The dreaded bloodsucker will be getting his fangs into the Edinburgh fringe this year – in a deeply creepy, liberty-taking show with a sisterly twist. We meet its director

Who is your Dracula? Max Schreck’s toothy Nosferatu, Bela Lugosi in a tux, the lantern-jawed host of Hotel Transylvania? This notorious shapeshifter “exists for us even before we know who he is” says theatre director Yngvild Aspeli, who is bringing a puppet bloodsucker to the Edinburgh fringe this summer. “There were stories of vampires long before Bram Stoker but he gave new life to them.”

After watching her deeply creepy show Dracula: Lucy’s Dream, that eerily waxen, lifesized puppet has for me become as indelible as top-hatted Gary Oldman or gorily grinning Christopher Lee. It matches Jonathan Harker’s assessment of the count in Stoker’s novel: “The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.” I saw the show on tour in Paris several months ago and it still haunts me: I could swear this Drac disintegrated then reappeared before my eyes, such is the technical sophistication of Aspeli’s French-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire. Thanks in part to Emilie Nguyen’s spectral lighting, stunning transformations take place, with the actors and puppets frequently becoming indistinguishable.

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David Streever had emailed acting ICE director after an immigration officer fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good

An upstate New York resident sued US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for sending federal officers to his house with a warning over an email he sent to the agency’s one-time head.

David Streever, who is a US citizen, was on a trip to Finland when two officers showed up to his Rochester home in June and presented his wife with a warning notice informing him that the email he sent months earlier was considered a threat, his attorneys said. Streever sent the email in January to Todd Lyons, then the acting director of ICE, after an immigration officer fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good in a confrontation caught on video during an anti-ICE demonstration.

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As a non-monogamist, it’s refreshing to see a film that reflects modern attitudes to non-conventional relationships, instead of using them as a punchline or cautionary tale

What is the chief obstacle that must be overcome in most modern-day big-screen romcoms? Lack of attraction? Misaligning schedules? Or, perhaps, heteromonogamy? If that wasn’t the dominating norm of human relationships, many movie plots would be much swifter to resolve. What if Elizabeth Olsen didn’t have to choose between Callum Turner and Miles Teller in Eternity? Or Twilight allowed Bella to be in a throuple with Edward and Jacob? Even though both films have fantasy narratives, their predestined outcome is as real as it gets – a man and a woman (re)marry and live happily ever after.

For a long time, alternative relationship structures were relegated to fan fiction, undeserving of mainstream fictional representations where conflict and resolution are both inscribed in coupledom. Even the films that challenged mononormativity, such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, sustain the cautionary tale: opening up your relationship will eventually break it. As a practising non-monogamist, I yearn to see my values represented on screen as something more than a cautionary tale. Recently, the love triangles of Past Lives (implied) and Challengers (consummated) have suggested that perhaps Hollywood itself may be opening up. Then came The Invite, a poly-romcom just in time for the Week of Visibility for Non-monogamy.

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Court shortens electoral ban but custodial sentence could complicate far-right leader’s campaign hopes

A French court of appeal has upheld Marine Le Pen’s ⁠conviction ⁠for embezzling European parliament funds but shortened her ban ⁠on running for elected office, potentially reopening a narrow path for the far-right ​leader ‌to run ‌in the 2027 presidential race.

However, ‌the court also handed Le Pen a three-year jail term, with two years suspended and one year in which she must wear ​an electronic ankle tag for monitoring. This could make a presidential campaign politically ⁠and logistically difficult.

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New Patricia Lockwood for the London Review of Books: A Tradcath Wedding. “He pronounced the word ‘nuptial’ as noopt-see-all. If that’s correct, never tell me.”

