.com/technology/2015/12/the-princess-steel-a-recently-uncovered-short-story-by-w-e-b-du-bois-and-afrofuturism.html

#10yrsago A roadmap for killing TPP: the next SOPA uprising! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/tpp-current-state-play-how-we-defeat-largest-trade-deal

#10yrsago Wikipedia Russia suspends editor who tried to cut deal with Russian authorities https://www.themoscowtimes.com/archive/russian-wikipedia-suspends-editor-who-cut-deal-with-authorities

#10yrsago Vtech toy data-breach gets worse: 6.3 million children implicated https://web.archive.org/web/20151204033429/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacked-toymaker-vtech-admits-breach-actually-hit-63-million-children

#10yrsago Ironically, modern surveillance states are baffled by people who change countries https://memex.craphound.com/2015/12/02/ironically-modern-surveillance-states-are-baffled-by-people-who-change-countries/

#10yrsago Mozilla will let go of Thunderbird https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/30/thunderbird-flies-away-from-mozilla/

#10yrsago Rosa Parks was a radical, lifelong black liberation activist, not a “meek seamstress” https://web.archive.org/web/20151208224937/https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/01/how-history-got-the-rosa-parks-story-wrong/

#10yrsago Racist algorithms: how Big Data makes bias seem objective https://www.fordfoundation.org/news-and-stories/stories/can-computers-be-racist-big-data-inequality-and-discrimination/

#5yrsago Nalo Hopkinson, Science Fiction Grand Master https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/02/in-the-ring/#go-nalo-go

#1yrago All the books I reviewed in 2024 https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/02/booklish/#2024-in-review

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Seattle: Neuroscience, AI and Society (University of Washington), Dec 4
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/neuroscience-ai-and-society-cory-doctorow-tickets-1735371255139

• Virtual: Poetic Technologies with Brian Eno (David Graeber Institute), Dec 8
  https://davidgraeber.institute/poetic-technologies-with-cory-doctorow-and-brian-eno/

• Madison, CT: Enshittification at RJ Julia, Dec 8
  https://rjjulia.com/event/2025-12-08/cory-doctorow-enshittification

• Hamburg: Chaos Communications Congress, Dec 27-30
  https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/index.html

---

Recent appearances (permalink)

• We have become slaves to Silicon Valley (Politics JOE)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzEUvh1r5-w

• How Enshittification is Destroying The Internet (Frontline Club)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oovsyzB9L-s

• Escape Forward with Cristina Caffarra
  https://escape-forward.com/2025/11/27/enshittification-of-our-digital-experience/

• Why Every Platform Betrays You (Trust Revolution)
  https://fountain.fm/episode/bJgdt0hJAnppEve6Qmt8

• How the internet went to sh*t (Prospect Magazine)
  https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/podcasts/prospect-podcast/71663/cory-doctorow-how-the-internet-went-to-sht

---

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

• "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 (the-bezzle.org).

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

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

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

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

---

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

---

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• "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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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Cuellar had faced a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering and conspiracy. On Wednesday, he filed for reelection as a Democrat, quieting speculation that he migh switch parties.

This week on Lost Terminal: Cath and Seth talk, Quent and Stillman come to a realisation, and Nia makes a discovery.
Lost Terminal will return next week!
📓 Free transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/144982450
🎵 Today's SIGNAL is: https://namtao.bandcamp.com/track/choices
🦣 Mastodon https://namtao.com/@lostterminal
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🎙️ Recorded using a RODE NT-1 v5 USB in 32-bit float, edited with REAPER on Linux
🙏 CREDITS
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
❤️ Thank you so much to everyone who supports me, but especially my Patreon Producers:
Ada Phillips
Kit
Mike McCaffrey
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Catoxis

You didn’t say “Shields up, please,” sir.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer wondering if they could ask their coworkers to tell them to shut up when they were talking too much? Here’s the update.

I was the person who wrote in a moment of desperation trying to figure out how to stop myself from endlessly talking with/at coworkers and posed the idea of having a button made to tell people to tell me to hush (you know it was bad times when that sounded like a good idea).

