Bungelen, abseilen en tokkelen van de 79 meter hoge Hefbrug. Studenten van de Algemene Luchtmobiele Opleiding moeten geen hoogtevrees hebben. De Hef was woensdag het decor van een speciale militaire actie, wat onderdeel is van de studie. Militairen die alle onderdelen met succes afleggen slagen voor deze loodzware opleiding krijgen de rode baret.

Frans Timmermans, nooit te beroerd om een goed woordje te doen voor Frans Timmermans, gaf gisteren bij Nieuwsuur aan helemaal voor een 'nieuwe' linkse partij te zijn, met bijvoorbeeld Frans Timmermans aan het roer. Alleen: mensen die daadwerkelijk op deze partij zouden stemmen willen helemaal geen Frans Timmermans, maar Jesse Klaver of Habtamu de Hoop*. Nu rijst dus de vraag of Frans Timmermans op zoek moet naar een nieuw verhaal over Frans Timmermans, of dat Frans Timmermans het huidige verhaal over Frans Timmermans gewoon op een andere manier moet vertellen, of dat Frans Timmermans misschien gewoon een keertje moet opbokken voor hij Job Cohen overvleugelt qua plaatsvervangende schaamte.

\*wie, vraagt u zich af? Nou, deze knakker

Zowel in Nederland als in grote delen van het Midden-Oosten en Europa is verontwaardigd gereageerd op Trumps plannen voor de Gazastrook. VN-secretaris-generaal António Guterres noemt het plan een „etnische zuivering”.

Dat de regering-Wilders weinig voor elkaar krijgt, is zo langzamerhand wel bekend. Maar wat spookt de oppositie eigenlijk uit?

In Gelderland hield Provinciale Staten een spoeddebat over de wolf. Het dier zorgt voor veel onrust. Boeren en burgers zijn bang of zelfs radeloos. En dat lieten ze horen ook. „Zijn wij nog veilig op ons eigen erf?”

Lees-, kijk- en luistertips van onze redacteuren bij het nieuws. Deze week: het leven op een strook land van 2.000 km breed.

Bitwarden gaat tweetrapsauthenticatie afdwingen voor gebruikers die dat nog niet ingeschakeld hebben. Die moeten voortaan bij het inloggen op een nieuw apparaat ook hun login verifiëren via e-mail. Volgens het bedrijf achter de wachtwoordmanager is dat veiliger.

Disney+ verloor in het afgelopen kwartaal zo'n 700.000 abonnees. Dit kwam vooral door een afname van het aantal internationale abonnees. Het aantal Noord-Amerikaanse klanten nam wel toe. De streamingdienst verdient wel meer aan de overgebleven klanten.

I didn't think that my former (extremely former) friend and coworker could be more of an unmitigated piece of shit, but "We hired this completely inexperienced guy solely because he murdered a black man" really takes it up a level.

If you work for or with any company that has taken money from Andreessen Horowitz, this is what you are supporting. It is blood money.

Daniel Penny, who was acquitted after choking a mentally ill subway passenger to death, will work for Andreessen Horowitz:

Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran acquitted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide in Manhattan in December, has been hired by one of Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capital firms to join its "American Dynamism" team. [...]

Mr. Penny was charged in 2023 by the Manhattan district attorney's office with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide after a video of him fatally choking another passenger, Jordan Neely, on the subway circulated online that May. [...]

Mr. Ulevitch said in the memo that the firm plans to teach Mr. Penny "the business of investing" and that he will support several of the firm's portfolio companies. On Andreessen Horowitz's website, Mr. Penny is listed as a "deal partner."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

ARNHEM (ANP) - Het NK wielrennen kan in de laatste week van juni niet plaatsvinden in de gemeenten Nijmegen en Berg en Dal. Er zijn door de NAVO-top in Den Haag te weinig politieagenten beschikbaar voor het evenement. Dat bevestigt Joost van Wijngaarden, manager wedstrijdsport van wielerbond KNWU, na eerdere berichtgeving van de Gelderlander.

