The UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is funding projects aimed at delivering connectivity using high-flying aircraft, including technology to beam power from the ground to keep them in the air. Britain's science and technology body, inspired by America's DARPA but on a more modest budget, says it is backing 18 projects to develop aircraft capable of operating reliably and cost-effectively in the stratosphere, as part of a program known as Enduring Atmospheric Platforms. Success will be measured by whether any aircraft can continuously supply 300 W of power to a communications payload for an entire week, while holding station above the UK. The intent is to create an alternative to orbital satellites for providing connectivity to underserved parts of the UK and elsewhere in the world. These are known as high-altitude pseudo-satellites (HAPS). The agency says that satellites have been the default way to reach users or communities that are not well served by terrestrial networks, but their distance and orbits impose physical limits on what they can deliver. ARIA is allocating £70 million ($94 million) in funding over three and a half years for the projects, which will tackle the power and reliability challenges of sustained operations above the UK. The projects are split into three technical areas, with TA1 set to cover enabling technologies, TA2 comprising system integration and testing, and TA3 focused on deployment and communications. ARIA highlighted a project called Carousel from aerospace startup Menapia. This plans to produce a constellation of high-altitude multi-rotor aircraft, capable of routine operations at altitudes up to 20 km (12 miles), with the intention of forming a persistent "canopy" over the UK. Another is Enduring Drone Networks, being developed by VFP Aerospace, which is aiming for persistent presence via a relay team of units that will cycle between their service altitude and ground stations for recharging. It says it is targeting a production cost of £50,000 ($67,000) per drone. In the enabling technologies category, a firm called Hypanode Ltd is working on a fuel cell power system to deliver 20 times more energy than current battery technology. Scalable Laser Ltd is developing laser-based power beaming technology, pairing high-power laser diodes with advanced photovoltaic receivers, while Space Solar Engineering Ltd is looking at radio frequency power beaming to deliver continuous power to a HAPS aircraft. A more exotic-sounding technology is Stratospheric Navigation and Gravity (STRAT-NAV) from the University of Bath. This seeks to extend the endurance of HAPS craft by allowing them to predict and make use of atmospheric gravity waves – caused when air is forced upward by weather fronts or hills, and gravity pulls it back down, creating a ripple. "This research expands the UK's leadership in high-altitude platforms to become the place where this industry is designed, built, and scaled," says Rico Chandra, ARIA's program director for Enduring Atmospheric Platforms. "Getting there means backing bold ideas, from fixed-wing solar aircraft to designs nobody predicted, including aircraft that fly on spinning wings instead of propellers." ARIA funds teams of scientists and engineers to pursue cutting-edge research. It is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST). It was until recently chaired by entrepreneur Matt Clifford, who stepped down after taking up a role with US AI firm Anthropic. The agency was also controversially spared being asked to make savings leading up to the UK government's Spending Review last year. ®

De Israëlische makers van de documentaire NAZA, over de genocide in Gaza, ontvingen afgelopen weekend een staande ovatie op het filmfestival van Venetië. Op last van een Israëlische minister wordt onderzocht of hun staatsburgerschap ze kan worden ontnomen. Het leger spreekt van „valse beschuldigingen”.

Schakelen we meteen direct LIVE naar Den Haag want was het gisteren nog allemaal Prinsjesdag en vree en SAAI, vandaag gaan de hoeden af en kan het minderheidskabinet rekenen op een spervuur aan vuurwerk vanuit de oppositie. Niemand heeft er nog zin in, niemand is tevreden, niemand heeft vertrouwen, iedereen ziet achteruitgang en de miljoenennota was weer niks, maar het kabinet-Jetten wil natuurlijk wel lekker blijven zitten, dus verwacht vanuit Vak K geslijm, gevlij, gelik, geglibber, gepalaver, gelebber, geouwehoer en misschien zelfs wat geboer. U kent het beter als praten, praten, praten. De linkse leider kent u ook, da's Jesse, alleen op rechts is het nog even die vraag wie het spervuurvoortouw neemt. Wordt het Chris, Gidi, Joost, Henk, Mona, Ralf, oppositiekanon Ruben van oppositiepartij VVD of toch good ol' Geert? Wij zetten ons geld op stem van een generatie JANTJE STRUIJS. De belangrijkste praatvraag is evengoed: gaat dit land over links of gaat dit land over rechts? Tijd om dat eens algemeen politiek te beschouwen.
Livestream + sprekerslijst na de klik.
Update 10:22 - Openingszet Geert Wilders: een informatieverzoek over MinFin Heinens conceptbegroting. Binnen een halfuur graag!
Update 10:23 - Klaver trapt (eigenlijk als tweede nu) af met een HOERAATJE. Geert Wilders interrumpeert: Fleur Agema 50 HOERA.

