Friends,

I watched Stephen Colbert’s last “The Late Show” episode last night with a mixture of laughter, sadness, and anger — anger at the cowardly and craven executives of CBS and its new corporate owner, Skydance. And at Skydance’s robber-baron Trump suck-ups Larry and David Ellison.

CBS says they canceled Colbert for financial reasons, which is utter bullshit (they made gobs of money from selling the show to affiliates). They canceled because they wanted to sell the network to Skydance and worried that Trump would block the deal unless they got rid of Colbert, who Trump despised because Colbert has been a courageous Trump critic.

Colbert hosted more than 1,800 episodes of “The Late Show” after taking over the mantle from David Letterman. This week Letterman called CBS’s decision to cancel Colbert a “huge mistake.”

To add insult to this corrupt injury, CBS is putting Byron Allen into Colbert’s 11:35 p.m. time slot.

Never heard of Byron Allen? Well, besides being a self-described comic, Allen is also a billionaire media mogul who owns The Weather Channel, BuzzFeed, and HuffPost.

Allen promises that his late-night humor on CBS won’t be “political” — that is, he won’t skewer Trump. He won’t even mention Trump. Allen claims that “people are totally good with not doing political humor. They just want to watch. For me, I don’t care who you vote for and I’m not trying to push an agenda. You’re going to vote for who you want to vote for. Just show up if you want to laugh.” For Allen, it’s just about making money: “This is business show, not show business. You have got to make the numbers work.”

CBS executives claim the deal will provide “immediate profitability” for the network.*

Well, duh. That’s because CBS won’t be paying Allen. Allen will ignominiously be paying CBS for Colbert’s time slot; CBS will “lease” Colbert’s time slot to Allen, and Allen will pocket whatever advertising revenue the show brings in.

Going from Colbert’s trenchant satire of America’s first dictator to billionaire media mogul Byron Allen’s jejune rental agreement is a stunning comedown. It’s also a perfect manifestation of an era in our nation’s history when greed and power have merged into a huge force that’s collaborating with authoritarianism. (For further evidence, look at Jeff Bezos’s insistence that his Washington Post not editorialize against Trump.)

Allen’s rental agreement is also an example of how the media is rapidly shifting from a public-centered model of broadcasting to a privatized, anyone-rich-enough model.

That public-centered model was hardly ideal. I’m old enough to remember when, in 1961, then FCC commissioner Newt Minow castigated TV broadcasters for prioritizing profits over public service. Minow said that if the media executives watched an entire broadcast day without distractions, they’d observe a “vast wasteland” filled with game shows, mindless violence, formulaic westerns, and endless commercials.

Newt Minow would be turning in his grave if he saw his vast wasteland turn into an arm of neofascist capitalism.

I strongly suggest you boycott Byron Allen’s show. Hell, boycott CBS.

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Friends,

Here’s a memo to Democrats as they begin campaigning in earnest for control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. (Please send to any candidates you care about.)

***

TO: Democratic candidates in the 2026 midterm elections

RE: Connect Trump’s lousy economy to his corrupt regime.

The purpose of this memo is to help you shape your midterm message around the crisis of affordability and Trump Republican corruption. I urge you to present these two issues as aspects of the same underlying problem: The economy is lousy for most Americans because Trump Republicans are enabling super-rich oligarchs to siphon off most of its gains while exerting increasing control over it. Their — and Trump’s — self-dealing is undermining trust and confidence in the U.S. economic system.

1. Republicans in the House and Senate have put oligarchs in charge of America.

House and Senate Republicans have allowed Trump’s war and his tariffs to drive up prices and Trump’s corruption to undermine faith in the economy. They’ve allowed Trump to gild his White House in gold leaf, plan a giant Arc de Trump, throw lavish parties, and build a Billionaire’s Ballroom — at a time when most Americans can’t afford gas or groceries.

They raided Medicaid to pay for Trump’s giant tax cut, whose benefits are going mostly to the rich. Legislative efforts advanced by House Republicans and signed into law have targeted up to $2 trillion in federal health care cuts, forcing millions of Americans off Medicaid rolls to pay for these tax reductions.

They refused to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. This is causing average premiums to more than double and has already pushed 1.2 million people off coverage because they can’t afford it. Coverage losses are mounting as many who initially selected a plan or who were automatically reenrolled have to drop coverage.

Big Tech oligarchs — centi-billionaires Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, and other robber barons — paid for Trump’s 2024 election, his inauguration, and his ballroom and are major donors to Senate and House Republicans. They’ve shown up at Trump’s inauguration, White House dinners, and official visits to China.

In return, these oligarchs have been allowed to monopolize and drive up the prices we pay and silence Trump critics. Bezos’s Amazon, for example, won’t allow any seller on the site to post lower prices on any other site, and Bezos won’t allow his Washington Post editorial page to criticize Trump. Larry and David Ellison have bought CBS and sanitized “60 Minutes” of Trump criticism and effectively canceled Stephen Colbert. After buying X (formerly Twitter), Musk turned it into a pro-Trump voice box.

