After a surprise first-round victory, critics suggest son of disgraced ex-president could seek to continue his father’s authoritarian rule

• Flávio’s surprise first-round win highlights rapid rise of Brazil’s House of Bolsonaro

Flávio Bolsonaro, the far-right frontrunner to become Brazil’s next president, has vowed to “re-democratise” the South American country, fuelling fears over a move into authoritarian rule if he wins power.

Brazil was re-democratised in the 1980s after a brutal 21-year dictatorship that Flávio’s father, the disgraced ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, has long praised.

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The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

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Leaked audio shows state’s attorney general tell fundraiser affordability is his campaign’s biggest problem; Trump due to speak in Texas on Wednesday

• California to ‘actively monitor’ possible threats after Trump said Iran could ‘take out’ LA and San Diego

• Sign up for the Breaking News US email

Tonight, we’ll have another set of midterm debates. In Iowa, we’ll see Republican nominee Ashley Hinson face off against Democrat Josh Turek, a state representative and Paralympian.

The race has become one of the most competitive of this cycle, despite the fact a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate election there since 2008. Turek, however, trails by just a point in several recent polls. And Hinson, who currently serves as a congresswoman, has pushed back on Donald Trump’s agenda of late. This includes calling for an end on the war in Iran, despite consistently voting against war powers resolutions in the House that would curb military action, and criticizing the president’s recent pause on tariffs for foreign beef imports, which, Hinson argues, will affect the bottom line for the many cattle ranchers in Iowa.

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Andrew Garfield’s fictional ploughman joins the historical heroes of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in a dirt-caked, docudrama-style film with disconcertingly silly moments

Paul Greengrass has in fact already made his “uprising” film: United 93, the gut-wrenching 2006 masterpiece about the passengers onboard United Airlines flight 93 who rose up against the 9/11 hijackers and prevented them from hitting their destination and causing fatalities – except, that is, for those onboard the plane. Greengrass’s new movie, shot in his distinctive handheld, docu-reportage style, is notionally about the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, in which Wat Tyler and John Ball became legendary for leading an insurrection against the cruel poll tax of Richard II. Or at least … it sort of is. Because the film, in a disconcertingly silly way, imagines the uprising as an origin myth for Robin Hood, or at least someone who’s supposed to be more or less Robin Hood – because that’s not what he’s called and the dates don’t quite match up.

Ex-soldier Tyler and radical preacher Ball, capably played by Cosmo Jarvis and Jamie Bell, are joined by a third fictional hero, apparently destined later to canter through the forest with a wealth-redistribution plan. He is a ploughman, known simply as “Ploughman”, played by Andrew Garfield; grieving the loss of his wife and children to the plague and sickened by the tax collectors’ greed and brutality, he instigates an insurrection that soon merges into other outbreaks of revolutionary rage. This involves rivers of smudgy-faced folk in rough clothes descending on the capital from all directions, to demand concessions from the king to whom they are still loyal and believe to have been misled by advisers.

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Rightly described as ‘Gremlins meets Hot Fuzz’, this fun series has the high-spirit and gusto one hopes for in a show about evil killer gnomes

One can never trust marketing materials to accurately describe a movie or TV series, but I’m pleased to report that Gnomes’ official synopsis gets its tone right: “Gremlins meets Hot Fuzz.” This six-part horror-comedy series indeed feels like the kind of rambunctious, high-spirited production that’d be right up the alley of Joe Dante and Edgar Wright, directors of the aforementioned films. Particularly in its air of barely controlled chaos, staged with a slight wink to the audience but never too self-consciously.

It’s also – without a doubt – the greatest television series ever made about murderous garden gnomes awakened by an ancient evil.

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From Day of the Dead to Samhain, celebrating autumn is centuries old. Now, I want this to be a moment of magic and connection for my kids

Darker nights are drawing in, there’s a hint of a chill in the air and the supermarket’s seasonal aisles are groaning with spooky paraphernalia. Halloween is coming. Every year about now, I tell myself I’m going to get my hands on a pumpkin and bake a pie like the ones my mum would make with us when we were little.

Halloween wasn’t a huge deal in our house, and neither was baking, but I hold warm memories of helping my mum go through the steps that led us to one delicious latticed pumpkin pie and one ugly jack o’lantern that we would display in the window with pride.