Rising memory prices are making budget smartphones commercially unviable to produce, forcing users to delay upgrades, pay more for higher-tier devices, or turn to the second-hand market instead. This is according to analyst Omdia, which estimates memory costs accounted for almost 60 percent of the total bill of materials in sub-$400 smartphones during calendar Q1 of 2026 – and things haven't improved since then. In fact, market watcher TrendForce predicted last month that the tech industry will see DRAM prices jump by another 50 percent or more in 2026, making it almost impossible for budget device makers to avoid passing on the component cost hike. To offset rising memory costs, manufacturers have tried switching to cheaper display panels, sensors, or radio frequency (RF) modules – but low-end phones are already built on such a tight cost structure that there's little room left to cut. As with entry-level PCs, this means vendors can no longer supply them at a price to satisfy cost-conscious buyers, and sales are already declining. Omdia expects sub-$400 smartphone shipments to drop 22 percent year-on-year in 2026. For other segments, where memory doesn't account for such a large proportion of the bill of materials, manufacturers have room to make trade-offs. Omdia believes that while the total global smartphone market will decline by 12 percent in 2026, the above-$400 segments will remain resilient and are actually expected to see shipments grow 5.7 percent. In response, smartphone makers are shifting production priority toward mid-to-high-end phones. For devices priced above $600, higher-performance system-on-chip (SoC) components, displays, and camera units account for a larger share of the total cost, giving vendors room to trim spending elsewhere and absorb some of the memory cost burden. Omdia says China-based manufacturers are reverting to LTPS (low-temperature polycrystalline silicon) display panels in some models that upgraded to the newer LTPO (low-temperature polycrystalline oxide) tech, reserving the latter for premium models. This can save $3 to $5 per device. Other trade-offs include reducing the number of cameras, using smaller image sensors, or switching to previous-generation SoCs, which can reduce costs by around 30 to 40 percent. In other words, buyers can expect to get a less capable device than they might previously have expected at a given price point this year, all thanks to the AI bubble causing a run on memory chips. Small wonder that memory manufacturers such as Samsung are raking in the cash, while consumers pay the price. It's also no surprise that buyers are choosing to hold onto smartphones for longer, with an average lifetime of 4.2 years – a figure expected to stretch out to 4.7 years before the end of the decade. The market for pre-owned phones is also growing, with a 12 percent increase in trade forecast for this year as many consumers seek to get a more premium device at a lower price. ®

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

In de Tour de France zijn het vaak de kopmannen die alle aandacht opeisen, maar voor de echte heldenverhalen moet je bij de renners zijn die zich wegcijferen voor die kopmannen. Zo bewijst ook deze superknecht, die in de derde etappe van de Ronde van Frankrijk blusdekens haalde voor de hele ploeg.

“Dit is heroïsch”, jubelde wielercommentator Karsten Kroon toen de knecht zich liet afzakken om bij de ploegleiderswagen de dekentjes op te halen. Met zijn handen vol dekentjes keerde de held vervolgens terug in het peloton om stuk voor stuk zijn teamgenoten te voorzien van het vuurwerende voorwerp.

Uiteindelijk liepen de collega’s van de heldhaftige knecht en de renner zelf slechts tweedegraads brandwonden op, waardoor de volledige ploeg vandaag gewoon kan opstappen in etappe 4.

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HANGZHOU (ANP/RTR) - Ook het Chinese AI-bedrijf DeepSeek ontwikkelt een eigen AI-chip. Dat meldt persbureau Reuters op basis van ingewijden. Daardoor wil de Chinese start-up minder afhankelijk worden van Nvidia en Huawei voor chips.

De chip is bedoeld voor inference. Dat is het proces waarbij AI-modellen, nadat ze getraind zijn, voorspellingen doen of beslissingen nemen op basis van gegevens die ze binnenkrijgen.

DeepSeek zorgde begin vorig jaar voor opschudding toen de Chinese AI-tool werd geïntroduceerd. DeepSeek haalde met minder rekenkracht verrassend goede prestaties. Het steeg naar de top van de ranglijst van de appwinkel van Apple en haalde ChatGPT, chatbot van OpenAI, in.

Ook concurrenten van DeepSeek kijken naar de mogelijkheid om eigen chips te ontwikkelen. OpenAI maakte vorige maand bekend aan een eigen chip te werken in samenwerking met chipbedrijf Broadcom. Anthropic zou eveneens overwegen om eigen AI-chips te bouwen, meldde Reuters eerder.

De rechtbank in Dordrecht heeft oud-burgemeester van Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht Herman J. (77) dinsdag veroordeeld tot een celstraf van een jaar, waarvan vier maanden voorwaardelijk. J. krijgt de straf voor het verspreiden, aanbieden, verwerven en het bezitten van kinderpornografisch beeldmateriaal. De opgelegde celstraf is gelijk aan de strafeis van het Openbaar Ministerie.

J. was van 1996 tot 2011 burgemeester van het Zuid-Hollandse Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht. De politie hield hem aan op 17 februari van dit jaar. Op inbeslaggenomen gegevensdragers van J. zijn in totaal 1036 beelden gevonden, waaronder 632 foto's en 404 video's van seksuele handelingen met soms zeer jonge kinderen.