The AI oligarchs have bribed Trump and congressional Republicans to allow unfettered and unregulated growth of AI and its data centers, threatening millions of jobs and posing potential dangers to human life itself.

The crypto oligarchs have bribed Trump and congressional Republicans to allow them to create the world’s largest Ponzi scheme — which is enriching Trump and his family while providing a means for criminals to hide insider trades, child trafficking, and drug deals.

The Big Oil and aerospace oligarchs have bribed congressional Republicans to allow Trump to go to war in Iran, resulting in massive profits for Big Oil — while the rest of us pay $1.50 more per gallon of gas — and giant profits for giant military contractors.

This war spending has also contributed to higher inflation, which the rest of us pay for in higher mortgage rates and higher rates on car loans and education loans. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has surged to over 6.6 percent, reaching its highest level in nearly nine months, driven by rising Treasury yields, higher oil prices, and broader economic inflation concerns stemming from the war in Iran. The major beneficiaries of these higher rates — who pocket the higher payments we have to make — are the biggest banks and super-rich who make the loans.

Oligarchs have also bribed Trump and congressional Republicans to (1) get no-bid contracts, (2) deregulate Wall Street, (3) roll back environmental safeguards and worker safety, and (4) get massive subsidies for their corporations — all of which have made them even richer while making life for the rest of us more dangerous and more costly.

2. Republicans have created crony capitalism on steroids.

The system is an extreme form of crony capitalism. Congressional Republicans have rubber-stamped Trump’s corruption or pretended not to notice it, while average Americans get shafted and billionaires do better than ever. Corporate profits have never been higher. But wages aren’t keeping up with prices, which means most people are getting poorer, and the confidence of average consumers has never been lower.

Trump and his family’s corruption are leading the pack, setting an example for the rest of the American oligarchy.

Congressional Republicans have been silent in the face of bribes paid to Trump and his family. They didn’t raise a word about Jeff Bezos’s outright bribe to Melania Trump of $40 million for her film rights and $35 million to promote it, for a total of $75 million, when the best-case scenario is that Bezos’s Amazon earns $10 million on it.

But that’s just one example of the bribes coming Trump’s way. Qatar gifted Trump a Boeing 747 luxury jet valued at $400 million. Days before Trump’s second inauguration, the United Arab Emirates’ “Spy Sheikh” secretly bought 49 percent of the Trump family’s crypto firm. Months later, the administration handed over America’s most sensitive AI chip technology to the United Arab Emirates despite national security concerns. The Trump cryptocurrency business has rolled out a stablecoin called (USD1) pegged to the U.S. dollar. The stablecoin was utilized in a subsequent $2 billion investment into the cryptocurrency exchange Binance by MGX, an Abu Dhabi government fund. And so on.

Congressional Republicans have been silent as Trump has executed thousands of stock trades, many in individual stocks affected by his regime’s policies. And congressional Republicans won’t pass legislation to stop the regime from profiting off its policies. They’ve been silent as Trump praises and boosts corporations (as he did Apple on March 11) on the same day he invests in them and won’t hold Trump or the regime to any ethical standards.

Congressional Republicans have been silent in the face of the Trump family’s looting of America. In his first year of his second term of office, Trump increased his net worth by almost $4 billion to $7.8 billion by the end of 2025, according to TIME. Forbes estimated that in 2025, Eric Trump became 10 times richer, ending up worth some $400 million, and Donald Trump Jr. became six times richer, ending up worth some $300 million. Even Barron Trump, while still in college, reportedly ended up worth some $150 million in 2025.

Congressional Republicans have also been silent about Trump’s “agreement” with the Justice Department to create a $1.8 billion slush fund and immunity to all future IRS audits of Trump and his family. The agreement was based on Trump’s withdrawal of his absurd $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for damages (after a contractor leaked Trump’s tax information during his first term), when the federal judge to which the case was assigned indicated she’d throw it out because Trump can’t be in charge of both sides of the lawsuit.

So Trump’s own Justice Department then offered him — not as an official legal “settlement” but as a kind of consolation prize — a $1.8 billion slush fund, enabling him to compensate anyone he feels has been unfairly convicted. Likely beneficiaries would include fat-cat contributors to the Republican Party, as well as those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Justice Department has also offered Trump and his family immunity from any IRS audit ever again — allowing him and his family to permanently bury any and all illegal bribes they’ve received.

This is outright robbery from the citizens of the United States. Billions of dollars that Trump and his family have pocketed — from foreign governments, billionaires, and corporate supplicants — are now untraceable, unaccounted for, and hidden for good.

Republican members of Congress are reportedly unhappy with this agreement, presumably because their constituents are furious about it. But they won’t take any action or even say anything about it for fear of angering Trump; their silence about it is deafening.

3. The larger Republican scam is to replace our economy with bribes.

The Republicans’ increasingly corrupt political system — rife with crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and payoffs to the powerful — inevitably produces a corrupt economy. That’s because politics determines the rules by which an economy functions — and if those rules are products of corruption, the economy is corrupted.

