Today's links
- How the Epstein Class recruits: Oh wait, THAT'S what this was?!
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- Object permanence: MPAA blasted in WSJ; RFID skimmers; Post-Soviet inventions; "Farthing"; "Dirty, Drunk and Punk"; Dweb v founders' frailty; Tax cheating made simple; Oregon v corporate medicine.
- Upcoming appearances: Toronto, NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago, London, Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
- 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.
How the Epstein Class recruits (permalink)
Perhaps you've encountered the stories about Dialog, an extremely weird secret society associated with Peter "Antichrist" Thiel, whose membership data and details have leaked this week:
https://www.wired.com/story/how-peter-thiels-private-dialog-club-secretly-ranks-its-members/
By all appearances, this is a comically creepy, awful talking-shop for the Epstein Class. It's not all that surprising, in retrospect, to learn that all these terrible people were in a group chat, secretly assigning ratings to one another, and periodically gathering to have tedious panels about, I dunno, "race science" or whatever.
I'm on the oligarchy beat, so stories about Dialog have been popping up in my RSS feed for the past week or so, but it wasn't until last night that I made a connection.
A year or two ago, I got an invite to speak at an event. This is normal, I get a lot of these and I do a lot of public speaking. I'm good at it, and it's a good way for me to reach people and get them energized about the issues I care about. Sometimes, I do these talks for free. Sometimes I get paid.
When I first glanced at this speaking offer, I thought, "Huh, I guess this is one to send on to my speaking agent," because the names the offer dropped were a bunch of rich people, and so I assumed that they were having some kind of summit and looking for a keynoter. Then I read a little more carefully and realized they – these billionaires and their lickspittles! – wanted me to pay them, thousands of dollars, so that I could shlep my ass to some luxury resort in order to have the privilege of speaking to them.
I came up as a science fiction writer, and at some point, every sf writer learns "Yog's Law," coined by James D Macdonald when he was running the science fiction forum on GEnie, under the screen name "Yog Sysop":
money flows toward the writer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Macdonald#Educational_work
In other words, whenever you, as a creative worker, are approached by someone who wants to "help" you with your work, and they want you to pay them, they are a scammer, preying upon your essential human need to communicate with others. Run away.
Which is what I did. I deleted the email.
Then, I got another one a couple months later. Ugh. I wrote a mail rule that auto-deleted anything from that sender and promptly forgot about the matter. Until last night.
I just had a look at my Trash folder and yup, these people are still emailing me in hopes that I will give them thousands of dollars to join their weird secret society.
I don't know if everyone who joined Dialog got an email like the one I was sent, but if you want to understand how at least some of those people ended up on those membership rolls, well, now you know: they were schmucks who'd never learned Yog's Law.
(Image: Gage Skidmore 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, CC BY-SA 2.0; TechCrunch50-2008, Dan Taylor 1, 2, CC BY 2.0; modified)
Hey look at this (permalink)
- EFF Joins 60+ Groups Urging the UK to Halt Face Estimation at the Border https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/joins-60-groups-urging-uk-halt-face-estimation-border
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AI Shouldn’t Dictate Our Democracy. Vote Alex Bores. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6KQ2yDK1Q4
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tokenalysis and john henry https://backofmind.substack.com/p/tokenalysis-and-john-henry
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Making Free Warhammer Terrain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6YC-cOngHg
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Mechanical Watch https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
Object permanence (permalink)
#20yrsago Wendy Seltzer smokes the MPAA in the Wall St Journal https://web.archive.org/web/20061016014904/http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115047057428882434-1V_FEK_CJelMfytdST8APRW7cZw_20060720.html
#20yrsago HOWTO build an RFID skimmer https://web.archive.org/web/20060703081753/http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~yash/kw-usenix06/index.html
#20yrsago Desperate inventions of post-Soviet Russia https://memex.craphound.com/2006/06/20/desperate-inventions-of-post-soviet-russia/
#20yrsago NYT falsely reports that Wikipedia has added restrictions https://jimmywales.com/2006/06/17/the-new-york-times-gets-it-exactly-backwards/
#20yrsago Farthing: Heart-rending alternate history about British-Reich peace https://memex.craphound.com/2006/06/20/farthing-heart-rending-alternate-history-about-british-reich-peace/
#15yrsago Dirty, Drunk and Punk: the untold history of Toronto’s BUNCHOFFUCKINGGOOFS https://memex.craphound.com/2011/06/20/dirty-drunk-and-punk-the-untold-history-of-torontos-bunchoffuckinggoofs/
#10yrsago Video: Guarding the Decentralized Web from its founders’ human frailty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlN6wjeCJYk