"In zijn zoektocht naar nieuwe prikkels is verdachte kennelijk beland in de verwerpelijke wereld van kinderporno. Voor de verdachte lag de focus enkel op de bevrediging van zijn eigen seksuele behoeftes. Hij heeft in dat kader beelden bekeken, bewaard en doorgestuurd", staat in het vonnis.

UTRECHT (ANP) - De rechtbank in Utrecht heeft een moeder en een vriendin van haar veroordeeld tot celstraffen voor ernstige kindermishandeling in Utrecht. Moeder Karlijn van R. (37) kreeg de hoogste straf, namelijk veertien maanden waarvan vier voorwaardelijk. Haar vriendin Chantal S. (42) moet twaalf maanden de cel in, waarvan zes voorwaardelijk. Volgens de rechter is zij verminderd toerekeningsvatbaar. Beide vrouwen moeten de twee kinderen van destijds 6 en 9 jaar ook een schadevergoeding betalen.

Het OM eiste gelijke straffen voor de vrouwen, namelijk twee jaar celstraf, waarvan zes maanden voorwaardelijk met een proeftijd van drie jaar.

De rechtbank stelde dinsdag vast dat de moeder haar kinderen tussen augustus 2023 en augustus 2024 stelselmatig heeft mishandeld. Haar vriendin is volgens de rechter medeplichtig.

Mishandeling

De mishandeling kwam op 19 augustus 2024 aan het licht na meldingen van buren. Volgens de rechtbank zijn de kinderen geschopt en geslagen, kregen ze soms een dag lang geen eten of drinken en gingen ze niet altijd naar school. Ook werden ze opgesloten op hun kamer en mochten ze soms niet naar de wc, waardoor de kinderen in hun eigen urine of ontlasting op de grond zaten.

De mishandeling begon na de scheiding van Van R. in 2023. Ze had veel stress en was onzeker over de opvoeding. Instanties als Veilig Thuis en het buurtteam vroegen S. om haar vriendin, die ze al kende van school, te helpen.

De twee hadden continu contact en stuurden elkaar in drie maanden tijd duizenden WhatsApp-berichten, waarbij Van R. ook foto's deelde van haar kinderen die bijvoorbeeld op de grond hadden geplast.

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Het probleem is allang niet meer dat Helena wordt gespeeld door de Keniaanse Lupita Nyong’o ipv een Griekse vrouw, maar dat ze simpelweg niet mooi genoeg is om de mooiste vrouw ter wereld te spelen. En dan heeft ze ook nog een mening en daar gaat het sowieso altijd fout. Bovenstaand wordt er gevraagd wat ze tegen 'Homerus' (die waarschijnlijk niet 1 persoon was) zou zeggen als het zou kunnen. Wat volgt is zo'n hemeltergende 'sassy'-modieuze klaagzang over dat vrouwen een te kleine rol spelen. En dan die eunuch die het ernaast een beetje braaf aan zit te moedigen het is allemaal gewoon niet om aan te zien. 

Afijn, al die attitude, maar slaat de kritiek ergens op? Stuurt Athena (v) niet zo'n beetje Odysseus' gehele terugreis? Houdt Penelope (v) niet drie jaar lang 108 vrijers tegen met haar weeftruc? Is Odysseus niet zeven jaar lang de gevangene van Calypso (v) en een jaar van Circe (v)? Was het niet Nausica (v) die een gebroken, aangespoelde Odysseus redde, en maande Athena (v) hem niet om in plaats van Nausica's vader, haar moeder koningin Arete (v) om hulp te vragen?

Schreef Britse auteur Samuel Butler (m) in 1987 niet een heel boek waarin hij betoogde dat De Odyssee zelfs door een (alleenstaande) vrouw geschreven zou zijn, omdat vrouwen juist zo'n sleutelrol spelen, en het verhaal doortrokken is van alleenstaande vrouwen met een ijzeren wil?

En het is niet alsof ze Lupita Nyong’o van straat geplukt hebben hè, ze komt van de YALE School of Drama. 

Maar goed, lekker sassy doen """Helena""", film verpest. Maar het had nog erger gekund, want ondanks eerdere geruchten lijkt Elliot Page (transgender, biologische vrouw, 1,55m, 48 kilo) in gelukkig geen Achilles te spelen.