Het toetje is van Mona

Treurig nieuws: Bartina Koeman, de vrouw van Ronald Koeman, is op 65-jarige leeftijd overleden aan de gevolgen van chronische borstkanker. Op Instagram schrijft de ex bondscoach: "Met intens verdriet, maar ook met grote trots en liefde, nemen wij afscheid van mijn prachtige vrouw, onze allerliefste mama en oma." Dan is de vervelende afsluiting van Ronald Koemans periode bij het Nederlands Elftal natuurlijk weer een bijzaak. Ze kregen samen drie kinderen, Tim, Debbie en Ronald Jr. Veel te jong. RIP.

Ronald Koeman op Instagram

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Een bericht gedeeld door Ronald Koeman (@ronaldkoeman)

Een chemische stof die massaal wordt gebruikt in verpakkingen van eten en drinken kan de gevoeligheid voor insuline binnen enkele dagen verminderen. Voor het eerst is dat effect aangetoond in een experiment bij mensen.

Het gaat om bisfenol A (BPA), een van de meest geproduceerde chemicaliën ter wereld. De stof zit sinds de jaren zestig in talloze plastic verpakkingen en epoxyharsen, waaronder coatings aan de binnenkant van voedsel- en drankblikjes. BPA wordt zo veel gebruikt dat de stof naar schatting in de urine van meer dan 90 procent van de bevolking voorkomt.

In het experiment kregen 40 gezonde jongvolwassenen vijf dagen lang dagelijks een lage dosis BPA of een placebo. De gebruikte hoeveelheid bleef binnen de grens die de Amerikaanse Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) als veilig beschouwt. Verder aten alle deelnemers hetzelfde.

Na vijf dagen was de insulinegevoeligheid in de BPA-groep met 9 procent afgenomen. In de placebogroep nam die licht toe. "Deze resultaten leveren het eerste bewijs bij mensen dat kortdurende orale toediening van BPA de insulinegevoeligheid kan verminderen."

Kans op diabetes

Dat is relevant omdat een verminderde gevoeligheid voor insuline een rol speelt bij het ontstaan van diabetes type 2. "Gezien het feit dat diabetes een belangrijke doodsoorzaak is in de VS, is het cruciaal om zelfs de kleinste factoren te begrijpen die bijdragen aan de ziekte", zei diabetesonderzoeker Todd Hagobian.

De EPA hanteert momenteel een veilige dagelijkse referentiedosis van 0,05 milligram BPA per kilogram lichaamsgewicht. Die grens werd al in 1988 vastgesteld. Sindsdien hebben duizenden dierstudies negatieve effecten van lage doses BPA laten zien. Bevolkingsonderzoek bij mensen bracht hogere blootstelling bovendien in verband met onder meer vruchtbaarheidsproblemen, veranderingen in de neurologische ontwikkeling, hart- en vaatproblemen, diabetes type 2 en insulineresistentie. Zulke verbanden bewijzen op zichzelf geen oorzakelijk effect.

De nieuwe studie komt daar dichter bij. Mogelijk verstoort BPA de door insuline gestimuleerde verwerking van glucose in skeletspieren. In Europa is BPA inmiddels niet meer toegestaan in de meeste voedings- en drankproducten.

Bron: Science Alert

STRAATSBURG (ANP) - De druk van de EU op Rusland moet verder worden opgevoerd, zei voorzitter Ursula von der Leyen van de Europese Commissie. "Daarvoor zijn niet altijd nieuwe sancties nodig, maar vooral handhaving van de bestaande sancties", zei de politica.

