LOS ANGELES—Staring blankly at the 27-year-old woman sitting across from him, musical artist Justin Bieber told reporters Thursday that he had forgotten his wife’s name. “I’d just keep saying ‘babe,’ but I think she’s starting to catch on,” said Bieber, who admitted that he had “zero clue” whether the woman he had been married to for the past six years was a Hadid sister, Patricia Arquette’s daughter, a former Disney Channel star, or someone else. “I know I said it after our vows years ago, but after a while, it just goes out the window,” he continued. “Oh, God, she’s looking right at me. What is it, Harley? Holly? Hattie? Pattie? No, Pattie’s my mom’s name. I’ll just ask my manager to introduce himself to her in front of me. Shit, what’s my manager’s name?” At press time, Bieber was reportedly googling “Justin Bieber wife” under the table.

The post Justin Bieber Forgets Wife’s Name appeared first on The Onion.

New comic!
Today's News:

Maybe after a history of being captured in bottles by inconsiderate adventurers, fairies in Hyrule have come to crave the situation's safety and solitude, as it shields them from their natural predators (other people who want to put them in bottles).

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ordered an end to the ongoing Canada Post strike after learning that Santa Claus, who he was counting on to deliver presents to the entire country this December, is not in fact real. PMO insiders report that Trudeau had previously remained confident waiting out the national strike due […]

The post Trudeau orders end to Canada Post strike after learning Santa Claus not real appeared first on The Beaverton.

The modified program would provide nearly 2,000 families living below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, who were already selected for the program, with $500 monthly payments through preloaded debit cards. Payments under the revised program were set to start going out in January.

This case sets up a legal battle between Texas’ near-total abortion ban and New York’s shield law that protects doctors from out-of-state prosecution.

According to the city northeast of Houston, the warehouse was not directly rented out by Amazon, but by a third-party company called Marsden Services. The facility was being used to repair or scrap Amazon warehouse carts typically used at distribution centers. 

Fans of "The Eyes of Texas" with KPRC 2 anchor Ron Stone will love this find by TAMI of the December 14, 1985 of the long-running show (syndicated from 1969 to 1993).In this episode:- Producer Gary James shops for antiques at Country Revivals in Brenham- Dickens on the Strand festival in Galveston- Producer Bill Springer profiles a Nederland teenager who makes and sells boudin in his spare time-

WATERLOO, ON ― With the GST break coming into effect, petty, irate, and aptly-named 46-year-old woman Karen Thorpe recently castigated a teenaged cashier for blaspheming against the Lord by using the inclusive term ‘tax holiday.’ “This is a Christian society. We have made Christmas into an official national day off, and non-Christians have no right […]

The post “It’s ‘tax Christmas,’ not ‘tax holiday,’” says local culture warrior appeared first on The Beaverton.

OTTAWA — After disgraced professor and beef enthusiast Jordan Peterson announced yesterday that he had moved to Florida due to the Canadian government’s allegedly woke fascist policies, Justin Trudeau immediately issued a statement saying that his 2025 election campaign slogan will be “I Got Jordan Peterson to Leave.” “I realize that my popularity has been […]

The post Trudeau unveils new campaign slogan: “I Got Jordan Peterson to Leave” appeared first on The Beaverton.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
All of these are of course just subsets of the sole story category, which is Ape Struggled And Was Thereby Changed.

Today's News:

President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic, while also pardoning 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes in the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history. What do you think?

The post Biden Commutes 1,500 Prison Sentences appeared first on The Onion.

Authorities say she echoed words connected to the murder when she allegedly said "delay, deny, depose, you people are next".

Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space examines the psychological significance of domestic spaces, suggesting that intimate environments — such as rooms, attics, and cellars — become vessels for the imagination, evoking deep emotions and memories. This framework of spatial psychology provides a lens for understanding Do Ho Suh’s artistic practice.