Vervloekt

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Laat het stoppen

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Black Market Flowers

The Future Sound of London

Thunder1203 has added a photo to the pool:

Looking towards Frankston

Today's links

• How US states and international trustbusters can beat Big Tech: Their common enemies are Trump and his tech giants.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Sex work synonyms; Carthedral; French pirates; Suffragette surveillance; Hidden library apartments; "The Meaning of July the Fourth for the Negro" x James Earl Jones; Farage quits; Peak indifference; Self publishing; Pepsi spies try to buy Coke formula; Steal this wiki; SF is the only lit people care enough about to steal; HP Lovecraft's commonplace book; "7th Sigma"; Conspiracy fantasy; PalmOS beampoints; Copyright poetry; Abandoned NOLA themepark; Life in Indian call-centers; "Rule 34"; Unpleasant design; WEB du Bois infographics; Drone v South African racism; Escobar's hippos; Brexit nihilism; UK Iraq War inquiry; Copyright reversion; Paperclip traded for house; Pen with shredder; Broadcast Treaty is back; "Influencing Machine"; ANSI x paid sex; Biden x Right to Repair; Technological self-determination.
• Upcoming appearances: London, Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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How US states and international trustbusters can beat Big Tech (permalink)

For a minute there, it looked like Big Tech was on the ropes. Over the past decade, countries all over the world have gotten antitrust fever, from South Korea to Singapore, Europe to Australia, and even China:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mamdani/#trustbusting

Even more important: these international trustbusters shared a common enemy with Biden's antitrust enforcers, like Lina Khan (FTC), Rohit Chopra (CFPB) and Jonathan Kanter (DoJ Antitrust Division), who pursued the most aggressive antitrust agenda America has seen since Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan killed antitrust enforcement a half century ago.

This international collaboration was an especially rich and productive one. Today's global trustbusters have opportunities for collaboration that their Gilded Age predecessors could only dream of.

That's because modern monopolies are likewise global, running the same scam in every country that they operate in. It wasn't like this during the era of the first Robber Barons. John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil had many of the world's economies in chokeholds, but each country got its own, national chokehold. In the US, Standard Oil monopolized pipelines and refineries, but it found different chokepoints in other countries. For example, in Germany, Rockefeller monopolized the ports:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/24/shithole-billionaires/#tarbells-everywhere

This meant that American and German enforcers had very little to say to one another. Sure, they had a common enemy, but even if US and German authorities commandeered a fleet of zeppelins and used them to ferry documents back and forth between their respective agencies, it wouldn't have done them any good. The fact patterns about German ports had nothing much in common with the cases being built in relation to America's captured oil refineries.

That's not how companies like Google, or Meta, or Apple, or Microsoft, or Oracle work. Like Standard Oil, these companies are planet-girding extraction machines that are strangling the world's economies. But unlike Standard Oil, these companies run the same playbook in every country, meaning that the facts that establish Google or Apple's guilt in Brussels can be translated and used to run cases in the UK, South Korea and Japan.

The opportunities for international cooperation don't stop there! It's been more than a century since the Gilded Age, and the intervening years saw the US enact the Marshall Plan, through which it redesigned the legal systems of countries shattered by WWII and the Korean War. The technocrats who oversaw the Marshall Plan understood that large, monopolistic firms played a key role in the rise of fascist governments in Europe and Japan, and so they transposed America's landmark antitrust laws – like the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act – onto lawbooks around the world:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/08/competition-is-killing-us/#borked

That means that it's not just that the same companies are committing the same crimes everywhere around the world – it also means that most of these countries have substantively similar statutes establishing those crimes. A successful case in South Korea will likely be successful in the UK – providing that the company engages in the same conduct in both countries (which, again, it does).

During the Biden years, the UK Competition and Markets Authority ran these international tech antitrust summits in London where US enforcers and their UK, European, Singaporean, South Korean and Japanese counterparts met to plan a shared strategy to take down US Big Tech:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-tickets-308678625077

The presence of America's trustbusters at these meetings was key. Not only were they running a string of wildly successful cases against US Big Tech in America, but just by being there, they signaled that the US government would help foreign governments enforce their judgments against US tech giants. That's key, because – as the Marshall Plan's architects could tell you – giant national monopolies often become a de facto, private, unaccountable arm of the state in the countries where they are born, and can call upon the governments they've colonized to protect them from other countries' attempts to enforce their laws.