Eerder werd al bekend dat er geen motoragenten beschikbaar waren voor het NK, maar nu blijkt dat de normale politiecapaciteit voor evenementen evenmin haalbaar is. "Dat is een belangrijk verschil", benadrukt Van Wijngaarden. "Het had zonder motards gekund, maar enige politie-inzet is wel nodig en die is er niet voldoende."

Van Wijngaarden hoopt dat het NK alsnog kan plaatsvinden dit jaar, maar realiseert zich dat dit lastig kan worden. "Je moet denken aan een alternatieve locatie op dezelfde datum of een alternatieve datum op dezelfde locatie. Een andere gemeente heeft echter mogelijk dezelfde problemen en we hebben ook te maken met de volle wielerkalender. Een locatie in het buitenland is eventueel ook nog een mogelijkheid", aldus de manager wedstrijdsport.

Het NK stond tussen 25 en 29 juni op het programma.

Met het opstappen van Kamerlid Lilian Helder en een paar statenleden in Overijssel had Caroline van der Plas al een paar slechte dagen, maar haar rampweek is nu pas echt compleet: vanmorgen kwam ze per ongeluk thuis met een pak eieren twee-sterren-beter-leven.

“Niet te geloven”, zegt Van der Plas terwijl ze verslagen naar het doosje eieren kijkt. “Dit is echt de Wet van Murphy.” De BBB-leider baalt er extra van dat ze juist vandaag geen bonnetje heeft gevraagd. “Normaal vraag ik bij de kassa altijd om een bonnetje. Juist voor dit soort gevallen. Maar ja: ik ben er kennelijk niet helemaal bij.”

Met een zucht gooit Van der Plas de eieren in de prullenbak. “We gaan maar weer terug naar de Jumbo dan.”

&

Since November, British telecom O2 has deployed an AI chatbot masquerading as a 78-year-old grandmother to waste scammers' time. The bot, named Daisy, engages fraudsters by discussing knitting patterns, recipes, and asking about tea preferences while feigning computer illiteracy. The Guardian has an update this week: In tests over several weeks, Daisy has kept individual scammers occupied for up to 40 minutes, with one case showing her being passed between four different callers. An excerpt from the story: "When a third scammer tries to get her to download the Google Play Store, she replies: 'Dear, did you say pastry? I'm not really on the right page.' She then complains that her screen has gone blank, saying it has 'gone black like the night sky'."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

conspectus_bs posted a photo:

Fomapan 100 with Mamiya 645 Pro and Sekor 35 mm

Dick Dale

The Pine Box Boys

Bush

Today's links

• MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing: In the mirror world, community organizers are community predators.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2024
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• 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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MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing (permalink)

In her unmissable 2023 book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein paints a picture of a "mirror world" of right wing and conspiratorial beliefs that are warped, false reflections of real crises:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

For example, Qanon's obsession with "child trafficking" is a mirror-world version of the real crises of child poverty, child labor, border family separations and kids in cages. Anti-vax is the mirror-world version of the true story of the Sacklers and their fellow opioid barons making billions on Oxy and fent, with the collusion of corrupt FDA officials and a pliant bankruptcy court system. Xenophobic panic about "immigrants stealing jobs" is the mirror world version of the well-documented fact that big business shipped jobs to low-Xenoowaged territories abroad, weakening US labor and smashing US unions. Cryptocurrency talk about "decentralization" is the mirror-world version of the decay of every industry (including tech) into a monopoly or a cartel.

Klein is at pains to point out that other political thinkers have described this phenomenon. Back in the 19th century, leftists called antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Socialism – the idea that working people are preyed upon by capital – is reflected in the warped mirror as "working people are preyed upon by international Jewish bankers."