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The launch of a collector’s box hints at a new reality: the kinds of games I grew up with are becoming a luxury item, locked behind a forbidding spending barrier

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As a parent (and partner) to a habitual collector, I do feel like an unwelcome portion of my life is occupied by an endless war against stuff. Surfaces in my home ceaselessly accumulate piles of random objects: a JoyCon wrist strap, a sticker sheet, an unidentifiable plastic piece of a toy or gizmo, an Xbox 360 controller with no batteries, cases for Switch cartridges lost down the side of the sofa … Stuff encroaches everywhere, especially in a gaming household. Much as I regret the imminent disappearance of physical games, I do not regret the extra space I have in my attic as a result of switching almost entirely to downloaded games over the last decade or so.

Speaking of the imminent disappearance of physical games: Rockstar recently announced a £350 ($400) “collector’s box” of Grand Theft Auto 6 goodies … that doesn’t include the game itself. Not even a download code. The Grand Theft Auto VI: The Goodtime State – Vice City Collection, to give it its full and unwieldy name, contains a hat, a bag, a pair of sunglasses, a figurine, a poster and more, including a mirror and a “swizzle spoon” that looks, unambigiously, like a cocaine spoon. The game retails at £70, so if you want something to play alongside all your stuff, you’re looking at an outlay of £420.

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Forced closure marks low point in UK-Israeli relations, with reports UK is considering retaliatory expulsion of Israeli diplomats from London

• Israel marks three years since 7 October attack – live

The UK consulate in East Jerusalem gave few signs that it was at the centre of a geopolitical controversy this week, with little movement around the high-walled building save the fluttering of the union jack and the occasional car exiting the compound.

The mission is to shut its doors on Thursday after Israel ordered its closure in response to a UK ban on trade with illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and sanctions on those who help build or finance them.

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Stills from Unmade Films is a series by Brent Lukey shot in the streets of Melbourne, Adelaide and Paris. The photographer and film-maker says the work draws on classic observational style and documentary cinema to explore how people engage with public spaces, and ‘the paths they seek and the places to pause’. The exhibition is showing at Dawn & Mabel’s in St Kilda, Melbourne, until 4 November

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Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan’s four-year fight over MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coalmine went all the way to the high court

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

When Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan and a few of their neighbours in the New South Wales Hunter region decided to take on the expansion of a local coalmine, people thought they were “crazy” to engage in the David and Goliath battle.

“When we started this, people thought we were crazy – a little community group taking on a billion-dollar coal company, arguing that the climate harm from burning this coal is our problem too,” Wales says.

Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter

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Cemil Tugay joins ruling AKP after vowing he would never switch sides in boost for Turkish president

The mayor of Izmir, Turkey’s third city and an opposition stronghold, has defected to the ruling AKP in a move hailed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president.

Turkey’s opposition is battling an increasingly intense crackdown, with a barrage of what observers say are politically motivated arrests and lawsuits targeting its mayors and elected officials.

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ROTTERDAM (ANP) - De lage waterstand heeft voor een flinke toename van het aantal riviercruiseschepen in Rotterdam gezorgd. In augustus en september kwamen er ruim twee keer zoveel schepen naar Rotterdam vergeleken met vorig jaar, meldt Havenbedrijf Rotterdam. Riviercruiseaanbieders hebben reizen naar onder meer Duitsland geschrapt om de uitzonderlijk lage waterstanden en kiezen voor andere bestemmingen.

Halverwege augustus waren er laagterecords op het Duitse deel van de Rijn als gevolg van de hitte en droogte. Deze werden in september opnieuw verbroken, omdat regen grotendeels uitbleef. Laagwater maakt het voor schepen lastiger om op bestemming te komen. Vrachtschepen kiezen ervoor om met minder lading te varen, zodat ze minder diep zijn. Voor cruiseschepen is dat niet mogelijk.

In augustus kwamen er 204 riviercruises naar Rotterdam, tegenover 90 een jaar eerder. Afgelopen maand waren er 156 rivercruiseschepen in de stad, terwijl dat er vorig jaar 60 waren.

Antwerpen

Ook naar Antwerpen wijken schepen met toeristen uit vanwege de lage waterstand. Eind september verwelkomde de stad het duizendste riviercruiseschip van het jaar. Het is voor het eerst dat die grens wordt bereikt, meldde de Vlaamse omroep VRT.