Warning for context to anyone who goes back and reads the original post, my original letter was written on a really bad day during one of our peak busy times so I was writing from a more desperate / stressed / frustrated / burned out place and ended up asking the wrong thing (asked how to make a very poorly thought-out solution work rather than asking for better ideas).

The actual update. I appreciated the comments on both sides, especially those who got at what I was really needing over what I asked and gave not insane ideas/suggestions. It was nice to feel the support and be reminded that ADHD is indeed a disability, not shameful personal failings (as long as you are honestly putting in effort to do better). But it was also good to see more critical perspectives as a reminder that disability/struggles do not reduce your personal responsibility to manage yourself and perceptions are still a thing.

One of the biggest ideas from the comments that has helped was breaking down and getting the smart watch I had been avoiding. I got a super cheap $20 one without all the bells and whistles and thus none of the extra distractions I was worried about. It has hourly movement reminders and I set “Whatcha dooin’ “alarms to go off every half hour during the workdays so I do not have to fiddle with setting timers, unexpected conversations, or misjudging how long a conversation will need to be. The alarm also has the option for up to three five-minute snoozes so I can start wrapping up or set up the back up timer. So far, it really seems to be working well and also helps pull me back when I need to move on from other things.

Added bonus: if I am at my desk when it goes off, I drink some water so have been well hydrated.

I also have been doing a variation of the water bottle idea by trying to carry my eInk tablet or something I have to carry, but is not satisfying to fiddle with if I know I am going to talk to someone. I can use it to jot something down or check existing notes, but I get annoyed not being able to use my hands so it reminds me to move on or, if things are heading to something bigger, cutting things off and suggesting a meeting with the relevant people.

If it is near lunch or the end of day, I have also taken to using my cats as a politer exit. I got a new kitten so try to not be out too long since he is relegated to a single room by himself until he clears an infection and his sister learns to not orange cat smack at the gate when he looks at her or tries to bring her toys. Realize a conversation is running too long, but otherwise would feel too rude to end? “Sorry, Adrikins will be starting to get fussy if I do not get home soon and I do not want to torture my neighbor.”

Are things magically perfect now and I never talk too much? Absolutely not, but catching myself two of five times is still better than it was so I will take it because clearly, I cannot keep anything concise lol.

Cat tax:

The post update: can I ask my coworkers to tell me to shut up when I’m talking too much? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the CEO who kept asking young male employees to try her breast milk (!!)? Here’s the update.

I recently wrote in about my CEO offering her breast milk to staff.

The staff member most impacted elected to write a letter to the board. About 95% of union members decided to sign on to the letter, with many of them writing their own letters describing favoritism and lack of accountability on the part of the CEO. The whole board received this letter shortly before their monthly meeting.

Per the union contract, the board has five working days to respond. Nearly three weeks on, they still have not responded.

According to gossip around the office, the board considered the letter “dramatic” and is doing nothing to address it.

I was offered a new job today. I am heartbroken, but know I probably shouldn’t stay. On paper, this is my dream job, and I have built the program I manage from scratch. We also serve many of the people most impacted by the government shutdown and upcoming changes to food and other support, so I am feeling profoundly scared and guilty about the future of the program as I consider leaving during a pivotal moment.

That said, I took the sentiment expressed by you and many commenters about letting this craziness poison me seriously, and I know I need to go — I’m just looking for any reason not to.

Thanks to you and your community for all the wisdom and support. It made me feel a little less alone and crazy.

The post update: the CEO keeps asking young male employees to try her breast milk appeared first on Ask a Manager.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer in HR who had recently brought in a new manager, Barbara, to manage a team that was resisting any change and complained constantly? Here’s the update.

First, Barbara is no longer with our organization. Due to some troubling behavior that was witnessed by multiple people (myself included), and given the nature of Barbara’s actions during her short time with us, we all felt this just wasn’t a good culture fit and parted ways.

Since then, we’ve brought in a new manager who has taken the team by storm in all the good ways! We did sit the team down after Barbara’s departure and talk through some of the issues we had noticed, and after digging deeper, it seems a lot of the pushback was due more in part to Barbara’s management style, which was such a radically different style than what the team needed. We even uncovered some additional troubling interactions between Barbara and some of our vendors and customers, which has really opened our eyes to the real problem actually being Barbara all along, unfortunately.