In such an economy, investors can no longer rely on a system of stable rules and reliable laws. Everything depends on bribes and personal deals made by the biggest Republican loyalists and grifters, oligarchs and plutocrats, billionaire and multi-billionaires, and monopolists.

This inevitably leads to economic sclerosis and decline, as political and economic deal-making become personal transactions. Greed and payoffs replace trust. It’s happened before, after America’s first Gilded Age (see the Great Crash of 1929, leading to the Great Depression).

4. A lesson: Péter Magyar’s victory over Viktor Orbán relied on connecting the economic problems of ordinary Hungarians with Orban’s corruption.

Finally, recall that the key to Péter Magyar’s remarkable defeat of Viktor Orbán’s entrenched regime was Magyar’s ability to connect the economic problems faced by ordinary Hungarians to Orbán’s corruption.

Magyar showed how Hungary’s soaring cost of living and crumbling public services were linked to the illicit enrichment of Hungary’s ruling elite. He exposed how state resources were siphoned into a “mafia state” and showed that Hungary’s crumbling healthcare system, dilapidated schools, and failing infrastructure were a consequence. The inner circle of Orbán-aligned oligarchs had amassed immense fortunes while ordinary Hungarians suffered from high inflation, stagnant growth, and an erosion of their purchasing power.

Magyar’s anti-corruption message resonated because he presented elite graft not merely as a moral or governance issue, but as the root cause of Hungary’s cost-of-living crisis and declining standards of living.

Democrats should do the same. The parallels between what happened under Orbán and what’s happened under Trump and the Republicans are almost exact.

5. The Republican Party is responsible for the corruption. Democrats must respond with a plan to revive the economy and end the corruption.

The Democrats’ record on corruption is not perfect, to be sure, but Republicans are now in charge of the entire government — and we have never before witnessed corruption on this scale. The twin issues of an economy that’s unaffordable for most Americans and a system overwhelmed with corruption are closely linked, and Trump and his Republican Congress are largely responsible.

Most Americans are beginning to catch on, but Democrats need to hammer this home — and propose ways to lower prices while fighting the corruption.

Democrats should propose: (1) more vigorous anti-monopoly enforcement, including busting up giant corporations, (2) prohibiting insider trading by all elected officials and their families, (3) getting big money out of politics (see here), (4) raising taxes on the super-wealthy, including a wealth tax, and (5) using the proceeds to improve the lives of average working Americans through Medicare for all, universal childcare, paid leave, and free public higher education.

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Today's links

• Shopping isn't politics: The personal isn't political.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Neither arphid nor RFID; Gor novel sex slave cult; Violent economist sex criminals; Vade et caca in pilleum et ipse traheatur super aures tuo; "We Stand on Guard"; Healthy FLOSS; Lawsuits 2.0; CDC v zombie apocalypse; Gandhi's speeches; Apple v games about Palestine; Second Life chuds v Bernie; UK was never a "white" country; Dead, broke; Who Broke the Internet? (III)
• Upcoming appearances: Hay-on-Wye, London, Kansas City, LA, Menlo Park, Toronto, NYC, Edinburgh.
• 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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Shopping isn't politics (permalink)

I've written before about the futility of "voting with your wallet." Billionaires love it when you try to vote with your wallet, because while billionaires only represent 0.00004% of the population, their wallets are 100,000 times larger than average, which means that when we vote with wallets, a billionaire's vote counts 100,000 times more than yours:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/13/consumption-choices/

The idea of voting with your wallet is fundamentally antiprogressive, and not only because wallet-voting favors the wealthy. The ideological basis for voting with your wallet is the belief that politics are slow and unresponsive, while markets dynamically optimize for human wellbeing. By voting with your wallet, you are supposedly injecting information about your preferences and dispreferences into a vast, distributed computer we call "the market," which uses "demand signals" to decide how we live our lives.

This belief is incompatible with the idea of politics – that is, the idea that our lives can be shaped by representative democracy, deliberation, and/or solidarity. It's a nihilistic view that insists that the only nice things we can have are the things that "the market" chooses for us. If "the market" doesn't decide to swap out fossil fuels for cleantech, then that's that – any attempt to draw down our carbon emissions through regulation will only "distort the market." If you're roasting in a drought, drowning in a flood, or being incinerated by a wildfire, your only move is to go shopping and hope that by buying a Tesla, you will emit a "demand signal" that "tips the market equilibrium" to "not killing you and everyone you love."

Shopping isn't politics. Politics are politics, and shopping is shopping.

This isn't to say shopping can't improve your life! I am a materialist, and having nice things is nice. If there's a lovely independent coffee shop in your neighborhood where the baristas are treated well and the coffee is delicious and the vibes are impeccable, then by all means, get your coffee there. If you love the staff and selections at your neighborhood indie bookstore, then you should buy your books there. If you love the discourse on Mastodon or Bluesky and find yourself feeling sick and angry when you use Twitter or Facebook, then ditch the legacy social media and take up residence in the Fediverse and/or Atmosphere.

