Cowboy Who?

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02 Mar 20:19

#Rowen #RoninWarriors

#Rowen #RoninWarriors


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02 Mar 20:19

UFO lands in downtown, witnesses describe alien...

UFO lands in downtown, witnesses describe alien visitors: Although I really do pitty them, because they're in a hot costume HAHAHAHAHAHA! #CowboyWho


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02 Mar 20:18

Pluralistic: No one wants to read your AI slop (02 Mar 2026)

by Cory Doctorow


Today's links


A 1913 picture postcard depicting the flood of Carey, OH's Main Street, as two men in a canoe paddle down the flooded street. A reflection of the hostile, glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' ripples in the water around them.

No one wants to read your AI slop (permalink)

Everyone knows (or should know) that as fascinating as your dreams are to you, they are eye-glazingly dull to everyone else. Perhaps you have a friend or two who will tolerate you recounting your dreams at them (treasure those friends), but you should never, ever presume that other people want to hear about your dreams.

The same is true of your conversations with chatbots. Even if you find these conversations interesting, you should never assume that anyone else will be entertained by them. In the absence of an explicit reassurance to the contrary, you should presume that recounting your AI chatbot sessions to your friends is an imposition on the friendship, and forwarding the transcripts of those sessions doubly so (perhaps triply so, given the verbosity of chatbot responses).

I will stipulate that there might be friend groups out there where pastebombs of AI chat transcripts are welcome, but even if you work in such a milieu, you should never, ever assume that a stranger wants to see or hear about your AI "conversations." Tagging a chatbot into a social media conversation with a stranger and typing, "Hey Grok‡, what do you think of that?" is like masturbating in front of a stranger.

‡ Ugh

It's rude. It's an imposition. It's gross.

There's an even worse circle of hell than the one you create when you nonconsensually add a chatbot to a dialog: the hell that comes from reading something a stranger wrote, and then asking a chatbot to generate "commentary" on it and emailing it to that stranger.

Even the AI companies pitching their products claim that they need human oversight because they are prone to errors (including the errors that the companies dress up by calling them "hallucinations"). If you've read something you disagree with but don't understand well enough to rebut, and you ask an AI to generate a rebuttal for you, you still don't understand it well enough to rebut it.

You haven't generated a rebuttal: you have generated a blob of plausible sentences that may or may not constitute a valid critique of the work you're upset with – but until a human being who understands the issue goes through the AI output line by line and verifies it, it's just stochastic word-salad.

Once again: the act of prompting a sentence generator to create a rebuttal-shaped series of sentences does not impart understanding to the prompter. In the dialog between someone who's written something and someone who disagrees with it, but doesn't understand it well enough to rebut it, the only person qualified to evaluate the chatbot's output is the original author – that is, the stranger you've just emailed a chat transcript to.

Emailing a stranger a blob of unverified AI output is not a form of dialogue – it's an attempt to coerce a stranger into unpaid labor on your behalf. Strangers are not your "human in the loop" whose expensive time is on offer to painstakingly work through the plausible sentences a chatbot made for you for free.

Remember: even the AI companies will tell you that the work of overseeing an AI's output is valuable labor. The fact that you can costlessly (to you) generate infinite volumes of verbose, plausible-seeming topical sentences in no way implies that the people who actually think about things and then write them down have the time to mark your chatbot's homework.

That is a fatal flaw in the idea that we will increase our productivity by asking chatbots to summarize things we don't understand: by definition, if we don't understand a subject, then we won't be qualified to evaluate the summary, either.

There simply is no substitute for learning about a subject and coming to understand it well enough to advance the subject, whether by contributing your own additions or by critiquing its flaws. That's not to say that we shouldn't aspire to participate in discourse about areas that seem interesting or momentous – but asking a chatbot to contribute on your behalf does not impart insight to you, and it is a gross imposition on people who have taken the time to understand and participate using their own minds and experience.