De EU werkt momenteel aan het 22e sanctiepakket tegen Rusland.

"Onze sancties zijn pijnlijk. Ze zetten de Russische economie enorm onder druk. Rusland probeert er alles aan te doen om ze te omzeilen. We moeten dus elke maas in de wet dichten", zei Von der Leyen.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Zeven XR-demonstranten die na actievoeren op Prinsjesdag werden aangehouden, worden vervolgd. Dat laat een politiewoordvoerder woensdag weten. Drie van hen werden dinsdag vastgehouden en zijn om 17.00 uur vrijgelaten.

Zes demonstranten van Extinction Rebellion (XR) werden aangehouden vanwege het bekladden van het wegdek, nadat zij rode verf op de route van de koninklijke stoet hadden gegooid. De zevende XR-demonstrant wordt vervolgd voor dierenmishandeling. Deze persoon zou met een spuitbus met verf een hoge toon hebben veroorzaakt waar de politiepaarden last van hadden.

Verder heeft de politie drie mensen aangehouden voor het bekladden van de Tweede Kamer en elf personen vanwege een onaangekondigde demonstratie. Zij worden niet vervolgd.

STRAATSBURG (ANP) - Er moet een Europese Veiligheidsraad komen, dat wil voorzitter Ursula von der Leyen van de Europese Commissie. "De urgentie is duidelijk. En het principe is eenvoudig: de veiligheid van Europa is ondeelbaar." Dat heeft ze woensdag gezegd in haar State of the Union, de jaarlijkse speech waarin ze de speerpunten voor het nieuwe politieke jaar uiteenzet.

Ook moet er een Europees veiligheidsprotocol voor noodgevallen komen, een Europees 'Artikel 4'. "Wanneer een lidstaat dit activeert, komen alle lidstaten bijeen. Om een ​​Europese reactie te coördineren, verdere escalatie af te schrikken en de gevolgen te beperken", zei Von der Leyen.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De Inspectie Leefomgeving en Transport (ILT) houdt vanwege bezuinigingen volgend jaar op een aantal terreinen minder intensief toezicht. Het gaat onder meer om het vervoer van gevaarlijke stoffen, de taxibranche en geluidshinder in de luchtvaart en op het spoor. Andere onderwerpen krijgen prioriteit, zoals pfas-vervuiling, cyberweerbaarheid en de veiligheid van producten van Aziatische webshops.

Door de bezuinigingen op de Rijksoverheid van dit en het vorige kabinet en het aflopen van tijdelijke financiering verwacht de ILT een steeds krapper budget, waarbij de daling van de begroting oploopt tot 14,6 miljoen euro in 2031. De begroting voor volgend jaar gaat over 251,6 miljoen euro. Tegelijkertijd stijgen de kosten van leveranciers en moet de toezichthouder investeren in ICT. Dit noopt de ILT tot "nog scherpere keuzes" over de inzet van personeel en geld.

"We kunnen niet meer overal dezelfde mate van toezicht bieden. Dat zal merkbaar zijn en kan botsen met de verwachting die de samenleving heeft van de ILT", waarschuwt inspecteur-generaal Mattheus Wassenaar in het jaarplan.

Gevaarlijke stoffen

Bij het toezicht op het transport van gevaarlijke stoffen gaat de ILT meer risico- en datagericht werken, waarbij de aandacht vooral uitgaat naar de branches waar het toezicht naar verwachting het meest effect heeft. Inspecties op de weg of bij bedrijven voert de ILT nog maar minimaal uit, zich beperkend tot de wettelijke taken. Ook het toezicht op het beheer van belangrijke dijken en dammen gebeurt vanaf volgend jaar meer risicogericht.

Rondom geluidshinder van vliegtuigen zal de ILT minder vragen van burgers afhandelen. Bij het toezicht op drinkwaterbedrijven stopt de toezichthouder met prestatievergelijkingen en kijkt de instantie meer naar het bestuur van de drinkwaterbedrijven. De ILT voert verder minder strafrechtelijke onderzoeken uit, namelijk vijftien in plaats van twintig. De meeste aandacht gaat daarbij uit naar milieucriminaliteit. In de taxibranche heeft de ILT onvoldoende budget voor acties tegen illegaal taxivervoer.