But don't kid yourself that this is politics. No matter how indie your coffee, books and social media, your consumption choices will not have a material impact on Starbucks, Amazon or Twitter. Going vegan won't make the meat industry treat animals better. Taking the bus won't induce improvements to your town's public transit network.

Having nice things is nice, and the more nice things you have – good food, good health, good books, good coffee, good social media and good transit – the more space and energy you'll have to devote to politics.

But what about boycotts? Surely the Montgomery bus boycott, the anti-Apartheid boycott, the California grape boycott and the BDS movement were politics, right?

They sure were. But they weren't shopping. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted 382 days, during which time organizers worked with bus riders, cab drivers, the UAW and community groups to provide material and legal support and alternatives like car pools, all while communicating about their specific demands. After 382 days, the courts ruled in their favor, their demands were met, and Montgomery's buses desegregated:

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

That wasn't "shopping." The bus boycott didn't consist of a bunch of individual choices to walk to work, repeatedly made by a city full of Black people and their allies. The shopping part was the least important part of the whole matter, and the meaningful part of the shopping was never individual. If the boycott was nothing more than shopping, it would have broken as soon as individual people found themselves unable to convince their bosses to tolerate their late, sweaty arrival at work, day after day. The boycott worked because it was politics.

And because the boycott was politics, it left behind a movement: the boycott brought people into solidarity with each other, and when they comprehensively defeated their political adversary – National City Lines – they went on to form the backbone of the civil rights movement, going from strength to strength.

Of course, shopping is part of a boycott. It's the individual part that each participant in the boycott undertakes. But without the collective, organized part, shopping is no way to effect change.

Is voting politics? Well, sure, but voting is to politics as shopping is to boycotts. For several decades now, most voters have been asked to chose the lesser of two evils (and now they're asked to choose the significantly lesser of two evils). Voting can change things, when there's something good to vote for, or something very bad to vote against, and when lots of people show up at the polls.

But to make voting effective, you have to do politics. You have to get involved in the primary races that select the candidate. You have to go to candidates' meetings and ask tough questions. You have to ring doorbells for your chosen candidate, volunteer to take your neighbors to the polls and volunteer to defend the polls from chuds and ICE fascists. The part of voting that takes place in the booth is the least important part of politics.

It's obvious why we might prefer to substitute voting or shopping for politics: they're activities you do alone. You don't have to find anyone else to do them with you. You don't have to convince anyone else to do them with you. You don't have to argue about them or justify them. They are zipless fucks, a source of satisfaction without connection, compromise or complication.

Of course, that's also why voting and shopping make a poor substitute for politics. All the retail therapy in the world can't lift your spirits the way that solidarity and community will. Doing politics creates solidaristic ties with the people around you, who might help you if you lose your job and can't buy groceries, or break your leg and can't get to the grocery store, or if ICE fascists try to kidnap you while you're out shopping.

Solidarity gets you through times of no money way better than money gets you through times of no solidarity – just ask the psycho billionaires who wanted Doug Rushkoff to invent a system of bomb-collars that would keep their post-apocalyptic mercenaries from whacking them and stealing their bunkers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Last weekend, I walked through a crowd of tens of thousands of coked-up fascists in central London on my way to meet up with 250,000 comrades marching for an end to genocide in Palestine and a new British social compact based on mutual aid, pluralism, and care. Walking through those flag-draped chuds was incredibly demoralizing:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2026/05/cokeheads-and-christians-a-day-at-tommy-robinsons-rally

But when I got off the tube at South Kensington and found there were so many of us we were backed up all the way from the every street entrance to the bottom of the escalators, my morale surged. Hours later, when we all reached Pall Mall together, I was ready to take on the world. That's what politics does for you: it makes you feel like you belong to a polity and that together, you can really change the world.

Politics runs on solidarity, but shopping destroys it. Individual consumption choices don't change the world, but if you've been convinced that the only way to change the world is by voting with your wallet then when the world stays terrible, you can only conclude that your friends and neighbors have ruined by things by voting (shopping) wrong.

In politics, we build bonds of mutual regard and understanding that we use to navigate our differences. But when you vote with your wallet, all that's left is the endless policing of your allies' consumption choices, endless scolding for their failure to leave Twitter, or give up meat, or eschew chatbots. Shopping for change ends up replacing politics with petty snooping and endless sniping and attempts to bully or shame people into consuming different things.

If "the personal is political," then every political disappointment in your life is down to your friends' personal defects. If you let yourself get tricked into organizing your life around "living your politics" – that is, giving up on nice things in the hope that this will make politics change, and then getting mad at people who consume different things from you – then you will end up sucked into the stupidest fights imaginable with the people you need to get along with in order to do politics.

