Pedro Sánchez se solidariza con el príncipe Mohamed bin Salman por las represalias iraníes contra bases de EE.UU en suelo saudí, mientras la tiranía wahabí acumula 356 ejecuciones solo en 2025 y occidente guarda silencio.
etiquetas: arabia saudí, derechos humanos
» noticia original (diariosocialista.net)
El indomable Will Hunting (1997) / Escena NSA: ¿Por que no deberia trabajar para nosotros?
etiquetas: will hunting, nsa, eeuu, imperialismo, cine
» noticia original (www.youtube.com)
Míralos, proclamando, como una letanía aprendida, santas razones en racimo: la eliminación de una dictadura, la destrucción de armas, la protección de los buenos vecinos de las amenazas del malo, la democratización de la región, la liberación del pueblo, el derecho a protestar, la dignidad de las mujeres, la lucha contra el terrorismo y si hace falta, la paz. “Si lo hacen, será por algo”, resumen, con argumento irrebatible. Es la fe, estúpido. Ora pro nobis, Donald, parece retumbar la Capilla Oval en esa grimosa oración en torno a su santón.
etiquetas: guerra, excusas, mentiras, abuso, desconfianza
» noticia original (ctxt.es)
¿El barco más pequeño del mundo?
Katy Stickland 3 de febrero de 2026
El aventurero en microyates Andrew Bedwell le cuenta a Katy Stickland cómo resucitó su desafío de récord mundial en el océano Atlántico. Andrew Bedwell no se rinde. Incluso cuando su sueño de cruzar el Atlántico se hizo añicos en el dique de Terranova, se repuso y se levantó de nuevo, con la visión de Big C V2 . Dos años y medio después, está inmerso en pruebas de mar y solucionando fallos para asegurarse de estar listo para mayo y el inicio del mayor reto de su vida: una
etiquetas: andrew bedwell, barco, atlántico, aventureros, microyates
» noticia original (www.pbo.co.uk)
«La Policía del Capitolio estaba intentando sacar a un manifestante desquiciado de la audiencia de las Fuerzas Armadas. Él se resistía. Decidí ayudar y calmar la situación. Este señor vino al Capitolio buscando una confrontación, y la tuvo. Espero que reciba la ayuda que necesita sin causar más violencia», escribió Sheehy. Tres agentes fueron atendidos por lesiones y «el sospechoso, que se quedó con el brazo atrapado en una puerta al resistirse a nuestros agentes y forzar su entrada en la sala de audiencias, también fue atendido»
etiquetas: brian mcginnis, veterano, marine, senado, eeuu, política, israel
» noticia original (www.reuters.com)
Epico, fidedigno, gracioso, al grano, digno de un oscar
etiquetas: iran, usa, eeuu, trump, israel, genocidio, palestina, epstein
» noticia original (www.youtube.com)
Es la tercera vez desde el 7-O que la organización Human Rights Watch certifica el uso de esta munición contra civiles por parte de Israel. Este uso está prohibido, principalmente, por los protocolos adicionales del Convenio de Ginebra que protegen a los civiles en conflictos armados.
etiquetas: israell, fosforo blanco, líbano, ilegal contra civiles, prohibido
» noticia original (www.publico.es)
El Gobierno de la Comunidad de Madrid, liderado por Isabel Díaz Ayuso, se niega a crear un registro de objetores de conciencia del aborto y evita con ello cumplir la ley. El Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Madrid (TSJM) ordenaba el pasado lunes al Ejecutivo de la Puerta del Sol que iniciara los trámites para la elaboración de este sistema que la presidenta se empeña en tachar de “lista negra”.
etiquetas: aborto, madrid, derecho, pp, ayuso, laicismo
» noticia original (www.elplural.com)
El gran cronista político, escritor, periodista de pasión desbordada y dueño de una biografía extraordinaria muere a los 89 años en Madrid, la ciudad que fue su 'Samarcanda' y donde ha dejado huella en más de medio siglo de oficio
etiquetas: literatura, raúl, pozo
» noticia original (www.elmundo.es)
Un documento de la CIA recientemente aparecido sugiere que la inteligencia estadounidense revisó una vez una investigación que insinuaba un posible tratamiento contra el cáncer hace más de 60 años. El documento, elaborado en febrero de 1951 y desclasificado en 2014, resume un artículo científico soviético que examinó sorprendentes similitudes entre gusanos parásitos y tumores cancerosos.