In Rotterdam was augustus tot nu toe de op een na drukste maand van het jaar. Alleen in april kwamen er meer riviercruiseschepen naar de stad. Dat is al jaren de drukste maand en is een gevolg van de vele cruisereizen naar de Keukenhof die ook Rotterdam aandoen, volgens het havenbedrijf.

Liggen er goudstaven of zilveren munten in je kluis thuis? Dan kun je vanaf 2028 slechter uit zijn dan iemand die hetzelfde goud via de beurs bezit. In het nieuwe box 3-plan van het kabinet rekent de belegger met een goud-ETF pas af als hij verkoopt. De bezitter van fysiek edelmetaal betaalt mogelijk elk jaar belasting over de koersstijging op papier. Zeker is dat nog niet, want het plan noemt edelmetaal nergens apart.

Wat er in het plan staat

Het kabinet stuurde op 29 september een brief over box 3 naar de Tweede Kamer. Volgens Fintool gaan aandelen, obligaties, opties en andere financiële instrumenten vanaf 2028 onder een vermogenswinstbelasting vallen. Je betaalt dan pas belasting over een waardestijging als je de winst echt binnenhaalt, bijvoorbeeld door te verkopen. De overige bezittingen volgen in 2030.

Belastingadviseur Crop legt in zijn kennisbank uit dat de brief geen definitie van een financieel instrument geeft. De minister noemt alleen voorbeelden: aandelen, obligaties en opties. Vergelijkbare beleggingen zoals crypto, vreemde valuta en edelmetalen worden volgens Crop niet genoemd.

Hetzelfde goud, twee verschillende regels

Dat lijkt een detail, maar het kan veel geld schelen. Forum voor Democratie wees er dinsdag op dat goud- en zilver-ETF's onder de financiële producten vallen die in 2028 overgaan op de vermogenswinstbelasting. Fysiek goud en zilver volgen volgens de partij waarschijnlijk pas in 2030. Tot dat jaar zouden baren en munten onder de vermogensaanwasbelasting blijven vallen. Ook Newsbit schrijft dat fysiek goud en zilver twee jaar langer lijken te moeten wachten.

Bij een vermogensaanwasbelasting betaal je elk jaar belasting over de waardestijging, ook als je niets hebt verkocht. Het goud blijft dus gewoon in de kluis liggen, maar de aanslag moet je wel betalen. Crop noemt precies dat het bezwaar tegen deze heffing: je kunt in de problemen komen omdat de winst nog niet op je rekening staat, terwijl de belasting wel betaald moet worden.

Hetzelfde goud, maar het moment waarop je belasting betaalt, verschilt.

De rekensom: €50.000 aan goud dat 15 procent stijgt

Neem een alleenstaande met €50.000 aan goud en verder geen box 3-rendement. In 2028 stijgt de goudprijs 15 procent. Dat levert €7.500 winst op papier op. We rekenen met de cijfers uit het voorstel: een tarief van 36 procent, zoals Mr FOB meldt, en een heffingsvrij resultaat van €1.000 per persoon (€2.000 voor fiscale partners), volgens Moore MKW.

• Fysieke baren of munten (aanwas): €7.500 min €1.000 is €6.500. Daarover 36 procent geeft €2.340 belasting over 2028, terwijl je niets hebt verkocht.
• Goud-ETF (vermogenswinst): over 2028 betaal je niets over de koersstijging. Je rekent pas af in het jaar dat je verkoopt.

Belastingvrij is die ETF-winst dus niet. Volgens Cryptobenelux is het uitstel van belasting en geen vrijstelling: alleen het moment van afrekenen verandert. Verkoop je later met dezelfde €7.500 winst, dan betaal je bij gelijke regels in dat jaar ook ongeveer €2.340.

Het verschil wordt groter als de goudprijs daarna daalt. In de wet die de Tweede Kamer eerder aannam, kun je verliezen maar beperkt verrekenen en niet met eerdere jaren, schreef Newsbit in februari. Betaal je over 2028 belasting op winst en lijd je in 2029 verlies, dan krijg je dat geld niet direct terug.