Which brings me to the Trump election, and the subsequent fusion of Big Tech with Trump's government. It started before Trump took office, when he traveled to Davos to warn the world's governments not to try to enforce their laws over his tech companies. Then there was the inauguration, where tech CEOs paid $1m each out of their pockets for a seat on the dais behind Trump. Big Tech ponied up millions for the Epstein Ballroom, and they also provide key material support to Trump's ethnic cleansing program. If you end up in a concentration camp thanks to one of Trump's ICE chuds, you can blame Microsoft for providing the administrative software; Google for providing the location data used to track you down; and Apple for blocking apps that warn you if you're about to get snatched by masked thugs:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply

All over the world, tech antitrust has gone into retreat. In Canada, ex-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau created sweeping new powers for the country's Competition Bureau, but now his successor Mark Carney is making equally sweeping cuts to the agency's funding. In the UK, PM Keir Starmer fired the devastatingly effective head of the Competition and Markets Authority and replaced him with the CEO of Amazon UK:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter

And in Ireland – the place where European tech regulation goes to die – they've just appointed an ex-Meta lobbyist named Niamh Sweeney to regulate the privacy practices of the US tech giants that pretend to be headquartered in Ireland in order to evade their taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/01/erin-go-blagged/#big-tech-omerta

This is especially worrying because Meta has a history of binding its former executives with nondisclosure and nondisparagement clauses that forbid them from ever saying a mean word about Meta, or discussing anything they learned while working at the company. There are no ends to the lengths the company will go to in their war on their ex-employees. Take Sarah Wynn-Williams, who has been fined $111m by the company's arbitrator as punishment for her #1 NYT bestselling whistleblower memoir, Careless People. Meta has told Wynn-Williams that she may not appear in public to discuss anything, not just her book, and now they've sued her for standing motionless and silent for an hour on a stage at a literary festival:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/27/zuckerstreisand-2/#autodisparagement

When Sweeney was given the job of regulating her former employers, it naturally raised questions about whether she would be legally allowed to criticize – or even talk about – Meta. Sweeney declined to comment on this at all for seven months, and now, at last, she has issued a heavily lawyered statement that seems to affirm that she will be allowed to do her job:

https://www.independent.ie/business/irish-business/no-legal-gag-from-meta-and-no-tech-shares-data-protection-commissioner-niamh-sweeney-on-regulating-her-former-employers/a/158097549.html

But a close read of her words tells a different story: Sweeney has affirmed that she's not bound by the same gag order as Wynn-Williams, but not whether she has any restrictions on her conduct in respect of Meta. This shouldn't be complicated: if Sweeney is indeed free to vigorously enforce the law against Meta, then she could have published a statement the day her appointment was made public: "I do not have any contractual restrictions on my ability to discuss Meta or its current or former personnel." If she is truly able to do this job, then it shouldn't take her half a year to issue a weasel-worded, heavily caveated statement.

Having narrowly escaped the existential crisis of democratic and legal accountability, Big Tech has captured a string of states: Ireland and the UK, and (especially) the USA. The fears of the Marshall Plan technocrats have been realized: Big Tech is Trump and Trump is Big Tech, and together, they are executing an authoritarian takeover of the USA and countries around the world.

Without the US as a willing partner, other countries have precious little chance of enforcing their laws (which were originally American laws). Just look at how Apple has point-blank refused to follow Europe's new tech regulations:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers

(Worse: Trump has blacklisted the EU officials who worked on those laws and has permanently barred them from entering the USA, and has now requisitioned more official EU correspondence from Big Tech companies so he can locate and punish more of Big Tech's official enemies:)

https://www.euractiv.com/news/eu-urges-us-tech-firms-to-follow-rules-on-handling-staff-data/

Now that the US state has merged with US tech, every country around the world has motive, means and opportunity to build a "post-American internet" of open source apps running at local data centers:

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

But don't write US enforcers out of the picture just yet! Writing for The Sling, Tyler Clark calls for "regionalized enforcement" by US states against Big Tech companies:

https://www.thesling.org/regionalizing-enforcement-agencies/

You see, it's not just international governments whose lawbooks were rewritten through the Marshall Plan that have access to America's antitrust laws. When Congress wrote the Clayton Act, Sherman Act and other US federal antitrust laws, they explicitly wrote in the power of state Attorneys General to enforce them. That means that 50+ state AGs all have the ability to wield antitrust against US tech giants.

It seems Congress foresaw this moment, when federal enforcers partnered with American monopolists, trading open bribes for approval for corrupt mergers and other illegal conduct:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/13/khanservatives/#kid-rock-eats-shit

But where the Feds fail, the states can pick up the slack. When states fine US companies and order their breakup, it's a lot harder for those companies to flout those orders – unlike the EU or Canada or the UK, America's state governments are first class actors in the US judicial system.