etiquetas: cia, cáncer
» noticia original (www.dailymail.co.uk)
La presidenta madrileña, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, siempre está atenta a las necesidades de los madrileños... para hacer todo lo contrario. ¿Que la Complutense se asfixia económicamente? Pues ella se embarca en traer la Fórmula 1
etiquetas: ayuso, 4 de julio, cipayismo
» noticia original (www.google.com)
El supuesto acuerdo entre Washington y La Habana, publicado por ‘USA Today’, implica apertura económica, pero no libertades en la isla
etiquetas: cuba, trump
» noticia original (elpais.com)
Aunque la Casa Blanca no ha anunciado un plan, ni una medida formal de servicio militar obligatorio. El hecho de que no descarte más opciones militares alimenta el debate público sobre escenarios que hace apenas unos días parecían lejanos. La inquietud aumentó después de que en la entrevista se planteara directamente el miedo de muchas madres a ver a sus hijos e hijas involucrados en una guerra. Una preocupación que Leavitt respondió sin cerrar por completo la puerta a nuevas decisiones militares por parte del presidente.
etiquetas: geoestrategia, guerra, información, militar, reclutamiento
» noticia original (www.sandiegored.com)
Vale, perdón, he elegido un titular un poco sensacionalista. Pero la realidad es que es así. Von der Leyen está intentando destruir la UE. Al menos, esta UE tal y como la conocemos.
No estoy diciendo que quiera que los países que integran la UE vayan por libre. Lo que está buscando es que los países de la UE formen otra organización diferente.
¿Por qué digo esto? Fácil, básicamente su sugerencia de no seguir el derecho internacional es, de facto, derogar el tratado fundacional de la UE.
Dicho tratado, en su versión actual, tiene el derecho internacional como fuente de derecho:
Artículo 49
Principios de legalidad y de proporcionalidad de los delitos y las penas
1. Nadie podrá ser condenado por una acción o una omisión que, en el momento en que haya sido cometida, no constituya una infracción según el Derecho interno o el Derecho internacional. Del mismo modo, no podrá imponerse una pena más grave que la aplicable en el momento en que la infracción haya sido cometida. Si con posterioridad a esta infracción la ley dispone una pena más leve, deberá aplicarse ésta.
Y es actor principal en la política exterior de la UE, donde estamos unidos en el compromiso de defenderlo, aquí, citando ejemplos concretos como la Carta de las Naciones Unidas:
DISPOSICIONES GENERALES RELATIVAS A LA ACCIÓN EXTERIOR DE LA UNIÓN
Artículo 21
1. La acción de la Unión en la escena internacional se basará en los principios que han inspirado su creación, desarrollo y ampliación y que pretende fomentar en el resto del mundo: la democracia, el Estado de Derecho, la universalidad e indivisibilidad de los derechos humanos y de las libertades fundamentales, el respeto de la dignidad humana, los principios de igualdad y solidaridad y el respeto de los principios de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas y del Derecho internacional.
2.b b) consolidar y respaldar la democracia, el Estado de Derecho, los derechos humanos y los principios del Derecho internacional;
Podría poner más puntos donde se cita el derecho internacional. Pero lo importante es que hablamos del tratado que une a la Unión Europea. La base que ha permitido la unión de un continente que ha estado en guerra consigo mismo toda la vida (y alguna zona fuera de la UE, aún lo está).
Lo de por qué romper un tratado firmado entre 27 países, con lo difícil que es ponerlos de acuerdo, mejor lo dejo para otro día, pero vamos, huele a kilómetros que quiere una UE que pueda LEGALMENTE supeditarse a la administración Trump. Por los artículos puestos antes, actualmente no puede hacerlo.
El caso, es que esa señora no tiene legitimidad para tal cosa. La iniciativa legislativa corresponde a la Comisión, que es un órgano colegiado, por tanto su presidente no puede pedir la modificación de las leyes europeas sin una reunión de la comisión ya que sus funciones son exclusivamente estas:
6. El Presidente de la Comisión:
a) definirá las orientaciones con arreglo a las cuales la Comisión desempeñará sus funciones;
b) determinará la organización interna de la Comisión velando por la coherencia, eficacia y colegialidad de su actuación;
c) nombrará Vicepresidentes, distintos del Alto Representante de la Unión para Asuntos Exteriores y Política de Seguridad, de entre los miembros de la Comisión.