Suh’s exhibition In Process at Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts extends this exploration into the poetic and psychological dimensions of space. The exhibition, meticulously curated to resemble a working studio, features containers, models, and towering fabric structures that convey the labor-intensive and iterative nature of Suh’s process. The juxtaposition of unfinished and completed works highlights the continual refinement and reworking inherent in his approach to artmaking.

A notable element of the exhibition is the participatory installation Artland, where visitors are invited to mold clay figures that populate the sculptural landscape. This engagement shifts the audience from passive observers to active participants, contributing their creative labor to the project. While the activity fosters interaction, it also positions the audience as contributors to the installation. This dynamic highlights the complex relationship between artist and audience, where the artist’s vision is expanded through the creative efforts of others.

Suh’s translucent fabric sculptures evoke a dual sense of presence and absence, solidity and ephemerality. By recreating architectural spaces from his past — such as his childhood home in Seoul and his apartments in New York and London — Suh navigates themes of impermanence, nostalgia, and identity. These structures transcend physical reconstruction, reflecting the emotional and cultural significance of the spaces individuals inhabit.

The delicate materials employed, such as silk and polyester, underscore the fragility of memory and the transitory nature of experience. Suh manipulates scale to create works that range from the monumental to the intimate, prompting viewers to engage with the installations in ways that are both physical and reflective.

Both Bachelard and Suh explore the power of imagination to transform ordinary spaces into extraordinary realms. Bachelard’s insights into the psychological resonance of spaces parallel Suh’s investigation of how environments hold and evoke memories. By foregrounding the process of artmaking, In Process compels visitors to reflect on the relationship between labor, collaboration, and the creation of meaning in artistic practice.

The exhibition serves as a layered investigation into the methodologies and themes that define Suh’s work. It invites audiences to consider the interplay of experimentation, souvenir, and labor in shaping perceptions of space. By aligning with Bachelard’s notion of the house as a symbol of the human psyche, Suh’s exhibition illustrates how intimate spaces and objects act as vessels for imagination, holding both personal and collective histories.

The post The Poetics of Space: “Do Ho Suh: In Process” appeared first on Glasstire.

Time named Trump their choice for Person Of The Year for the second time, recognizing the president-elect as the individual or group deemed to have wielded the greatest influence on global affairs “for good or for ill.” What do you think?

The post Trump Named ‘Time’ Person Of The Year For Second Time appeared first on The Onion.

We have taken another proud, collective stride toward dystopia.

A bankruptcy court has denied the sale of InfoWars following a month of drawn-out legal proceedings. The experience was long and punishing for all involved, and the final outcome is inconclusive: The InfoWars assets remain in limbo. Everything is now in doubt and everyone is worse off than before.

In short, it is the kind of world we at Global Tetrahedron have always envisioned. One in which wealth begets wealth, power begets power, and the process itself inflicts daily suffering on innocent parties for no reason.

On a personal level, witnessing this saga has been nothing short of inspiring. To see such naked contempt for truth and humanity—to have front-row seats as a parade of mercenary goons disfigure the English language with blunt-force bravado—is a dream come true for the 10-year-old boy in me who grew up idolizing greats like George Wallace and Idi Amin.

And as I reflect on how lucky I am, I find myself wishing others could share in this experience. I believe that everyone, at least once in their life, should know the joy of being locked in a byzantine financial struggle to own InfoWars.com.

That is why my message to you today is one of hope. This is not the end for Global Tetrahedron. When the night seems dark, we can still make it darker and profit from darkness arbitrage markets. When the world seems to have died, it is possible to extract significant economic value from its slouching corpse. And no matter what, transnational global capital always wins.

So as we close this long chapter of uncertainty and dread and immediately open another much longer chapter of uncertainty and dread, I hope you will all follow along. Untapped acres of time stretch forward without limit, and the name on the deed is ours.

Your role will soon become clear. Stand by.

Infinite Growth Forever,

Bryce P. Tetraeder, Global Tetrahedron CEO

The post A Message Of Hope From Global Tetrahedron appeared first on The Onion.

