Bij een aanrijding in Berkel en Rodenrijs is vrijdagavond een bestelbus door het hekwerk van een bedrijfspand gereden. Dat gebeurde na een botsing met een personenauto op de kruising van de Zeppelinstraat. Beide voertuigen raakten zwaar beschadigd.

De gemeente Dordrecht gaat voor de jaarwisseling geen vergunningen voor een vuurwerkshow verlenen aan clubs en verenigingen. Dat zegt burgemeester Nanning Mol in de uitzending van 'In Gesprek Met' op TV Rijnmond. Met die beslissing sluit Dordt zich aan bij tal van andere gemeenten in de regio.

Sadler’s Wells, London
A trio of dances taking influence from Stravinsky, tap and William Blake’s poetry combine with powerful performances exuding showmanship

Damn, there was some amazing dance going on in mid-20th century New York. You had George Balanchine forging a new American ballet, all slick speed and striking angles, and in Harlem there was the Cotton Club and the Savoy, swinging dancefloors and entertainers like the legendary Nicholas Brothers, of whom Balanchine was a fan. There’s a taste of this world in English National Ballet’s latest triple bill, with a distinctly American flavour and a focus on propulsive rhythm.

Balanchine’s Symphony in Three Movements was made in 1972 as a memorial to Stravinsky, although the eponymous music is from 1945. Balanchine and Stravinsky were an absolute dream team, architects of multiple masterpieces. Here the clarity of line and stripped-back nature of the design crossed with the depth and crunchy complexity of Stravinsky’s score is a perfect balance. There’s palpable power from the pit, with the English National Ballet Philharmonic relishing the music under the baton of Maria Seletskaja.

Continue reading...

Friday’s verdict against Manchester City will change everything we understood about their Premier League title triumphs

Welcome, then, to the age of asterisk. Whatever punishment Manchester City and their sovereign wealth fund owners receive at the end of this process, the fact remains, everything is tainted now.

Overturn the tables, scatter the gold coins. Throw your medals in the bin. You cheated to win them. Whatever that thing was, it’s done. Stolen glory, stolen income, stolen joy. Every chant, every “we won the lot”, every awkward documentary scene about the deep, throbbing heart of this empire of love. It all looks odd, sinister, cold, sloppy, but also, and this is always the best response, utterly absurd.

Continue reading...

Social

Woke is NIET dood. De Amerikaanse autoriteit voor renpaardenregistratie heeft fokker Scott Herbertson gedwongen tot het veranderen van de naam 'Austrian Painter' omdat dit te veel zou lijken op een verwijzing naar HITLER. Dit terwijl de eigenaar verklaart dat de Oostenrijkse schilder in kwestie gewoon Gustav Klimt moet zijn. Austrian Painter won afgelopen week bij zijn debuut in Indianapolis glansrijk met een tijd van 40.45 maar die overwinning werd overschaduwd door alle walgelijke nazi-beschuldigingen. Tot overmaat van ramp moet uit dezelfde stal ook het paard New Order van naam veranderen, een naam die natuurlijk niet verwijst naar de nazistische Neuordnung maar naar de Britse postpunkband die voortkwam uit Joy Division (een naam die dan weer WEL verwijst naar WOII). Hoe dan ook hebben de cancelaars gewonnen dus is het tijd voor een POLL.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De politie vergoedt de apparatuur van de fotograaf die zaterdag op het Malieveld bij een politieactie in het water belandde. Dat bevestigt een woordvoerder na berichtgeving van Omroep West. Op beelden die tijdens de rellen op het Malieveld rondgingen, was te zien dat de Spaanse fotograaf door een agent in het water werd geduwd.

De politie liet eerder al weten dat de duw het gevolg was van "het creëren van werkruimte" voor de arrestatie-eenheid van de politie. Volgens een woordvoerder ging het om een "heftige inzet", waarbij de politie "snel moest handelen". Volgens de woordvoerder had de agent mogelijk niet gezien dat er water achter de fotograaf was. Ze benadrukte toen dat ze daarmee "niet wil goedpraten" dat de journalist in het water is gevallen. "Dat is nooit de bedoeling geweest."

