I always knew my Vietnamese pot-bellied pig was smart and special – and he has brought love, chaos and happiness into my life
We have lots of animals in our home in Sacramento, California – a dog, two chicks, a pigeon, a bearded dragon, three rats and two rescue cows. But our pig, Merlin, is special.
I had a pig obsession for a while. I remember going to visit some animal sanctuaries and getting emotional when I saw the pigs. There’s just something about them that I felt a connection to. I knew how smart they were. I remember telling myself that one day I’d have a pig.
Continue reading...Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway shine in frothy sequel that smartly comments on struggling media industry
This article contains spoilers for The Devil Wears Prada 2
The Devil Wears Prada 2 review – a sequel? For spring? Groundbreaking
After a promotional blitz that has run the full gamut from haute (Meryl Streep on the cover of Vogue with Anna Wintour) to not (a heinous line of Target sweats), The Devil Wears Prada 2 is finally here, and set for very chic box office takings of over $200m in its first week.
Praised as one of the few Hollywood sequels to measure up to its beloved original, the movie sees Streep reunite with Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci two decades after the original movie’s release in a flurry of designer rags, withering put-downs and a slew of celebrity cameos. Surprisingly enough, it mostly works. At my screening on opening weekend, fans crowded to take pictures with promotional cardboard cut-outs and clinked cocktails as the lights went down. Read on for a spoiler-packed breakdown of the film, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Continue reading...Yes, Trump might carry them to victory in the midterms. But he can’t carry them much longer – especially not in the 2028 elections
All told, Democrats already seem as though they’re headed for a great midterm election. Voters already troubled by the state of the economy now have the impacts of Donald Trump’s teeter-tottering war in Iran to contend with, and polls tell us they aren’t happy – per poll averages from the analyst Nate Silver, nearly 55% of Americans oppose the war in Iran, 61% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, and 57% of Americans disapprove of Trump overall. As it stands, Democrats have a six-point advantage in generic congressional ballot polling over Republicans.
And Republican hopes that a mid-decade redistricting rush would save their tight majority in the House have been frustrated. The partisan gerrymandering war of the last several months peaked with the victory of a ballot measure in Virginia that allows the state’s Democratic legislature to draw maps that would eliminate three Republican seats and a riposte by Florida Republicans who approved their own map that could allow Republicans to gain as many as four seats in that state – mere hours after the Supreme Court struck down provisions in the Voting Rights Act banning racial gerrymandering.
Continue reading...The promise of this task: throwaway fun and mindful, tactile joy. The reality: juice, humiliation and a deeply stubborn fruit
I’m trying to “touch grass” more these days, to embrace embodied experiences and introduce analogue “friction” – and fun! – into my life, which is how I ended up attempting Rosamund Pike’s no-knife technique for eating a pineapple.
Admittedly, I discovered it online while consuming algorithmically suggested slop (the video is from 2021, but was reposted on TikTok last week and is enjoying a new flurry of attention). But shh. It’s great – Pike is infectiously enthusiastic, explaining that the Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins told her the technique, then gamely gets to work, worrying the pineapple base off with her thumbs, then popping off and eating perfect chunks. “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” she concludes.
Continue reading...Updated guidelines issued by the Trump administration mean immigrants could potentially be denied a green card for their political opinions
Let’s play a fun game of Will This Get Me Deported? The first contestant is myself: a British-Palestinian green card holder in the US. I’ll start by quoting some recent news items concerning Israel. I don’t have the space to list every atrocity that the US ally has been accused of in the past few weeks so, unlike certain trigger-happy soldiers, I’ll restrict myself to two bullet points.
“Israeli soldiers and settlers are using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts say.” (The Guardian; 21 April)
“Israeli forces shot and killed a young female student on Thursday while she was attending a class held in a tent in the town of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip … third-grade student Ritaj Rihan was hit by a bullet in front of her classmates.” (Reuters; 9 April)
Continue reading...A desperate cabbie joins a service that directs him down a shadowy path in this interesting, less-is-more satirical thriller
Canadian film-maker Michael Pierro makes his feature debut with this low-to-no-budget sortie, a modern-day Travis Bickle nightmare which, though flawed and in need of some script development, adds up to a pertinent satirical comment on the gig economy and the Waymo-isation of the service industry.