Once again, this isn't to say that you shouldn't choose to have nice things. Buy stuff you like, shop at places you like. And when circumstances allow all of us to start making consumption choices in unison – as when Comrades Trump and Putin stage an orgy of demand-destruction for fossil fuels, catapulting the world into the Gretacene – then by all means, take the win. That is one of the rare instances in which we can do political change with consumption!

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/04/hope-in-the-dark/#hormuzed-into-the-gretacene

And there definitely are times where a single individual can intervene in the system in a powerful way that really fucks up the worst actors in our society:

https://www.theverge.com/tech/931532/bambu-agpl-pawel-jarczak-open-source-threat-dmca-github

These usually involve using technology to "move fast and break things," which is fine, actually! It's fine to move fast and break things belonging to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or some other monster. Indeed, it's practically a moral imperative:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/30/zucksauce/#gandersauce

But even in those highly leveraged, highly individualized opportunities to make a dent in the universe, you'll make a bigger dent, and have more fun, if you do it as politics, with a big group of people, in bonds of solidarity.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• The Workers Who Defy Gravity https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/05/20/ai-companies-organized-labor-actors-fight-back/

• Messages of Solidarity https://movement.wwwrise.org/solidarity

• The Enshittification of History https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/05/the-enshittification-of-histor.html

• Europe’s big tech bet is only as safe as its democracy https://defenddemocracy.eu/eu-tech-democracy/

• Iran demands Big Tech pay fees for undersea Internet cables in Strait of Hormuz https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/iran-demands-big-tech-pay-fees-for-undersea-internet-cables-in-strait-of-hormuz/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Software-based antennas https://web.archive.org/web/20010518225333/http://www.etenna.com/

#25yrsago Aimster loses trademark to AOL https://web.archive.org/web/20010523001415/http://msnbc.com/news/575492.asp?cp1=1

#25yrsago House to ban online anonymity https://web.archive.org/web/20010526220254/https://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43938,00.html

#20yrsago Lawsuits of Web 2.0 https://web.archive.org/web/20060528001734/http://www.fuckedsuit.com/

#20yrsago Is one month’s piracy worth more than France’s GDP? https://decordove.com/one-month-of-torrents-is-worth-more-than-the-gdp-of-france-riaa-rant.php

#20yrsago Audio from Bruce Sterling’s “Neither Arphid nor RFID” rant https://web.archive.org/web/20060614140414/https://dev1.manme.org.uk/~luke/Sterling_SPACE_160506.mp3

#20yrsago Cops raid “sex slave cult” based on science fiction novels http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4996410.stm

#15yrsago Legal rebuttal: “vade et caca in pilleum et ipse traheatur super aures tuo” https://newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneyblog.com/2011/05/joseph-rakofsky-i-have-an-answer-for-you.html

#15yrsago List of economists involved in violent sex crimes, for Ben Stein https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/05/18/answering-ben-steins-question/

#15yrsago MAFIAA wants warrantless searches of CD and DVD factories https://web.archive.org/web/20110520232527/https://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/riaa-warrantless-seizures/

#15yrsago CDC explains how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse https://web.archive.org/web/20110519201602/http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

#10yrsago 129 of Gandhi’s speeches on India and self-rule https://archive.org/details/HindSwaraj?and[]=subject%3A"Post+Prayer+Speech"

#10yrsago A backer message as Earth leaves beta and goes 1.0 https://web.archive.org/web/20160521054706/http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v533/n7603/full/533432a.html

#10yrsago EFF files Chelsea Manning appeal on hacking conviction https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-asks-court-reverse-chelsea-mannings-conviction-violating-federal-anti-hacking-law

#10yrsago Apple rejects game about Palestine because political messages disqualify games from consideration https://web.archive.org/web/20160520111154/https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/apple-says-game-about-palestinian-child-isnt-a-game/

#10yrsago Nerdcore rapper Sammus’s amazing OSCON keynote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELczJ07XPnw

#10yrsago Everything is a Remix on “The Force Awakens” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKvsc6a03Es

#10yrsago Angry dudes are downranking woman-oriented TV shows on review sites https://web.archive.org/web/20160519014153/https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/men-are-sabotaging-the-online-reviews-of-tv-shows-aimed-at-women/

#10yrsago Second Life’s Trump army lays siege to Bernie Sanders’s virtual HQ with swastika cannons https://web.archive.org/web/20160428093534/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/second-life-donald-trump-bernie-sanders

#10yrsago Xenophobic UK politician ranting about “political correctness” gets a public spanking from an historian https://web.archive.org/web/20160520224731/http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/ukip-councillor-attempts-to-blast-bbc-for-historical-inaccuracy-gets-destroyed-by-actual-historian–ZyZAasU2fb

#10yrsago A look at digital habits of 13 year olds shows desire for privacy, face-to-face time https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/parenting4digitalfuture/2016/04/18/the-class-living-and-learning-in-the-digital-age/

#10yrsago Big Vitamin bankrolls naturopaths’ attempts to go legit and get public money https://web.archive.org/web/20160520123659/https://www.statnews.com/2016/05/17/naturopaths-go-mainstream/