During that sit-down, however, we did still talk about things that the team needed to be open to with any manager that they get, and they all seemed very receptive to it. Quite frankly, the issues they’d brought up with both of their previous managers really just stemmed from inadequacies on the managers’ parts that we couldn’t see from the upper management point of view (and the team was unsure of how to voice it and/or too nervous to bring it up to upper management), and so we are making some changes on our end to make sure this doesn’t happen again!

All that said, the new manager we brought in is just as much of a go-getter, but more of a team player and collaborator than Barbara was, which is exactly what this team needed! Barbara was the “it’s my way or the highway” type with no input really being allowed from her staff, whereas the new manager (let’s call her Sara) has taken the time to see how things are done first before making recommendations for any changes, and bases a lot of her decisions on what the team feels would be beneficial (within reason). As far as the team wanting other departments to do things that are clearly in the title of their department goes? Seems to be a non-issue now! Sara has really lit the fire under everyone on the team and re-invigorated the necessity of them to provide these services, and leads with encouragement and collaboration instead of an iron fist masked by kind demeanor and surface-level gratitude for perception‘s sake.

All seems to be smooth sailing for now! We are so grateful to have found Sara after everything this team has been through over the last few years! There’s still been a few hiccups as there usually are, but everyone’s really finding their stride!

The post update: managing a team that resists any change and complains constantly appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Well, you’re always welcome here, friend. Always.

SPOKANE, WA—Lamenting that she still hadn’t found the bug-eyed man-child of her dreams, area bachelorette Louise Perkins confirmed Tuesday that she was growing tired of constantly looking for Mr. Bean. “It seems like all my friends are settling down with buffoonish, mishap-prone men, but no matter how many dates I go on, I just can’t seem to find a Mr. Bean of my own,” said Perkins, adding that she longed for the day when a goofy, tweed-jacketed man would get down on one knee and say “Bean?” to her in a bizarrely low-pitched voice. “I don’t think I’m being too picky. I just want a guy with a digital calculator watch, a teddy bear he treats as a sentient being, and a citron green and black British Leyland Mini he can drive from an armchair strapped to the roof. But every time a date is chock-full of quirky escapades and it seems I might have finally found my Mr. Bean, he’ll throw up a major red flag by turning a light off at the switch instead of shooting out the bulb with an air pistol. It’s exhausting. I know they say Mr. Bean finds you when you least expect it—deviously poking his head out from behind a postbox, perhaps, or dangling from a flagpole as a result of a childish misunderstanding of how to do laundry—but at this point, I’m starting to worry that I’ll never find the man who makes me feel like Irma Gobb.” At press time, Perkins had reportedly swiped left on a dating profile belonging to Rowan Atkinson.

The post Single Woman Tired Of Looking For Mr. Bean appeared first on The Onion.

SILVER SPRING, MD—Praising the drug’s ability to quickly and effectively increase fatalities amongst the nation’s opioid users, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new nasal spray Wednesday capable of reversing the effects of Narcan.

The compound, called noroxone, was reportedly approved by the FDA as part of a broader effort to combat a surge in Narcan usage by vulnerable individuals who would have otherwise died. According to the manufacturer, the powerful opioid anti-antagonist is extremely fast-acting, and can re-depress the central nervous system and restore an overdose in just two to three minutes.

“Narcan use in this country is a major public health concern for Americans, who are often left watching helplessly as friends and loved ones succumb to the resuscitating effects of emergency care,” said FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary, who called the drug an essential intervention in the global fight against harm reduction. “Once sprayed into the nostril, noroxone works quickly to free up opioid receptors in the brain, allowing compounds like heroin, fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, and morphine to reattach and fatally interrupt respiration.” 

Noroxone, soon to be available both over-the-counter and as a prescription, was developed in response to what is widely known as the “Narcan crisis,” a nationwide epidemic that began in 2016 and has tragically saved hundreds of thousands of lives each year. Health officials praised the FDA’s emergency authorization, which marks the first time an overdose reversal-reversal spray has been deemed effective and lethal enough to warrant widespread distribution. 

Advocates who work in the healthcare field and have seen the new drug’s high mortality rates firsthand have said the emergency medicine inhibitor should be a standard item included in first-aid kits, as readily available as defibrillators and fire extinguishers in public spaces like hotels, libraries, and schools.