Nathaniel Chadwick has the everyguy role of a Toronto driver working for an Uber-style app, slumped in his hoodie at the wheel, deeply depressed about providing for a partner and baby at home, avoiding calls from his landlord, exhausted and exploited by customers who are rude and throw up in his car. He’d prefer to be paid by the app every day rather than every week but that would mean upgrading to some higher “platinum” level of driver, and paying a non-returnable membership fee which would supposedly entitle him to be first in the queue for jobs and various other questionable perks. He can’t afford it, in an interesting insight into Uber world.
Continue reading...Home hope will be on the start line in Barcelona
Could be first male French winner since Hinault in 1985
The cycling prodigy Paul Seixas will make his Tour de France debut this year, raising hopes of France’s first male homegrown winner since 1985.
The 19-year-old Decathlon-CMA CGM rider has prompted intense debate in France after a dazzling start to 2026 with his team weighing the benefits of early exposure to the Tour against the risk of overburdening a rider still in his first season as a professional.
Continue reading...peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:
Shikoku Karst
四国カルスト
The place I most wanted to visit on this trip was the Shikoku Karst, located at an altitude of 1,000 to 1,400 meters. I was able to enjoy the magnificent scenery and the profound beauty of the mountains of Shikoku. It was a little chilly, though.
今回の旅で一番行きたかった所が標高1,000mから1,400mに位置する四国カルストです。雄大な景色、四国の山の奥深さを堪能できました。ちょっと寒かったですが。
Kumakogen town, Ehime pref, Japan
peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:
Michinoeki Awaji
道の駅あわじ・明石海峡大橋
I went on a four-day motorcycle tour of Shikoku during Golden Week. On the first day, I crossed the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge and spent the day sightseeing on Awaji Island.
GWは4日間の四国ツーリングに行ってきました。初日は、明石海峡大橋を渡り、一日、淡路島を観光しました。
Awaji city, Hyogo pref, Japan
peaceful-jp-scenery has added a photo to the pool:
Michinoeki Awaji
道の駅あわじ・明石海峡大橋
I went on a four-day motorcycle tour of Shikoku during Golden Week. On the first day, I crossed the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge and spent the day sightseeing on Awaji Island.
GWは4日間の四国ツーリングに行ってきました。初日は、明石海峡大橋を渡り、一日、淡路島を観光しました。
Awaji city, Hyogo pref, Japan
BOEKAREST (ANP) - Het was de afgelopen weken druk bij het Nationaal Historisch Museum in Boekarest. Daar werden sinds woensdag 22 april de gouden helm van Cotofenesti en twee gouden armbanden tijdelijk tentoongesteld, die vorig jaar in Nederland werden gestolen. Het museum meldt aan het ANP dat het aantal bezoekers deze periode flink is gestegen.
Het was de eerste keer dat de kunststukken weer publiekelijk te zien waren sinds ze werden teruggevonden. Volgens een woordvoerder van het museum gebeurde dit "om mensen de kans te geven de helm te zien, en hen te laten weten dat hij terug is". Afgelopen vrijdag was de laatste dag.
De gouden helm raakte beschadigd en moet worden gerestaureerd. Daarna keren de kunststukken terug naar het museum. Het is niet duidelijk hoe lang de restauratie gaat duren.
Het proces tegen drie verdachten van de kunstroof begon vorige maand. Het OM heeft met twee van hen de afspraak gemaakt dat ze strafvermindering krijgen voor het teruggeven van de helm en twee van de gouden armbanden. Naar de derde armband wordt nog gezocht.