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Web loggers bare their souls https://web.archive.org/web/20010321183557/https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/02/28/DD27271.DTL

#20yrsago Fight AOL/Yahoo’s email tax! https://web.archive.org/web/20060303152934/http://www.dearaol.com/

#20yrsago Long-lost Penn and Teller videogame for download https://waxy.org/2006/02/penn_tellers_sm/

#20yrsago Aussie gov’t report on DRM: Don’t let it override public rights! https://web.archive.org/web/20060813191613/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/component/option,com_content/task,view/id,1137/Itemid,85/nsub,/

#20yrsago BBC: “File sharing is not theft” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4758636.stm

#15yrsago Hollywood’s conservatism: why no one wants to make a “risky” movie https://web.archive.org/web/20110305083114/http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris?currentPage=all

#15yrsago Eldritch Effulgence: HP Lovecraft’s favorite words https://arkhamarchivist.com/wordcount-lovecraft-favorite-words/

#15yrsago Exposing the Big Wisconsin Lie about “subsidized public pensions” https://web.archive.org/web/20110224201357/http://tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8EDJYS?OpenDocument

#15yrsago Taxonomy of social mechanics in multiplayer games https://www.raphkoster.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Koster_Social_Social-mechanics_GDC2011.pdf

#15yrsago San Francisco before the great fire: rare, public domain 1906 video https://archive.org/details/TripDownMarketStreetrBeforeTheFire

#15yrsago Ebook readers’ bill of rights https://web.archive.org/web/20110308220609/https://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/2011/02/ebookrights.html

#10yrsago 500,000 to 1M unemployed Americans will lose food aid next month https://web.archive.org/web/20160229021021/https://gawker.com/in-one-month-we-will-begin-intentionally-starving-poor-1761588216

#10yrsago FBI claims it has no records of its decision to delete its recommendation to encrypt your phone https://www.techdirt.com/2016/02/29/fbi-claims-it-has-no-record-why-it-deleted-recommendation-to-encrypt-phones/

#10yrsago A hand-carved wooden clock that scribes the time on a magnetic board https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEbmYp5VVcw

#10yrsago Press looks the other way as thousands march for Sanders in 45+ cities https://web.archive.org/web/20160314104804/http://usuncut.com/politics/media-blackout-as-thousands-of-bernie-supporters-march-in-45-cities/

#10yrsago Crapgadget apocalypse: the IoT devices that punch through your firewall and expose your network https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/02/this-is-why-people-fear-the-internet-of-things/

#10yrsago Found debauchery: cavorting bros and a pyramid of beer on a found 1971 Super-8 reel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAobW4PtoMY

#10yrsago Trump could make the press great again, all they have to do is their jobs https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/donald-trump-could-make-the-media-great-again/

#10yrsago Federal judge rules US government can’t force Apple to make a security-breaking tool https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/government-cant-force-apple-unlock-drug-case-iphone-rules-new-york-judge

#10yrsago Black students say Donald Trump had them removed before his speech https://web.archive.org/web/20160302092600/https://gawker.com/donald-trump-requested-that-a-group-of-black-students-b-1762064789

#10yrsago Red Queen’s Race: Disney parks are rolling out surge pricing with 20% premiums on busy days https://memex.craphound.com/2016/03/01/red-queens-race-disney-parks-are-rolling-out-surge-pricing-with-20-premiums-on-busy-days/

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

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

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

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

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

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


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America ( words today, total)

  • "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

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

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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

How to get Pluralistic:

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Pluralistic.net

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https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

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https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

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https://doctorow.medium.com/

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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

02 Mar 16:55

The plumb. Mike, the plumb. Watch your plumb.

The plumb. Mike, the plumb. Watch your plumb.

02 Mar 16:54

They never should’ve let Tor improv.

They never should’ve let Tor improv.

02 Mar 16:54

Well, it’s hat-related.

Well, it’s hat-related.

02 Mar 16:54

Nice day for it!

Nice day for it!

02 Mar 16:54

I’m glad I can talk to you so openly.

I’m glad I can talk to you so openly.

02 Mar 16:30

Nation Forced To Eat 35 Million Canadians To Survive Harsh Winter

by The Onion Staff

WASHINGTON—Expressing certainty that they wouldn’t make it to spring without resorting to drastic measures, the American people stated Wednesday that they had been left with no choice but to eat 35 million Canadians to survive the harsh winter.

 According to sources, the United States endured below-freezing temperatures and depleted food rations for weeks before a terrible hunger drove all 340 million of its residents to turn to cannibalism in order to increase their odds of staying alive.

 “After so many days without a proper meal, I could feel my body starting to eat away at itself,” said Amy Hanrahan of Roseau, MN, who along with the rest of the country managed to persevere amid the hostile conditions by reluctantly consuming nearly 85% of Canada’s population. “It may sound barbaric to an outsider, but the cupboard was bare. We ran through all the reserves we’d laid in for the winter, people didn’t have half a bag of pizza rolls between them, and the Dairy Queens had all closed for the season. We were facing certain death.”