De controle op producten van webshops van buiten de EU wordt juist intensiever. Er komen meer controles aan de grens met andere instanties. Daarnaast blijft volgens Wassenaar veel aandacht uitgaan naar de bodemkwaliteit. "Keuzes maken hoort bij het werk van een inspectie. Ons uitgangspunt blijft dan ook hetzelfde: we willen daar zijn waar we de meeste maatschappelijke schade kunnen voorkomen."

STRAATSBURG (ANP) - De EU moet een intensievere samenwerking aangaan met Canada die de relatie verdiept, onder meer op het gebied van handel en defensie. Dat stelt voorzitter van de Europese Commissie Ursula von der Leyen in haar State of the Union voor de EU. Canada moet het eerste "geassocieerd lid van de Europese Unie" worden, zei ze.

De Canadese premier Mark Carney is ook aanwezig in Straatsburg bij de toespraak waarin Von der Leyen de speerpunten voor het nieuwe politieke jaar uiteenzet.

Het gaat lukken om de daders van de spoorwegsabotage, waardoor de dienstregeling dinsdag in het midden en oosten van het land werd ontregeld, te pakken. Die verwachting sprak justitieminister David van Weel uit voordat hij aanschoof bij de Algemene Politieke Beschouwingen. Topvrouw Mirjam van Velthuizen van ProRail zei eerder dat er weinig camerabeelden van de sabotage zijn. Maar er zijn volgens de VVD-bewindsman andere manieren om de daders te vinden.

"Er zijn allemaal manieren om hierachter te komen. Er is materiaal achtergelaten, dat komt ook ergens vandaan. Onderschat de politie en het OM niet. Ik zeg heel vaak: het is 2026 inmiddels, we hebben heel veel technieken en we komen erachter", aldus Van Weel.

UTRECHT (ANP) - In de nacht van dinsdag op woensdag heeft spoorbeheerder ProRail geen nieuwe buizen op het spoor gevonden. In de avond werd op het spoor tussen Apeldoorn en Deventer nog wel een buis aangetroffen. Dinsdag, Prinsjesdag, zorgde materiaal zoals buizen en kabels dat op meer dan 35 plekken op de spoorrails was gelegd voor een flinke ontregeling van het treinverkeer.

Volgens ProRail rijden woensdag alle treinen weer.

Het is nog onduidelijk wie er achter de sabotageacties zit. De landelijke politie doet onderzoek.

Part spoken-word poem, part journalistic meditation, this is an inventive, tender novel of a songwriter’s journey through love and loss in London

Tice Cin’s philosophical and poetic new novel about a young Turkish-Cypriot songwriter and music producer extends the preoccupations of her prizewinning debut, 2021’s Keeping the House. This intimately told sophomore novel, again a story of friendship, precarity and community, is at once an elegy, a spoken-word poem and a journalistic meditation, repeatedly asking readers: “So, are you listening?”

For our unnamed narrator, “hurts come in different shapes each time”: from the childhood scars of her father’s abandonment, to sexism in the creative scene and the difficulties of navigating short-lived flatshares on universal credit (“If you don’t know about being money dry, if you don’t know loss – you don’t get it. If you know, you know”). Her journey of personal discovery is mapped on to the contemporary travails of London’s wider working-class inner-city diaspora communities as she calculates her life by doorways, “walking past each one” without a roadmap for her personal and professional goals.

Continue reading...

One Oscar-winning director, one horoscope-prompted meet-cute and a continent-crossing cyclist – is this the start of documentaries that make you happy-cry?

Here is a story that on the face of it seems so wildly unlikely it can only be true. Indeed, the very concept of a romantic documentary sounds almost oxymoronic, an indication of how much nonfiction films have become synonymous with grim histories full of suffering and injustice. Let’s hope this sweet work, directed by Orlando von Einsiedel (who’s made his share of hardcore, suffering-intensive docs including Oscar-winning short The White Helmets) launches a new trend in nonfiction film-making for stuff that makes you happy-cry.