PRAIA (ANP) - Opvarenden van het Nederlandse cruiseschip MV Hondius mogen niet aan land in Kaapverdië. Dat meldt de BBC op gezag van lokale media en autoriteiten. Drie passagiers van dat schip zijn onlangs overleden nadat ze ziek waren geworden aan boord, onder wie twee Nederlanders. Een 69-jarige Brit ligt nog op de intensive care. Sinds het incident ligt het schip nabij de Kaapverdische hoofdstad Praia, waar passagiers dus niet van boord mogen, volgens de BBC om de lokale bevolking te beschermen.
Onduidelijk is wat er precies is gebeurd op het schip. Vermoedelijk gaat het om een uitbraak van een variant van het hantavirus, dat doorgaans van knaagdieren op mensen wordt overgebracht. Dat virus kent tientallen varianten en kan in ernstige gevallen de dood tot gevolg hebben. Varianten die in Europa rondgaan, geven doorgaans griepachtige verschijnselen en leiden tot nier- of leverklachten. In zeldzame gevallen kan het gaan om een variant die overdraagbaar is van mens op mens.
PARIJS (ANP) - Het Franse wielertalent Paul Seixas maakt komende zomer zijn debuut in de Tour de France. Dat heeft zijn ploeg Decathlon CMA CGM aangekondigd op sociale media.
"Het is niet mijn bedoeling en het past niet in mijn visie om aan de start van de Ronde van Frankrijk te verschijnen puur voor de ervaring", aldus Seixas via zijn ploeg. "Ik zal gaan voor het best mogelijke klassement."
De 19-jarige Fransman is bezig aan een sterk seizoen. Hij schreef dit jaar al de Ronde van Baskenland en Waalse Pijl op zijn naam. In de andere Ardennenklassieker Luik-Bastenaken-Luik werd hij tweede achter de Sloveense wereldkampioen Tadej Pogacar.
De Ronde van Frankrijk start op 4 juli in Barcelona en eindigt 26 juli in Parijs.
Hoe een extreem slankheidsideaal via social media het zelfbeeld van meisjes ontregelt en zich vertaalt in een meetbare toename van eetstoornissen.
Dun zijn is allang geen modegril meer, maar een morele opdracht geworden. Meisjes van twaalf zeggen dat ze hun lichaam haten, zeventienjarigen slaan maaltijden over tot ze flauwvallen. In een tijdlijn vol ‘fitspiration’ en ‘that girl’-video’s is het lichaam geen gegeven meer, maar een eindeloos verbeterproject.
In die wereld geldt: wie slanker is, lijkt succesvoller, gedisciplineerder, moreel sterker. Onderzoek laat zien dat socialmediagebruik en internalisering van het dunheidsideaal duidelijk samenhangen met ontevredenheid over het eigen lichaam bij zowel jongens als meisjes, al zijn de effecten bij meisjes veel sterker. De boodschap is subtiel maar genadeloos: normaal is nooit goed genoeg.
Zolang dunheid wordt verkocht als karaktereigenschap, blijft de verleiding groot om letterlijk weg te schrappen wat niet in beeld past.
Tegelijkertijd zijn er harde cijfers die laten zien dat het niet bij onvrede blijft. In Nederland is de incidentie van anorexia nervosa onder meisjes van 10 tot 14 jaar in vier decennia meer dan verviervoudigd, van 8,6 naar 38,6 nieuwe gevallen per 100.000 persoonsjaren. De totale aantallen blijven relatief klein, maar de trend is scherp stijgend juist in de jongste groep. Dat zijn kinderen die nog op de basisschool of de brugklas zitten en al leven volgens een dieetregime dat ooit bij volwassen modellen hoorde.
Daar komt bij dat bijna alle Europese jongeren dagelijks online zijn en intensief worden blootgesteld aan ideaalbeelden. Pan-Europese onderzoeken laten zien dat meer tijd op smartphone en internet samenhangt met een negatiever lichaamsbeeld, vooral bij meisjes met een normaal gewicht. De ironie: hoe meer je scrolt, hoe groter de kans dat je je ‘te dik’ voelt, ongeacht wat de weegschaal zegt.