Es decir, Úrsula se está extralimitando en sus funciones y una reforma de ese calado no puede partir de ella. Debe de reunir la comisión y prepare un proyecto de revisión del TUE (artículo 48). Luego tiene que ser aprobado por unanimidad de los países, que no parece algo fácil.
Me gustaría comentar el detalle, de que ese TUE que quiere derogar, es lo que le confiere legitimidad, ya que su cargo viene del artículo 17.
¿Qué se puede hacer? Como siempre en democracia, el pueblo no puede hacer nada. Pero los gobiernos sí que pueden desautorizarla, ya que no puede decir eso en ejercicio de sus funciones y pretende derogar precisamente lo que le da legitimidad a su cargo.
Por tanto, en una Unión Europea basada en reglas, los gobiernos deberían desautorizar a la presidenta de la Comisión y pedir su dimisión por extralimitarse en sus funciones e intentar, de facto, acabar con la UE.
Y si no estamos en una Unión Europea basada en reglas, estamos en una UE basada en las armas, pues entonces esa señora no es nadie para decirle a un estado con ejército lo que debe hacer, ya que ni la Comisión Europea, ni ella como su presidenta, tienen un solo soldado.
etiquetas: artículo
» noticia original ()
Ormuz no es un sitio. Es una franja. 39 km de ancho en lo más estrecho, vale, pero la costa iraní da al estrecho en TODA su extensión. Cientos de kilómetros de litoral. Cada cala, cada playa, cada pueblo de pescadores es un sitio desde donde lanzar algo. Irán no juega a la guerra naval como en las películas. Nada de fragatas contra fragatas. Su doctrina se llama A2/AD: no pretendo controlar el mar, pretendo que tú no puedas usarlo. Y para eso no hacen falta portaaviones. Hacen falta cosas baratas y muchas. Y aquí es donde duele...
etiquetas: ormuz, g7, brent
» noticia original (skywriter.blue)
José Pablo López, presidente de RTVE, retrata de nuevo a la Unión Europea de Radiodifusión por permitir la participación de Israel mientras sigue atentando contra los derechos humanos
etiquetas: eurovisión, genocidio, israel, irán, gaza, líbano, derechos humanos
» noticia original (www.eldiario.es)
La campaña de boicot a ChatGPT no para de ganar apoyos. Al menos cuatro millones de personas han cancelado su suscripción o han dejado de utilizar el chatbot de inteligencia artificial a lo largo de la última semana, según indica la organización, QuitGPT. El rechazo a la popular aplicación responde al contrato militar que su desarrolladora, OpenAI, ha cerrado con el Pentágono y que podría abrir la puerta al uso de su IA para casos extremos como la vigilancia masiva de ciudadanos estadounidenses o la creación de armas autónomas.
etiquetas: chatgtp, boicot, open ai, 4 millones, desistalaciones, vinculos, trump
» noticia original (www.elperiodico.com)
Un nuevo estudio científico ha detectado una aceleración significativa del calentamiento global del planeta, que se ha intensificado de forma clara en la última década, evidenciando una preocupante tendencia que podría adelantar los umbrales climáticos más críticos.
Es decir, el calentamiento del planeta no solo continúa, sino que lo hace cada vez más rápido.
Enlace al estudio científico: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2025GL118804
etiquetas: cambio climático, temperatura global, acuerdo parís
» noticia original (cazatormentas.com)
El mercado civil de transporte marítimo ha abandonado la región. La inclusión de Jordania en la lista de suspensión (país sin litoral en el Golfo pero con puerto en Aqaba/Mar Rojo) sugiere que los riesgos de seguros se han extendido a toda la región del Levante, indicando inteligencia de amenaza de misiles o drones.
etiquetas: geoestrategia, economía, guerra, transporte, consumo
» noticia original (www.businesstoday.in)
Los precios del crudo revirtieron al alza el martes después de que CNN informara que Irán ha comenzado a colocar minas en el Estrecho de Ormuz, una vía fluvial que transporta aproximadamente una quinta parte de todo el petróleo crudo. Irán ha desplegado unas pocas docenas de minas en los últimos días en la vía fluvial estratégica, según dos personas familiarizadas con los informes de inteligencia estadounidenses. El país aún conserva entre el 80% y el 90% de sus pequeñas embarcaciones y buques minadores, lo que significa que sus fuerzas...
