← Feed

Posts

• Post #4500168

  In the summer of 2013, two esoteric, technical, incredibly important texts were published within weeks of one another: the first is the Snowden leaks, which revealed a system of global, pervasive digital surveillance. -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/11/tragedy-of-the-commoners/#piketty-snowden 1/

• Post #4482426

  According to an *Economist* editorial, "AI is breaking the British state" by making it too easy to file complaints, demands and appeals, which will "drown the state" with "demands as well-crafted as a first-class lawyer's": https://archive.is/VTrj9 -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/10/de...

• Post #4481116

  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: The bureaucratic AI arms-race is mutually assured destruction; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/10/deep-state-wopr/ #Pluralistic 1/

• Post #4446182

  Hardly a day goes by without my getting email from someone looking for ways to do good with technology. From computer science students thinking about post-grad careers to seasoned coders with decades of experience, there's an army of hackers looking for a way to turn their expertise into public goods. -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://plurali...

• Post #4422840

  602 words on “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. (2542 words total) #dailywords

• Post #4414672

  https://bsky.app/profile/did:web:pluralistic.net/post/3msft7xhvns2g Hey look at this * Can AI agents conduct open-ended AI research? Early evidence from two case studies https://cruxevals.com/crux/can-ai-agents-conduct-research/ * Meta Adding Millions Of AI-Generated 'Users' To IG, Facebook https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/402263/ * The Oligarchs are Doubling Down on Republicans https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-oligarchs-are-doubling-down-on * rent, always rent h...

• Post #4389580

  623 words on “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. (1336 words total) #dailywords

• Post #4385300

  Big Tech is the source of Americans' risk from authoritarian oppression. That means that Americans *cannot* rely on Big Tech to protect them from that authoritarianism. And yet, after decades of regulatory forbearance and lax antitrust enforcement, Big Tech has forced nearly all its rivals out of business. Who can compete with companies that use Irish domicile to evade taxation and US domicile to evade privacy law? 6/

• Post #4374389

  Obviously, the non-American world has a digital sovereignty problem - Trump has means, motive and opportunity to order his tech companies to shut down any public official, large corporation, or individual who displeases him: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/18/their-trillions-our-billions/#eyes-on-the-prize -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://plura...

• Post #4363974

  As "Cathy" so aptly put it: "The thing that is a good tool for the skilled people is being sold as a thing to reduce the number of skilled people hired": https://bsky.app/profile/cathyby.bsky.social/post/3ms3pzq57nc2c The former is a normal technology. The latter is the root of a catastrophic folly that is destroying our environment, destroying workers' lives, destroying the quality of the goods and services we rely on, and which will shortly destroy our economy. It&#3...

• Post #4362843

  "Understanding" and "statistical extrapolation" *can* often lead to the same place, but when they *don't*, "understanding" provides a way forward, while "extrapolation" founders. Both work fine, but only one fails gracefully. The two tricks only *appear* the same, but they are fundamentally different. 10/

• Post #4358923

  692 words on “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. (692 words total) #dailywords

• Post #4356625

  Have you ever received a Terms of Service or Privacy Policy update from a business you used that was an *improvement* on the previous version?

• Post #4350139

  The greatest magic trick of them all is *lying*. The reason you can't figure out that coin vanish even after the conjurer performs it three times in a row is that they *didn't* do the same trick three times in a row! -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/03/andor/#either 1/

• Post #4350126

  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: Dualism; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/03/andor/ #Pluralistic 1/

• Post #4279831

  From its inception, I've loved Creative Commons. I hung out with Lisa Rein, Matt Haughey and Aaron Swartz while they coded up the site, and my first novel was the first professionally published text ever released under a CC license, just weeks after CC itself launched: https://creativecommons.org/ -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralisti...

• Post #4264356

  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: The stupidest imaginable excuses for surveillance pricing; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/30/pay-for-privacy/ #Pluralistic 1/

• Post #4241026

  With "surveillance pricing," businesses have finally found something AI can do way, way, *way* better than people: price gouging. -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/30/pay-for-privacy/#ab2654 1/

• Post #4189198

  Hey look at this * We used to be able to buy things in this country https://dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to-be-able-to-buy-things * How to Stop the Enshittification of America https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-how-to-stop-the * Yes, Trump Will Attempt a Coup https://prospect.org/2026/07/28/trump-attempt-coup-january-6-election-republican-congress/ * Framework Laptop 13 Pro Review: The Best Modular Laptop Ever Made https://gizmodo.com/framework-laptop-13-pro-review-the...

• Post #4171061

  Or they insist that the mere act of making copies of published works in order to count their elements and the relationships between them is a sin, despite the fact that this standard would kill search engines, the Internet Archive, and the Oxford English Dictionary: https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/ 9/

• Post #4164537

  As far as I can tell, this dialog between MacArthur prize-winning mathematician Terrence Tao and Chatgpt about "the Jacobian conjecture counterexample" is very impressive: https://chatgpt.com/share/6a5fdc7a-d6f8-83e8-bbea-8deb42cfed56 -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/28/hitl-ers/#ai-ai-oh 1/

• Post #4164028

  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: Discernment; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/28/hitl-ers/ #Pluralistic 1/

• Post #4136808

  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: How the EU can punish Google (despite Trump); and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/27/eucd-6/ #Pluralistic 1/

• Post #4135518

  After all, the American public are always the first victims of any new tech scam, and America is the only country with a large, affluent population who lack modern, comprehensive consumer privacy protection, making Americans highly prized prey for tech companies: https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/23/zuckerstreisand/#zdgaf With America and the EU on the same side of the tech fight, the world had a fighting chance. 4/

• Post #4135111

  The "Serenity Prayer" (*Serenity to accept things I can't change/Courage to change the things I can/Wisdom to know the difference*) is usually cited as pop psychology or addiction recovery advice, but I think there's a place for it in policymaking. -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/27/eucd-6/#and-the-wisd...

• Post #4130960

  in 2019, there were more people in America struck by lightning than consumers who got monetary awards from an arbitration panel. Matt Stoller https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-how-to-stop-the

• Post #4086598

  It may strike you as weird, but lenders *love* lending to poor people who will have trouble paying them back Obviously, lenders want to be repaid, and the more money you have, the easier it is to settle your debts, but (paradoxically) if you have a lot of money, you expect to pay *less* to borrow. -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net...

• Post #4062660

  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: AI solipsists and AI cynics; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/24/supplemental-income/ #Pluralistic 1/

• Post #4060675

  It gets worse for social media bosses like Mark Zuckerberg, for whom AI's principal appeal is the prospect of ending socializing on social media, swapping your mulish friends for pliable chatbots who will organize their interactions with you to maximize your platform usage and thus the number of ads you see: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/19/billionaire-solipsism/#sirius-cybernetics 13/

• Post #4060405

  As a *technology*, AI isn't exceptional. It's not exceptionally wicked. It's not exceptionally good. Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we'd call AI's applications "plug-ins" and we'd use them and abuse them in the same way that we've used every other technology: https://www.normaltech.ai/ 1/