De vraag is niet waarom sommige meisjes doorschieten, maar hoe zóveel jongeren nog overeind blijven in een tijdlijn die hun lichaam als probleem framed.
Body positivity en campagnes over ‘diversiteit’ leggen het intussen af tegen de stille macht van het algoritme. Platforms verdienen aan elke seconde aandacht en sturen gebruikers richting content die emoties losmaakt: afgunst, schaamte, ambitie. Dat zijn precies de gevoelens waarop een slankheidsideaal gedijt.
De vraag is dus niet waarom sommige meisjes doorschieten, maar eerder hoe het kan dat zóveel jongeren nog overeind blijven in een digitale omgeving die voortdurend fluistert dat ze minder moeten zijn: minder kilo’s, minder ruimte, minder eten. Zolang dunheid wordt verkocht als karaktereigenschap in plaats van als lichaamstoestand, blijft de verleiding groot om letterlijk weg te schrappen wat niet in beeld past.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Gedupeerden van Green Consultancy hebben na bemiddeling van de Consumentenbond hun geld teruggekregen. Volgens de Consumentenbond heeft het telemarketingbureau, dat energieadvies aan huis verkoopt, 69 gedupeerden een totaalbedrag van bijna 17.500 euro teruggegeven.
De Consumentenbond waarschuwde consumenten in januari al om niet in zee te gaan met Green Consultancy. Het bedrijf zou op een "misleidende en agressieve manier" energieadvies aan huis verkopen. De bond overwoog ook juridische stappen tegen het bedrijf na veel klachten van consumenten.
Green Consultancy deed zich soms voor als netbeheerder of als contactpersoon van zogenaamd failliete zonnepaneelbedrijven. Klagers meldden dat ze onder druk werden gezet om nog tijdens het telefoongesprek schriftelijk akkoord te gaan met een energieadvies aan huis voor 249 euro. Ze kregen dan bijvoorbeeld te horen dat de garantie op hun zonnepanelen zou vervallen als ze niet instemden.
Polymarket is a platform where people can bet on real-world events, political and otherwise. Leaving the ethical considerations of this aside (for one, it facilitates assassination), one of the issues with making this work is the verification of these real-world events. Polymarket gamblers have threatened a journalist because his story was being used to verify an event. And now, gamblers are taking hair dryers to weather sensors to rig weather bets.
There’s also insider trading: a lot of it.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose Hope in the Dark got me through the first Trump administration and whose A Paradise Built In Hell inspired my novel Walkaway:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/
In her latest, "Truth, Consequences, Climate, and Demand Destruction," Solnit is nothing short of inspirational – not because she downplays the horror and misery of Trump and his war of choice in Iran, but because she tells us what we stand to salvage from the wreckage:
https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/truth-consequences-climate-and-demand-destruction/
Solnit starts by explaining some of the (many, many) things that Trump doesn't understand. Principally, Trump doesn't understand the concept of "demand destruction," which is what happens when shortages prompt people to make durable, one-way changes in their behavior that permanently reduce the demand for fossil fuels.
High prices sometimes create demand destruction: for example, if a transient shortage in eggs pushes prices up, people might discover that they prefer tofu scrambles in the morning, so even when the price of eggs comes back down, they buy two dozen fewer eggs every month, forever.