The mirror world is a critical concept, because it shows that far right and conspiratorial beliefs are often uneasy neighbors with real, serious political movements. The swivel-eyed loons have a point, in other words:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

Once you understand the mirror world, you start to realize that many right wing conspiracists could have been directed into productive movements, if only they'd understood that their problems were with systems, not sinister individuals (this is why Trump has ordered a purge of any federally funded research that contains the word "systemic"):

https://mamot.fr/@Lazarou@mastodon.social/113943287435897828

This also explains why the "tropes" of right wing conspiratorialism sometimes echo left wing, radical thought. I once had a (genuinely unhinged) dialog with a self-described German "progressive" who told me that criticizing the finance industry as parasitic on the real economy was "structurally antisemitic." Nonsense like this is why Klein's "mirror world" is so important: unless you understand the mirror world, you can end up believing that "progressive" just means "defending anything the right hates."

Historian Erik Baker is the author of a new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, which has some very interesting things to say about the mirror world:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674293601

In a recent edition of the always-excellent Know Your Enemy podcast, the hosts interviewed Baker about the book, and the conversation turned to the subject of pyramid schemes, the "multilevel marketing systems" that are woven into so many religious, right-wing movements:

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-the-entrepreneurial-ethic/

MLMs have it all: prosperity gospel ("God rewards virtue with wealth"), atomization ("you are an entrepreneur and everyone in your life is your potential customer"), and rabid anti-Communism ("solidarity is a trick to make you poorer").

The rise of the far right can't be separated from the history of MLMs. The modern MLM starts with Amway, a cultlike national scam that was founded by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos (father-in-law of Betsy DeVos).

Rank-and-file members of the Amway cult lived in dire poverty, convinced that their financial predicament was their own fault for not faithfully following the "sure-fire" Amway method for building a business. Andrea Pitzer's gripping memoir of growing up in an Amway household offers a glimpse of the human cost of the cult:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/amway-america/681479/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZxYkntna5M_rYEv4707Zqqs

Amway – and MLMs like it – don't just bleed out their members by convincing them to buy mountains of useless crap they're supposed to sell to their families, while enriching the people at the top of the pyramid who sell it to them. The "toxic positivity" of multi-level marketing cults forces members deep into debt to pay for seminars and retreats where they are supposed to learn how to repair the personal defects that keep them from being "successful entrepreneurs." The topline of the cult isn't just getting rich selling stuff – they're making bank by selling false hope, literally, in Hilton ballrooms and convention centers across the country, where hearing an MLM scammer berate you for being a "bad entrepreneur" costs thousands of dollars.

Amway destroyed so many lives that Richard Nixon's FTC decided to investigate it. The investigation wasn't going well for Amway, which was facing an existential crisis that they were rescued from by Nixon's resignation. You see, Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, was the former Congressman of Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel, who was also the head of the US Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobbyist in America.

At Ford's direction, the FTC exonerated Amway of all wrongdoing. But it's even worse than that: Ford's FTC actually crafted a rule that differentiated legal pyramid schemes from illegal ones, based on Amway's destructive business practices. Under this new rule, any pyramid scheme that had the same structure as Amway was presumptively legal. Every MLM operating in America today is built on the Amway model, taking advantage of the FTC's Amway rule to operate in the open, without fear of legal repercussions.

MLMs prey on the poor and desperate: women, people of color, people in dying small towns and decaying rustbelt cities. It's not just that these people are desperate – it's that they only survive through networks of mutual aid. Poor women rely on other poor women to help with child care, marginalized people rely on one another for help with home maintenance, small loans, a place to crash after an eviction, or a place to park the RV you're living out of.

In other words, people who lack monetary capital must rely on social capital for survival. That's why MLMs target these people: an MLM is a system for destructively transforming social capital into monetary capital. MLMs exhort their members to mine their social relationships for "leads" and "customers" and to use the language of social solidarity ("women helping women") to wheedle, guilt, and arm-twist people from your mutual aid network into buying things they don't need and can't afford.

