Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Miffy_ has added a photo to the pool:

And an upcoming train

Miffy_ has added a photo to the pool:

Shinjuku Station

Sergiy Galyonkin has added a photo to the pool:

Sunlight on traditional wooden tubs and buckets at the Historic Village of Hokkaido, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan.

Today's links

• Economic probabilities for our grandchildren: If only data centers would stop hogging all the copper.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: RIAA v P2P; Infoseek's anti-terror brain-scanner; Copyrighting every phone number; Carving pumpkins with cookie-cutters; Polish women go on strike; Latent labor in material world; Hitler's meth; "Flying Saucers Are Real!"; Hope, not optimism; Broadcast Flag talk; David Suzuki's free research; "Inquisitor's Apprentice"; California's tax ban made the rich MUCH richer; Union organizers caught Wells Fargo; Power poses aren't real; "Ghosts"; Criticizing tech; "Savage Love A-Z."
• Upcoming appearances: Brighton, Virtual, South Bend, Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Paris, OVancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Kilkenny, 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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Economic probabilities for our grandchildren (permalink)

The post-war "peace dividend" owed its existence to three factors: industrial capacity, political freedom and pent-up demand.

• Industrial capacity: freed up by the war's end and the collapse of demand for munitions and materiel;

• Political freedom: the war's orgy of capital destruction of the majority of the wealth (and thus the power) of the world's oligarchs;

• Demand: Making up for years of neglect and privation during the war required new production of infrastructure and consumption goods.

In Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty and his students analyzed painstakingly assembled records of 300 years' worth of capital flows, showing that wealth tends to pool in the hands of the already-wealthy. This creates mounting instability, thanks to the misrule of a shrinking class of increasingly powerful hereditary, unaccountable oligarchs whose whims and follies trump the material and political needs of the vast majority:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

That instability eventually reaches a breaking point in which the old order collapses in spectacular fashion, and that collapse destroys vast amounts of capital stock. Since this breaking point arrives as a result of oligarchy, in which nearly all the world's wealth has been hoarded by a tiny number of people, those aristocrats are disproportionately impoverished by the conflagration. If 90% of the wealth is in the hands of 1% of the people, a war or disaster that wipes out most capital will mostly destroy the wealth of the 1%. The poor suffer terribly, but they start with nothing – and end with nothing.

We are clearly steaming into one of these situations. The wealthy squandered two generations preventing the world from taking the climate emergency, and now the inevitable has arrived. California is on track to see a 12 inch sea-level rise in the next month:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/30/california-kelvin-wave-sea-level-rise

That's just the overture to the American run of this year's "Super El Nino," a blockbuster whose out-of-town previews have been slaying massive crowds all over the world:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/03/bangkok-thailand-floods-breaking-point-stagnant-lakes

Also right on schedule: the misrule of oligarchs has elevated a con-man to the presidency, who trumps every other president for both corruption and incompetence. From oil to dollars, telecoms infrastructure to the internet itself, Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to end the American empire:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/16/technopoly/#trumpismo-is-praxis-question-mark-exclamation-point

A post-American world is on the horizon. What that world will look like is undecided. The US was always a wildly defective trusted third party, but it retained its status as the world's platform for generations thanks to the absence of credible alternatives. Now – as Mark Carney told the Davos crowd last year – the old system has "ruptured":

https://www.weforum.org/stories/forum-institutional/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/

What will replace the dollar?

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/11/post-dollar-world/#de-dollarization

What will replace oil?

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/11/cyber-rights-now/#better-late-than-never

What will replace the internet?

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

No one knows. No one can know, because this is all up for grabs. The future isn't something that happens to us. The future is something that we make. And despite the horrible death toll that's locked in by waves of climate shocks – presided over by the dying, fumbling "drink bleach" guy – it's conceivable that the future we get will be a good one, if not an easy one.