Beyond high prices, shortages and rationing are far more likely to lead to demand destruction. In the 10 years following the 1970s oil crisis, US cars doubled in fuel efficiency, and the gas-guzzler didn't return until car manufacturers exploited the American "light truck" loophole to fill the streets with deadly SUVs:
But to really max out on demand destruction, you need both rationing and a cheap, easily installed substitute, and that's what the Strait of Epstein crisis, along with solar and batteries, offers the world today. Solar is incredibly cheap, and getting cheaper every day. Batteries are also incredibly cheap, and they're getting cheaper too. For decades, fossil fuel apologists have insisted that we'll never stop setting old dead shit on fire because "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow," but thanks to battery deployment in China and California (and more places very soon), the sun shines all night long:
In starting this stupid, unforgivable war, Trump has vastly accelerated the process of demand destruction. Rather than buying American oil, the whole world has undertaken a simultaneous, rapid, irreversible shift to electrical substitutes for fossil fuel applications, from induction tops to balcony solar to ebikes and EVs:
https://thepolycrisis.org/01-demand-destruction-us-oil-is-not-winning-the-iran-war/
As Solnit writes, Trump's stupid war follows on the heels of another unforgivable and cruel blunder: Putin's quagmire in Ukraine, which catapulted Europe into the Gretacene, with a wholesale, continent-wide shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power. Now, the rest of the world is following suit. In South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung is leading the charge to transition the country to renewables, framing fossil fuels as an existential geopolitical risk.
Trump's demand destruction accelerates Putin's demand destruction: China and India both increased their energy consumption in 2025 – but reduced their fossil fuel consumption over the same period. In 2025, coal accounted for less than a third of the world's energy for the first time in modern history. 2025 was the year that solar and wind overtook coal globally.
Meanwhile, Trump and his oil baron buddies keep trying to make fetch happen. On the campaign trail, Trump told the oil industry that if they slipped him a $1b bribe, he would give them anything they wanted, and he's kept his promise. Trump will let Big Oil drill anywhere they like, from sacred sites like New Mexico's Chaco Canyon to the Arctic. He'll even let them take all of Venezuela's oil. The problem is that banks can see the demand destruction writing on the wall, and they are conspicuously declining to loan the oil companies the money they'd need to get that oil.
Truly, Trump's a machine for creating stranded assets at scale. As Solnit writes, that's because Trump has no strategic foresight; strategy being "the ability to plan for things to arise that may counter your agenda, so you can continue to pursue your agenda." Trump's a bully, and he's accustomed to intimidating his adversaries into capitulating. That's why Trump keeps making moves without ever thinking about the countermove he might provoke. He can't metabolize the strategic maxim that "the enemy gets a vote."
This is the GOP's whole vibe these days: "how dare you do unto me as I have done unto you?" Solnit points to GOP outrage in response to Democratic gerrymandering in blue states, which Democrats undertook in direct, explicit response to shameless gerrymandering in Texas and other red states. Solnit says that the GOP has "confused having a lot of power with having all the power" and is perennially surprised when their attacks on Iran and Minneapolis evince a reaction from the people in Iran and Minneapolis.
This is the defective reasoning that caused Comrade Trump to hormuz the world into the full Gretacene. Whereas once the case for the energy transition was driven by activists who warned people about the future consequences of inaction, Trump has summoned up a new army of people who are worried about the present consequences of inaction: such as not being able to drive your car, use your gas stove, or fertilize your crops. Trump has summoned up another army of people, who are worried about the politics of oil, the fact that oil leads to wars and can be mobilized as a weapon when it is withheld from your country.
Activists couldn't deliver the energy transition on their own – but now there's a coalition that's driving rapid, irreversible change: activists concerned about the future of the planet, in coalition with economic actors concerned about the consequences of not being able to cook, heat your home, or keep the lights on; in coalition with national security hawks worried about the geopolitics of oil. That's Comrade Trump's three-part mobilization: human rights, finance, and national security, all insisting that the enemy gets a vote, and voting unanimously for a post-American world.
Last week marked the first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference, attended by representatives from 54 countries who sidestepped the US- and China-dominated UN to ratify the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative, whose 18 signatories include Colombia, a major oil producer.