The basic meet-cute happened in 1975, when PK (played by Chirag Lobo in the film’s extensive re-enactments) met Lotta (Mina Dale) in Delhi. He was a poor street artist, a Dalit, the lowest possible caste, once called Untouchables. The real PK Mahanandia appears on screen to explain how he had left his rural village for Delhi in order to get away from all that caste hierarchy. When he met Lotta he pretty much knew he’d met the woman of his dreams because he’d been carrying a horoscope his father had commissioned for him when he was a baby that prophesised he’d fall in love with a woman whose family owned a jungle. Lotta, a backpacker from Sweden, hailed from a clan back home that owned a forest, so that was good enough for PK to believe he’d met his fate. After a chaste holiday romance bloomed between these two crazy kids, she went back to Sweden and he decided to bicycle the 6,000 miles all the way there from India to prove his love.

Continue reading...

What does perception look like when it belongs to a machine? That question became the foundation for our work on TRON: Ares, where our team of twenty artists designed and animated more than sixty shots of computer vision and interface systems that visualize the world through the eyes of Ares. Rather than creating traditional HUD graphics, we set out to design machine perception itself. Every frame exists as a living system that continuously scans, tracks, evaluates, and reconstructs reality as streams of computation. Driven by a philosophy of maximum detail, each live action plate was transformed through our custom squarepacking algorithms into a computational lattice capable of analyzing the image at multiple scales simultaneously. Source code, reactive graphics, tracking systems, and layered analysis become different expressions of the same intelligence, revealing a world where every pixel is continuously interpreted and every image is rewritten through the language of the machine.

Een 16-jarige jongen is dinsdagavond beroofd van zijn fatbike in Berkel en Rodenrijs. Vier jongens trokken het slachtoffer van zijn fiets, sloegen hem en dreigden met een mes. Zijn fatbike is niet meer teruggevonden, maar agenten stuitten wel op twee andere opmerkelijke vondsten.

​Eindelijk is er duidelijkheid over de grootschalige sabotage op het spoor gisteren: anonieme saboteurs wilden met deze actie aandacht vragen voor anonieme sabotage. “Wij worden niet gezien.”

“Het was tijd om een heel duidelijk statement te maken”, vertelt een anonieme saboteur. “Anonieme sabotage. Dat is ons statement. En ja, als we daarvoor metalen buizen aan het spoor moeten vastmaken, dan is dat maar zo.”

Met de actie hopen de anonieme saboteurs mensen te hebben wakker geschud over sabotage dat door niemand wordt opgeëist. “Dit zal iedereen wel aan het denken zetten. Het is tijd dat mensen gaan inzien dat er in Nederland gesaboteerd wordt, door bepaalde mensen.”

​

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Today's links

• How an AI moratorium can save AI bosses: If you can't impose switching costs, just eliminate the competition.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Flash Worms; This Film is Not Yet Rated; Libdem copyright sabotage; Religion worth more than Big Tech; Geographic tubemap; Selective censorship resistance.
• Upcoming appearances: Budapest, Edmonton, Boston, South Bend, Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa.
• 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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How an AI moratorium can save AI bosses (permalink)

There's lots of reasons to believe the "hyperscaler" model of AI can never be profitable, and not just because of its gigantic expenditures and negative unit economics (the companies lose money with every new customer and every new use, and they lose more money with each generation of their products):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence

The industry strenuously denies this, of course. They insist that they are only days away from turning their balance sheets right side up. All they have to do is fix those unit economics, then they can make back the cost of producing their models by selling access to them. The problem is that the evidence for those improving unit economics is weak, while the evidence that they're faking their finances is very strong:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/

Same goes for the claims that these companies are already profitable. Dig into those claims and you'll learn they depend on a new, special meaning of "profitable" that does not match the generally accepted accounting procedures (GAAP) definition, which is to say, these companies are claiming that they are so cool that their profitability can only be measured using a novel, secret form of mathematics:

https://futurism.com/future-society/anthropic-claude-profit-ai-safety-development-finances