“At first, we said we wouldn’t eat beyond the flannel and the denim,” she continued, “but you do what you need to do to survive.”

The nation is said to have made a few ineffectual attempts to forage locally, but with months of winter left to go and no indication that help was coming, a new plan was made. In a last-ditch effort to find sustenance, several hundred thousand intrepid Americans ventured north on an expedition across the border. Between Newfoundland and Yukon, they reportedly discovered nearly 6 billion pounds of surplus Canadians.

While some U.S. residents said they were ethically opposed to consuming their Canadian brethren, the severity of the situ-ation soon led them to accept that sacrificing their North American neighbors was their only hope of avoiding starvation.

“Either I eat the guy, or I go hungry,” said Ione, WA, man Lee Danvers, who is believed to have been the first of many millions to try a Canadian when he cut into a Winnipeg banker and swallowed a matchstick-sized piece of flesh. “Once we ran out of people to eat in Puerto Rico and Guam, we really didn’t have a choice.”

“It tasted so good,” Danvers added. “It was our only option, and it was delicious.”

Many Americans reported feeling residual guilt over the three generations of Canadians they ate their way through, while others were unapologetic, noting that Ontarians provided a lot of sustenance and the Quebecois possessed a rich, buttery flavor that was highly satisfying. Nearly all agreed the Canadians would have readily eaten most of the Midwest if the situation had been reversed.

“You should have seen the crazy look in their eyes,” said Canada’s Joseph O’Brien, who stumbled upon the “feral, blood-covered” American popul-
ace while on an early morning hike near his home in Banff, Alberta, where the landscape was crimson with the slaught-ered remains of his gorged-upon countrymen. “I was lucky to make it out alive. They had so much meat, yet they still ran after me. God, I can still hear the sound of them sucking on the bones.”

“I really don’t understand what would drive a person to do something like that,” he continued. “There are over 4,000 Tim Hortons locations in this country they could have eaten at instead.” 

The post Nation Forced To Eat 35 Million Canadians To Survive Harsh Winter appeared first on The Onion.

02 Mar 16:29

Shaq Warns Young Players Not To Do Movie About Genie

by The Onion Staff

LOS ANGELES—Urging the next generation of NBA talent to learn from his mistakes and avoid going down the wrong path, Shaquille O’Neal issued a stern warning Monday to young basketball players not to star in a movie about a genie. “When you come into the league and suddenly have all this money and fame, it’s easy to get carried away, whether it’s spending too much or partying too much or agreeing to appear in a poorly written movie where you play a streetwise rapping genie who lives in a boom box,” the Hall of Famer said during an appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast, advising fresh-faced rookies to be wary of predatory film executives who might try to cast them in doomed low-budget kids’ movies that end up notching a 5% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. “These young guys think they’re unstoppable, but trust me, all it takes is one film where you play a fast-talking genie tasked with helping a wayward child reconcile with his estranged father, and you’re in a bad spot,” he continued. “I don’t care if they let you do a few songs for the soundtrack, I don’t care if they use state-of-the-art 1990s computer animation to make it look like you’re rolling the bad guy up into a ball and dunking him into a garbage chute—as soon as someone pulls out that golden vest and the pointy shoes, you need to walk away.” O’Neal added that if he could give any further advice to younger players, it would be to make dozens of commercials for Icy Hot.

The post Shaq Warns Young Players Not To Do Movie About Genie appeared first on The Onion.

02 Mar 16:29

Trump Boys Try Trading In George Washington Portrait At GameStop

by The Onion Staff

WASHINGTON—Still sweating from the 7.5-mile walk from the White House to the video game retailer, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were spotted Thursday attempting to trade in a 1797 portrait of George Washington at a D.C.-area GameStop. “One PS5, please,” Donald Jr. said as his younger brother Eric pushed the 18th-century Gilbert Stuart oil-on-canvas across the counter and assured the silent middle-aged employee on the other side that it was a real painting. “It’s a super good picture, so it’s worth a lot of money. You don’t even have to keep it if you don’t want to. You can just use the fancy frame. It’s all golden and stuff, see, so it’s probably worth a lot of money too. We carried it all the way here. You got to give us something because we can’t carry it all the way back. Say, are you done yet? Do you have Grand Theft Auto VI ?” At press time, the GameStop employee was reportedly telling the Trump boys that the best he could do was a Donkey Kong Amiibo.