As we at the Texas Observer were racing to finish proofreading of our November/December 70th anniversary issue, I managed to track down Alan Pogue in a back office of the KOOP radio studio off Airport Boulevard in Austin. I was a tad desperate to locate caption information for the images in this photo essay, and, to my relief, there he was copying over handwritten cutlines into an email to me. 

The 78-year-old documentary photographer and longtime Observer contributor didn’t have too much time to talk, as he was scheduled to shoot an open house event the radio station was hosting. So his wife, Mary Birdsong, handed me a pair of old print articles about Pogue to help me flesh out this introduction. One, a 23-year-old piece in a now-defunct Austin monthly magazine called The Good Life, detailed his journey from Vietnam battlefield medic to visual artist capturing fights for social justice worldwide. From the late ’60s on, Pogue took his camera from counterculture gatherings in Austin to farmworker marches and colonias and prisons around Texas to Iraq and the West Bank. 

“Pogue takes photographs that are open-eyed and unblinking views of what many would rather not see,” wrote the article’s author, Stuart Heady, who noted as well that the Observer used to run free ads for Pogue’s photo services in exchange for paying him “just five bucks a photograph.” 

A hurried search of the Observer’s digitized archive pulled up a first photo by Pogue from August 1972—an image of a Mexican-American gardener working out front of Austin’s LBJ Library, which was later used on the cover of a collection of his work titled Witness for Justice. In the following month, October 1972, an ad indeed appeared promoting Pogue’s availability to capture “political events & pseudo events” and “people in their natural surroundings.” His photos would appear regularly in the publication for the next 30-plus years. 

With press time dangling above my head like an axe, I tried calling Pogue for a closing thought about the role of the Observer in his career, but he wasn’t available. He’d gone shooting for the day, his wife said. Oh well, I had plenty of material ready at hand. 

To this day, the walls of the Observer office are decorated largely with Pogue’s photos. There’s the one I love of Molly Ivins camping out in 1996 to protest Austin’s new anti-homeless ordinance, the one of longtime Observer business manager Cliff Olofson working with a cat perched on his shoulder, and the one of radio host and humorist John Henry Faulk thoughtfully reading—plus a couple that are featured in this very issue. 

The history of the Texas Observer is one of world-class talents giving their labor to a broke little paper due to a shared and bone-deep belief in transforming Texas into a more just place. Arrange these talents in an auditorium, as it were, and Pogue would be sitting in the front row.

— Gus Bova

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The post Bearing Witness appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Groups are urging the state’s estimated 1.6 million undocumented migrants to prepare financially and make plans for their loved ones if they’re detained.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s the final round of the Worst Boss of 2024 voting. We’ve narrowed the pool from eight nominees to two (see results from the first round and second round). The two finalists go head-to-head below.

Voting is now closed. The results in this round were:

A Frightful Face-Off – The Nominees:

our boss is a jerk about bereavement leave for miscarriages – 44.36% (4,650 votes)

my mother-in-law manages my sister-in-law and covers up her drunk driving – 55.64% (5,832 votes)

Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail. Today, we’re looking at something that seems a bit mundane but is actually quite special. Located at 9669 FM 1960 W, Humble, TX 77338, this is technically Houston’s newest Big Lots, but the history of this building interests me. As keen-eyed readers have likely already noticed, this Big Lots juts right up to a Sam’s Club in an unusual setup. While this isn’t the only Sam’s ...

According to a recent poll, about 13% of Canadians support Donald Trump’s recent suggestion that Canada become the 51st state. Naturally we wanted to ask them “what the fuck is wrong with you?!” But instead we went with “why?”

The post Canadians who support the U.S. annexing us explain why appeared first on The Beaverton.