Hoe hoog de vergoeding is die de fotograaf krijgt, is onbekend. Aan Omroep West laat de politiewoordvoerder weten dat daarover geen uitspraken worden gedaan in verband met privacy.

As if the pace of software creation hadn't accelerated enough thanks to generative AI coding agents, computer scientists in Japan have devised a way to turbocharge the process of build dependency verification. Speeds can increase by as much as 54x. Software build systems like Make, CMake, and the Zig build system automate the process of turning source code into executable programs. They ensure source files are compiled in the correct order and objects are linked correctly. They provide reproducible rebuilds and handle platform-specific compilation requirements, dependencies, tests, and documentation. But according to Yuta Saito, Kazunori Sakamoto, and Hironori Washizaki from Waseda University, dependency specification management remains a challenge, accounting for more than half of all build errors in large projects. Because existing tools like ptrace impose significant overhead, the researchers have devised a way to improve error detection by analyzing dependencies using extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF)-based system call tracing. They've developed a tool called mkcheck2 that reduces the time and compute cost required to catch software build errors. And they explain their approach in a paper titled "Efficient Build Dependency Verification Using eBPF and Incremental Analysis," published in the Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE/ACM 48th International Conference on Software Engineering. "Our evaluation on a diverse set of open-source projects demonstrates that mkcheck2 reduces the overhead of dependency error detection by up to 99.7 percent compared to existing ptrace-based approaches while maintaining detection accuracy," the authors explain. "Across the entire 300-project Make corpus, the incremental analysis technique lowers the mean analysis time per commit from 1267.49 seconds to just 23.56 seconds, making continuous dependency verification practical in real-world development environments." That's about 54x faster per commit. The researchers say their eBPF-based system call tracer largely avoids the performance overhead imposed by ptrace. eBPF allows sandboxed programs to run within kernel space, where they can perform tasks involving networking, observability, security, and other low-level operations. It's been used for efficiency gains in services like Meta's Strobelight. "By executing tracing code directly in kernel space, we can monitor build processes with minimal impact on build performance," the authors explain in their paper. "Unlike ptrace, which requires process suspension and context switches for each system call, our eBPF-based approach provides non-invasive tracing by operating entirely within the kernel." The authors note that their approach has some limitations. The eBPF-tracing system is Linux-specific, so build systems for other operating systems can't expect the same gains. And there are various build-system scenarios that still present challenges, such as some kinds of redundant dependencies, tracking access to memory-mapped regions, visibility into dependencies for dynamically loaded libraries, network dependencies, and distributed build systems. Nonetheless, the potential for mkcheck2 to cut the overhead of dependency error detection by up to 99.7 percent compared to ptrace-based approaches promises to save a lot of time. ®

Today's links

• Itch scratching: Love, care and self-actualization.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 9/11 x Viridians; Announcing Wikipedia; Infinite Copyright Mickey; Floppy shoulder bag; Wells Fargo's long sleaze; Corbyn wins Labour leadership; Interop v internet monopolies; The billionaires aren't all right; RIP Mike Ford; PGP didn't cause 9/11; Flying Solaris boxen; "Unelectable" Corbyn; Algorithmic management; "That's Disgusting!"; Tax breaks for repair expenses; Climate denial driven by economic doctrine; "100% pumpkin" has no pumpkin; Copyright reversion; "Scholars of the Night"; Apple threatens EU.
• Upcoming appearances: Edmonton, Boston, Brighton, South Bend, Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Paris, OVancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Kilkenny, Montreal.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Itch scratching (permalink)

The thing about a maddening itch between your shoulder blades is that it feels so good when you scratch it, and even better when someone else scratches it, and better still if that person hits the right spot because they love you and they've performed this service for you so often and attentively that they know exactly which spot to hit.