etiquetas: trump, informes, irán, estrecho, ormuz
» noticia original (es.investing.com)
En el corazón de Europa se libra una batalla interminable entre Rusia y Ucrania. En Israel, los misiles vuelan hacia Teherán y Beirut acompañados d...
etiquetas: guerras, conflictos, paz, geopolítica
» noticia original (www.eldebate.com)
Dave Rubin, de «The Rubin Report», comparte un clip de DM de Zohran Mamdani en el que comenta el intento de atentado terrorista con explosivos cerca de Gracie Mansion sin mencionar que los sospechosos, los musulmanes Emir Balat e Ibrahim Kayumi, tenían como objetivo a los manifestantes con su artefacto explosivo improvisado, no al alcalde.
etiquetas: explosivo, atentado, nueva york, alcalde, manipulación
» noticia original (www.youtube.com)
El Gobierno modifica la Ley de Memoria para limitar las indemnizaciones. Los asesinatos ocurridos tras 1978 quedarán excluidos.
El sistema era tan sencillo como ingenioso.
Ver post completo: Así funcionaba la pistola de la Nintendo NES.
Apple ha lanzado el MacBook Neo, un iphone con forma de portátil y MacOs. Lleva su procesador, su ram, una pantalla de 13 pulgadas y batería para 16 horas. Por el precio que lo anuncian (599$) va a arrasar. Aunque la compra buena sigue siendo el Air.
Even if rich people were no more likely to believe stupid shit than you or me, it would still be a problem. After all, I believe in my share of stupid shit (and if you think that none of the shit you believe in is stupid, then I'm afraid we've just identified at least one kind of stupid shit you believe in).
The problem isn't whether rich people believe stupid shit; it's the fact that when a rich person believes something stupid, that belief can turn into torment for dozens, thousands, or millions of people.
Here's a historical example that I think about a lot. In 1928, Henry Ford got worried about the rubber supply chain. All the world's rubber came from plantations in countries that he had limited leverage over and he was worried that these countries could kneecap his operation by cutting off the supply. So Ford decided he would start cultivating rubber in the Brazilian jungles, judging that Brazil's politicians were biddable, bribeable or bludgeonable and thus not a risk.
Ford took over a large area of old-growth jungle in Brazil and decreed that a town be built there. But not just any town: Ford decreed that the town of Fordlandia would be a replica of Dearborn, the company town he controlled in Michigan. Now, leaving aside the colonialism and other ethical considerations, there are plenty of practical reasons not to replicate Dearborn, MI on the banks of the Rio Tapajós.
For one thing, Brazil is in the southern hemisphere, and Dearborn is in the northern hemisphere. The prefab houses that Ford ordered for Fordlandia had windows optimized for southern exposure, which is the normal way of designing a dwelling in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, you try and put your windows on the other side of the building.
Ford's architects told him this, and proposed having the factory flip the houses' orientation. But Ford was adamant: he'd had a vision for a replica of his beloved Dearborn plunked down smack in the middle of the Amazon jungle, and by God, that was what he would get:
Fordlandia was a catastrophe for so many reasons, and the windows are just a little footnote, but it's a detail that really stuck with me because it's just so stupid. Ford was a vicious antisemite, a bigot, a union-buster and an all-round piece of shit, but also, he believed that his opinions trumped the axial tilt of the planet Earth.
In other words, Henry Ford wasn't merely evil – he was also periodically as thick as pigshit. Ford's cherished stupidities didn't just affect him, they also meant that a whole city full of people in the Amazon had windows facing the wrong direction. Like I said, I sometimes believe stupid things, but those stupid things aren't consequential the way that rich people's cherished stupidities are.
This would be bad enough if rich people were no more prone to stupid beliefs than the rest of us, but it's actually worse than that. When I believe something stupid, it tends to get me in trouble, which means that (at least some of the time), I get to learn from my mistakes. But if you're a rich person, you can surround yourself with people who will tell you that you are right even when you are so wrong, with the result that you get progressively more wrong, until you literally kill yourself:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alternative-medicine-extend-abbreviate-steve-jobs-life/
A rich person could surround themselves with people who tell them that they're being stupid, but in practice, this almost never happens. After all, the prime advantage to accumulating as much money as possible is freedom from having to listen to other people. The richer you are, the fewer people there are who can thwart your will. Get rich enough and you can be found guilty of 34 felonies and still become President of the United States of America.
But wait, it gets even worse! Hurting other people is often a great way to get even more rich. So the richer you get, the more insulated you are from consequences for hurting other people, and the more you hurt other people, the richer you get.