That's where Clark comes in: he calls for coalitions of state enforcers to take on US Big Tech, filling the void created by Trump's pay-to-play fed enforcers. A (future) federal statute could enshrine this system through "regional FTC enforcement centers":

https://www.ftc.gov/reports/collaboration-act-report-congress

I like Clark's idea, but I think he's missing a trick: US regional antitrust enforcement doesn't need to lean on the US government for resources and collaboration. There are national governments all over the world whose antitrust laws were created by the Marshall Plan, and those are the same laws that state AGs have at their disposal. And of course, tech companies' crimes aren't just the same in France and Japan – they're also the same in New York State and California.

The US government isn't the only game in town. American state enforcers have a global buffet of enforcement partners, and those international enforcers need American collaborators who can collect the fines they levy and enforce the breakup orders they issue. It's a win-win (for the people, for international enforcers, and the states) and a big loss (for Trump's tech companies and his corrupt antitrust dingo babysitters).

One place this could start: joint hearings that call ex-Big Tech employees as key witnesses, daring companies like Meta to invoke their gag orders. It's one thing to tell Sarah Wynn-Williams she can't talk to a crowd at a book festival, but Meta has taken the position that she cannot speak before a legislature or regulator, either.

Wynn-Williams isn't alone. The Big Tech companies are laying off employees by the thousands, thanks to their failed 11-figure AI bets. Those ex-employees know where every body is buried. They know where to find the memos that establish their ex-bosses' intent to create and maintain monopolies and the hardest part of any antitrust case is establishing intent.

Together, US states and foreign enforcers have the opportunity of the century – a chance to shatter the power of Trump's tech giants, who are so key to Trump's authoritarian takeover.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Sony Erases Digital Content From Libraries, a Reminder That You Don’t Own What You Buy https://www.wired.com/story/sony-erases-digital-content-from-libraries/

• enshittification https://www.oed.com/dictionary/enshittification_n?tab=meaning_and_use&tl=true#1649390880

• Google must pay €4.1bn fine for using Android to 'block' rivals https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgj0pp5p62o

• We Crunched the Data: There’s a Grocery Price Emergency in America https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/27/opinion/grocery-prices-inflation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uFA.EpN1.HGYs0A5uoRrh

• The Ghost Brand Epidemic in Mowers & Security https://winnowl.com/audits/2026-ghost-brand-epidemic

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Prohibited synonyms for sex work https://web.archive.org/web/20010803205316/https://www.ci.sparks.nv.us/municode/Title_5/66/100.html

#25yrsago Carthedral https://web.archive.org/web/20010803104957/http://www.carthedral.com/FAQ.html

#25yrsago How solar is decentralizing power in the Domincan Republic https://web.archive.org/web/20010802180254/https://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,44784,00.html

#25yrsago PalmOS streetlamp beam-points https://web.archive.org/web/20010723042420/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/07/05/BU239233.DTL

#25yrsago Poignant story of a dotcom’s death https://web.archive.org/web/20010703095832/http://www.oreilly.com/news/deathofdotcom_0601.html

#20yrsago Haunted house build-notes https://web.archive.org/web/20060710081617/https://www.dragons-eye.com/watch_us_build!.htm

#20yrsago US copyright law in verse https://jergames.blogspot.com/2006/07/us-copyright-code-in-verse.html

#20yrsago Indie band pulls out of iTunes, cites DRM https://web.archive.org/web/20060708093512/https://www.technozid.de/2006/07/06/bodenstandig-2000-are-opting-out-of-itunes/

#20yrsago Coke employees busted for trying to sell formula to Pepsi https://web.archive.org/web/20060712112019/https://edition.cnn.com/2006/LAW/07/05/coke.secrets.ap/index.html

#20yrsago Sf is the only literature people care enough about to steal on the Internet https://www.locusmag.com/2006/Issues/07DoctorowCommentary.html

#20yrsago Steal This Book, the wiki https://web.archive.org/web/20060707015922/https://stealthiswiki.nine9pages.com/index.php?title=Table_of_Contents

#20yrsago Canadian artists call for less copyright https://web.archive.org/web/20060706205719/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060705.COPYRIGHT05/TPStory/

#20yrsago Pirate Party launches in France https://web.archive.org/web/20060706141024/http://www.parti-pirate.info/?page_id=17

#20yrsago Guy successfully trades paperclip for house https://web.archive.org/web/20060806194814/http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/2006/07/interesting.html

#20yrsago Woman gamer voice-changer for impersonating men https://web.archive.org/web/20060711114727/http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=65946

#20yrsago Collection of publishing industry statistics https://web.archive.org/web/20060704112005/http://parapublishing.com/sites/para/resources/statistics.cfm