The post Trump Boys Try Trading In George Washington Portrait At GameStop appeared first on The Onion.

02 Mar 16:28

15 Years Of Saving Just For Your Dad To Call It A Shack

by The Onion Staff

Sure, you denied yourself many things as you scrimped and saved enough for a down payment on a home, but it’ll all be worth it when your father calls it a total dump.

Reference #59893

The post 15 Years Of Saving Just For Your Dad To Call It A Shack appeared first on The Onion.

02 Mar 14:10

Awkward Zombie - Au Revoir a Renoir

by tech@thehiveworks.com

New comic!
Today's News:

If you choose to fight Renoir at this point, he is close enough to your party's level that it is a balanced and dramatic experience. If you instead choose to continue playing the videogame -- because why wouldn't you? -- you get to come back tens of levels later and flatten him before he gets a chance to show you his cool moves.

02 Mar 14:09

Wait, do you hear that? (HULL OR HIGH WATER begins)

by John Allison

Laying in the back seat listening to Little Willie John, yeah, that’s when time stood still! A new Solver chapter begins, HULL OR HIGH WATER. It forms part of a loose-three parter with Little Days and the upcoming and inappropriately timed Christmas Special to round out Solver volume 2. I don’t just make this stuff up on the hoof, it’s carefully constructed. Over-engineered, like a Victorian aqueduct.

Patreon subscribers (Early Reader and above) can read the whole chapter now in an easy to download and mis-file PDF format.

The post Wait, do you hear that? (HULL OR HIGH WATER begins) appeared first on Bad Machinery.

02 Mar 14:07

Pearly Gates

by Alvaro Montoro

Cartoon with two people at the gates of Heaven. One is checking a list saying 'Sorry, but web developers' admission is now inversely proportional to their number of HTML classes.' The other person looks concerned while wearing a t-shirt with the Tailwind logo. Off-panel, someone with a red hand holding a pitchfork says 'You are coming with me, buddy!'

02 Mar 14:06

Part 3.38

Part 3.38
02 Mar 14:06

Danielle Smith uses notwithstanding clause to run red light

by Geoff Cork

Calgary, Alberta – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has once again invoked the notwithstanding clause, something meant for only the most dire times to pass legislation, to get around a small legal problem. “This is exactly the kind of reason the notwithstanding clause exists,” argued Smith while double-parked in a handicap spot. “If me want to […]

The post Danielle Smith uses notwithstanding clause to run red light appeared first on The Beaverton.

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01 Mar 22:33

Analysis: Ayatollah’s death fails to deliver Trump his dead father’s approval

by John Hansen

WASHINGTON D.C. – Following the confirmed death of Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in U.S.-led airstrikes, observers question whether Iran’s allies will retaliate, and also whether President Trump will finally win his late father’s approval. “The Middle East is at a delicate stage right now, and the key to understanding lies in that dead […]

The post Analysis: Ayatollah’s death fails to deliver Trump his dead father’s approval appeared first on The Beaverton.

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01 Mar 12:53

Carney puts rules-based international order sign back in window

by Clare Blackwood

OTTAWA – After publishing an official statement on behalf of the Canadian government supporting the joint US-Israel bombings in Iran this morning, Prime Minister Carney was spotted happily putting the rules-based international order sign back in the window of Parliament. “Look, guys, when I made that speech at Davos about ‘taking the sign out of […]

The post Carney puts rules-based international order sign back in window appeared first on The Beaverton.

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28 Feb 21:00

Evolution in Higher Dimensions

by Emergent Garden

MORE FUNCTIONS! Hello again, this video is a follow up to my video on functions in higher dimensions, and this time I use an algorithm known as symbolic regression to automatically generate, mutate, and evolve the functions to create some trippy patterns.

Learn to code with Scrimba: https://scrimba.com/?via=EmergentGarden
Function Website: https://evolvecode.io/hyperspace/index.html
Picbreeder: https://evolvecode.io/hyperspace/picbreeder.html
Biomorphs: https://evolvecode.io/hyperspace/biomorphs.html
Source Code: https://github.com/MaxRobinsonTheGreat/hyperdimensions

~SUPPORT ME~
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/emergentgarden
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/emergentgarden
Discord: https://discord.gg/tnjmrmprQs
Twitter: https://twitter.com/max_romana
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/emergentgarden.bsky.social

Music: https://www.youtube.com/@acolyte-compositions

AI Disclaimer:
I used AI code tools for the website and animations.
No AI video, images, script, voice, or music were used.