A post-oligarch, post-American world could be a post-austerity world, one where we recognize that the limiting factor on public investment isn't money, but resources: energy, material, labor, expertise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATQ0Yf0Fhc

Just as the post-war world led to the "30 glorious years" by mobilizing people and material to rebuild a shattered world and shattered lives, a post-American world might be one in which we find full, meaningful employment for all of us, all of our children, and all of their children:

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

As seas rise, we're going to have jobs for every person who is willing, building sea defenses and moving whole coastal cities inland. Two generations of neoliberalism has left us with massive shortages of housing stock, crumbling highways, inadequate schools and hospitals. That means that we need to build lots more of these, and they can be built with state-of-the-art climate hardening, including geothermal heat, "passive home" designs, modern insulation, and heat-pumps. The rights-of-way for the interstate system would make dandy railbeds for arrow-straight, all electric high-speed rail powered by solar, wind and tides.

All of this has the potential to yield a second peace-dividend prosperity. A post-oligarch world can recover industrial capacity by diverting it away from destructive activity (data centers, luxury housing) to essential functions (climate defenses, decent housing for everyday people). A post-oligarch world can recover democratic excellence by removing the malign influence that morbid wealth exerts on our policy choices: for example, if we don't like the quality of public schools, we can fix them by giving schools more resources, not by letting billionaire dilettantes privatize and starve them in the name of "school choice":

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/09/autocrats-of-trade-2/#witness-the-firepower-of-this-fully-armed-and-operational-battle-station

Finally, a post-oligarch society can provide us with an even more inclusive version of post-war prosperity: we can use the wages we earn by building a better world to acquire new homes, induction tops, EVs and ebikes, and beautiful heirloom computers that are built to last for generations, upgraded and maintained by their users:

https://www.edn.com/as-moores-law-slows-open-hardware-rises/

This is a world of material abundance and prosperity. Just as the post-war world made millions of people comfortable, educated and happy by putting them to work clearing the rubble and building something better, a post-oligarch, post-American world can offer us all all the hard, rewarding work we want, performing the essential work of care and rebuilding. We'll find that work by helping hundreds of millions of climate refugees, who will find work helping each other. This is all economically valuable, environmentally sustaining labor that we have labor, energy and expertise for. It's just that all that labor, energy and expertise is being misallocated by the ultra-wealthy who don't even believe that the majority of us exist, and who want to bet the planet and our species on a bizarre scheme to feed so many words to the world-guessing machines that they wake up and become gods:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/13/vibe-governance/#k-hole

Nearly a century ago, John Maynard Keynes published "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," where he extrapolated from rising productivity to predict a fifteen-hour work-week within two generations:

http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

That dream was destroyed by war and greed. Today, we are submerged in an ocean of debt. I'm not talking about the (fictional) "national debt" that is just a measure of all the dollars the government has spent into existence without taxing out of existence:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/21/we-can-have-nice-things/#public-funds-not-taxpayer-dollars

I'm talking about fiscal debt: the solar we didn't build, the carbon we emitted instead; the rail we didn't build, the wildly inefficient aviation we substituted; the walkable, livable, transit-oriented cities we didn't build, the car-choked disasters we built instead. Oligarchic opposition to universal health-care left us sick, with un- or undertreated illnesses and missed opportunities for prevention that left us with overlapping, population-scale health crises. All of this is debt that must be repaid: we can't walk away from it through bankruptcy. We must build the transit, cities, and systems of care – the infrastructure – our species needs to carry on human civilization. We can't keep hitting snooze on this, lest we are finally awoken by seawater lapping at our pillows.

The world we're in today is awful and terrifying. It's awful because of the climate ruptures we're living through. It's terrifying because we didn't just fail to avert this crisis – we did nothing to prepare for it, either.

As Piketty foretold, the misrule of oligarchs has led to an orgy of destruction, and while poor people will get the worst of it, oligarchs will pay the most, because they own nearly everything, which means they own everything that will be destroyed, too. None of that is good, and it would be better if we hadn't gotten into this situation in the first place.