BENTON HARBOR, MI—Confirming that the device would give home cooks the speed, efficiency, and power of over 200 professional chefs, appliance brand KitchenAid announced Wednesday that it had begun selling a new military-grade culinary mech suit. “Whether you are attempting to make your world-famous blueberry muffins, roll out perfect tagliatelle, or spiralize vegetables for a healthy home-cooked meal, our new stainless steel exoskeleton will turn you into an unstoppable, unkillable foot soldier in the kitchen,” said KitchenAid spokesperson Grace Jackson, adding that the 15-foot-tall, 3-ton robotic suit came with 20 custom attachments, including a brûlée cannon, built-in arm whisks, a turbo kneader, and a jet-powered pasta extruder. “With the click of a button, the titanium-reinforced exoskeleton fuses to your arms, legs, neck, and head, giving you all the abilities of a stand mixer, pasta sheeter, ice cream maker, juicer, and meat grinder. With over 40 stylish colors, including classic ivory, seafoam green, and blue salt, it’s no wonder the KitchenAid mech suit is already the No. 1 culinary mech suit on the market.” At press time, KitchenAid announced that it had released a new culinary link unit that would allow its customers to control air fryer–human hybrids that had been sent to another planet to cook a variety of golden-brown appetizers for alien life. 

The post KitchenAid Unveils New Culinary Mech Suit appeared first on The Onion.

HOUSTON—In a devastating accident that left the entire downtown area in smoldering ruins, officials confirmed Tuesday that the Houston skyline had been knocked over by a large, playful sheepdog named Gus. According to eyewitnesses, the 3-year-old Old English sheepdog tore through the business district,
bumping into the TC Energy Center and whacking over the JPMorgan Chase Tower with his tail. Houston’s 2.3 million residents reportedly called out “Down, boy, down!” and “Bad Gus, no!” in a futile attempt to control the over-excited, rampaging animal, who was wound up after being released outside into the metropolitan area for the first time all afternoon. Several reports indicated that residents and commuters screamed in terror as the dog was observed lifting its leg to relieve itself. At press time, sources said the dog had caused massive pileups across the city after frantically running circles around Interstate 610.

The post Large, Playful Sheepdog Knocks Over Houston Skyline appeared first on The Onion.

Today's links

• A Democratic media strategy to save journalism and the nation: Hire journalists, publish the news, win the country.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023
• 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 Democratic media strategy to save journalism and the nation (permalink)

As unbearably cringe as the hunt for a "leftist Joe Rogan" is, it is (to use a shopworn phrase), "directionally correct." Democrats suck at getting their message out, and that exacts a high electoral cost.

The right has an extremely well-funded media ecosystem of high-paid bullshitters backed by algorithm-gaming SEO dickheads. This system isn't necessarily supposed to turn a profit or even break even: the point of Prageru isn't to score ad revenue, it's to ensure that anyone who googles "what the fuck causes inflation" gets 25 minutes of relatable, upbeat, cheerfully sociopathic Austrian economics jammed into their eyeballs. Far right news isn't a for-profit concern, it's a loss-leader for oligarch-friendly policies. It's a steal: a million bucks' worth of news buys America's ultra-rich a billion dollars' worth of tax-cuts and the right to maim their workers and poison their customers for profit.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have historically relied on the "traditional media" to carry their messages, on the ground that reality has a well-known leftist bias, so any news outlet that hews to "journalistic ethics" will publish the truth, and the truth will weigh in favor of Democratic positions: trans people are humans, racism is real, abortion isn't murder, housing is a market failure, the planet is on fire, etc, etc, etc.