~TIMESTAMPS~
(0:00) Functions in Higher Dimensions
(3:00) Growing Random Functions
(10:43) Mutating Functions
(13:26) Evolution
(16:37) Symbolic Regression
(19:17) The Future is NEAT
View attached file (DB-TD3s3MZ0?version=3, unknown)
28 Feb 17:27

Pluralistic: California can stop Larry Ellison from buying Warners (28 Feb 2026)

by Cory Doctorow


Today's links


The Warner tower, toppling over, surmounted by the bear from the California flag, posed on an old timey map of Los Angeles.

California can stop Larry Ellison from buying Warners (permalink)

For months, the hottest will-they/won't-they drama in Hollywood concerned the suitors for Warners, up for sale again after being bought, merged, looted and wrecked by the eminently guillotineable David Zaslav:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izC9o3LhnVk

From the start, it was clear that Warners would be sucked dry and discarded, but the Trump 2024 election turned the looting of Warners' corpse into a high-stakes political drama.

On the one hand, you had Netflix, who wanted to buy Warners and use them to make good movies, but also to kill off movie theaters forever by blocking theatrical distribution of Warners' products.

On the other hand, you had Paramount, owned by the spray-tan cured tech billionaire jerky Larry Ellison, though everyone is supposed to pretend that Ellison's do-nothing/know-nothing/amounts-to-nothing son Billy (or whatever who cares) Ellison is running the show.

Ellison's plan was to buy Warners and fold it into the oligarchic media capture project that's seen Ellison replace the head of CBS with the tedious mediocrity Bari Weiss:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/the-centurylong-capture-of-us-media

This is a multi-pronged media takeover that includes Jeff Bezos neutering the Washington Post, Elon Musk turning Twitter into a Nazi bar, and Trump stealing Tiktok and giving it to Larry Ellison. If Ellison gains control over Warners, you can add CNN to the nonsense factory.

But for a while there, it looked like the Ellisons would lose the bidding. Little Timmy (or whatever who cares) Ellison only has whatever money his dad parks in his bank account for tax purposes, and Larry Ellison is so mired in debt that one margin call could cost him his company, his fighter jet, and his Hawaiian version of Little St James Island.

Warners' board may not give a shit about making good media or telling the truth or staving off fascism, but they do want to get paid, and Netflix has money in the bank, whereas Ellison only has the bank's money (for now).

But last week, the dam broke: Warners' board indicated they'd take Paramount's offer, and Netflix withdrew their offer, and so that's that, right? It's not like Trump's FTC is going to actually block this radioactively illegal merger, despite the catastrophic corporate consolidation that would result, with terrible consequences for workers, audiences, theaters, cable operators and the entire supply chain.

Not so fast! The Clayton Act – which bars this kind of merger – is designed to be enforced by the feds, state governments, and private parties. That means that California AG Rob Bonta can step in to block this merger, which he's getting ready to do:

https://prospect.org/2026/02/27/states-can-block-paramount-warner-deal/

As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, state AGs block mergers all the time, even when the feds decline to step in – just a couple years ago, Washington state killed the Kroger/Albertsons merger.

The fact that antitrust laws can be enforced at the state level is a genius piece of policy design. As the old joke goes, "AG" stands for "aspiring governor," and the fact that state AGs can step in to rescue their voters from do-nothing political hacks in Washington is catnip for our nation's attorneys general.

Bonta is definitely feeling his oats: he's also going after Amazon for price-fixing, picking up a cause that Trump dropped after Jeff Bezos ordered the Washington Post to cancel its endorsement of Kamala Harris, paid a million bucks to sit on the inaugural dais, millions more to fund the White House Epstein Memorial Ballroom and $40m more to make an unwatchable turkey of a movie about Melania Trump.

Can you imagine how stupid Bezos is going to feel when all of his bribes to Trump cash out to nothing after Rob Bonta publishes Amazon's damning internal memos and then fines the company a gazillion dollars?

It's a testament to the power of designing laws so they can be enforced by multiple parties. And as cool as it is to have a law that state AGs can enforce, it's way cooler to have a law that can be enforced by members of the public.