But after a forest fire, the canopy opens; and when it does, the seedlings that were overshadowed for centuries by the old growth can sprout in the ashes and the sun. We can't afford to continue living under oligarchy, and as oligarchs' greed and folly drives the old system beyond its breaking point, we must seize the opportunity to build a better successor.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Starship Stormtroopers: Michael Moorcock https://libcom.org/article/starship-stormtroopers-michael-moorcock

• The Enshittification of Mathematics https://rdcu.be/5uYGc2uo454a

• Zack Polanski to call for three-year cap on private rent rises https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq74e4jg9leno

• AI ‘godfather’ Yann LeCun: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is ‘deluded,’ ‘crazy,’ and doesn’t understand cybersecurity https://fortune.com/2026/10/01/yann-lecun-anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-deluded-crazy-cybersecurity/

• Court Agrees with EFF: Utah’s VPN Law Demands a Technical Impossibility https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/court-agrees-eff-utahs-vpn-law-demands-technical-impossibility

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrago Leak: RIAA's anti-P2P strategy https://web.archive.org/web/20011019060035/https://www.dotcomscoop.com/riaa1003.html

#25yrsago Infoseek founder: my brain-scanner can find all the terrorists https://web.archive.org/web/20011009025805/http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/22020.html

#25yrsago Copyrighting every possible phone number as a touch-tone tune https://web.archive.org/web/20011007073546/http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/2001/10/04/FFX0PGT0CSC.html

#20yrsago What happens to password-locked data when you die? https://web.archive.org/web/20061106235805/http://news.com.com/Taking+passwords+to+the+grave/2100-1025_3-6118314.html

#20yrsago Audio of activist lawyer talk on Broadcast Flag and Chilling Effects https://web.archive.org/web/20061005074245/http://uscpublicdiplomacy.com/index.php/events/events_detail/1859/

#20yrsago David Suzuki: Steal my research – that’s what it’s for! https://web.archive.org/web/20061020144546/http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly09290601.asp

#20yrsago Interdisciplinary DRM blog from my USC students https://uscpubd510.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2006-08-24T14:59:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=91&by-date=false

#15yrsag Inquisitor’s Apprentice: tenement sorcerers versus the robber barons in an alternate Gilded Age New York https://memex.craphound.com/2011/10/04/inquisitors-apprentice-tenement-sorcerers-versus-the-robber-barons-in-an-alternate-gilded-age-new-york/

#15yrsago Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century https://memex.craphound.com/2011/10/03/context-further-selected-essays-on-productivity-creativity-parenting-and-politics-in-the-21st-century/

#15yrsago Unicode’s “right-to-left” override obfuscates malware’s filenames https://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/09/right-to-left-override-aids-email-attacks/

#15yrsago HOWTO carve a pumpkin by hammering cookie-cutters into it https://web.archive.org/web/20200916004345/https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/shopping/cookie-cutter-pumpkin-carving

#15yrsago Shell funded warring militias in the Niger Delta https://web.archive.org/web/20111006003453/http://blog.platformlondon.org/2011/10/03/counting-the-cost-corporations-and-human-rights-abuses-in-the-niger-delta/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=counting-the-cost-corporations-and-human-rights-abuses-in-the-niger-delta

#10yrsago Sen Mitch McConnell blames Obama for bill that Obama vetoed and McConnell repeatedly voted for https://www.loweringthebar.net/2016/10/congress-blames-veto.html

#10yrsago Polish women go on strike over extreme anti-abortion law https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37540139

#10yrsago Survivors of CIA torture describe homebrew electric chair used at Afghan black site https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/10/03/interview-new-cia-torture-claims

#10yrsago Visualizing the latent emotional and bureaucratic labor in our material world https://xkcd.com/1741/

#10yrsago Meth, Hitler and the Reich: the true, untold story of the Nazis’ dependence on coke, meth and oxy https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/25/blitzed-norman-ohler-adolf-hitler-nazi-drug-abuse-interview

#10yrsago Flying Saucers are Real! Anthology of the lost saucer-craze https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/03/flying-saucers-are-real-anthology-of-the-lost-saucer-craze/

#10yrsago The malware that’s pwning the Internet of Things is terrifyingly amateurish https://web.archive.org/web/20161004061621/http://motherboard.vice.com/read/internet-of-things-malware-mirai-ddos

#10yrsago California’s 40-year-old ban on property tax raises has made the rich a lot richer https://web.archive.org/web/20161001034224/https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-prop-13–20160929-snap-story.html

#10yrsago The Wells Fargo fraud came to light because of union organizers https://web.archive.org/web/20161005123132/https://prospect.org/article/first-and-foremost-wells-fargo-scandal-about-workers