#10yrsago Unnamed Canadian telco sabotages’ library’s low-income internet service https://web.archive.org/web/20160618143132/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/canadian-telecoms-limiting-wifi-low-income-families-toronto-public-libraries-digital-divide
#10yrsago Clarence Thomas rumored to be considering retirement https://web.archive.org/web/20160622135444/http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/end-of-conservative-supreme-court-clarence-thomas-may-be-next-to-leave/article/2594317
#10yrsago Tolkien elf or prescription drug name? https://web.archive.org/web/20160609021515/https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/literature/drug-or-tolkien-elf-quiz.htm
#5yrsago The EU, Tech Trustbusting, and Trade Wars https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/20/the-eu-tech-trustbusting-and-trade-wars/
#5yrsago How to cheat on your taxes https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/20/la-hougue/#complexity
#1yrago Oregon bans the corporate practice of medicine https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/20/the-doctor-will-gouge-you-now/#states-rights
==
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- Toronto: The Sovereignty Debate (IAB Canada's State of the Nation), Jun 23
https://iabcanada.com/state-of-the-nation-2026 -
Toronto: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI (Osler Records/Type Books), Jun 23
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-book-launch-and-talk-tickets-1991501299998 -
NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html -
Philadelphia: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with David Williams (Fitler Club/Philadelphia Citizen), Jun 25
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-book-event-tickets-1990110326559 -
Chicago: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Rick Perlstein (Exile in Bookville), Jun 26
https://exileinbookville.com/events/50628 -
London: Idler Festival, Jul 11
https://www.idler.co.uk/festival/ -
Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales -
Sydney: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Aug 23-24
https://festivalofdangerousideas.com/cory-doctorow/ -
Melbourne: Enshittification at the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25
https://www.wheelercentre.com/events-tickets/season-2026/cory-doctorow-enshittification -
Brighton: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8
https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/ -
London: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle's Picadilly), Sep 9
https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn -
South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/
Recent appearances (permalink)
- How to Think About AI Before It’s Too Late (Galaxy Brain)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPQNPJ0CEPo -
The future of world governance, with Kim Stanley Robinson (UN Independent Expert on International Order)
https://www.youtube.com/live/wJvBvYdaAMY -
How to Think About Artificial Intelligence (KUER)
https://radiowest.kuer.org/show/radiowest/2026-06-16/cory-doctorow-on-how-to-think-about-artificial-intelligence -
The Enshittification of Life, the Universe, & Everything (Luke Savage)
https://www.lukewsavage.com/p/the-enshittification-of-life-the -
Cory Doctorow's digital jail-break (DW In Focus)
https://www.dw.com/en/cory-doctorows-digital-jail-break/audio-77414035
Latest books (permalink)
- "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
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"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).
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"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).
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"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).
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"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).
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"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.
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"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Upcoming books (permalink)
- "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/)
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"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
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"The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027
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"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
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"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. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.
- "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.
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"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
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A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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HOUSTON (ANP) - Ruim 15.000 mensen hebben zaterdag in Houston meegelopen in een optocht van supporters achter de Oranjebus aan naar het Houston Stadium, waar het Nederlands elftal op het WK om 19.00 uur tegen Zweden begint. Dat meldt een woordvoerder van de KNVB, op basis van cijfers van de lokale autoriteiten.
Daarmee ligt het aantal fans ongeveer gelijk als bij de mars van zondag in Dallas, toen Oranje met 2-2 gelijkspeelde tegen Japan.