This is a stupid policy, and it has failed. The "respectable" news media hews to a self-imposed code of "balance" and "neutrality" that is easily gamed: "some people say that Hatians don't eat pet dogs, some people do, let's report both sides!" This is called "the view from nowhere" and it gets Democrats precisely nowhere:

http://archive.pressthink.org/2008/03/14/pincus_neutrality.html

Balance and neutrality are bullshit, an excuse that has been so thoroughly weaponized by billionaires and their lickspittles that anyone who takes it seriously demonstrates comprehensively that they, themselves, are deeply unserious:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/10/la-times-billionaire-owner-hilariously-thinks-he-can-solve-media-bias-with-ai/

Press neutrality – the view from nowhere – isn't some eternal verity. In terms of the history of the press, it's an idea that's about ten seconds old. The glory days of the news were dominated by papers with names like The Smallville Democrat and The Ruling Class Republican. Most of the world boggles at the idea that a news outlet wouldn't declare its political posture. Britons know that the Telegraph is the Torygraph; that the Guardian is in the tank for Labour (and specifically, committed to enabling Blairite/Starmerite purges of the left); the Mirror is a leftist tabloid; and the Mail is so far right that its editorial board considers Attila the Hun "woke."

Writing for The American Prospect – an excellent leftist news outlet – Ryan Cooper proposes a solution to the Democratic media gap that's way better than the hunt for the elusive "leftist Joe Rogan": sponsoring explicitly Democratic news outlets:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-12-democrats-lost-propaganda-war/

The country is a bleak landscape of news deserts where voters literally didn't hear about what Trump was saying he would do, and, if they heard about it, they didn't hear from anyone who could explain what it meant. The average normie voter doesn't know what a "tariff" is, and chances are they think it's a tax that other countries inexplicably pay for the privilege of selling very cheap things to Americans.

Ironically, this news desert is also a crowded field of hungry, unemployed, talented journalists. What if Dems funded free newsgathering and publication in news deserts that told the truth? What if these news outlets, by dint of being an explicitly partisan, party-subsidized project, refused to adopt all the anti-reader practices of other websites, like disgusting surveillance, intrusive advertising, AI slop, email-soliciting pop-ups, and all the other crap that makes the news worse and worse every day?

Cooper recounts how this was actually tried on a small scale, to modest good effect, when the Center for American Progress subsidized Thinkprogress, an explicitly leftist news outlet. This was going great until 2019, when corporate Dems and their megadonors killed it because Thinkprogress had the temerity to report on their corrupt dealings:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/thinkprogress-a-top-progressive-news-site-is-shutting-down/

And, Cooper points out, this isn't what happens with far-right subsidy news. Right wing influencers, personalities and writers can stray pretty far from the party line without getting shut down.

I love the idea of a disenshittified, explicitly political leftist Democratic news media. Imagine a newsroom whose purpose is to get its message repeated as widely as possible. It wouldn't have a paywall – it would be Creative Commons Attribution-only, allowing for commercial republication by anyone who wants to reprint it, so long as they link back to it. It wouldn't wring its hands over AI ingestion or whether a slop site that rewrote its articles got to the top of Google News. That's fine! If the point is to get people to understand your point of view – and not to attract clicks or eyeballs – other people repackaging your content and finding ways to spread it is a feature, not a bug.

Back in the Napster Wars, entertainment industry shills – like Hillary Rosen, who oversaw a campaign to sue tens of thousands of children before becoming a major Democratic Party power-broker – used to tell us that "you can't compete with free." That's not entirely true, but it's not entirely false, either. If your news is a loss-leader for a democratic society that addresses human flourishing and a habitable planet, then you can make that news free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer, and avoid all the suckitude that makes reading "real" news so fucking garbage.

For the past five years, I've been publishing a newsletter – this thing you're reading now – that has no analytics, ads, tracking, pop-ups, or other trash. As a writer, it's profoundly satisfying and liberating, because all I have to care about is whether people engage with my ideas. I literally have no idea how many people read this, but I know everything people say about it.

That's how the news worked back in the good old days that everyone says we need to return to. Writers and editors measured the success of a story based on how the public reacted to it, not based on clicks or metrics that told you how far someone scrolled before they gave up on it. The supposed benefits of "data-driven" editorial policy have not materialized – the "data-driven" part is the search for an equilibrium between how surveillant and obnoxious a website can be and your decision to stop reading it forever.