This is called a "private right of action" – the thing that lets impact litigation shops like Planned Parenthood, EFF, and the ACLU sue over violations of the public's rights. The business lobby hates the private right of action, because they think (correctly) that they can buy off enough regulators and enforcers to let them get away with murder (often literally), but they know they can't buy off every impact litigation shop and every member of the no-win/no-fee bar.

For decades, corporate America has tried to abolish the public's right to sue companies under any circumstances. That's why so many terms of service now feature "binding arbitration waivers" that deny you access to the courts, no matter how badly you are injured:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/27/shit-shack/#binding-arbitration

But long before Antonin Scalia made it legal to cram binding arbitration down your throat, corporate America was pumping out propaganda for "tort reform," spreading the story that greedy lawyers were ginning up baseless legal threats to extort settlements from hardworking entrepreneurs. These stories are 99.9% bullshit, including urban legends like the "McDonald's hot coffee" lawsuit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

Ever since Reagan, corporate America has been on a 45-year winning streak. Nothing epitomizes the arrogance of these monsters more than the GW Bush administration's sneering references to "the reality-based community":

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

Giving Ellison, Bezos and Musk control over our media seems like the triumph of billionaires' efforts to "create their own reality," and indeed, for years, they've been able to gin up national panics over nothingburgers like "trans ideology," "woke" and "the immigration crisis."

But just lately, that reality-creation machine has started to break down. Despite taking over the press, locking every reality-based reporter out of the White House, and getting Musk, Zuck and Ellison to paint their algorithms spray-tan orange, people just fucking hate Trump. He is underwater on every single issue:

https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/ahead-of-state-of-the-union-address

Despite the full-court press – from both the Dem and the GOP establishment – to deny the genocide in Gaza and paint anyone (especially Jews like me) who condemn the slaughter as "antisemites," Americans condemn Israel and are fully in the tank for Palestinians:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead-americans-middle-east-sympathies.aspx

Despite throwing massive subsidies at coal and tying every available millstone around renewables' ankles before throwing all the solar panels and windmills into the sea, renewables are growing and – to Trump's great chagrin – oil companies can't find anyone to loan them the money they need to steal Venezuela's oil:

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/earning-optimism-in-2026

Reality turns out to be surprisingly stubborn, and what's more, it has a pronounced left-wing bias. Putting little Huey (or whatever who cares) Ellison in charge of Warners will be bad news for the news, for media, for movies and TV, and for my neighbors in Burbank. But when it comes to shaping the media, Freddy (or whatever who cares) Ellison will continue to eat shit.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Mormon guide to overcoming masturbation https://web.archive.org/web/20071011023731/http://www.qrd.org/qrd/religion/judeochristian/protestantism/mormon/mormon-masturbation

#20yrsago Midnighters: YA horror trilogy mixes Lovecraft with adventure https://memex.craphound.com/2006/02/26/midnighters-ya-horror-trilogy-mixes-lovecraft-with-adventure/

#20yrsago RIP, Octavia Butler https://darkush.blogspot.com/2006/02/octavia-butler-died-saturday.html

#20yrsago Disney hiring “Intelligence Analyst” to review “open source media” https://web.archive.org/web/20060303165009/http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002199.html

#20yrsago MPAA exec can’t sell A-hole proposal to tech companies https://web.archive.org/web/20060325013506/http://lawgeek.typepad.com/lawgeek/2006/02/variety_mpaa_ca.html

#15yrsago Why are America’s largest corporations paying no tax? https://web.archive.org/web/20110226160552/https://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/26/main-street-tax-cheats/

#15yrsago Articulated cardboard Cthulhu https://web.archive.org/web/20110522204427/http://www.strode-college.ac.uk/teaching_teams/cardboard_catwalk/285

#15yrsago Freeman Dyson reviews Gleick’s book on information theory https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/03/10/how-we-know/?pagination=false

#15yrsago 3D printing with mashed potatatoes https://www.fabbaloo.com/2011/02/3d-printing-potatoes-with-the-rapman-html

#15yrsago TVOntario’s online archive, including Prisoners of Gravity! https://web.archive.org/web/20110226021403/https://archive.tvo.org/

#10yrsago _applyChinaLocationShift: In China, national security means that all the maps are wrong https://web.archive.org/web/20160227145529/http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/digital-maps-skewed-china