#10yrsago “Power Poses” are bullshit https://web.archive.org/web/20161007215414/https://www.wbur.org/npr/496093672/power-poses-co-author-i-do-not-believe-the-effects-are-real

#10yrsago Martin Shkreli offers a bailout to ailing 4chan https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/4chan-cashflow-problem-martin-shkreli-wants-to-join-board/

#10yrsago Ghosts: Raina Telgemeier’s upbeat tale of death, assimilation and cystic fibrosis https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/04/ghosts-raina-telgemeiers-upbeat-tale-of-death-assimilation-and-cystic-fibrosis/

#10yrsago Yahoo secretly built a tool to scan all email in realtime for US spies https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1241YT/

#10yrsago How to: Criticize technology https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/constructive_technology_criticism.php

#10yrsago Johnson & Johnson says people with diabetes don’t need to worry about potentially lethal wireless attacks on insulin pumps https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-cyber-insulin-pumps-e-idUSKCN12411L/

#5yrsago USPS pilots postal banking https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avoidance-is-evasion/#check-cashing

#5yrsago The Pandora Papers https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avoidance-is-evasion/#transparency

#5yrsago Savage Love A-Z https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avoidance-is-evasion/#ggg

#5yrsago Hope, Not Optimism https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/03/hope-not-optimism/

#1yrago When your ISP pays you https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/03/we-dont-care-we-dont-have-to/#were-the-phone-company

#1yrago Blue Bonds https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/04/fiscal-antifa/#post-trump

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

https://www.epl.ca/blogs/post/elbows-up-with-cory-doctorow/

• Brighton: Digital Sovereignty and the Post-American Internet (Green Party Conference), Oct 3
  https://www.openrightsgroup.org/events/digital-sovereignty-and-the-post-american-internet/

• Virtual: How to govern technology in a multipolar digital world (Connecting Current), Oct 6
  https://connectingcurrent.tech/how-to-govern-technology-a-multipolar-digital-world/

• South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
  https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/

• Hudson, OH: Hudson Library, Oct 7
  https://engagedpatrons.org/EventsExtended.cfm?SiteID=3850&EventID=596952&PK=

• Calgary: Wordfest, Oct 8
  https://wordfest.com/2026/show/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2026/

• Winnipeg: McNally Robinson, Oct 9
  https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/event-18991/An-Evening-with-Cory-Doctorow

• 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/

• 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: 504 (21882 total).

• "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

---

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ISSN: 3066-764X

IRKOETSK/SJELECHOV (ANP) - Russische autoriteiten hebben in het oosten van het land tweehonderd mensen onder medisch toezicht geplaatst als gevolg van een sterfgeval in een laboratorium door de pest. Dit meldt onder meer The Moscow Times.

Een jonge vrouw is afgelopen week overleden in een ziekenhuis aan de gevreesde ziekte. Ze werkte in een instituut in Sjelechov in de regio Irkoetsk waar ook de bestrijding van pest wordt onderzocht. Ze zou hebben gezegd dat ze per ongeluk een reageerbuis met pestbacillen brak en kreeg dinsdag een ernstige longaandoening. Twee dagen later overleed ze in een ziekenhuis.

LAUSANNE (ANP) - Kogelstootster Jessica Schilder ontbreekt op de shortlist voor de verkiezing van Europees atlete van het jaar. De atlete uit Volendam, die dit jaar voor de derde keer op rij de Europese titel veroverde en als eerste vrouw na veertien jaar over de 21 meter stootte, behoorde wel tot de tien genomineerden.

De drie finalisten bij de vrouwen zijn de Zwitserse Audrey Werro, de Britse Amy Hunt en de Italiaanse Nadia Battocletti. De winnaar van de verkiezing wordt op 24 oktober bekendgemaakt op een gala in Lausanne.

Werro duelleerde dit jaar vaak met Femke Broeders-Bol op de 800 meter en won alle keren. Ze werd in Birmingham Europees kampioene. Hunt was de ster van de EK in Birmingham met een record van vier gouden medailles op de sprintnummers (100, 200, 4x100 en 4x100 gemengd). Battocletti veroverde EK-goud op de 5000 en 10.000 meter.