But it's worse, because what MLMs really sell is MLMs. The real purpose of an MLM sales call is to convince the "customer" to become an MLM salesperson, who owes you a share of every sale they make and is incentivized to buy stock they don't need (from you) in order to make quotas. And of course, their real job is to sign up other salespeople to work under them, and so on.

An MLM isn't just a pathogen, in other words – it's a contagion. When someone in your social support network gets the MLM disease, they don't just burn all their social ties with you and the people you rely on – they convince more people in your social group to do the same.

Which brings me back to the mirror world, and Erik Baker's conversation with the Know Your Enemy podcast. Baker starts to talk about who gets big into Amway: "people who already effectively lead by the force of their charisma and personality many other people in their lives. Right? Because you're able to sell to those people, and you're able to recruit those people. What are we talking about? Well, they're effectively recruiting organizers, people who have a natural capacity for organizing and then sending them out in the world to organize on behalf of Christian capitalism."

Listening to this, I was thunderstruck: MLM recruiters are the mirror world version of union organizers. In her memoir of growing up in Amway, Andrea Pitzer talks about how her mom would approach strangers and try to lead them through a kind of structured discussion:

Everywhere we went—the mall, state parks, grocery stores—she’d ask people whether they could use a little more money each month. “I’d love to set up a time to talk to you about an exciting business opportunity.” The words should have seemed suspect. Yet people almost always gave her their number. Her confidence and professionalism were reassuring, and her enthusiasm was electric, even, at first, to me. “What would you do with $1 million?” she’d ask, spinning me around the kitchen.

This kind of person, having this kind of dialog, is exactly how union organizers work. In A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey's classic book on labor organizing, she describes how she would seek out the charismatic, outgoing workers in a job-site, the natural leaders, and recruit them to help bring the other workers onboard:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Organizer training focuses on how to have a "structured organizing conversation," which McAlevey described in a 2019 Jacobin article:

“If you had a magic wand and could change three things about life in America [or her town or city or school], what would you change?” The rest of your conversation needs to be anchored to her answers to that question.

https://jacobin.com/2019/11/thanksgiving-organizing-activism-friends-family-conversation-presidential-election

The MLM conversation and the union conversation have eerily similar structures, but the former is designed to commodify and destroy solidarity, and the latter is designed to reinforce and mobilize solidarity. Seen in this light, an MLM is a mirror world union, one that converts solidarity into misery and powerlessness instead of joy and strength.

The MLM movement doesn't just make men like Rich De Vos and Jay Van Andel into billionaires. MLM bosses are heavy funders of the right, a blank check for the Heritage Foundation. Trump is the MLM president, a grifter who grew up on the gospel of Norman Vincent Peale – a key figure in MLM cult dynamics – who tells his followers that wealth is a sign of virtue. Trump boasts about all the people he's ripped off, boasting about how getting away with cheating "makes me smart":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

The corollary is that being cheated means you're stupid. Caveat emptor, the motto of the cryptocurrency industry ("not your wallet, not your coins") that spent hundreds of millions to get Trump elected.

Tech has its own mirror world. The people who used tech to find fellow weirdos and make delightful and wonderful things are mirrored by the people who used tech to find fellow weirdos and call for fascism, ethnic cleansing, and concentration camps.

In Picks and Shovels, my next novel (Feb 17), I introduce readers to a fictitious 1980s religious computer sales cult called Fidelity Computing, run by an orthodox rabbi, a Catholic priest and a Mormon rabbi:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

Fidelity is a faith scam, a pyramid scheme that is parasitic upon the bonds of faith and fellowship. Martin Hench, the hero of the story – a hard-fighting high tech forensic accountant – goes to work for a competing business, Computing Freedom, run by three Fidelity ex-employees who have left their faiths and their employers to pursue a vision of computers that is about liberation, rather than control.