In 2027 maakt het nog niets uit

Volgend jaar geldt het oude stelsel nog. De Belastingdienst rekent roerende zaken die je als belegging hebt, zoals goud, tot de overige bezittingen, net als aandelen en ETF's. In 2026 is het forfait voor die categorie 6 procent. Volgens PwC wordt dat in 2027 7,87 procent.

Elke €10.000 aan goud boven je vrijstelling kost je in 2027 dan ongeveer €283 belasting. Valt de hele €50.000 erboven, dan betaal je ongeveer €1.417, tegen €1.080 dit jaar. Wat de goudprijs echt doet, maakt voor die som niet uit. Wat dezelfde verhoging betekent voor gewone beleggers, lees je in €100.000 belegd? Dan betaal je in 2027 mogelijk ruim €1.000 meer belasting.

Sieraden tellen niet mee

Een gouden ketting die je draagt, is geen belegging. Volgens Newsbit zijn bezittingen voor eigen gebruik in principe vrijgesteld. Het gaat dus om goud dat je bewaart als belegging, zoals baren en munten, niet om sieraden die je zelf draagt.

Nog niets is definitief

Crop benadrukt dat het plan nog niet in een wetsvoorstel is uitgewerkt. Het kan dus nog veranderen of helemaal niet doorgaan. Voor direct gehouden crypto is het al duidelijker: volgens de ontwerpnovelle valt die vanaf 2028 voorlopig wél onder de aanwasbelasting. Voor edelmetaal staat zo'n zin er niet in. Of een bepaald goudfonds, ETF of ETC onder de nieuwe regels valt, hangt volgens Newsbit af van de juridische vorm van het product en de uiteindelijke wettekst. De novelle moet vóór 31 december door de Eerste Kamer zijn aangenomen.

En de kluis zelf?

Bewaar je goud thuis, kijk dan ook naar je verzekering. Volgens Investeringsgoud.nl zijn edelmetalen en munten bij Interpolis standaard tot €7.500 tegen diefstal verzekerd. In een gekeurde kluis (minimaal Euronorm 1143-1 CEN II of een waardeberging van minstens €23.000) is dat maximaal €200.000 per object of verzameling. Andere verzekeraars hebben vergelijkbare, maar niet dezelfde voorwaarden. Een kluis van minder dan 1.000 kilo moet meestal vastzitten aan vloer of muur. Voor contant geld gelden weer andere regels, die we beschreven in Zoveel contant geld mag je in 2026 belastingvrij thuis hebben.

Wat je nu kunt doen

• Zet op een rij wat belegging is (baren, munten) en wat je zelf gebruikt (sieraden). Alleen het eerste hoort in box 3.
• Reken voor 2027 met het forfait van 7,87 procent over het deel boven je vrijstelling. Dan is fysiek goud nog niet duurder dan een ETF.
• Denk je erover om fysiek goud te ruilen voor een ETF? Wacht de definitieve wettekst af en controleer of het product echt als financieel instrument geldt.
• Bewaar je aankoopbewijzen. Die heb je nodig voor de verzekering en straks mogelijk ook om je werkelijke rendement aan te tonen.
• Kijk in je polis hoeveel edelmetaal er thuis verzekerd is en welke kluis je verzekeraar eist.

Bronnen: Crop, Forum voor Democratie, Newsbit, Fintool, PwC, Moore MKW, Mr FOB, Cryptobenelux, Cryptoklaar, Investeringsgoud.nl

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Regionale ziekenhuizen hebben de afgelopen jaren niet meer planbare zorg kunnen aanbieden, terwijl hier wel afspraken over waren, zei minister Sophie Hermans (Volksgezondheid) in een debat in de Tweede Kamer. Hoogcomplexe zorg wordt wel steeds vaker samengebracht in ziekenhuizen met meer specialisten.

In het Integraal Zorgakkoord (IZA) uit 2022 is afgesproken dat lastige behandelingen meer terechtkomen bij ziekenhuizen met meer specialistische kennis, terwijl eenvoudige zorg zoals het stellen van diagnoses weer vaker in regionale ziekenhuizen moet kunnen. "Er moet een been bijgetrokken worden", zei de VVD-minister.