“Everyone should keep noroxone on hand in case they encounter someone at risk of being saved from a drug overdose or getting the help they need,” said Aaron Lorenz, a Narcan prevention specialist in New Hampshire who teaches community members how to confidently intervene when a drug user appears to be regaining consciousness. “Even if a person is sitting up straight, totally responsive to stimuli like shaking and shouting, or even breathing normally—it’s not too late.” 

Added Lorenz, “With noroxone, anyone can end a life.”

The post FDA Approves New Drug  That Reverses Effects Of Narcan appeared first on The Onion.

You used to dream of couch-surfing across the world, untethered and unbothered, and now here you are, seriously considering an HOA townhouse.

Reference #17806

The post Look Who You’ve Become appeared first on The Onion.

After years of planning their wedding, the pair were united in marriage within an hour of the bride being legally able to consent.

The post Elisa Geoffries and Daniel Walter appeared first on The Onion.

The Department of Transportation is considering a new crash test dummy design based on female anatomy, claiming it would improve safety testing for women. What do you think?

The post Transportation Department Endorses Crash Test Dummies That Resemble Women appeared first on The Onion.

“[Secretary of War] Hegseth ordered a lethal attack but not the killing of survivors, officials say… Amid talk of war crimes, the details and precise sequence of a Sept. 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean are facing intensifying scrutiny.” — New York Times

Can we all calm down for a minute? It appears my command to take no prisoners, exterminate all traces of life, and torch any semblance of international law has been misinterpreted. You shouldn’t rush to conclusions until you have all the facts.

Just because I said “Blow up the boat and everyone on it” doesn’t mean I literally wanted to do those things. Ever heard of a rhetorical device? The media can’t handle nuance or irony.

You have to understand, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are a lighthearted bunch. We joke around. We do bits. The Situation Room is DC’s Comedy Cellar. Everyone is cracking wise. So when you hear that I ordered an unprovoked attack based on dubious intelligence, you shouldn’t take anything out of context.

Intention is such a tricky concept. You say one thing to one person, then everyone else takes it and runs with it. When I bang my fist and shout “Kill the bastards” at the first Navy admiral I see, that could mean anything. You don’t know the kind of rapport we have.

Comedians use this language all the time. “I bombed last night.” “He got on stage and killed.” “Blow up a fishing boat to start a war so we can install a new regime and steal an entire nation’s oil reserves.” That’s how comedians speak.

I might be a Nazi-friendly talk-show host possessed by the ghost of John Barleycorn, but I still have a sense of humor. What’s not funny, though, is some pimply journalist trying to defame me by reporting my words verbatim.

This is classic cancel culture. A man can’t even cut loose with his friends anymore. All I did was comment on some nautical imagery after my sixth gin and tonic, and now they’re threatening to send me to the Hague.

Even if I did—allegedly—tell some admirals to rain death on a fishing boat, I’m sure they went through all the proper channels. That’s why we employ attorneys. They make sure that when we murder innocent people, we do it in a way that respects international law.

Besides, I went to Princeton. No one from Princeton could be evil.

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For weeks, we’ve been told the threat posed by the trafficking of illegal drugs is indistinguishable from an outright declaration of war on the United States by foreign drug cartels. Trump and his toadies insist traffickers are bringing drugs across the border to “kill” Americans, which would be an entirely self-defeating business plan no self-respecting cartel would ever engage in. Obviously, he’s lying, as are those who speak for him.

But those lies are being used to buttress something even more awful than our usual War on Drugs: the extrajudicial murders of people only suspected to be moving drugs from Venezuela to… well, anywhere else but Venezuela. There are plenty of people between the United States and Venezuela who might be interested in purchasing/trafficking drugs. To insist that these drugs (if they exist at all) are headed to the US border with the intent of “killing” cartels’ customer bases is a lie so stupid it shouldn’t be given the dignity of a one-sentence debunking.

Trump is playing hardball in international waters, straight up murdering people simply because their boats have departed from Venezuelan shores. And while he keeps constructing his “Savior of America” facade, he’s so self-interested he can’t stop himself from undercutting his own narratives.