#10yrsago We Stand on Guard: in 100 years, America seizes Canada for its water https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/18/we-stand-on-guard-in-100-years-america-seizes-canada-for-its-water/

#5yrsago Apple's complicity in Chinese state oppressionhttps://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#think-manorialism

#5yrsago Community Health Services sued its way through the pandemic https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#health-usury

#5yrsago What Would Open Source Look Like If It Were Healthy https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#user-personas

#5yrsago Dead, broke https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

#1yrago Who Broke the Internet? Part III https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/19/khan-thought/#they-were-warned

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

• Kansas City: Facing the Future (Woodneath Library Center), Jun 10
  https://www.mymcpl.org/events/119655/facing-future-cory-doctorow

• LA: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Brian Merchant (Skylight Books), Jun 19
  https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-cory-doctorow-presents-reverse-centaurs-guide-life-after-ai-w-brian-merchant

• Menlo Park: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Angie Coiro (Kepler's), Jun 21
  https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow-2026

• Toronto: TBA, Jun 23

• NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
  https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

• Philadelphia: TBA, Jun 25

• Chicago: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Rick Perlstein (Exile in Bookville), Jun 26
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/50628

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• On Enshittification – and what can be done about it (Re:publica)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhINQgPMVSI

• EFFecting Change: How to Disenshittify the Internet (EFF, with Wendy Liu)
  https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-enshittification

• The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
  https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/

• Enshittification (99% Invisible)
  https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/

• Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

---

Latest books (permalink)

• "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

---

Upcoming 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/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "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

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

---

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. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

---

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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Friends,

I was born just after the end of World War II. The first half of the 20th century marked a particularly difficult, violent era.

But the 21st century so far has been, well, one trauma after another.

It started with 9/11, followed by the grim wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then the Wall Street crisis of 2008 and subsequent Great Recession. The COVID pandemic of 2020 and its own economic crisis. The attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Then, beginning in 2024, Trump’s full-scale attack on democratic institutions, followed by his war on Iran and soaring prices. Soon to come: Artificial Intelligence invading all aspects of our lives.

At the same time, we’ve been experiencing widening inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity, along with a growing climate crisis.

When a nation’s people experience these sorts of stresses, they begin expecting stress. They gird themselves for the next crisis. They shut down their capacity to be shocked or appalled.

Trump’s lies swirl around us in the daily flow of hyper-digital noise. His attacks on democracy and his abject cruelty have by now become expected features of politics. The corruption, too, has come to be normalized, along with the public cynicism that accompanies it.

According to a survey from the American Psychological Association, 76 percent of Americans are concerned about the future of the nation. This is now the leading cause of stress, above the economy or work or money. Anxiety has moved from being a psychological disorder to becoming part of a seemingly natural order. We no longer see the degree of stress we’re under as exceptional because we’re enveloped in it.

Trump is not the only cause of stress. In fact, anxieties that have grown over the last four decades may explain why so many Americans voted for him in the first place — a so-called “strongman” who assured them he would take care of their troubles (he obviously didn’t; he added to the troubles).

Job tenures have become shorter and incomes more volatile. That’s because economic disruption has moved from the periphery of our economy to its center.

Marriages are postponed and births are falling because the future is too uncertain to make lifelong commitments.

Counselors, therapists, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies now focus on problems that are consequences of chronic anxiety — heart ailments, chronic headaches, ulcers and bowel issues — rather than traditional ailments.

We are becoming a PTSD nation. We are no longer shocked by the shocking circumstances we find ourselves in, but we are frightened by them all the same. We are seemingly numb to painful realities all around us that nonetheless keep us up at night.

I can’t help wonder: Have we silently relinquished a major reason we joined together in the first place, more than two centuries ago — to ensure domestic tranquility?

Have we unwittingly entered a Faustian bargain? We are paying an exorbitant price for aspects of our system we’ve been told are indubitably good or over which we have no control: the constant stream of new “stuff.” So-called “economic efficiencies,” economic growth, and technological disruption. Digital access 24 hours a day, wherever you are. Social media. An exciting (and exhausting) “what-has-he-done-now?” politics that substitutes for entertainment.

Maybe the tradeoff isn’t worth it.

In addition to ridding ourselves of Trump, we’ll also need to turn down the noise. Seek more peace, quiet, and stability in our lives.

Do we really need AI? Do we have to work this hard? Is all this stuff really necessary? Can’t this rich nation afford to give everyone at least a universal basic income? Can’t we just elect quiet, humble, capable leaders?

(Or am I turning into a cranky old man?)

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Friends,

Trump’s revenge tour continues.

Republican congressman and Trump critic Thomas Massie lost Tuesday to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein in the most expensive House primary in U.S. history (total cost was more than $32 million from combined campaign and super PAC spending).