Outlets like Propublica have done well by adopting much of this program, albeit without any explicit leftist agenda (the fact that they seem leftist reflects nothing more than their commitment to reporting the truth, e.g., Clarence Thomas is a lavishly corrupt puppet of billionaires who've showered him with riches).

The fact that they've been as successful as they are on a national beat – and partnering with the scant few regional papers to do some local coverage – just proves the point. The Democratic Party doesn't need its own Joe Rogan – they need a nationwide network of local outlets, sponsored by the party, committed to never enshittifying, bringing relevant, timely news to a nation in desperate need of it.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• DJ Riko Merry Mixmas 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyZ7-s05r7k&t=480s

• The Lost Chronicles of Oz https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/freeforall/the-lost-chronicles-of-oz/

• “The Ancient Engineer” by Bruce Sterling https://bruces.medium.com/the-ancient-engineer-by-bruce-sterling-2016-167351c82385

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This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago Forever War with better sex, Starship Troopers without the lectures: Old Man’s War https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/12/forever-war-with-better-sex-starship-troopers-without-the-lectures-old-mans-war/

#20yrsago Cable companies will expire your Six Feet Under recordings after 2-4 weeks https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/12/cable-companies-will-expire-your-six-feet-under-recordings-after-2-4-weeks/

#15yrsago FDIC sends a big F-U: completely blacked out documents in response to WaMu takeover freedom of information requests https://web.archive.org/web/20100114010713if_/https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2009/12/the_fight_for_wamu_documents.html

#10yrsago IBM’s banking security software demands the right to spy on you https://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/12/11/2233234/bank-security-software-eula-allows-spying-on-users

#10yrsago US Christian terrorism: the other white meat https://web.archive.org/web/20141205144046/https://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/12/04/3599271/austin-shooter-christian-extremism/

#10yrsago Senate IP address vandalizes Wikipedia to scrub “torture” from CIA torture report https://mashable.com/archive/senate-wikipedia-torture-report

#5yrsago Teespring removes Techdirt’s “Copying is Not Theft” tees for copyright infringement, and won’t discuss the matter any further https://www.techdirt.com/2019/12/12/teespring-takes-down-our-copying-is-not-theft-gear-refuses-to-say-why/

#5yrsago The three biggest Chinese business scams that target foreign firms https://web.archive.org/web/20200107202820/https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/12/china-scams-our-annual-holiday-edition.html">https://web.archive.org/web/20200107202820/https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/12/china-scams-our-annual-holiday-edition.html

#5yrsago A Wechat-based “mobile court” presided over by a chatbot has handled 3m legal procedures since March https://web.archive.org/web/20191207192051/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/07/asia-pacific/crime-legal-asia-pacific/ai-judges-verdicts-via-chat-app-brave-new-world-chinas-digital-courts/#.Xev7n2bP1qY

#5yrsago Facebook promised to provide academics data to study disinformation, but their foot-dragging has endangered the whole project https://socialscience.one/blog/public-statement-european-advisory-committee-social-science-one

#5yrsago DJ Riko is back with the 18th annual Merry Mixmas mashup album! http://djriko.com/mixmases.htm

#5yrsago Family puts Ring camera in children’s room, discovers that hacker is watching their kids 24/7, taunting them through the speaker https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-hackers-are-breaking-into-ring-cameras/

#5yrsago 2019 was the year of voice assistant privacy dumpster fires https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-12-11/silicon-valley-got-millions-to-let-siri-and-alexa-listen-in

#1yrago An Epic antitrust loss for Google https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/12/im-feeling-lucky/#hugger-mugger

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• IA et “merdification“ d’internet: peut-on envisager un nouveau web? (Remote), Dec 12
  https://www.unige.ch/comprendre-le-numerique/conferences-publiques1/cycle-5-2024-2025/ia-et-merdification-dinternet-peut-envisager-un-nouveau-web/