The man is a blend of involuntary muscle movements and brain stem-level thinking. “DRUGS ARE KILLING US” he screams into the bullhorn he owns (TruthSocial). Meanwhile, back at the Oval Office, he’s letting the drug dealers he personally likes off the hook.

President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.

As several current and former government officials noted in that preliminary reporting, Trump’s actions were not only harmful to foreign relations and ongoing anti-drug trafficking efforts, but also made a mockery of Trump’s other statements about going hard on drugs.

A day later, nothing had changed but the status of Juan Orlando Hernandez’s pardon, which was now a fact, rather than a threat. And, of course, it was Classic Trump, all the way down to the New York Times’ coverage of it.

Mr. Trump signaled on Saturday that he was ratcheting up his campaign against drug cartels, saying in a social media post that airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”

Less than 24 hours earlier, Mr. Trump had announced on social media that he was granting a full pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras who had been convicted in the United States of drug trafficking charges in what was seen as a major victory for authorities in a case against a former head of state. That pardon has not yet been officially granted.

The two posts displayed a remarkable dissonance in the president’s strategy, as he moved to escalate a military campaign against drug trafficking while ordering the release of a man prosecutors said had taken “cocaine-fueled bribes” from cartels and “protected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state — military, police and justice system.” In fact, prosecutors said that Mr. Hernández, for years, allowed bricks of cocaine from Venezuela to flow through Honduras en route to the United States.

Oh NYT, that’s not “remarkable dissonance.” And it certainly isn’t the “display” of “contradictions” claimed in the headline.

The word the NYT is looking for (in both cases) is “hypocrisy.” These are hypocritical acts performed by a president who resolutely does not care that he’s the embodiment of hypocrisy. There’s no “contradiction” or “dissonance.” This is how Trump operates. His “shut down the borders” yelling obviously clashes horribly with his decision to pardon a foreign drug trafficker, but everything about it is entirely consistent with all known Trump actions/statements to date. It may look like dissonance to someone who just emerged from a 12-year coma today, but it looks exactly like Trump business as usual to everyone else.

This doesn’t mean this hypocrisy should be ignored. It absolutely shouldn’t. It just means we shouldn’t use nicer words that suggest an error of judgment might have taken place, because that just gives a deliberately hypocritical act (one of several!) by Trump a veneer of plausible deniability it certainly goddamn doesn’t deserve.

Trump will continue to engage in baseless fraud prosecutions of political opponents while simultaneously pardoning the fraudsters he likes. He’ll demand the FBI investigate Democratic representatives for sedition while pardoning hundreds of MAGA true believers who engaged in a literal insurrection attempt back in January 2021. Pardoning a politician with ties to drug cartels while murdering Venezuelans in international waters is so on brand it may as well be backed by Trump trademark applications. This is just Trump being Trump. To suggest it’s merely “dissonant” is to miss the point entirely.

Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn’t get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away.

It’s unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and bypass these invasive laws. Their solution? Entirely ban the use of VPNs. 

Yes, really.

As of this writing, Wisconsin lawmakers are escalating their war on privacy by targeting VPNs in the name of “protecting children” in A.B. 105/S.B. 130. It’s an age verification bill that requires all websites distributing material that could conceivably be deemed “sexual content” to both implement an age verification system and also to block the access of users connected via VPN. The bill seeks to broadly expand the definition of materials that are “harmful to minors” beyond the type of speech that states can prohibit minors from accessing—potentially encompassing things like depictions and discussions of human anatomy, sexuality, and reproduction. 

This follows a notable pattern: As we’ve explained previously, lawmakers, prosecutors, and activists in conservative states have worked for years to aggressively expand the definition of “harmful to minors” to censor a broad swath of content: diverse educational materials, sex education resources, art, and even award-winning literature. 

Wisconsin’s bill has already passed the State Assembly and is now moving through the Senate. If it becomes law, Wisconsin could become the first state where using a VPN to access certain content is banned. Michigan lawmakers have proposed similar legislation that did not move through its legislature, but among other things, would force internet providers to actively monitor and block VPN connections. And in the UK, officials are calling VPNs “a loophole that needs closing.”

This is actually happening. And it’s going to be a disaster for everyone.