Bij WK's en EK's is het inmiddels traditie dat de Nederlandse supporters zich verzamelen voor een feest en vervolgens achter de Oranjebus aanlopen richting stadion. De KNVB was bij de duels met Japan en Zweden eerst uitgegaan van 10.000 aanwezigen in de Oranjeoptocht. Die aantallen vallen hoger uit, omdat veel Amerikanen zich met oranje kleding aansluiten en graag deel willen uitmaken van het feest.
Nederland speelt in de nacht van donderdag op vrijdag (01.00 uur Nederlandse tijd) de derde en laatste groepswedstrijd. Dan is Tunesië de tegenstander.
AARBURG (ANP) - Tadej Pogačar heeft zaterdag de vierde en voorlaatste etappe van de Ronde van Zwitserland gewonnen. De viervoudig Tourwinnaar van UAE Team Emirates was in een tijdrit over 23,7 kilometer rond Aarburg drie tienden van een seconde sneller dan Mathieu van der Poel. De Noor Tobias Foss werd derde op 7 seconden.
Mathieu van der Poel zette met zijn tijdrit verrassend de snelste tijd neer. Zo was hij sneller dan Pogačars Belgische knecht Tim Wellens. Lang kon niemand aan de tijd van de Nederlander komen, totdat klassementsleider Pogačar als laatste renner over de streep kwam.
Zondag wacht de renners in de vijfde en laatste etappe een zware dag in de Alpen. De bergpas Col de la Croix moet twee keer in zijn geheel worden beklommen in de rit over 150,7 kilometer rond Villars-sur-Ollon.
In het algemeen klassement heeft Pogačar zijn voorsprong op nummer 2 Richard Carapaz uit Ecuador uitgebreid naar 4.22 minuten. Mathias Vacek uit Tsjechië staat derde op 4.27. Wilco Kelderman is de beste Nederlander op de achtste plaats (5.51).
Barbecuen is niet per se een doodzonde, maar de combinatie van verbrand vlees, rook en grote hoeveelheden rood en bewerkt vlees maakt een zomer vol grillavonden allesbehalve onschuldig voor je gezondheid. Wie geregeld zwartgeblakerde hamburgers en worsten eet, stapelt ongemerkt stoffen op die op de lange termijn het kankerrisico kunnen verhogen.
Barbecue als zomerse lifestyle die structureel ongezonder is dan we willen toegeven: het gaat minder om één zwart worstje, meer om een patroon van verbrand vlees, rook en veel vlees per keer.
Zwarte randjes, echte risico’s
Die zwarte korstjes op vlees, vis en zelfs groente bevatten polycyclische aromatische koolwaterstoffen (PAK’s), kankerverwekkende stoffen die ontstaan als vet en marinade in de kolen druppelen en verbranden. Ook heterocyclische aromatische amines (HCA’s) – gevormd bij hoge temperaturen in vlees – worden in verband gebracht met een verhoogd risico op onder meer darm- en alvleesklierkanker.
Zetmeelrijke producten zoals brood en aardappelen op de barbecue produceren bovendien acrylamide zodra ze hard worden gebruind, een stof die in dierstudies kankerverwekkend is en die volgens Europese voedselautoriteiten beter zoveel mogelijk beperkt wordt. Het Voedingscentrum adviseert daarom letterlijk om zwarte randjes weg te snijden en aardappelproducten goudgeel in plaats van donkerbruin te bakken.
Minder slecht barbecuen
Toxicologen zijn het erover eens dat het risico vooral zit in hoge temperaturen, directe vlammen en langdurige verbranding, niet in het barbecueprincipe zelf. Door indirect te grillen, vlamcontact te vermijden en vet en marinade op te vangen in een lekbakje, daalt de vorming van PAK’s aanzienlijk.
Een gasbarbecue maakt het makkelijker om de temperatuur te beheersen en verbrandingsproducten te beperken, al blijft de boodschap hetzelfde: matig met rood en bewerkt vlees, vul het rooster met groente en laat zwart simpelweg niet meer door de keuring. Dan wordt de barbecue geen gezondheidsfeest, maar wel een minder schadelijke traditie
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