In de Kamer waren hier zorgen over. Ingrid Coenradie (JA21) vroeg zich af of het verspreiden van eenvoudige zorg nog wel gaat gebeuren. Zij denkt dat de ziekenhuizen en de zorgverzekeraars er meer aan verdienen als het in de grote ziekenhuizen blijft. Ziekenhuizen krijgen betaald per behandeling, dus voor grote ziekenhuizen kost het geld om planbare zorg te verplaatsen.

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Ja wat een beelden hè. De extreemlinkse burgemeester Bally Bagayoko van Jean-Luc Mélenchon extreemlinkse partij La France Insoumise tussen de chargerende ME en 'demonstranten'. Eerder leidde zijn uitspraak dat "geweld op een gegeven moment legitiem kan worden" en zijn dansende aanwezigheid bij een brandende vuilnisbak bij een schoolhek - al moet daarbij opgemerkt worden dat de hele video toont hoe hij die brandende vuilnisbak eerst bij het hek vandaan sleept. Belangrijke nuance bij zulke genuanceerde demonstraties! Maar goed, zie hier Mélenchon gedroomde "creolisering" (zijn term niet de onze) van Frankrijk in actie. En zoals het oprukkend islamo-links, Global South/Third Worldism betaamt, hangt een enorme Palestijnse vlag uiteraard voor zijn spreekstoel midden in de gemeenteraad van Saint-Denis, en werd deze pontificaal voorop het gemeentehuis gehesen tussen de Franse vlag en EU-vlag in. Dat is uw voorland overigens.

De burgemeester getroffen door traansgas

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Burgemeester eerder dansend aanwezig bij brand voor school

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Deze nachtmerrie

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Wat valt er toch op bij de demonstraties die niet vanaf seconde 2 in Intifada ontaarden?

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Ondertussen Macron op zee: "Om vrij te zijn, moet men gevreesd worden. En om gevreesd te worden, moet men machtig zijn."

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Plural

Today's links

• Disloyalty: Air Canada's frequent flier fuckery.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Indie booksellers v internet; Coke pays dieticians to astroturf soda taxes; Voting in a voter-suppression state; Facebook v your use of Facebook.
• Upcoming appearances: Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Paris, Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Kilkenny, Sheffield, Oxford, 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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Disloyalty (permalink)

Up until very recently indeed, airlines were the only businesses that I dealt with regularly that practiced "price discrimination," charging different customers different prices for the same seats.

Economists broadly like this "second-order" price discrimination, where a company charges customers different prices based on the circumstances of the purchase, such as a bakery discounting bread at the end of the day. When an airline cranks up the price of an itinerary that doesn't include a Saturday stay, they're using that fact as a proxy for "price-insensitive" business travelers whose bosses can afford to pay more for a ticket, rather than paying a worker overtime to spend a weekend away from home after a meeting.

Despite the arguments about "efficiency," it's safe to say that *fliers* hate this. The airlines' pricing algorithms are so opaque and capricious that anyone who buys a ticket at *any* price inevitably feels like they got a bad deal. This situation is only exacerbated by the airlines' extreme and aggressive secrecy over their pricing strategies, which includes lawsuits against websites that use historical pricing data to predict when a plane ticket will be the cheapest to buy:

https://www.eff.org/document/preliminary-injunction-american-airlines-v-farechase-inc

When a company wants the government to intervene to prohibit third parties from publishing factual information about its prices, that's a bad look. Hard to believe that they're so sure that you, the customer, will be delighted by these pricing tactics that they can't bear to have these third parties ruin the surprise.

But this second-order discrimination is *so* 20th century. Here in the 21st century, we have *first-order* price discrimination, in which AI-powered pricing algorithms use commercial surveillance data about *you*, personally, to predict the highest price you're willing to pay. In this world of "surveillance pricing," every traveler (or customer) sees a different price, in a kind of cod-Marxist dystopia whose motto is "from each according to their ability (to pay), to each according to their (desperate) needs":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor

Airlines *love* this kind of pricing, and they have means, motive and opportunity to practice it. All over the world, airlines have acquired or entered into joint ventures with surveillance pricing companies. These deals put the airlines on the horns of a dilemma: they love to boast to their shareholders about the way that surveillance pricing will let them gouge fliers, but inevitably the public finds out about these investor calls and breaks out the pitchforks and torches.