Here’s Why This Is A Terrible Idea 

VPNs mask your real location by routing your internet traffic through a server somewhere else. When you visit a website through a VPN, that website only sees the VPN server’s IP address, not your actual location. It’s like sending a letter through a P.O. box so the recipient doesn’t know where you really live. 

So when Wisconsin demands that websites “block VPN users from Wisconsin,” they’re asking for something that’s technically impossible. Websites have no way to tell if a VPN connection is coming from Milwaukee, Michigan, or Mumbai. The technology just doesn’t work that way.

Websites subject to this proposed law are left with this choice: either cease operation in Wisconsin, or block all VPN users, everywhere, just to avoid legal liability in the state. One state’s terrible law is attempting to break VPN access for the entire internet, and the unintended consequences of this provision could far outweigh any theoretical benefit.

Almost Everyone Uses VPNs

Let’s talk about who lawmakers are hurting with these bills, because it sure isn’t just people trying to watch porn without handing over their driver’s license.

1. Businesses run on VPNs. Every company with remote employees uses VPNs. Every business traveler connecting through sketchy hotel Wi-Fi needs one. Companies use VPNs to protect client and employee data, secure internal communications, and prevent cyberattacks. 
2. Students need VPNs for school. Universities require students to use VPNs to access research databases, course materials, and library resources. These aren’t optional, and many professors literally assign work that can only be accessed through the school VPN. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s WiscVPN, for example, “allows UW–‍Madison faculty, staff and students to access University resources even when they are using a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP).” 
3. Vulnerable people rely on VPNs for safety. Domestic abuse survivors use VPNs to hide their location from their abusers. Journalists use them to protect their sources. Activists use them to organize without government surveillance. LGBTQ+ people in hostile environments—both in the US and around the world—use them to access health resources, support groups, and community. For people living under censorship regimes, VPNs are often their only connection to vital resources and information their governments have banned. 
4. Regular people just want privacy. Maybe you don’t want every website you visit tracking your location and selling that data to advertisers. Maybe you don’t want your internet service provider (ISP) building a complete profile of your browsing history. Maybe you just think it’s creepy that corporations know everywhere you go online. VPNs can protect everyday users from everyday tracking and surveillance.

It’s A Privacy Nightmare

Here’s what happens if VPNs get blocked: everyone has to verify their age by submitting government IDs, biometric data, or credit card information directly to websites—without any encryption or privacy protection.

We already know how this story ends. Companies get hacked. Data gets breached. And suddenly your real name is attached to the websites you visited, stored in some poorly-secured database waiting for the inevitable leak. This has already happened, and is not a matter of if but when. And when it does, the repercussions will be huge.

Forcing people to give up their privacy to access legal content is the exact opposite of good policy. It’s surveillance dressed up as safety.

“Harmful to Minors” Is Not a Catch-All 

Here’s another fun feature of these laws: they’re trying to broaden the definition of “harmful to minors” to sweep in a host of speech that is protected for both young people and adults.

Historically, states can prohibit people under 18 years old from accessing sexual materials that an adult can access under the First Amendment. But the definition of what constitutes “harmful to minors” is narrow — it generally requires that the materials have almost no social value to minors and that they, taken as a whole, appeal to a minors’ “prurient sexual interests.” 

Wisconsin’s bill defines “harmful to minors” much more broadly. It applies to materials that merely describe sex or feature descriptions/depictions of human anatomy. This definition would likely encompass a wide range of literature, music, television, and films that are protected under the First Amendment for both adults and young people, not to mention basic scientific and medical content.

Additionally, the bill’s definition would apply to any websites where more than one third of the site’s material is “harmful to minors.” Given the breadth of the definition and its one-third trigger, we anticipate that Wisconsin could argue that the law applies to most social media websites. And it’s not hard to imagine, as these topics become politicised, Wisconsin claiming it applies to websites containing LGBTQ+ health resources, basic sexual education resources, and reproductive healthcare information. 

This breadth of the bill’s definition isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. It gives the state a vast amount of discretion to decide which speech is “harmful” to young people, and the power to decide what’s “appropriate” and what isn’t. History shows us those decisions most often harm marginalized communities. 