This is the same wheeze that Softbank tried with Wework. Speaking in my capacity as an author of internationally bestselling technothrillers about accounting fraud, I can tell you that it was accounting fraud then, and it's accounting fraud now:

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/how-wework-went-from-being-47-billion-start-up-to-bankrupt-in-3-years-4552627

But let's give the AI bosses a momentary benefit of the doubt and stipulate that they are on the verge of acquiring positive unit-economics, which will let them start to pay off the massive expenditures they incurred by training their models and enter their long-anticipated profitability phase, where the money-furnaces they've been running for years turn into money printers, to the delight of the investors who've supplied the vast bales of $100 bills the companies have been shoveling into their models' coalboxes for years now.

Basically, they're saying, "Sure, it cost us a lot to get these rails laid, but now that the railroad is complete we can start running cars over them and make a profit." Unfortunately (for bosses and investors), this proposition is every bit as dubious as their claims to improving unit economics.

To understand why, just look at what happened the last time Anthropic shipped a major Claude update. Virtually overnight, all of OpenAI's best customers stopped paying for ChatGPT and started paying for Claude. That's because chatbots have very low switching costs: going from one chatbot to another costs almost nothing:

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-ai-startup-founder-switched-chatgpt-to-claude-2026-3

Everyone using AI knows this to be true. When I walked the floor at CES last year, I asked every AI-powered gadget maker, "What will you do if your chatbot provider jacks up their prices?" and to a one, they said, "No problem, we've designed this thing so that we can switch chatbots with the click of a mouse":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfhELBX8Jbs

That means that you can't just "build the railroad and run the cars over it." The minute you finish your railroad, your rivals will announce that they've got a new, adjacent railroad that's even faster than yours, and you will have to get to work laying another set of tracks to support even faster trains.

This is a disaster all around: the AI companies are locked in a Red Queen's Race, a fatal beggar-thy-neighbor doom-loop. The only way they could escape that trap is by signing a nonaggression pact amongst themselves promising not to compete anymore. But there's two giant problems with this: first, it is incredibly, fantastically illegal under antitrust law, because it represents a conspiracy among the dominant players to cease to compete with one another, and; second, it leaves the field open for the further development of Chinese "open weight" models that customers can run on their own modest, low-powered computers, which are presently lagging the US "frontier models" by a mere four months:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/exclusive-open-chinese-models-close-gap-with-silicon-valleys-frontier-ai-models/

Even if you don't trust Chinese models, you can extract their training through a process called distillation and transfer them to models you do trust:

https://www.anthropic.com/news/detecting-and-preventing-distillation-attacks

But what if there was a way for the AI companies to get government permission to violate antitrust law and cease to compete with one another, and secure a ban on the use of Chinese open weight models? Turns out, there is a way to call time on the Red Queen's Race: merely insist that you are on the verge of teaching so many words to the word-guessing program that it will wake up and devour us all, and call for a ban on "superintelligence":

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/microsoft-ceo-says-superintelligence-must-remain-under-human-control

Once the government stipulates that "superintelligence risk" is an existential crisis, it must grant the hyperscalers a consent decree absolving them from any violations of antitrust law stemming from a conspiracy to halt direct competition with one another:

https://stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/brer-rabbit-and-ai-extinction

Freaking out about "superintelligence" is a canonical example of "criti-hype," where critics repeat boosters' claims but append, "(and that's bad)" to them:

https://peoples-things.ghost.io/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype/

Remember, the tech giants want to stop competing. Mark Zuckerberg and Sudar Pichai colluded to rig the ad-market with a secret program called "Jedi Blue":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

Every year, Google sends Apple a bribe of more than $20b in exchange for Apple not entering the search market:

https://appleworld.today/2025/09/google-wont-be-barred-from-entering-into-search-agreements-with-companies-like-apple/

And the biggest tech companies in the world had a secret "no poach" agreement where they illegally promised not to try to hire one another's top engineers by offering them raises:

https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics/1033/

The only thing Peter Thiel hates more than the Antichrist (spoiler, he's just talking about Greta Thunberg) is "wasteful competition":