This triggers embarrassing climbdowns, like Delta's fiasco of summer 2025, when CEO Ed Bastian bragged to shareholders that his deal with the Israeli surveillance pricing company Fetcherr would boost profits by 50% (!) by figuring out which customers could be safely gouged. When fliers, civil society groups and members of Congress got wind of this and raised a ruckus, Fetcherr publicly disavowed Bastian's remarks, insisting that it wasn't even capable of the kind of price-fixing he'd promised. Then Delta launched a smear campaign against its critics, claiming that Bastian never said the thing he *absolutely said* and accusing surveillance pricing activists of peddling "misinformation":

https://groundworkcollaborative.org/news/amid-deltas-ai-pricing-scheme-groundwork-applauds-congressional-action-to-crack-down-on-surveillance-pricing-schemes/

Meanwhile, airlines all over the world have quietly switched their frequent flier reward programs from "mileage-based" rewards to "revenue-based" rewards. That means that you get points and status based on how much you spend on your ticket, not how far you fly. What may not be obvious from this move is that it forces frequent fliers to buy their tickets directly from the airlines, who claim that they can't tell how much you've spent on your ticket otherwise.

So tickets bought on sites like Expedia or through travel agents often qualify for insultingly small points awards, or no points at all. For example, British Airways once gave me *12 points* on a $2,000 Alaska Air ticket because I didn't buy it through British Airways' site (attaining BA's gold status requires *50,000* points).

Forcing frequent fliers to buy their tickets directly from the airline's website sets things up beautifully for surveillance-driven, first-order price discrimination. Airlines you do business with regularly can augment the personal information you provide to them and the data they collect from you with sensitive information purchased from the unregulated data-broker industry, which will cheerfully disclose your salary, credit card debts, or even if you've recently lost a parent and might be flying out for a funeral.

The airlines strenuously deny that they're doing this, of course, but they continue to make investor-facing announcements about their exciting deals with surveillance pricing companies…and things are getting *weird* for frequent travelers.

Thanks to a lot of book-related travel over the past couple of years, I have "Elite" status with Air Canada. Yesterday, I needed to book a last-minute, one-way fare on a route that is only serviced by Air Canada (AC enjoys a monopoly over many Canadian routes, even between major Canadian cities). I checked it out on Google Flights and found a fare for the eye-watering sum of USD829.73.

Now, my normal daily-use browser is Firefox, but I know from long experience that I can't log in to my Air Canada frequent flier account on any browser except Chromium, which I keep installed on my system for just this kind of hostile garbage website. So I tabbed over to Chromium and pasted the Google Flights outbound link that would take me to a pre-populated reservation form on aircanada.com. To my amazement, that same flight was showing as a USD1200 fare!

These were identical trips, loaded via identical referrer URLs. The difference was that in the browser where Air Canada knew that I was an extremely loyal and prolific customer, they had whacked me with a *44.8% premium* to punish me for my loyalty!

I couldn't believe it. I actually called Air Canada's customer service line for "Elite" fliers, and the customer service rep was at a loss for an explanation and could only apologise and suggest that I write a letter to the company.

I'm publishing this instead, because a) this will do more to punish Air Canada for trying to screw me over; and b) this can help you book your tickets in the future.

Yesterday, I finished buying the ticket in my logged-out Firefox window (Air Canada's website will work with Firefox to buy tickets provided you don't try to log in to your Aeroplan account first), paying $829. Then I flipped back to Chromium, where I was still logged into my Air Canada Aeroplan account, located the reservation, and added my frequent flier number to it.

I guess this is how I'm buying my plane tickets from now on.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

* PM Mark Carney pledged to ‘Buy Canadian.’ Since then, $7.8 billion in contracts went to American corporations https://archive.is/zDBfX#selection-3576.0-3576.3

* Tracing the rogue ideology of the frontier labs to their product choices https://buttondown.com/apperceptive/archive/tracing-the-rogue-ideology-of-the-frontier-labs/

* Have you heard of the term "enshittification?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ5V3pk6PEA&t=1220s

* Window display at TYPE Books Toronto to honour David Byrne’s new book https://stopmakingsense.info/window-display-at-type-books-toronto-to-honour-david-byrnes-new-book/

* Red Vienna Is Still Alive https://www.thenation.com/article/society/vienna-public-housing-urban-cities/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Indie booksellers in the age of the Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20061026112859/https://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/1,71924-0.html