One of the recurring themes in Spider Robinson's short stories and novels is people who have close relationships suddenly realizing that they have acquired a psychic link. He comes up with endless ways to play this scene out, but my favorite – I think it's from one of the later Callahan's tales – is when one person scratches another between the shoulder blades and hits the exact right spot the very first time and they realize that they are now psychically linked.

Maybe it's a primate grooming reflex, maybe it's receiving a gesture of love and care. Maybe those are the same things. Having your itch scratched for you feels good. Not just primates, either: cats with the flexibility to reach any part of their body with all four of their paws and their teeth will nevertheless purr like a badly-tuned diesel outboard when you scratch them just right.

Since the outset, the free software/open source movement has extolled the virtues of technological self-determination, which is to say, deciding how the computers and programs you use will work. This is often described as "scratching your own itch."

There is no question that scratching your own itch in this way is hugely and enduringly satisfying. On my laptop, I have a variety of little scripts and keybindings and bits of automation that I've built up over the years and every time I use one of these, I get a little hit of brain-reward.

The latest: I got tired of alt-tabbing to get to the file explorer, only to discover that I'd closed all my file explorer windows, meaning I had to mouse over to the dock and open a new one. So I bound "Windows key + E" to opening a file explorer after reading a message board post from an ex-Windows user who'd done this (apparently this is a standard Windows keybinding).

I've fully retrained my fingers to type Win-E rather than alt-tab when I want to get at a graphic filesystem and every time I do, I get the tiniest little pleasant jolt of pleasure. I scratched my own itch!

But even better than this are the little scripts that other people have thoughtfully made for me over the years. The oldest of these still in daily use is more than 20 years old, a bash script called "boingpic" (from when I was still working on Boing Boing). When I run this, it iterates interactively through the files ending with "jpg" or "png" on my Desktop, tells me how wide they are, prompts me to resize them or hit enter to keep their size, and then rsyncs them to the directory on my server that corresponds to https://craphound.com/images/.

If this strikes you as weird and inefficient, that's fine, because it does exactly what I need it to do, and I've memorized it through long, long use. And on top of all that, boingpic.sh was written for me by my dear old friend Seth David Schoen, when we were one of a bare handful of EFF staffers in the early oughts and hung out together all the time. Every time I use it, it reminds me of Seth, and good times, and I feel good.

For centuries, people have fought for the right to self-determination. The disability rights rallying cry "Nothing about us without us" actually dates back to 16th century Poland (it was the basis for the formation of a Polish parliament that wrestled power away from the king). Any parent who has avoided a conflict over getting dressed for school by swapping out "Put your clothes on right now!" for "Which would you rather put on first, your shirt or your socks?" knows how far even a little autonomy can go.

I worked as a computer programmer from the age of 17 to about the age of 29, and while I was never a spectacular coder, I was good at it, and I wrote a lot of code for myself that precisely met my needs, which always felt great. It's one of the reasons I have always championed low-code/no-code software development tools, from Logo to Hypercard to Visual Basic to Scratch. Sure, the code that you write with one of these tools might not be "efficient" from a CPU/memory-usage perspective, but the point is that you write it. You don't have to convince someone else to do you a favor, you don't have to part with any of your money – and you don't have to try to get someone else to understand what you mean when you describe the tool you want.

When I worked at Bakka Books (the world's oldest surviving science fiction bookstore, in Toronto), we organized our inventory using an extremely idiosyncratic Filemaker database created by the store's then-owner, John Rose. John lovingly tended that Filemaker app, tweaking it on his days off to make it better suited to the very specific needs of a science fiction bookstore with a giant used section and an important sideline in keeping collectors' want-lists that we consulted whenever we bought more used books. There are doubtless "better" bookstore stock-keeping systems (including the one that Bakka uses now, in its latest incarnation as BakkaPhoenix), but that Filemaker app was John, a presence in the store even when he wasn't there, embodying his management and literary and retail theories on a MacSE by the cash-register.