Massie lost by a 10-point margin after being outspent 2-to-1 for most of the race. Pro-Israel groups (AIPAC, RJC) accounted for just over 30 percent of outside spending in the race, while Trump’s own super PAC accounted for another 30 percent.

This is just Trump’s latest victory on what has been dubbed his “revenge tour.” Other Trump victories include:

• The retirement of North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who announced last summer he would not run for reelection after voting against Trump’s Big Ugly Bill.

• The primary defeat of all but one of the Indiana Republicans who stood up to Trump by opposing Trump’s demand for redistricting.

• The primary defeat of Louisiana’s Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to impeach Trump for January 6.

• The potential loss of Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn to Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton in next Tuesday’s runoff. (Trump says he decided to back Paxton because Cornyn was “very late in backing me” in 2024, despite Cornyn’s record of voting for everything Trump has wanted.)

• Incumbent Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who opposed Trump’s plot to “find 11,780 votes” in Georgia in 2020 and declined to seek reelection to another term as secretary of state in favor of running for governor, was easily trounced in the Republican primary for governor. (The GOP secretary of state primary in Georgia is headed to a June 16 runoff, with both candidates having promoted voter fraud conspiracies.)

These purges cement Trump’s stranglehold over the GOP. They send a clear signal to all Republicans who seek office or who are planning to run for reelection that they must be a rubber stamp for Trump to gain or remain in power.

They have thereby converted the official Republican Party from a political party into an extension of Trump’s regime — further eroding American democracy.

Trump’s retribution victories have encouraged him to settle additional scores. He’s now demanding that Senate Republicans fire parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough after she ruled that funding for the White House ballroom cannot be included in Republicans’ party-line immigration enforcement bill.

When Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Trump’s threat against MacDonough was “concerning,” Trump doubled down — posting this morning on Truth Social: “Get smart and tough Republicans, or you’ll all be looking for a job much sooner than you thought possible!”

Trump also reiterated his threat to seek revenge against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Col.), an “America Firster” who broke with Trump by pushing to release the Jeffrey Epstein files and campaigning with Massie last weekend. (Boebert declared last night on X after Massie’s defeat that “Trump is my President!”)

Trump is also threatening Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who last week criticized Trump’s ballroom funding request. Fitzpatrick is a moderate Republican from a must-hold district if the GOP hopes to defend the House majority. “He likes voting against Trump,” Trump said. “You know what happens with that — doesn’t work out well.”

**

But the purges in Congress could also make Trump a premature lame duck over the next six months if Tillis, Cassidy, Massie, and Cornyn break with him for the remainder of their terms.

And why shouldn’t they, if they have left a shred of integrity?

They’re already showing some courage. Since his loss, Cassidy has rebuked Trump by voting against ballroom funding and voting for a procedural vote to advance a war powers resolution aimed at limiting Trump’s military action in Iran. The resolution forces Trump to either end hostilities or seek congressional authorization. The motion to advance the resolution passed by a 50-47 vote, marking the first time Democrats successfully advanced this measure.

In addition to Cassidy, other Senate Republicans who broke party lines with their May 19 procedural vote to advance a war powers resolution were Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul. Notably, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn were absent from the vote. (Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who’s fast becoming a DINO, was the sole Democrat to vote with most Republicans against the resolution.)

If Cornyn loses in Texas, the rift between Trump and Thune is likely to deepen — thereby threatening Senate passage of the second reconciliation bill (which incorporates a huge funding increase for ICE as well as $1 billion for Trump’s ballroom).

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Friends,

I was honored to be selected to give the commencement address at Berkeley. For any of you who’d like to see and hear what I said, I’m posting the address above (and the written version below). I’d be very interested in your reactions, so please don’t hesitate to comment.

**

Faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, parents, significant others and insignificant others, and finally and most importantly, members of the great class of 2026.

It is a profound honor to be here with you today. Now, I know every commencement speaker probably says this. The graduates down on that little farm in Palo Alto will probably find someone to say how honored they are to speak there.

But as we all know, those other places are not Berkeley, the best university in the world. I may be accused of some bias. I had the privilege of teaching here for 17 wonderful years. Yet as someone who attended and taught in other places, I can honestly say that nowhere is quite like Berkeley.

Yes, it’s beautiful. Yes, the weather is superb. Yes, its faculty are world renowned. But more than anything, this place is the best because of you, the best students I have ever had the honor of teaching. You are exceptionally curious, remarkably kind, amazingly smart, and you care extraordinarily about each other.

Three years ago, I taught my last big undergraduate course, in Wheeler Hall. Some people call what happened next “retirement.” I hate that word. I didn’t retire. I just graduated into the next phase of life.

But the truth is I’ve missed you. So, like many Berkeley graduates, I found excuses to never leave here. Maybe one of the reasons you selected me as your speaker is that you took pity on this old guy roaming the campus telling anyone who would listen how much he missed you.

There’s a reason why both professors and students have such affection for this place. While your time here is relatively brief -- in the span of what will hopefully be a long and happy lifetime -- the bonds formed here, the people you met, the way you learned to think, the passage from childhood to adulthood, will never leave you.