The women of Computing Freedom – a queer orthodox woman who's been kicked out of her family, a Mormon woman who's renounced the LDS over its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, and a nun who's left her order to throw in with the Liberation Theology movement – are all charismatic, energetic, inspirational organizers.

Because of course they are – that's why they were so good at selling computers for the Reverend Sirs who sit at the top of Fidelity Computing's pyramid scheme.

Hearing Baker's interview and reading Pitzer's memoir last week made it all click together for me. Not just that MLMs destroy social bonds, but that within every person who gets sucked into an MLM, there's a community organizer who could be building the bonds that MLMs destroy.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Open Licensing Promotes Culture and Learning. That's Why EFF Is Upgrading its Creative Commons Licenses. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/open-licensing-promotes-culture-and-learning-thats-why-eff-upgrading-its-creative

• DIY cyberpunk Walkman is a blocky music player you wish you had in the 80s https://www.yankodesign.com/2025/02/03/diy-cyberpunk-walkman-is-a-blocky-music-player-you-wish-you-had-in-the-80s/

• AI Company Asks Job Applicants Not to Use AI in Job Applications https://www.404media.co/anthropic-claude-job-application-ai-assistants/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Interoperable apocalypse: sf story about devices that come to life https://web.archive.org/web/20050208033403/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/difilippo3/difilippo31.html

#20yrsago List of Polish communist snitches available online https://web.archive.org/web/20050205131854/https://www.futrega.org/lista/

#15yrsago Zero rupee note that Indians can slip to corrupt officials who demand bribes https://web.archive.org/web/20100204201655/http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/paying-zero-public-services

#15yrsago Santa Fe Institute economist: one in four Americans is employed to guard the wealth of the rich https://web.archive.org/web/20100206183034/http://sfreporter.com/stories/born_poor/5339/

#15yrsago Photog sued for shooting a street that contained publicly funded art https://web.archive.org/web/20100208073541/https://komonews.com/news/local/83618997.html

#10yrsaog Ron Wyden to Eric Holder: before you go, how about all those requests for information? https://www.techdirt.com/2015/02/04/senator-wyden-follows-up-with-eric-holder-all-requests-doj-has-totally-ignored/

#10yrsago If privacy was really dead, would everyone be trying so hard to kill it? https://rifters.com/crawl/?p=5525

#10yrsago Alan Turing’s lost notes discovered as crumpled insulation in Bletchley Park huts https://web.archive.org/web/20150203205132/http://www.mkweb.co.uk/pictures/8203-BLETCHLEY-PARK-Alan-Turing-s-notes-used-roof/pictures-25966005-detail/pictures.html

#10yrsago GOP senator: abolish hand-washing regulations in restaurants https://www.joeydevilla.com/2015/02/03/gop-senators-example-of-reducing-regulatory-burden-letting-restaurant-workers-opt-out-of-washing-their-hands-after-using-the-bathroom/

#1yrago How I got scammed https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Boskone (Boston), Feb 14
  https://schedule.boskone.org/62/

• Picks and Shovels with Ken Liu (Boston), Feb 14
  https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2025-02-14/cory-doctorow-ken-liu-picks-and-shovels

• Picks and Shovels with Yanis Varoufakis (Jacobin/virtual), Feb 15
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIDep7Z4LM

• Picks and Shovels with Charlie Jane Anders (Menlo Park), Feb 17
  https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow

• Picks and Shovels with Wil Wheaton (Los Angeles), Feb 18
  https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Cory-Doctorow-Wil-Wheaton-Author-signing

• Picks and Shovels with Dan Savage (Seattle), Feb 19
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

• Picks and Shovels at Another Story (Toronto), Feb 23
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/picks-shovels-cory-doctorow-tickets-1219803217259

• Ursula Franklin Lecture (Toronto), Feb 24
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2025-ursula-franklin-lecture-cory-doctorow-tickets-1218373831929