I am highly skeptical of vibe-coding in the sense of writing code for other people to use. But when I meet people who've vibe-coded their own apps for their own use to scratch their own itches, I completely get their excitement. They've scratched their own itch! I know exactly how good that feels:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/03/rod-logic/#making-flippy-floppy

Sure, I have concerns about this kind of personal vibe-coding, the biggest of which is that if you aren't a skilled programmer, you might end up vibe-coding an app that you can't adequately assess, so it might contain subtle defects that make you vulnerable to security risks and/or expose your sensitive information to the public internet. But there are domains and use-cases where I am totally willing to accept that vibe-coding can enhance someone else's life in important ways, by letting them build exactly the widget they need, and if (when) it breaks, they can just do it again.

This is even better than "nothing about us without us." It's not just insisting that someone else "gather your requirements" before producing a tool that you will rely on and require. This is you, producing that tool for yourself, which means that you might be able to embed features and affordances into it that you can't even articulate, let alone defend. There something undeniably great about scratching your own itch and hitting exactly the right spot.

Even so: the experience of working through your requirements with someone else is clarifying and disciplining, because while you are the domain expert on your needs, that doesn't mean you're the domain expert on how to address those needs. You have the worm's eye view of your life and your needs, while an expert can have the bird's eye view that comes from working with many people, exposing them to many ways of solving problems, including ones you've never thought of.

Darren, the contractor who put in our new kitchen a couple years ago, had ideas for cabinet- and appliance-placement that had been refined by seeing, demolishing, building and revising orders of magnitude more kitchens than we had ever cooked in, and moreover, he clearly cared about our long-term happiness in our own home. The kitchen is great.

That care makes all the difference. Skilled craftspeople can bring expertise to the project that doesn't trump your needs, but can be co-equal with them. Scratching your own itch is great, having your itch scratched by someone who cares enough about you to know where your itch is, that's even better. But best of all is for that person to find the itch you didn't even know you had and scratch that, too. That's something that relies on the human connection that the best free/open source projects embody, the co-creation and community between developers and users.

If you've ever filed a bug against a free/open project and worked through the testing the devs need to squash it, you've experienced that co-creation. The devs want their code to work, because they care about the users, and you as a user can help other users and the devs by reciprocating that care through conscientious, patient, attentive bug reporting and testing.

I think that so much of the outrage about slop code – floods of garbagey pull requests and bug reports – is the result of the collapse of this dynamic. Slop's not merely annoying or time-wasting: it's a betrayal of the love and care that goes into writing and maintaining code for others. Your cat can scratch any part of its body, but it wants you to scratch it, and it will hiss at you and even claw at you if you scratch it the wrong way.

(Image: Orrling and Tomer S, CC BY-SA 3.0, modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• AI Workers' Inquiry 2026 https://techworkersinquiry.org/ai/

• Machine god metaphors eat your brain https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/machine-god-metaphors-eat-your-brain

• Here’s What California Is Learning From Solar Panels Built Over Irrigation Canals https://www.kqed.org/science/2002033/heres-what-california-is-learning-from-solar-panels-built-over-irrigation-canals

• Toads in a Pond https://longforgottenhauntedmansion.blogspot.com/2026/09/toads-in-pond.html

• The Federal Agency That’s Supposed to Protect Consumers Just Made Another Business-Friendly Move https://www.propublica.org/article/cfpb-consumer-complaint-database

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Surveillance is a security failure https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2001/sep/27/onlinesupplement.afghanistan

#25yrsago 9/11: the Viridian take https://web.archive.org/web/20011023095346/http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/251-300/00272_au_revoir_belle_epoque.html

#25yrsago Announcing Wikipedia https://web.archive.org/web/20060517024408/http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/9/24/43858/2479

#25yrsago Phil Zimmerman says PGP can't be blamed for 9/11 https://slashdot.org/story/01/09/24/162236/philip-zimmermann-and-guilt-over-pgp