Broeders-Bol won vorig jaar voor de derde keer de verkiezing. Ze kreeg voor dit jaar geen nominatie.

SEPANG (ANP/RTR) - Teambaas Toto Wolff van Mercedes staat voor een raadsel in Sepang. De upgrades die de auto's van Kimi Antonelli en George Russell sneller moeten maken, werken averechts. "We hadden verwacht drie tienden sneller te zijn, maar we verliezen vier tot vijf tienden en vallen voor het eerst buiten de top drie in de kwalificatie. Er is iets aan de hand dat we moeten doorgronden", zei hij tegen Sky Sports na de kwalificatie van de Grote Prijs van Bahrein in Maleisië.

Antonelli is de kampioenschapsleider met 66 punten voorsprong op Russell, die weer 37 punten meer heeft dan Lewis Hamilton van Ferrari. In de kwalificatie noteerde Antonelli de vierde tijd en Russell pas de achtste. Het verschil met Max Verstappen, die in zijn Red Bull de pole pakte, was meer dan een halve seconde.

"De auto laat gedrag zien dat we niet kennen. Er is meer luchtweerstand en we verliezen veel tijd op de rechte stukken. Je kan zeggen dat het hier erg heet is en dat het asfalt anders is, maar dat verklaart niet ons gebrek aan snelheid", aldus Wolff.

BERLIJN (ANP) - De Duitse bondskanselier Friedrich Merz gaat praten met de twee grootste kanshebbers voor de opvolging van president Christine Lagarde van de Europese Centrale Bank (ECB), meldt persbureau Bloomberg op basis van ingewijden. Met Klaas Knot praat hij naar verluidt ergens de komende dagen. Het gesprek met zijn grootste rivaal, de Spanjaard Pablo Hernández de Cos, moet volgens Bloomberg in de komende weken plaatsvinden.

Knot was tot vorig jaar president van De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). Hij wordt al langer genoemd als mogelijke opvolger van Lagarde. Merz' gesprekken met de kandidaten zijn tot nu toe het duidelijkste teken dat er achter de schermen beweging zit in de strijd om de leiding van de ECB.

Eerder gaf Lagarde zelf een hint dat ze mogelijk eerder vertrekt dan het einde van haar termijn in oktober volgend jaar, en kondigde de Duitse ECB-bestuurder Isabel Schnabel haar vertrek aan. De termijn van hoofdeconoom Philip Lane loopt daarnaast in mei af. Daardoor komen er min of meer tegelijk drie topplekken vrij.

Wie nu de wintersport boekt, kijkt naar het appartement, de reistijd en de sneeuwzekerheid. De skipas komt later wel. Toch maakt juist die het verschil: voor één dag op de piste betaal je deze winter in het ene gebied bijna twee keer zoveel als in het andere. Een overzicht van de dagpassen voor seizoen 2026/27.

De dagpas per gebied

Prijs voor één dag in het hoogseizoen, tarief winter 2026/27; Winterberg kent één wintertarief. Bij SkiWelt zit €2 voor de herbruikbare KeyCard in de prijs. Stand: 3 oktober 2026.

Voor één dag op de piste betaal je in het ene gebied bijna twee keer zoveel als in het andere.

Waarom de Dolomieten bovenaan staan

Dolomiti Superski vraagt €89, maar alleen op piekdagen: van 20 december tot en met 9 januari en van 31 januari tot en met 20 maart. Daarbuiten kost een dagpas €80. Vorige winter lag de piekprijs nog op €86. Sölden zit er met €86,50 vlak onder, maar dat tarief geldt alleen van 19 december tot en met 6 januari. Ski Arlberg rekent €85 gedurende het hele hoofdseizoen, van 19 december tot en met 2 april.

Onderaan staan Les Orres in de Franse Zuid-Alpen en, dichter bij huis, Winterberg in het Sauerland. Geen Arlberg, maar voor een lang weekend scheelt het flink.

Rekensom voor een gezin

Neem twee ouders en twee kinderen, geboren in 2014 en 2016. Een dag skiën in Sölden in de kerstvakantie kost dan €268 aan skipassen. In Winterberg is dat €166. Dat is €102 verschil, voor één dag.