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WmRC_NQh6aQ

When an industry that is eating itself alive through "hyperscaling" demands that the government bless a conspiracy to halt competition and ban open source alternatives, you should be suspicious. When that industry is pursuing a venture that has lost more money than any other venture in human history, you should be very suspicious, especially when its "rogue AI hacking" story turns out to be a story about how a hacking tool did exactly what it was designed to do:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/12/god-in-the-box/#llms-are-fake

Peter Thiel is right: AI is full of wasteful competition, but not because competition is a waste – rather, it's because the companies are competing to convince people to use their expensive products for the cheapest applications.

Elon Musk's SpaceX IPO depended on him losing billions of dollars by letting the world's stupidest chuds produce mountains of child porn and images of Sonic the Hedgehog with giant boobs. That is indeed wasteful (and reprehensible).

That doesn't mean we should allow the AI companies to get the government to bless their conspiracy in restraint of trade; rather, it militates for having the government investigate them for securities fraud, trafficking in child sex abuse material, election finance violations, and a long list of other crimes and misdemeanors.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Henry Farrell and Abe Newman on Weaponized Interdependence https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/henry-farrell-and-abe-newman-on-weaponized

• The Enshittification Resistant Software Project https://er-certification.statichost.page/index.html

• The Life of Death and the Ensh*ttificator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6SPV4GZp-U

• Marginalia Search https://marginalia-search.com/

• Why the Postpandemic Tech Bust Sent Billionaires to Trump https://www.wired.com/story/against-tech-oligarchy-book-excerpt-trump-billionaries/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrago Flash Worms: Thirty Seconds to Infect the Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20011024012950/http://www.silicondefense.com/flash/

#20yrsago This Film is Not Rated – must-see doc about MPAA ratings https://memex.craphound.com/2006/09/16/this-film-is-not-rated-must-see-doc-about-mpaa-ratings/

#15yrsago Chinese netizens angered by “princelings” — spoiled children of the rich and powerful https://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/16/world/asia/china-elite-children/index.html?iref=allsearch

#15yrsago LibDems get to vote on copyright reform, but who inserted the clause saying downloading should be a criminal act? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/sep/16/libdems-vote-copyright-reform

#15yrsago Insurer: music-festival tragedy caused by illegal downloading https://twitpic.com/6l5ap2

#10yrsago US religion is worth $1.2T/year, more than America’s 10 biggest tech companies, combined https://web.archive.org/web/20161019095803/http://www.religjournal.com/pdf/ijrr12003.pdf

#10yrsago Geographically representative map of the London Underground https://web.archive.org/web/20240813111321/https://www.citymonitor.ai/analysis/map-londons-tube-shows-disused-stations-track-layout-and-more-2429/

#10yrsago Republican election officials block restrictions on foreign spending in US elections https://web.archive.org/web/20160916181403/https://theintercept.com/2016/09/16/fec-republicans-kill-attempt-to-block-foreign-money-in-u-s-elections/

#10yrsago Tommy Chong asks Obama to pardon him for his bullshit drug paraphernalia bust https://web.archive.org/web/20210720131834/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/tommy-chong-seeks-obamas-pardon-928962/

#10yrsago Week two for the largest prison strike in US history https://web.archive.org/web/20160916143157/https://theintercept.com/2016/09/16/the-largest-prison-strike-in-u-s-history-enters-its-second-week/

#5yrsago Criminal entrepreneurship in Mexico’s high-tech drug cartels https://web.archive.org/web/20160917133449/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-drug-cartels-operate-like-silicon-valley-startups

#1yrago No such thing as selective censorship resistance https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/16/too-many-throats-to-choke/#pluralism-is-resiliency

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Budapest: Brain Bar, Sep 17
  https://brainbar.com/munkatars/cory-doctorow

• 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: 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

• 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

• 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

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• 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

• Pod Save the UK
  https://audioboom.com/posts/8950533-radicalised-organised-and-thick-as-s-t-nish-has-had-it-with-far-right-protests-plus-why

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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: 555 (15487 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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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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