#20yrsago Pen with built-in shredder and FM radio https://web.archive.org/web/20061027190059/http://www.radicauk.com/product/instructions/74011

#15yrsago Women football players half as likely to fake an injury as men https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110706195906.htm)

#15yrsago WIPO’s Broadcast Treaty is back: copyright nuts want to steal the public domain, kill Creative Commons, and give copyright over your videos to YouTube and other streamers https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/its-back-wipo-broadcasting-treaty-returns-grave

#15yrsago Influencing Machine: Brook Gladstone’s comic about media theory is serious but never dull https://memex.craphound.com/2011/07/07/influencing-machine-brook-gladstones-comic-about-media-theory-is-serious-but-never-dull/

#15yrsago Suffragette surveillance photos from 1912 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3153024.stm

#15yrsago Steampunk thinking helmet https://tombanwell.blogspot.com/2011/07/tauruscat-final-photos.html

#15yrsago RIP, Len Sassaman: cypherpunk and anonymity hacker https://web.archive.org/web/20110707065058/https://www.cso.com.au/article/392338/young_cryptographer_ends_own_life/

#15yrsago Italian telco regulator grants itself power to censor Internet; Obama administration approves https://hyperorg.com/2011/07/04/obama-admin-backs-berlusconis-unfettered-anti-piracy-regs/

#15yrsago Massive science fiction encyclopedia’s third edition will be digital https://web.archive.org/web/20110709072721/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/

#15yrsago HP Lovecraft’s commonplace book https://web.archive.org/web/20110706091953/https://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/07/h-p-lovecrafts-commonplace-book/

#15yrsago America’s copyright scholars speak out against PROTECT-IP bill https://volokh.com/2011/07/04/and-speaking-of-the-inalienable-right-to-the-pursuit-of-happiness/

#15yrsago Little Brother stage adaptation in San Francisco, Jan 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20130803164337/https://littlebrotherlive.wordpress.com/

#15yrsago Steven “Jumper” Gould’s new novel 7TH SIGMA: genre-busting science fiction/western kicks ass https://memex.craphound.com/2011/07/05/steven-jumper-goulds-new-novel-7th-sigma-genre-busting-science-fiction-western-kicks-ass/

#15yrsago Rotting, abandoned New Orleans theme-park https://www.flickr.com/photos/uelaphantom/sets/72157625672417251/comments/

#15yrsago Spanish anti-piracy execs busted for ripping off artists https://web.archive.org/web/20120510175030/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/police-raid-spanish-collecting-society-in-embezzlement-case/

#15yrsago Following the money: how spammers do their banking https://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/07/which-banks-are-enabling-fake-av-scams/

#15yrsago Life in an Indian call center https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/indian-call-center-americanization/

#15yrsago Stross’s Rule 34: pervy technothriller about the future of policing https://memex.craphound.com/2011/07/06/strosss-rule-34-pervy-technothriller-about-the-future-of-policing/

#10yrsago Unpleasant Design: design that bullies its users https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/unpleasant-design-hostile-urban-architecture/

#10yrsago 2016’s Illusion of the Year will make you cover your screen with fingerprints https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jri0del_6t4

#10yrsago WEB Du Bois’s infographics on black life, from the 1900 Exposition Universelle https://hyperallergic.com/w-e-b-du-boiss-modernist-data-visualizations-of-black-life/

#10yrsago “Security is what happens to people, not machines” https://www.oreilly.com/content/eleanor-saitta-on-security-as-a-product-of-shared-human-outcomes/

#10yrsago Drone’s eye view photos reveal the racism of South African neighbourhoods https://web.archive.org/web/20160706105856/https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/06/africa/south-africa-apartheid-drone-photography-unequal-scenes/index.html

#10yrsago Man builds giant, discrete-component-based computer that can play Tetris https://www.megaprocessor.com/

#10yrsago Epipens have more than quintupled in price since 2004 https://inthesetimes.com/article/anaphylactic-sticker-shock

#10yrsago Let’s check in with Pablo Escobar’s herd of feral hippos https://web.archive.org/web/20160706160442/https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1028733/legacy-of-drug-lord-escobars-pet-hippos

#10yrsago UK Tory leadership race: “a sort of X Factor for choosing the antichrist” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/05/tory-leadership-election-x-factor-choosing-antichrist-brexit-frankie-boyle

#10yrsago UK Tories want 10-year prison sentences for watching TV the wrong way https://torrentfreak.com/uk-bill-introduces-10-year-prison-sentence-for-online-pirates-160706/