What a world! The people whose wrong beliefs have the widest blast-radius and inflict the most collateral damage also have the fewest sources of external discipline that help them improve their beliefs, and often, that collateral damage is a feature, not a bug.
Billionaires are a danger to themselves and (especially) to the rest of us. They are wronger than the median person, and the consequences of their wrongness are exponentially worse than the consequences of the median person's mistake.
This has been on my mind lately because of a very local phenomenon.
I live around the corner from Burbank airport, a great little regional airport on the edge of Hollywood. It was never brought up to code, so the gates are really close together, which means the planes park really close together, and there's no room for jetways, so they park right up against the terminal. The ground crews wheel staircase/ramps to both the front and back of the plane. That means that you can walk the entire length of the terminal in about five minutes, and boarding and debarking takes less than half the time of any other airport. Sure, if one of those planes ever catches fire, every other plane is gonna go boom, and everyone in the terminal is toast, but my sofa-to-gate time is like 15 minutes.
Best of all, Burbank is a Southwest hub. When we moved here a decade ago, this was great. Southwest, after all, has free bag-check, open seating, a great app, friendly crews, and a generous policy for canceling or changing reservations.
If you fly in the US, you know what's coming next. In 2024, a hedge fund called Elliott Investment Management acquired an 11% stake in SWA, forced a boardroom coup that saw it replace five of the company's six directors, and then instituted a top to bottom change in airline policies. The company eliminated literally everything that Southwest fliers loved about the airline, from the free bags to the open seating:
The airline went from being the least enshittified airline in America to the most. Southwest is now worse than Spirit airlines – no, really. Southwest doesn't just merely charge for seat selection, but if you refuse to pay for seat selection, they preferentially place you in a middle seat even on a half-empty flight, as a way of pressuring you to pay the sky-high junk fee for seat selection:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SouthwestAirlines/comments/1rd2g0k/ngl_thought_yall_were_joking/
Obviously, passengers who are given middle seats (and the passengers around them, who paid for window or aisle seats) don't like this, so they try to change seats. So SWA now makes its flight attendants order passengers not to switch seats, and they've resorted to making up nonsense about "weight balancing":
Even without junk fees, Southwest's fares are now higher than their rivals. I'm flying to San Francisco tomorrow to host EFF executive director Cindy Cohn's book launch at City Lights:
https://citylights.com/events/cindy-cohn-launch-party-for-privacys-defender/
Normally, I would have just booked a SWA flight from Burbank to SFO or Oakland (which gets less fog and is more reliable). But the SWA fare – even without junk fees – was higher than a United ticket out of the same airport, even including a checked bag, seat selection, etc. Southwest is genuinely worse than Spirit now: not only does it have worse policies (forcing occupancy of middle seats!), and more frustrated, angrier flight crew (flight attendants are palpably sick of arguing with passengers), but SWA is now more expensive than United!
All of this is the fault of one billionaire: Elliott Investment Management CEO Paul Singer, one of America's most guillotineable plutes. This one guy personally enshittified Southwest Airlines, along with many other businesses in America and abroad. Because of this one guy, millions of people are made miserable every single day. Singer flogged off his shares and made a tidy profit. He's long gone. But SWA will never recover, and every day until its collapse, millions of passengers and flight attendants will have a shitty day because of this one guy:
Even if Paul Singer were no more prone to ethical missteps than you or me, the fact that he is morbidly wealthy means that his ethical blind spots leave behind a trail of wreckage that rivals a comet. And of course, being as rich as Paul Singer inflicts a lasting neurological injury that makes you incapable of understanding how wrong you are, which means that Paul Singer is doubly dangerous.
Billionaires aren't just a danger when they're trying to make money, either. One of the arguments in favor of billionaires is that sometimes, the "good" billionaires take up charitable causes. But even here, billionaires can cause sweeping harm. Take Bill Gates, whose charitable projects include waging war on the public education system, seeking to replace public schools with charter schools.