• Picks and Shovels with John Hodgman (NYC), Feb 26
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-john-hodgman-picks-and-shovels-tickets-1131132841779

• Picks and Shovels (Penn State), Feb 27
  https://www.bellisario.psu.edu/assets/uploads/CoryDoctorow-Poster.pdf

• Picks and Shovels at the Doylestown Bookshop (Doylestown, PA), Mar 1
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1146230880419

• Picks and Shovels at Red Emma's (Baltimore), Mar 2
  https://redemmas.org/events/cory-doctorow-presents-picks-and-shovels/

• Picks and Shovels with Matt Stoller (DC), Mar 4
  https://www.loyaltybookstores.com/picksnshovels

• Picks and Shovels with Lee Vinsel (Richmond, VA), Mar 5
  https://fountainbookstore.com/events/1795820250305

• With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It (Indiana University/virtual), Mar 7
  https://events.iu.edu/mediaiub/event/1783095-with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshitti

• Picks and Shovels at First Light Books (Austin), Mar 10
  https://thethirdplace.is/event/cory-doctorow-picks-shovels-1

• Picks and Shovels at Dark Delicacies (Burbank), Mar 13
  https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3257/Thu%2C_Mar_13th_6_pm%3A_Pick_%26_Shovel%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#/

• Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20
  https://cloudfest.link/

• Picks and Shovels at Imagine! Belfast (Remote), Mar 24
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189

• Picks and Shovels with Peter Sagal (Chicago), Apr 2
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/44853

• ABA Techshow (Chicago), Apr 3
  https://www.techshow.com/

• Picks and Shovels at Morgenstern (Bloomington), Apr 4
  https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorow

• Teardown 2025 (PDX), Jun 20-22
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025

• DeepSouthCon63 (New Orleans), Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Picks, Shovels, and Digital Chains (The Internet Is Crack)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N3q-qHVdg8

• A Weird Way to Win the Trade War with Trump (Canadaland)
  https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/1100-a-weird-way-to-win-the-trade-war-with-trump/

• Fear and Loathing in Silicon Valley (How To Academy)
  https://www.ivoox.com/en/novelist-and-activist-cory-doctorow-fear-and-audios-mp3_rf_138898836_1.html

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Latest books (permalink)

• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "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). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "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. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "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

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

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

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Canada shouldn't retaliate with US tariffs https://craphound.com/overclocked/2025/02/02/canada-shouldnt-retaliate-with-us-tariffs/

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

When game designer Will Wright lost his house in the devastating 1991 Oakland firestorm, the long process of reconstruction made him wonder: what if a game could capture the experience of building a home, filling it with possessions, and watching life unfold within its walls? His small team spent most of the next decade quietly innovating, crafting a Maslow-esque "pheromonal" needs system, a satirical product catalog full of whimsical item descriptions, a playfully improvised gibberish language, and an unforgettable instrumental score that blended chipper midcentury shopping reveries with wistful, impressionistic, deeply evocative piano interludes. Initially panned by focus groups and deemed too weird and passive by Maxis -- who jokingly called it 'the Toilet Game' for its mundane chores -- the project would finally launch as The Sims, twenty-five years ago today. After building buzz with a fateful kiss [previ-ously], it proved to be a smash hit, topping Myst as the best-selling PC game of all time and breaking ground with a broad spectrum of so-called "non-traditional" gamers, who embraced the title as a platform for sharing custom content, wacky mods, and heartfelt storytelling. A parade of expansions and sequels later, The Sims stands as one of the most important titles in the history of gaming -- look inside for a collection of behind-the-scenes design docs, music, rare videos, personal essays, and other fun stuff.