#20yrsago RIP, sf writer John M Ford https://memex.craphound.com/2006/09/25/rip-sf-writer-john-m-ford/

#20yrsago Gigantic Little Nemo book does justice to the loveliest comic ever https://memex.craphound.com/2006/09/25/gigantic-little-nemo-book-does-justice-to-the-loveliest-comic-ever/

#20yrsago 747s as flying Unix hosts: SCADA in the sky https://memex.craphound.com/2011/09/25/747s-as-flying-unix-hosts-scada-in-the-sky/

#20yrsago Mickey Infinite Copyright mashup https://web.archive.org/web/20061027141551/http://python.net/~goodger/projects/graphics/#mickey-s-infinite-copyright#mickey-s-infinite-copyright

#20yrsago HOWTO make a shoulder-bag out of floppies https://web.archive.org/web/20061025050629/http://www.instructables.com/id/E86165FIENERIE2PV6/?ALLSTEPS

#15yrsago TOSAmend: turn all online “I Agree” buttons into negotiations https://web.archive.org/web/20110925122850/https://www.owocki.com/2011/09/02/tosamend-the-easy-way-to-modify-web-service-terms-of-service-agreements/

#15yrsago That’s Disgusting! Awesomely gross picture book https://memex.craphound.com/2011/09/26/thats-disgusting-awesomely-gross-picture-book/

#10yrsago Swedish law will let you write off the money you spend fixing things rather than trashing them https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/waste-not-want-not-sweden-tax-breaks-repairs

#10yrsago Climate denial’s internal contradictions spring from a need to defend economic doctrine https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-016-1198-6

#10yrsago There’s no pumpkin in “100% canned pumpkin” https://web.archive.org/web/20160927152542/https://www.foodandwine.com/news/i-just-found-out-canned-pumpkin-isnt-pumpkin-all-and-my-whole-life-basically-lie

#10yrsago The AI Now Report: social/economic implications of near-future AI https://web.archive.org/web/20161014142521/https://artificialintelligencenow.com/media/documents/AINowSummaryReport_3.pdf

#10yrsago Whistleblowing Wells Fargo loan officer describes years of fraudulent, criminal culture in the bank https://truthout.org/articles/wells-fargo-whistleblower-they-are-all-riding-the-stagecoach-to-hell/

#10yrsago Writer in 29th year of solitary confinement barred from reading his own book https://solitarywatch.com/2016/09/20/writer-in-solitary-confinement-is-barred-from-reading-his-own-book/

#10yrsago Despite sabotage and dirty tricks, Jeremy Corbyn wins Labour leadership race in unprecedented landslide https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37461219

#10yrsago Who decided Corbyn was “unelectable”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8os-nKuoM3o

#10yrsago The democratization of censorship: when anyone can kill as site as effectively as a government can https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/the-democratization-of-censorship/

#5yrsago Demonopolizing the internet with interoperability https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/24/comcom-acm/#cacm

#5yrsago Copyright reversion, bargaining power, and authors’ rights https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

#5yrsago The Scholars of Night https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/mike-ford-rides-again/#cold-war-zeitgeist

#1yrago Apple threatens to stop selling iPhones in the EU https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers

#1yrago The billionaires aren't OK https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/24/robo-lickspittle/#just-not-evenly-distributed

#1yrago Rage Against the (Algorithmic Management) Machine https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/25/roboboss/#counterapps

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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

• Boston: The Post-American Internet: Possibilities for a new internet created by an American Hermit Kingdom (MIT Media Lab), Sep 30
  https://www.media.mit.edu/events/the-post-american-internet-possibilities-for-a-new-internet-created-by-an-american-hermit-kingdom/

• Boston: Rethinking Our Relationship with AI, Sep 30 (Emtech)
  https://event.technologyreview.com/emtech-future-2026/detailed-agenda

• Boston: The Paradox of Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs (Harvard Berkman Klein), Sep 30
  https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/running-harder-falling-faster-paradox-enshittification-and-reverse-centaurs