The world is moving on, and Trump continues to insist that he can roll back history to some imaginary era of a Great America. Every time this fails, he doubles down on his failures and sets the stage for more failure to come. Take Trump's decision to have the US blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Not only is this a powerful force for demand destruction – but, as Trita Parsi writes, it's also poison for Trump's own electoral fortunes in America:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-iran-blockade/
Trump won in 2024 by campaigning to improve Americans' cost of living. This is a powerful campaign strategy, and it's not limited to fascists, as Zohran Mamdani can attest. But for this to work, you actually have to reduce the cost of living once you take office, otherwise you will be hated and rejected and hampered in everything you do. The problem (for Trump – but not for Mamdani!) is that America's high cost of living is driven by corporate profiteering, and the only way to fix it is to make the rich poorer so as to make the poor richer:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/24/mamdani-thought/#public-excellence
If Trump had chosen to bullshit his way through the Iranian blockade of the strait, allowing the Iranians to collect a $2m toll per tanker (payable in Chinese renminbi!), well, oil would have gone up in price some, but the coming runaway inflation on food and fuel would have been substantially blunted. Instead, he decided to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" by adding a US blockade, which means that prices in the US are going to skyrocket, making his base furious and driving turnout for Democrats, along with support for more renewables, even among blood-red Republican rural Texas ranchers, who have had enough of "DEI for fossil fuels":
https://austinfreepress.org/renewables-are-now-the-costco-of-energy-production-bill-mckibben-says/
The renewables transition is now a self-licking ice-cream cone, a flywheel that only spins faster and faster. As Solnit writes, this is true notwithstanding the concerns by some climate advocates about the materials needed for the transition. Sure, there will be some extraction involved in mass electrification, and if that's done badly, it will involve stealing and destroying more land from poor and indigenous people. But we don't have to do it badly!
Meanwhile, not transitioning to renewables absolutely requires an endless cycle of incredibly destructive and genocidal extraction. Remember, fossil fuels are fuels, while renewables are infrastructure. Fuels need to be dug up and destroyed every year for so long as we insist on setting old dead shit on fire to survive. We dig up a lot of fossil fuels. The world consumes seventeen times more fossil fuels in a year than we will require to electrify the planet forever:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/06/with-great-power/#comes-great-responsibility
The infrastructure of renewables – panels, batteries, transmission lines – requires materials that are often scarce and whose processing involves extremely harmful and polluting processes. But those materials are all recyclable: we don't recycle them today because we haven't prioritized doing so, not because it it technologically beyond our reach. In 2024, America saw its first all-solar powered solar panel recycling factory, which reclaimed 99% of the materials in a panel that was 20% efficient, and then used those materials to make two panels that were each 40% efficient:
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/solarcycle-to-recycle-10-million-solar-panels-yearly
Trump shut that plant down, which means that other countries will get to recycle America's superannuated panels into modern, efficient ones and sell them back to America. America may have blocked any climate reparations for the poor world, but thanks to Comrade Trump, America's still going to end up paying them, in the form of windfall profits for countries whose cleantech economy is racing ahead of America's.
Unlike a fossil fuel economy, a cleantech sector does not require that your country have access to some difficult to find, unevenly distributed reservoir of old dead shit or even rare minerals. Not only is lithium far more common than once believed, it's also being phased out for use in batteries and replaced by sodium, the world's sixth-most abundant element:
https://cen.acs.org/energy/energy-storage-/Sodium-ion-batteries-Should-believe/103/web/2025/11
Lithium is set to join cobalt, a notorious conflict mineral, in the cleantech revolution's rear-view mirror as a transitional material used in early, primitive batteries and no longer required.
A post-carbon future is a post-petrostate future is a post-American future. It will run on solar and wind and batteries, which can be brought online cheaply and quickly, every time demand-destruction surges, using materials that are widely distributed around the world. It won't be a nuclear future, and not just because nuclear materials are (like oil) concentrated according to accidents of geography, nor merely because fissiles are geopolitically catastrophic (like oil). Nuclear plants take at least a decade to bring online, which means that they will always arrive ten years after some future Comrade Trump-type kicks off another orgy of demand destruction, and by the time we turn them on, the world will have already bought, improved and recycled two generations of batteries and panels.