️ The Game Play it again! The Sims official re-release on Steam - Review from LGR RockPaperShotgun: Making Of: The Sims - Previously: The History of The Sims A treasure trove of original design documents Unearthed The Sims design docs show the internal debate over same-sex relationships Video: A demo of an early pre-release version of The Sims (June, 1998) The permanent exhibit at MoMA An exhaustive collection of clips comparing how various activities are portrayed throughout the series (spoiler: The Sims 2 is pretty much the GOAT) The Music The Untold Story of 'The Sims,' Your First Favorite Jazz Record

For a time in the early-2000s, millions of kids were listening to impressionistic, semi-improvised mood jazz without even knowing it. It's likely one of the most widely heard album-length collections of music to be released so far this century. [...] If you were still so young that you didn't know about cynicism, it allowed you a glimpse into a future that wasn't necessarily impossible. Maybe you could become a firefighter or a rockstar or a supermodel; maybe you could type in a cheat code and make a million dollars; maybe building a three-story mansion with an indoor swimming pool and a bunch of hot tubs and three wall-sized TVs isn't all that hard; maybe sadness is caused by hunger and hunger is cured by eating cereal and cereal is always in the kitchen and that's all there is to it. Even though they hadn't played the game, the musicians who soundtracked its world were trying to capture some of that blissful naivety. [...] "We'd throw around some catchphrases: hope, dream, with a hint of sadness because you're growing up, and you're leaving behind something that you really enjoy, and you're also looking ahead to a place where you hopefully will be filled with joy and wonder."

The complete Build mode suite:

Under Construction Buying Lumber Since We Met If You Really See Eurydice Now What? The Simple Life

All pieces are available for download in high quality from composer Jerry Martin's official site, where you can also sign up for an occasional newsletter of found material ️Simlish A history of Simlish, the language that defined The Sims Twenty Thousand Hertz: "Sul Sul"

When The Sims was first being developed, the creators faced a problem. They knew they wanted these characters to talk and interact, but they were worried that using a real language would quickly get repetitive and annoying. So, they decided to make one up. This is the story of Simlish: How it was created, why it works so well, and why artists ranging from The Black Eyed Peas to The Flaming Lips have re-recorded their songs in this gibberish language. Featuring Sims Designer & Voiceover Director Claire Curtin, Composer & Audio Director Jerry Martin, voice actress Krizia Bajos, and Youtuber Rachybop.

A complete playlist of Simlish covers of real songs recorded for various games - Plus a highlights compilation An extensive playlist of artists recording their own songs in Simlish plus The Sims games' voice actors Rare footage of a Sims 1 recording session (RIP Gerri Lawlor) Linguistics nerdery: The language of the Sims (by a linguist) and A Phonology of Simlish Dropout.TV: The Simlish Pledge of Allegiance ✍️Essays: What The Sims Teaches Us about Avatars and Identity

How we manifest new behavior through these virtual representations of self speaks to how deep our psychological bond can be with even an abstract, incorporeal form of who we know ourselves to be. It goes deeper than making a Sim who looks and acts just like you, or making a custom character with the purple hair you always dreamed of. Games become an experimental plane upon which to test out scenarios and interactions that are, for whatever reason (financial, emotional, etc.), otherwise inaccessible to the player. I find it fascinating just how deep this bond can go.

What The Sims taught me about relationships

While I played The Sims for entertainment back then, in hindsight and with a clinician's mind now, I can see that The Sims actually served as a kind of subversive, psychoeducational tool on the very early stages of my healing journey – helping me to rewire and re-form some maladaptive beliefs I had about relationships as a result of my very dysfunctional upbringing.