Kassaprijs wordt een plafond Steeds meer skigebieden werken met dynamische prijzen. De prijs aan de kassa is dan een bovengrens; wie vroeg online koopt, betaalt vaak minder. In Sölden geldt de reguliere kassaprijs vanaf vier dagen vóór de skidag. In Zermatt begint een dagpas bij 89 Zwitserse frank, maar alleen in de rustigste weken aan het begin en eind van het seizoen.

Wie pas aan de kassa afrekent, betaalt steeds vaker de hoofdprijs.

Duurder dan vorig jaar

Een skipas voor zes dagen kost komende winter in het hoogseizoen gemiddeld €388, tegen €375 vorig seizoen. Dat is 3,4 procent meer, gemeten over 36 populaire skigebieden in vijf landen. Sölden is met €478,50 voor zes dagen het duurst, Winterberg met €224 het voordeligst.

En helemaal vast staan de prijzen nog niet. Ski Arlberg schrijft er zelf bij dat de tarieven opnieuw kunnen worden berekend als energiekosten of inflatie daar aanleiding toe geven. Kijk dus vlak voor vertrek nog even op de site van je skigebied. En koop dan meteen online.

Meer weten?

• Snowplaza: skipasprijzen 2026/2027, zoveel duurder wordt je skipas
• Snowplaza: skipas in tien jaar 165 euro duurder
• ANWB: wat kost een skipas?

"Can it run Doom?" now applies to databases, as the author of DOOMQL has released a far more visually accurate port. There's a saying: "Be careful what you wish for." In 2025, we wrote a piece about a database boffin coming up with a version of Doom that was written in SQL. It was neat, but the visuals were nearer to 3D Monster Maze than to the 90s pixel blaster. We commented, "If persuading SQL to do the entire rendering pipeline is a 'bad idea,' we cannot wait for a terrible one." And so here we are. The author, Lukas Vogel, has been at it again and ported both Doom's game logic and renderer to SQL, running it in a database. Python handles timing, keyboard input, and bitmap display, but the rest comes from SQL queries and the CedarDB database. DOOMQL was an undeniably impressive thing. However, Vogel told The Register, "Someone on Hacker News complained last year when I did the first iteration that that one was more Wolfenstein-like because I used raycasting instead of BSP-tree traversal which was *the thing* that made Doom revolutionary. "So I obviously couldn't let that stand." Which brings us to SQLDoom. Doom, ported to SQL. In his blog, Vogel noted the ground rules for the port. Unlike DOOMQL, this had to look like real Doom. The rendering had to be purely SQL-based: "the only acceptable SQL output is a table or a bitmap encoding exact RGB values for every pixel," and the game loop also had to be purely SQL-based. Vogel told us, "I was very thrilled to find out that porting the real Doom was a) feasible and b) the performance was actually *better* than the much more barebones approach from last year! "Also, at some point I started actually playing it for fun in my free time, which is still a very strange feeling. I intended it as a tech demo, but it just feels like the real Doom, even though it doesn't share a single line of code with any existing Doom port. So I wanted to see how far I could take it. "In the end, I even got deathmatch to work." According to Vogel, the game is perfectly playable on his laptop (using a Ryzen 7 7840U), and multiplayer games can be played online using EU and US servers. We found the server performance a little sluggish – likely more due to the servers than the port – although getting SQL to jump through these hoops is something that, only a few short years ago, would be unimaginable. It's worth keeping in mind that this is a thinly veiled demonstration of the capabilities of CedarDB. It's a compiling database system where complex queries are eventually compiled to machine code. Still, it's hard not to get swept up in Vogel's enthusiasm and the fact that this is Doom… running in a database. Certainly this is a lot more fun than recreating yet another online store for yet another interminable keynote. ®

President’s popularity has plummeted in solidly Republican state – will his presence at midterm rallies help or hinder?

Kelly Savage-Radich grew up in a Republican-supporting Ohio family and voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. But today the mother of three, who lives in a Montgomery county suburb of Dayton, is facing the prospect of having to sell one of her family’s vehicles due to the high cost of gas. Her grocery bill has gone up about $100 a week.