#10yrsago Brexit’s other shoe drops: austerity, deregulation, climate nihilism https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/04/disaster-capitalism-tory-right-brexit-roll-back-state

#10yrsago After 7 years, UK’s Iraq War inquiry releases 2.6M word report damning Tony Blair and the invasion https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/chilcot-report-crushing-verdict-tony-blair-iraq-war

#10yrsago IS CELL PHONE DO BAD TO CHILD IN CLASSROOM?!11? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JdyABt6Ldo

#10yrsago UK cops routinely raided police databases to satisfy personal interest or make money on the side https://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Safe-in-Police-Hands.pdf

#10yrsago New York’s stately libraries sport hidden apartments for live-in caretakers https://www.6sqft.com/life-behind-the-stacks-the-secret-apartments-of-new-york-libraries/

#10yrsago Russia’s ghastly Children’s Rights Commissioner finally quits https://globalvoices.org/2016/07/04/russias-childrens-rights-commissioner-is-stepping-down-but-well-remember-him-for-these-7-things/

#10yrsago Frederick Douglass’ “The Meaning of July the Fourth for the Negro,” read by James Earl Jones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2YYEceo1HI

#10yrsago Sanders supporters are the least racist https://web.archive.org/web/20160705084803/https://blogs.reuters.com/talesfromthetrail/2016/07/01/belatedly-what-sanders-supporters-say-about-race/

#10yrsago Hidden “anti-crime” mics are proliferating on US public transit, recording riders’ conversations https://web.archive.org/web/20160704073920/https://www.csoonline.com/article/3090502/security/big-brother-is-listening-as-well-as-watching.html

#10yrsago Nigel “Brexit” Farage, having tanked the UK economy, retires to “get his life back” https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36702468

#10yrsago Peak indifference: privacy as a public health issue https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-peak-indifference/

#10yrsago ANSI board member thinks we should all pay for sex (and also pay to read the law) https://www.techdirt.com/2016/07/07/standards-body-whines-that-people-who-want-free-access-to-law-probably-also-want-free-sex/

#10yrsago Post-Brexit, EU Commission plan to ram through disastrous Canada-EU trade deal dies https://wolfstreet.com/2016/07/02/to-save-canada-eu-trade-pact-ceta-eu-assaults-democratic/

#10yrsago Claude Shannon, MOOCs, and nanoassembly: what 3D printing is really about https://www.edge.org/conversation/neil_gershenfeld-digital-reality

#5yrsago Comic book store files comic-book lawsuit https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/07/instrumentalism/#legal-funnies

#5yrsago Biden delivers Right to Repair via executive order https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/07/instrumentalism/#r2r

#5yrsago Technological self-determination https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/07/instrumentalism/#self-determination

#5yrsago Self-publishing https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/

#5yrsago Conspiracy fantasy https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/05/ideomotor-response/#qonspiracy

#5yrsago Quantifying copyright reversion https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/06/backsies/#take-backs

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• London: Idler Festival, Jul 11
  https://www.idler.co.uk/festival/

• Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
  https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales

• Sydney: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Aug 23-24
  https://festivalofdangerousideas.com/cory-doctorow/

• Melbourne: Enshittification at the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25
  https://www.wheelercentre.com/events-tickets/season-2026/cory-doctorow-enshittification

• Brighton: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8
  https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/

• London: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle's Picadilly), Sep 9
  https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Can AI be Saved From Capitalism? (Everyday Anarchism)
  https://www.everydayanarchism.com/192-can-ai-be-saved-from-capitalism-cory-doctorow/

• Lawfare Daily
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1KIwaYRs1g

• How to Think About AI (Organized Money)
  https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/how-to-think-about-ai-with-cory-doctorow

• Breaking Points
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJmUbkRqXeE

• A.I. Enshittifies Everything (Slate)
  https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next-tbd/2026/06/cory-doctorow-thinks-a-i-is-overvalued-and-overrated-and-still-a-threat

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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: "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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ISSN: 3066-764X

Na de Marokkaanse zege op het Nederlands elftal, liep het uit de hand in de Haagse Schilderswijk. De politie mag geweld gebruiken, maar uit veel videobeelden blijkt dat ook feestvierende supporters om niets klappen kregen, constateren Jair Schalkwijk en Dionne Abdoelhafiezkhan.

Het kabinet publiceert een eigen Kritieke Grondstoffenlijst. Zeventien grondstoffen kennen een „hoog leveringsrisico” voor Nederland.