• Brighton: Digital Sovereignty and the Post-American Internet (Green Party Conference), Oct 3
  https://www.openrightsgroup.org/events/digital-sovereignty-and-the-post-american-internet/

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

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

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

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

• Paris: Slow Tech Summit, Oct 15
  https://slowtechsummit.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Could Tech Bosses Destroy Life As We Know It? (Politics JOE)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL4VktU0SgY

• Are 'AI Apocalypse' Warnings Just Marketing? (What's Left)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXd9HwIE5bo

• The Real AI Threat Isn’t What You’ve Been Told (The Tea with Myriam François)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc8It00fRsA

• Fascists may come after the AI bubble bursts (You&AI)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2WN64aQeYQ

• What Would a Normal Person Do (Trashfuture)
  https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture/posts/what-would-do-169247456

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Latest books (permalink)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Upcoming books (permalink)

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

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

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

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

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 511 (19222 total).

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

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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

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

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

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ISSN: 3066-764X

Built throughout the 1960s and ’70s, the Aylesbury Estate is an enormous public housing complex in South East London that at its peak, boasted 11,000 residents. Like other social projects of this kind, Aylesbury has struggled with violence and vandalism throughout its run, and in 2005, local officials decided to demolish the estate and rebuild in phases rather than rehabilitate the existing structures.

Living and working in South East London for nearly four decades, Harriet Mena Hill was familiar with the area, but it wasn’t until 2018 when she was commissioned to teach a summer program for young residents that she really engaged with the project. She made large portraits from wool, blending dyed roving to delineate windows, shape bowed electrical wires, and even mimic graffiti spray-painted on outdoor walls.

Forming the series Soft Concrete, the textile pieces cast a largely gray environment of stone and steel in soft fiber. The body of work, Hill says, was a “repositioning of how the estate is perceived. Historically, it has been widely portrayed in the media as violent and intimidating, as a place without hope.”

In contrast, Soft Concrete “presents the estate as a place of living and community. From a distance, the portraits look like photographs or realistic paintings, but on closer inspection, the material reveals itself to be wool, hand blended for subtle colour mixing used to depict small active details of domestic life,” the artist adds.

Hill is broadly interested in the ways that communities and the objects they interact with can become vessels for shared memories, so when the estate began to be razed in 2020, she started to collect fragments of concrete from the construction site. “It was a direct response to the situation of residents who were required to stay at home as the demolition of adjoining blocks, the homes of their former neighbours, continued throughout lockdown, in spite of wider restrictions,” she tells Colossal.

Before its destruction, several tenants had advocated for renovations rather than demolition, hoping to preserve the community and homes they’d built. In an interview with the BBC in 2023, long-time resident Aysen Dennis lamented being forced to leave the estate after 30 years. Local administrators found her new housing in central London, but it wasn’t the same. “The council gave me everything I asked for. It’s on a high floor. There’s lots of light. I can see the park,” Dennis said. “But it’s not my home.”

Intimate in scale, Hill’s paintings glimpse hallways and pockets of windows that are similarly sliced from their larger contexts, the ragged edges of concrete framing the largely domestic spaces. Part of the ongoing series titled The Aylesbury Fragments, the scenes capture the run-down infrastructure of buildings left standing during the phased reconstruction process.

Although regeneration began in 2013, it’s less than half complete, and Hill has completed more than 150 paintings to date. As demolition continues, she adds to her ever-changing collection of concrete remnants. “I live with the unpainted pieces for months, sometimes years, getting to know their shape before I begin working on them,” the artist says, noting that as long as there are buildings still under construction, she’ll continue painting these small tributes to the community once housed within their walls.

Hill has exhibitions slated for London and across the U.K. throughout 2027. Follow along on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article On Concrete Remnants of London’s Aylesbury Estate, Harriet Mena Hill Preserves a Community appeared first on Colossal.

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