It Won’t Even Work

Let’s say Wisconsin somehow manages to pass this law. Here’s what will actually happen:

People who want to bypass it will use non-commercial VPNs, open proxies, or cheap virtual private servers that the law doesn’t cover. They’ll find workarounds within hours. The internet always routes around censorship. 

Even in a fantasy world where every website successfully blocked all commercial VPNs, people would just make their own. You can route traffic through cloud services like AWS or DigitalOcean, tunnel through someone else’s home internet connection, use open proxies, or spin up a cheap server for less than a dollar. 

Meanwhile, everyone else (businesses, students, journalists, abuse survivors, regular people who just want privacy) will have their VPN access impacted. The law will accomplish nothing except making the internet less safe and less private for users.

Nonetheless, as we’ve mentioned previously, while VPNs may be able to disguise the source of your internet activity, they are not foolproof—nor should they be necessary to access legally protected speech. Like the larger age verification legislation they are a part of, VPN-blocking provisions simply don’t work. They harm millions of people and they set a terrifying precedent for government control of the internet. More fundamentally, legislators need to recognize that age verification laws themselves are the problem. They don’t work, they violate privacy, they’re trivially easy to circumvent, and they create far more harm than they prevent.

A False Dilemma

People have (predictably) turned to VPNs to protect their privacy as they watched age verification mandates proliferate around the world. Instead of taking this as a sign that maybe mass surveillance isn’t popular, lawmakers have decided the real problem is that these privacy tools exist at all and are trying to ban the tools that let people maintain their privacy. 

Let’s be clear: lawmakers need to abandon this entire approach.

The answer to “how do we keep kids safe online” isn’t “destroy everyone’s privacy.” It’s not “force people to hand over their IDs to access legal content.” And it’s certainly not “ban access to the tools that protect journalists, activists, and abuse survivors.”

If lawmakers genuinely care about young people’s well-being, they should invest in education, support parents with better tools, and address the actual root causes of harm online. What they shouldn’t do is wage war on privacy itself. Attacks on VPNs are attacks on digital privacy and digital freedom. And this battle is being fought by people who clearly have no idea how any of this technology actually works. 

If you live in Wisconsin—reach out to your Senator and urge them to kill A.B. 105/S.B. 130. Our privacy matters. VPNs matter. And politicians who can’t tell the difference between a security tool and a “loophole” shouldn’t be writing laws about the internet.

Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

Speaking of traffic fatalities, Helsinki is doing things differently. Amanda Shendruk for Not-Ship has the charts:

This past summer, Helsinki made an astonishing announcement: as of August, the Finnish capital went an entire year without any traffic deaths. Not a single pedestrian, cyclist or driver died on the city’s roads. Not. One.

And this wasn’t an outlier year. Helsinki’s traffic deaths have been steadily declining for decades.

Lower speed limits and income-based speeding fines helped the city get to this point. Maybe others should give this a try.

Sidenote: Not-Ship is a new data-focused newsletter from Shendruk that is worth a sub.

Tags: Amanda Shendruk, Not-Ship, traffic

So ... why don't you guys down there saddle up the possie and get on out there and find Cowboy Pat? #CowboyWho

Illustration by Jesse Shamon

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CHARLOTTETOWN – The Premier of Prince Edward Island, apparently someone named Rob Lantz, released a statement demanding a response from Ottawa on the 2019 separation referendum that resulted in the province declaring independence from Canada. According to most residents of PEI, this triggered a Canadian constitutional crisis, despite no one outside the province having heard […]

The post PEI waiting for someone to notice they voted to separate from Canada in 2019 appeared first on The Beaverton.

WASHINGTON D.C. – Officials inside the Trump White House are beaming with pride after US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was able to complete the classic Canadian children’s book Franklin Fibs without any help from aides or outside consultants. “Come here, look,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as he ushered reporters into a room […]

The post White House astonished as Pete Hegseth reads Franklin book all by himself appeared first on The Beaverton.

A judge in Missouri resigned after wearing an Elvis Presley wig in court, coming after a disciplinary commission determined he failed to maintain order and decorum. What do you think?

The post Judge Resigns After Wearing Elvis Wig In Court appeared first on The Onion.

#Cye #RoninWarriors

Uh ... do you mind telling us what those secret documents are all about?
Uh ... no ... I can let you see the briefcase though.
#CowboyWho