#10yrsago Teaching kids about copyright: schools and fair use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzqNKQbWTWc

#10yrsago Ghostwriter: Trump didn’t write “Art of the Deal,” he read it https://web.archive.org/web/20160229034618/http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/264591/donald-trump-didnt-write-art-deal-tony-schwartz/

#10yrsago The biggest abortion lie of all: “They do it for the money” https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-abortion-business/

#10yrsago NHS junior doctors show kids what they do, kids demand better of Jeremy Hunt https://juniorjuniordoctors.tumblr.com/

#10yrsago Nissan yanks remote-access Leaf app — 4+ weeks after researchers report critical flaw https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/25/11116724/nissan-nissanconnect-app-hack-offline

#10yrsago Think you’re entitled to compensation after being wrongfully imprisoned in California? Nope. https://web.archive.org/web/20160229013042/http://modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/the-crazy-injustice-of-denying-exonerated-prisoners-compensation

#10yrsago BC town votes to install imaginary GPS trackers in criminals https://web.archive.org/web/20160227114334/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/canadian-city-plans-to-track-offenders-with-technology-that-doesnt-even-exist-gps-implant-williams-lake

#10yrsago New Zealand’s Prime Minister: I’ll stay in TPP’s economic suicide-pact even if the USA pulls out https://www.techdirt.com/2016/02/26/new-zealand-says-laws-to-implement-tpp-will-be-passed-now-despite-us-uncertainties-wont-be-rolled-back-even-if-tpp-fails/

#10yrsago South Korean lawmakers stage filibuster to protest “anti-terror” bill, read from Little Brother https://memex.craphound.com/2016/02/26/south-korean-lawmakers-stage-filibuster-to-protest-anti-terror-bill-read-from-little-brother/

#5yrsago Privacy is not property https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/26/meaningful-zombies/#luxury-goods

#1yrago With Great Power Came No Responsibility https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/#franklinite

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

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

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

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

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

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


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1022 words today, 40256 total)

  • "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

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

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

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"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

28 Feb 16:04

Inside the fight to save Texas’ Native American studies course

by Raul Alonzo
The anti-DEI movement put the future of the high school class in question, but it ultimately survived state board review. Its supporters say that offers a lesson for other states.
View attached file (HechingerNativeAmStudies.webp, unknown)
28 Feb 16:04

Texas declared independence 190 years ago. This town northwest of Houston is celebrating

by Raul Alonzo
Almost two centuries ago, dozens of Texans gathered in the town of Washington-on-the-Brazos to sign Texas’ Declaration of Independence from Mexico. Today, the site is investing in becoming a historical destination.
View attached file (HPMWashingtonOnTheBrazos.webp, unknown)
28 Feb 16:04

Trump administration backs production of pesticide many blame for cancer diagnosis

by Raul Alonzo
Bayer has paid out billions of dollars to settle court claims related to glyphosate.

View attached file (8103_Liquid_Terragator-scaled.jpeg, image/jpeg)
28 Feb 12:58

CURRENT Events

by Justin Pierce

There's a Bitcoin joke here if I knew enough about Bitcoin to make one.

28 Feb 12:40

Biden flies commercial from DCA and winds up stuck in delays like everyone else

by Meg Kinnard, Associated Press
Former presidents are just like us. Joe Biden got stuck in delays Friday while flying commercially from Reagan National Airport.

View attached file (AP26058580874592-1024x653.jpg, image/jpeg)
28 Feb 12:39

Punch the monkey melts hearts after rejection and unlikely friendship

by Stephanie Sy
In a zoo outside Tokyo, one monkey has pulled heartstrings around the world after forming an unexpected friendship. Stephanie Sy reports.

View attached file (monkeyingarond-1024x765.jpg, image/jpeg)
28 Feb 12:37

They bounce! 🧡💚💙

They bounce! 🧡💚💙

27 Feb 21:38

Retail News: Walmart Drone delivery arrives in Houston

by Mike
Walmart Drones have arrived at certain locations in the Houston area. The service is an expansion of an existing partnership between Walmart and third-party drone operator Wing. Test flights began about a month ago, and deliveries began around the start of the year. At present, the service is offered at no fees or upcharges, but it offers only a limited selection of mostly “grocery store” items. Drone delivery is limited to an area of about ...
27 Feb 21:17

This is so depressing! This is like something out of Mike’s youth.

This is so depressing! This is like something out of Mike’s youth.