Does playing The Sims affect our mental health? We're All Depressed. Let's Play The Sims

I first started playing Sim Ella's life in the fall of 2014. Now in 2020, Sim Ella's granddaughter Eloise has just moved in with her girlfriend, an artist named Payton. They live in a beach shack on the shore of Sulani, with rainbow pride flags on the front porch and a large art wall where Payton can sell her paintings. Eloise is a lifeguard, which gives her plenty of time off to work on her tan and fish in a nearby cove. They're enjoying young adulthood free from responsibility, beyond paying their electric bill. Eloise and Payton are talented and beautiful. They have adoring families and perfect weather (I turned off thunderstorms in the game settings). While they catch the occasional case of Llama Flu, they don't have to worry about fatal diseases or medical debt. [...] In real life, I am a self-employed writer. I rarely leave my boyfriend's studio apartment because taking the elevator puts me in close contact with the doctors who live in his building. Most of my earthly possessions are stuffed into boxes in my dad's basement and my childhood bedroom at my mom's house. I am frequently winded, and my heart races unpredictably due to anxiety. I aspire to be a successful novelist, but mostly I want a dog and a home where I can hang up my posters of smutty pulp novel book covers. Meanwhile, my Sim self is at the top of her field. She has created several generations of Sim Dawsons to carry out her legacy. Her success is a bittersweet reminder of the dreams I struggle to reach, probably because I spend so much time playing The Sims.

The Sims Made Me Realize I'm Ready for More In Life

In a bid to feel in control of something in my life during this damn pandemic, I turned to The Sims. What I got instead was unexpected, yet far more important—mindfulness and clarity. It can likely do the same for you.

The creation of stained glass can be traced back to ancient Egypt and Rome, but we most often associate it with its popularity in Western Christianity, as in the biblical narratives adorning chapels and cathedrals. For Timo Fahler, this tradition forms the foundation of a multimedia practice influenced by Mesoamerican codice imagery, national symbols, and motifs found in older European churches.

Stained glass is a “storytelling medium in which I get to draw from everything I experience, everything I study, read, believe in, and even distrust,” Fahler tells Colossal. “We are floating in a unique era of questioning reality, the last gasp of the living generation before automation integrates itself via AI, ChatGPT, and digital interface.” He views his practice as depicting this era and even, in a way, immortalizing it.

Fahler first worked with lampworking glass while studying ceramics at the Kansas City Art Institute, which sparked an ongoing interest in the medium. Recently, he began incorporating it into what he calls “rebar drawings,” which form the foundation of much of his work. “I was curious about letting the unpredictability of light become a part of the ‘materials’ I work with,” the artist says.

Many of Fahler’s sculptures are framed or supported by heavy-duty metals like rusted steel, iron fences, and gates. Stained glass hovers a few inches from the wall, casting colorful shadows. For his most recent works, Fahler places barriers atop the glass to consider not only the viewer’s relationship to the image but also the implications of people being barred from freedoms and knowledge. “I draw from a lot of different sources—historical, mythological, and fantastical—all of which encompass my ‘heritage,'” the artist says.

In a piece titled after the poem “New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, which is carved in bronze on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, Fahler uses a gate to frame a detail of Lady Liberty’s arm constructed of tiny glass squares soldered to the facets of a chain-link fence. Historically a potent symbol of welcome, amnesty, and inclusiveness, the statue in this context references how today, new immigrants’ access is more troubled and often blocked.

Serpents, dragons, eagles, and landscapes merge with realistic portraits and references to historical moments and national emblems, like Mexico’s crest featuring a golden eagle on a cactus with a snake in its talons. The image centers on the nation’s flag, representing the resilience, bravery, and spirit of the Mexican people. Echoing his representation of the Statue of Liberty, the icon is barricaded, merging with iron bars.

Fahler is currently working on a solo presentation with Sebastian Gladstone this autumn. He and his family just moved to Amsterdam, where he shares he’s beginning from a “zero-point/clean canvas” in a new studio, and he plans to explore ideas around the complexities of sovereignty, expatriation, and a quickly evolving global society.

“The world is changing so quickly that we cannot collectively understand, let alone keep up with it!” he says. “I’m excited to be working on all of that and look forward to the body of work that depicts it.”

Find more on Fahler’s website and Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Timo Fahler’s Stained-Glass Sculptures Question Symbols and Curtailed Freedoms appeared first on Colossal.