(Image: Stefan Müller (climate stuff), CC BY 2.0)
The Supreme Court is Corrupt. This is What We Can Do About It. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRzS61buXkQ
NHS Goes To War Against Open Source https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/
An open letter asking NHS England to keep its code open https://keepthingsopen.com/
Top 20 Fiction to Inspire Climate Action https://thebookslist.com/20-fiction-books-to-inspire-climate-action/
#25yrsago Beck dumps Winona and becomes a Scientologist https://web.archive.org/web/20010502151355/http://www.suntimes.com/output/zwecker/zp30.html
#25yrsago Fuck San Francisco https://craphound.com/fucksf.html
#25yrsago Desktop Linux rant https://web.archive.org/web/20021204051712/http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3297/1/
#25yrsago History of ASCAP and BMI https://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/royalty-politics.html
#25yrsago AUSA: If we let you decrypt DVDs, airplanes will start falling out of the sky https://web.archive.org/web/20010504221956/https://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,43485,00.html
#25yrsago Microsoft shits on open source https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/03/business/technology-microsoft-is-set-to-be-top-foe-of-free-code.html
#20yrsago Dan Gillmor explains “citizen journalism” https://web.archive.org/web/20060512043722/https://sf.backfence.com/bayarea/showPost.cfm?myComm=BA&bid=2271
#20yrsago UN plans a treaty to kill podcasts https://web.archive.org/web/20060512141428/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004619.php
#20yrsago Sen Stevens tries to sneak the Broadcast Flag into law https://web.archive.org/web/20060505054724/http://ipaction.org/blog/2006/05/breaking-news-broadcast-flag-is-back.html
#20yrago How the US Navy queered San Francisco https://web.archive.org/web/20060504024636/http://ask.yahoo.com/20060502.html
#20yrago Help wanted: new DRM czar for Sony-BMG https://web.archive.org/web/20060512063724/http://www.paidcontent.org/sonybmg-director-new-technology-content-protection-nyc
#20yrsago Rich Americans as sick as poor Brits https://web.archive.org/web/20060516225807/http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9098&feedId=online-news_rss20
#15yrsago Sculpture embodies lossy copying using much-copied house-key https://web.archive.org/web/20110316215804/http://www.danielbejar.com/Visual_Topography_of_a_Generation_Gap.html
#15yrsago Piracy and poor countries: Big Content wants to have its cake and eat it too https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/may/03/why-poor-countries-lead-world-piracy
#15yrsago Brust’s Tiassa: versatile fantasy in three modes https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/02/brusts-tiassa-versatile-fantasy-in-three-modes/
#15yrsago Why New Zealand was dumb to let the USA write its copyright laws https://web.archive.org/web/20110601173727/http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/7615
#15yrsago Canadian neocon Tories take a slim majority in election, pro-Internet New Democrats form the opposition https://web.archive.org/web/20110503041720/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/new-political-era-begins-as-tories-win-majority-ndp-grabs-opposition/article2006635/
#15yrsago Will technology make us freer, and if so, how? https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-techno-optimism/
#15yrsago Wikileaks: America will foot the bill for record company enforcement in NZ if NZ will let America write its laws
https://web.archive.org/web/20110502135002/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5769/125/
#15yrsago Horology considered hazardous: the “German Time Bomb” clock with its deadly mainspring https://web.archive.org/web/20110516102538/https://www.anniversaryclocks.org/aci/haller-gtb.pdf
#5yrsago Political economy vs inflation https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/01/mayday/#inflationary-political-economy
#1yrago Apple faces criminal sanctions for defying App Store antitrust order https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup
#1yrago AI and the fatfinger economy https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpis-off/#principal-agentic-ai-problem
Barcelona: Internet no tiene que ser un vertedero (Global Digital Rights Forum), May 13
https://encuentroderechosdigitales.com/en/speakers/
Virtual: How to Disenshittify the Internet with Wendy Liu (EFF), May 14
https://www.eff.org/event/effecting-change-enshittification
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
SXSW London, Jun 2
https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901
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
Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales
When Do Platforms Stop Innovating and Start Extracting? (InnovEU)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccDR0YaMt8
Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612
The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P
Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech
"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, April 20, 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. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.
"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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