She lays the blame squarely at the Trump administration’s door.

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For years, eating was something to control, fear or regret. After I hunted my first deer, I started to see fat, hunger and my own body in a different light

I muffled my sobs with a pillow so my family couldn’t hear me from the adjacent room. I was 19 years old and we were in Paris, staying on the top floor of an old six-story walkup where every step echoed through the thin walls. I was trying, and failing, to hide the emotional war I had decided to wage on my body. Who does that on a family vacation? In Europe, no less?

Pulling tear-soaked strands of hair off my cheeks, I stood in front of a full-length mirror and grabbed the fat of my thighs. If only I could just – I pictured ripping off fistfuls of my body and flinging them out the windows, where they would land on some unknowing French person six stories below. I had this vision often: pulling bits of myself off and casting them somewhere far away from me.

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The UK prime minister has earned his party a rehearing but the battle of public opinion is not yet won

“He’s offering what no other politician has offered for a long, long time. He actually feels like he’s one of us,” was how Neil, a geography teacher, described Andy Burnham in our focus group on Thursday night.

Neil wasn’t alone in his praise: this group of Labour 2024 voters – some of whom had drifted to Reform, the Tories and Greens during the Starmer era – provided the most positive reception for a politician since Boris Johnson at the height of his Covid-vaccine bounce.

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Shoppers are switching from traditional product despite little evidence alternative is safer

Bacon has long been a favourite of carnivores, but there is growing consumer concern about the health risks posed by nitrites, chemicals used to cure meats.

While many experts argue there is no evidence processed meat made without nitrites is safer, retailers have responded to consumer concerns by offering “nitrite-free” products to meet demand.

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The US defense secretary who hates ‘beardos, weirdos and wimps’ has announced an Office of Religious Affairs at the Pentagon

Apart from money and McDonald’s, there’s nothing Donald Trump seems to love more than a “big, beautiful” wall. The government is currently spending billions of taxpayer dollars to fulfill the president’s fantasy of lining the US-Mexico border with 30ft steel bollard walls and high-tech surveillance.

What the Trump administration is apparently not so keen on is the wall of separation between church and state. While the president may hawk bibles as a side hustle, he is not exactly devout; he serves only mammon. The top levels of his government, however, are stuffed full of religious fanatics who appear hellbent on remaking the country as a Christian theocracy.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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The Premier League’s actions would ‘have an influence on the bilateral state relationship’, Emirati officials said

The United Arab Emirates have reportedly warned the government it could cancel big investments in the UK after Manchester City were found guilty by an independent commission.

Emirati officials said “the Premier League’s actions” would “have an influence on the bilateral state relationship”, according to Bloomberg.

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Wat een gezellige avond had moeten worden, eindigde afgelopen zaterdag in ongemak. Toen de vriendinnen van Julia (25) aanbelden bij het naambordje ‘Julia & Jasper’, was het tot hun grote verbazing Jasper die opendeed.

“Hij stond daar gewoon. In de gang. Met z’n sloffen aan. Duidelijk niet van plan om te vertrekken,” vertelt vriendin Maria, die de dag erna nog zichtbaar aangeslagen is. “Dan denk je: heb gewoon het fatsoen om een avondje buitenshuis te plannen. Ga naar een vriend, ga naar de sportschool, ga desnoods een rondje lopen tot een uur of twaalf.”

Tijdens het etentje trok Jasper zich wel terug in de slaapkamer, maar dat mocht niet baten. “Je hoorde hem gewoon af en toe hoesten”, zegt vriendin Bloem. “En om tien uur is hij nog een glas water komen halen. Toen viel het hele gesprek stil.” Bloem vindt dat Julia recht heeft op een ongestoorde avond. “Het is ook gewoon het huis van Julia. Als zij een meidenavond wil, moet ze dat in alle vrijheid kunnen doen.”

Normaal gesproken organiseert Maria de etentjes van de vriendinnengroep. Haar partner werkt ’s avonds, dus die is er dan nooit. “Zo hoort het ook”, zegt Maria. “Het stelt me zo teleur van Juul. Dan denk je dat je iemand kent.”

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