#10yrsago Wells Fargo whistleblower describes bank’s culture of blackballing threats and coerced corruption https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/07/497084491/episode-728-the-wells-fargo-hustle

#10yrsago Coca-Cola is paying dietitians to tweet scare-stories about soda taxes https://medium.com/cokeleak/is-coke-paying-dietitians-to-tweet-against-soda-tax-12d130d73b9a#.dw8udqccy

#10yrsago What it’s like to register to vote in states with voter suppression law https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37569855

#5yrsago Facebook shouldn't be in charge of how you use Facebook https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/08/unfollow-everything/#shut-the-zuck-up

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

* 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/

* Sheffield: Reverse Centaur at Juno Books, Nov 25
https://www.outsavvy.com/event/40274/cory-doctorow-in-conversation

* Oxford: Bennett Oxford Symposium on Open Code in Science, Dec 9
https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/events/2026-bennett-institute-symposium/

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

* Terms of Service with Clare Duffy (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/terms-of-service-with-clare-duffy/episodes/458ce968-af5d-11f0-b539-13ed2afe25f8

* AI, Work, and Power (Software Engineering Daily)
AI, Work, and Power https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/podcasts/cory-doctorow-on-ai-work-and-power/

* AI, Corporate Power, and the Fight for Worker Control (Plutopia)
https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-ai-corporate-power-and-the-fight-for-worker-control/

* How to Think About AI—Before It’s Too Late (Daniel Solove)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0xR3uEgGcc

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

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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: 529 (22924 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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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

BBC Earth is returning to the ocean. 25 years after the first installment, the legendary naturalist, presenter, and centenarian David Attenborough narrates Blue Planet III. This first look video, backed by a song Hans Zimmer & Jade Thirwall, is teeming with stunning footage of sea life of all sorts.

Ed Yong called BPIII’s predecessor the best nature series ever:

Blue Planet II is the greatest nature series that the BBC has ever produced.

It is almost transcendentally good—the product of a team that, after six decades of experience, is now at the height of its powers. The Blue Planet II crew traveled to 39 countries to capture over 6,000 hours of footage. They stuck their cameras into coral crevices. They hung off speedboats to film dolphins rocketing behind them. They literally stared into the abyss—and then repeatedly entered it. The resulting episodes, each narrated by David Attenborough in his trademark velvety tones, are hour-long distillations of wonder, featuring sequences that would be breathtaking had earlier shots left you with any breath to take away.

Blue Planet III will air sometime later in the year in the UK; not so sure about timelines in other locations at this point.

Tags: Blue Planet · David Attenborough · trailers · TV · video

Bisschop Christopher Saunders pleegde jarenlang misbruik in geïsoleerde Aboriginal-gemeenschappen in zijn bisdom in West-Australië. Uit angst en wantrouwen jegens de autoriteiten zwegen zijn slachtoffers jarenlang.

University of Wisconsin-Madison physicist Francis Halzen has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to understanding astrophysical neutrinos. Halzen led the development of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory beneath the Antarctic ice, which has helped trace high-energy neutrinos back to cosmic sources such as supermassive black holes and opened a new era of "multi-messenger" astronomy. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from UW-Madison: Embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, IceCube uses thousands of light sensors to survey the universe for neutrinos, nearly massless particles that rarely interact with other matter. Neutrinos provide information about the workings of black holes, galaxies and other objects in the cosmos. "IceCube is like no other telescope in the world," says UW-Madison interim Chancellor Eric M. Wilcots. "And there is no other scientist quite like Francis Halzen, whose idea to create a neutrino detector under almost a mile of ice has led to a remarkable multinational and multi-institutional scientific collaboration and a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe."

Unlike the neutral neutrino, cosmic rays are charged particles whose paths cannot be traced directly back to their sources. But the powerful cosmic accelerators that produce them, like supermassive black holes, will also produce neutrinos. These so-called "ghost particles" travel nearly undisturbed from their accelerators, giving scientists an almost direct pointer to their source. Along with observations by other telescopes, the neutrino first detected by IceCube provided the first-ever evidence of a source of high-energy cosmic rays, whose origins have been notoriously difficult to pinpoint since their discovery over 100 years ago by 1936 physics Nobel laureate Victor Hess.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.