Gates has no background in education, but he spent millions on this project. He is one of the main reasons that poor communities around the country have been pressured to shutter their public schools and replace them with weakly regulated, extractive charters:
https://apnews.com/article/92dc914dd97c487a9b9aa4b006909a8c
This was a catastrophe. A single billionaire dilettante's cherished stupidity wrecked the educational chances of a generation of kids:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2026/03/free-market-charter-schools-wreak-havoc-in-michigan/
Gates was a prep-school kid, so it's weird for him to have forceful views about a public education system he never experienced. In reality, it's not so much that Gates has forceful views about schools – rather, he has forceful views about teachers' unions, which he wishes to see abolished. Gates is one of America's most vicious union-busters:
Gates's ideology permeates all of his charitable work. We all know about Gates's work on public health, but less well known is the role that Gates has played in blocking poor countries from exercising their rights under the WTO to override drug patents in times of emergency. In the 2000s, the Gates Foundation blocked South Africa from procuring the anti-retroviral AIDS drugs it was entitled to under the WTO's TRIPS agreement. The Gates Foundation blocked the Access to Medicines WIPO treaty, which would have vastly expanded the Global South's ability to manufacture life-saving drugs. And during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, Gates personally intervened to kill the WHO Covid-19 Technology Access Pool and to get Oxford to renege on its promise to make an open-source vaccine:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation
It's not that Gates is insincere in his desire to improve public health outcomes – it's that his desire to improve public health conflicts with his extreme ideology of maximum intellectual property regimes. Gates simply opposes open science and compulsory licenses on scientific patents, even when that kills millions of people (as it did in South Africa). Gates's morbid wealth magnifies his cherished stupidities into weapons of mass destruction.
Gates is back in the news these days because of his membership in the Epstein class. Epstein is the poster child for the ways that wealth is a force-multiplier for bad ideas. We can't separate Epstein's sexual predation from his wealth. Epstein spun elaborate junk-science theories to justify raping children, becoming mired in that most rich-guy coded of quagmires, eugenics:
https://www.statnews.com/2026/02/24/epstein-cell-line-george-church-harvard-personal-genome-project/
Epstein openly discussed his plans to seed the planet with his DNA, reportedly telling one scientist that he planned to fill his ranch with young trafficked girls and to keep 20 of them pregnant with his children at all times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html
We still don't know where Epstein's wealth came from, but we know that he was a central node in a network of vast riches, much of which he directed to his weird scientific projects. That network also protected him from consequences for his prolific child-rape project, which had more than 1,000 survivors.
In embracing eugenics junk science, Epstein was ahead of the curve. Today, eugenics is all the rage, reviving an idea that went out of fashion shortly after the Fordlandia era. After all, Henry Ford didn't just build a private city where his word was law – he also bought up media companies to promote his ideas of racial superiority:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dearborn_Independent
Despite being too cringe to make it onto Epstein island, Elon Musk is the standard bearer for the dangers of billionaireism:
Like Henry Ford, he craves company towns where his word is law:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/inside-starbase-spacex-elon-musk-company-town/
Like Ford, he buys up media companies and then uses them to push his batshit ideas about racial superiority:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/eugenics-isnt-dead-its-thriving-in-tech/
Like Paul Singer, he is a master enshittifier who never met a junk fee he didn't fall in love with:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/01/tech/musk-twitter-verification-price
And like Epstein, he wants to seed the human race with his babies, and has built a secret compound in the desert he plans to fill with women he has impregnated:
https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/elon-musk-compound-austin-children/
Billionaires and their lickspittles will tell you that all of this is wrong: the market selects "capital allocators" by executing a vast, distributed computer program whose logic gates are every producer and consumer in The Economy (TM), and whose data are trillions of otherwise uncomputable buy and sell decisions.
This is a tautology: the argument goes that only good people are made rich, and therefore all the rich people are good. If rich people had as many cherished stupidities as I claim, The Economy (TM) would relieve them of their wealth, and thus their power to allocate capital, and thus their potential to hurt people by being wrong, which means that they must be right.
This is the stupidest (and most destructive) of all of billionaireism's cherished stupidities: that we live in a meritocracy, which means that whatever the richest people want must be right. It's a modern update to the doctrine of divine providence, which held that we can discern god's favor through wealth. The more god loves you, the richer he makes you.
This can't be true, because every single economic cataclysm in the history of the world was the fault of rich people. Rich people gave us the 19th century's bank panics. They gave us the South Seas bubble. They gave us the Great Depression, and the S&L Crisis, and the Great Financial Crisis. They invented greedflation and created the cost of living crisis. Today, they are teeing up an AI crash that will make 2008 look like the best day of your life:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington
The old left aphorism has it that "every billionaire is a policy failure." That's true, but it's incomplete. Every billionaire is a machine for producing policy failures at scale.