• Should a Public Telecom Be An Election Issue/Davenport NDP (Remote), Dec 15
  https://www.davenportndp.ca/public_telecom_town_hall

• ISSA-LA Holiday Celebration keynote (Los Angeles), Dec 18
  https://issala.org/event/issa-la-december-18-dinner-meeting/

• Picks and Shovels with Charlie Jane Anders (Menlo Park), Feb 17
  https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow

• Picks and Shovels with Dan Savage (Seattle), Feb 19
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

• Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20
  https://cloudfest.link/

• DeepSouthCon63 (New Orleans), Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Can we avoid the enshittification of clean-energy tech? (Volts.wtf)
  https://www.volts.wtf/p/can-we-avoid-the-enshittification

• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (HOPE XV)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrciT_dc2sc&list=PLcajvRZA8E0_tLLEh1COeAv-TcaDna2k1&index=32

• How To Keep IoT From Becoming An IoTrash (Def Con)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA7bpp8qXxI

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Latest books (permalink)

• 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). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "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). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "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. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "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

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Spill, part six (FINALE) (a Little Brother story) https://craphound.com/littlebrother/2024/12/08/spill-part-six-finale-a-little-brother-story/

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The company ModRetro has released their Chromatic, an FPGA handheld console which simulates a Game Boy Color and plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. It retails for $199, which may seem rather pricey but to attract buyers ModRetro developed a new version of Tetris and bundled it with the console. This version of Tetris can only be purchased with a Chromatic, it is not available separately. Having bought a Chromatic I intended to review both the console and its game, however as the console review was already pretty long and the game review ended up being lengthy in its own right, I decided to split the article into two parts for easier reading. In this article I will review the Tetris games which came before ModRetro's, give an overview of ModRetro's features and gameplay and see how it stacks up against its predecessors and whether it offers good value to the Chromatic package.

Read more »

The post Wrongly Convicted Death Row Inmate Exonerated Mere Hours After Execution appeared first on The Onion.

Whether you’re spending time with cherished family members or new friends, skipping small talk and diving into deeper topics can help strengthen your relationships. The Onion shares tips for having more meaningful conversations.

Bang a gavel every time someone says something trivial.

Put your phone away, unless you’re having a conversation with someone over the phone, in which case this is considered rude. 

Always wear business casual attire to any conversation.

If they seem distracted, clap loudly in their face and yell “Focus!” 

Try not to get too caught up by the fact that you’re talking to the boss while wearing a wire.

Each quarter, take the bottom-performing conversationalists and cut them from your friendship roster.

Learn how to pronounce “Hegel.”

Ease into more sensitive topics by lowering your megaphone’s volume to a seven or eight.

Pay attention to nonverbal cues. If the other person is crying, you’ve successfully avoided small talk.

The post Tips For Having More Meaningful Conversations appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—In an evident attempt to walk back previous inflammatory statements, prospective Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth clarified Thursday that although he now believes women should be allowed in combat roles, he still sees that as a huge turnoff. “While I want to state that I have nothing but respect for the female troops serving our country, it’s important to stress that thinking about that sort of thing is a real boner killer,” said Hegseth, adding that even a “total knockout, 10 out of 10″ would be marked down several points in his book if she were dressed up in a baggy, shapeless military uniform and given an assault rifle. “Personally, I believe there are several aspects of their biology that make women far better equipped to be sexy back on the homefront. It also really grosses me out thinking of them with, like, a butch buzz cut and muscles. It should be up to each individual servicewoman to decide whether she wants to be deployed to the front lines and turned into a total uggo. If not, there’s certainly a lot of room for them to look like absolute bombshells dressed as Army nurses.” Hegseth went on to suggest his mind might be changed if the military dress code were amended to require female soldiers to wear only a camouflage bra and panties on the battlefield.

The post Pete Hegseth Clarifies Women Allowed In Combat Roles But It’s A Huge Turnoff appeared first on The Onion.