(Image: Aude, CC BY 4.0, modified)
Canada's One-Man Air Force – and His Calculated Airline Crusade https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/canadas-one-man-air-force-and-his
Cloud Sovereignty Framework Self Assessment https://www.suse.com/cloud-sovereignty-framework-assessment/
EFF, Ubuntu and Other Distros Discuss How to Respond to Age-Verification Laws https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/03/09/0544224/eff-ubuntu-and-other-distros-discuss-how-to-respond-to-age-verification-laws
Reading “The Ethnography of Infrastructure” https://www.not-so-obvious.net/reading-the-ethnography-of-infrastructure/
#20yrsago Indie label uses heartfelt note instead of copy-restriction http://blog.resonancefm.com/archives/48
#20yrsago Clay Shirky’s ETECH presentation on the politics of social software https://craphound.com/youshutupetech2006.txt
#20yrsago Judge quotes Adam Sandler movie in decision blasting defendant https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/motion-denied-because-youre-idiot
#15yrsago Video game in your browser’s location bar web.archive.org/web/20110309212313/http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter
#15yrsago Wondrous, detailed map of the history of science fiction https://web.archive.org/web/20110310152548/http://scimaps.org/submissions/7-digital_libraries/maps/thumbs/024_LG.jpg
#15yrsago American Library Association task forces to take on ebook lending https://web.archive.org/web/20110310085634/https://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=5749
#15yrsago Wisconsin capitol bans recording, flags, reading, balloons, chairs, bags, backpacks, photography, etc etc etc https://captimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/more-rules-released-for-state-capitol-visitors/article_f044044f-6183-5128-b718-d5dffbfdb573.html
#15yrsago Librarians Against DRM logo https://web.archive.org/web/20110308170030/https://readersbillofrights.info/librariansagainstDRM
#15yrsago Extinct invertebrates caught in a 40 million year old sex act https://web.archive.org/web/20110303234001/http://news.discovery.com/animals/40-million-year-old-sex-act-captured-in-amber.html
#15yrsago Improvised toilets of earthquake-struck Christchurch https://web.archive.org/web/20110310044912/https://www.showusyourlongdrop.co.nz/
#15yrsago Canadian MP who shills for the record industry is an enthusiastic pirate https://web.archive.org/web/20110310163136/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5673/125/
#15yrsago The Monster: the fraud and depraved indifference that caused the subprime meltdown https://memex.craphound.com/2011/03/07/the-monster-the-fraud-and-depraved-indifference-that-caused-the-subprime-meltdown/
#15yrsago Self-destructing ebooks: paper’s fragility is a bug, not a feature https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/08/ebooks-harpercollins-26-times
#10yrsago Senior U.S. immigration judge says 3 and 4 year old children can represent themselves in court https://web.archive.org/web/20160304201631/http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/03/04/us-judge-says-3-and-4-year-olds-can-represent-themselves-in-immigration-court.html
#10yrsago Crimefighting for fun and profit: data-mining Medicare fraud and likely whistleblowers https://www.wired.com/2016/03/john-mininno-medicare/
#10yrsago Extensive list of space opera cliches https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html
#10yrsago Verizon pays $1.35M FCC settlement for using “supercookies” https://web.archive.org/web/20160308111653/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/verizon-settles-over-supercookies
#10yrsago Group chat: “an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda” https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat/#.1chnl7hf4
#10yrsago Less than a year on, America has all but forgotten the epic Jeep hack https://www.wired.com/2016/03/survey-finds-one-4-americans-remembers-jeep-hack/
#10yrsago Racial justice organizers to FBI vs Apple judge: crypto matters to #blacklivesmatter https://theintercept.com/2016/03/08/the-fbi-vs-apple-debate-just-got-less-white/
#1yrago Gandersauce https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/08/turnabout/#is-fair-play
Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/
Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
https://conference.bioneers.org/
Montreal: Bronfman Lecture (McGill) Apr 10
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disrupter-tickets-1982706623885
London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU)
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691
Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow
Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html
Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2
The Virtual Jewel Box (U Utah)
https://tanner.utah.edu/podcast/enshittification-cory-doctorow-matthew-potolsky/
Tanner Humanities Lecture (U Utah)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Yf1nSyekI
The Lost Cause
https://streets.mn/2026/03/02/book-club-the-lost-cause/
Should Democrats Make A Nuremberg Caucus? (Make It Make Sense)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWxKrnNfrlo
"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"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
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 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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