Do you remember beginning your formal education? Maybe the first day of kindergarten? My memory is a bit fuzzy because it was back when Abraham Lincoln was president. But if you think that you’re now leaving your student days behind, I want to let you in on a little secret. You may have had your last final exam and your last term paper, but the most important thing we’ve taught you is to be a student as long as you’re alive. Life is about learning.

While our job as professors has been to teach you, what makes being a professor so rewarding, especially in a place like this, is that we are also learning from you. To be a teacher is also to be a student. To be a student is to be a teacher. Two parts of the same impulse – to engage with a world continuously replenished by curiosity and community. I see in teaching and learning an embrace of life itself. Think about how much of who you are now, you’ve learned from the people now sitting next to you in their caps and gowns. And think of what you’ve been able to teach them.

A question that often haunts me is who the teachers of tomorrow will be. Not only in the formal classroom sense, although classroom teachers are desperately needed. But also in the larger sense of helping make sense of the world and showing the way forward. That is, leading.

You don’t need to be cloaked in formal authority to be a leader. You don’t need a fancy title or a big office. You certainly don’t need to be a Cabinet secretary to be a leader. Many of our most important leaders through history had no formal title. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dolores Huerta, Rosa Parks, W.E.B. DuBois, Susan B. Anthony. To be a leader you need to understand where we should be heading and why, what we need do to get there, and how to summon the intelligence and energies of many people to help accomplish it. Leadership is a moral vocation.

We live in a world obsessed with doing things. We’ve invented incredible tools -- machines, robots, now AI. But a much more important and interesting problem than what we are doing is why we’re doing it.

Engineers are already designing headphones that can simultaneously translate other languages. It’s remarkable. But the purpose of learning a foreign language is not just to order a beer in Belgium. It’s to teach ourselves how to see the world from different perspectives and connect with people who have other ways of living and knowing. As I used to tell my students, the best way of learning anything is to talk with people who disagree with you.

The purpose of so much of what you have learned, and will learn, is not just to master complicated concepts or solve difficult problems but to understand why you have mastered these concepts and problems, what you might do with your mastery, and how they might help you connect with others in mastering or at lease improving your community, your society, the world.

I didn’t discover much of this until I was in my 50s. That’s when I came to teach here, the best university in the world.

I was running for governor of Massachusetts and came to the Bay Area to raise money for my campaign (the part of campaigning I hated most). I stopped for a cup of coffee at Cafe Strada, and it suddenly hit me: I didn’t want to be governor of Massachusetts. I wanted to be a professor at Berkeley, a public university that prizes education as a public good, where I could teach a diverse group of brilliant students who would help heal the world.

Thankfully, the good people of Massachusetts saw the light and decided they didn’t want me to be their governor. And luckily, the Berkeley faculty decided they did want me to be a professor, here.

So, I left Massachusetts and came to Berkeley. Amazing. It was like that moment in the movie the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the window of her house that’s fallen into Oz, and everything’s in technicolor.

That’s really what it’s about. Sometimes getting caught up in a tornado, occasionally coming down with a crash, and, if you’re fortunate, opening your window and seeing the beauty of the world you’ve landed in.

One lesson you have taught me is that you are part of an incredible wave of youthful energy, empathy, and intelligence. Whenever I despair – which, these days, is more often than I’d like to admit -- I just take a stroll through campus, past the Campanile, through Sproul Plaza, under the towering redwoods, and I see the flyers on the bulletin boards, the intricate group dances being rehearsed, I see you going to or coming from classes. And I have a feeling that the nation and world are not just going to be okay, you will also make them better. Much, much better.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you, if you hadn’t noticed, that we’re in trouble right now. With each passing day, the systems that have been in place in this nation for nearly 250 years to advance democracy and prevent authoritarianism are under ever-greater strain.

Why is democracy so important and authoritarianism so dangerous? Because the moral purpose of a civilized society is to prevent the stronger from attacking or exploiting the weaker. Otherwise, we’d be permanently immersed in a brutish war in which only the fittest and most powerful could survive.

This moral imperative lies at the center of America’s founding documents. It’s also at the core of the postwar international order championed by the United States – emphasizing multilateralism, human rights, and the rule of law.

It’s an aspiration we have not always lived up to. Maintaining it has required that the powerful possess sufficient integrity and civic virtue that they not abuse their power -- and if they do, they are held accountable.

Yet we now inhabit a society and world grown vastly more unequal. This itself invites the powerful to exploit the weaker, because in an extremely unequal society and world, some of the powerful come to feel omnipotent.

But unfettered might does not make right. It makes for instability, upheaval, depravity, and war.

History shows that laws and norms designed to constrain the powerful also protect them. Without such constraints, their insatiable demands for more power and wealth eventually bring them down – along with their empires, dynasties, or nations. And threaten the entire world.

It is the responsibility of every one of us – and of this great university -- to do whatever we can to preserve democracy, fight authoritarianism, protect freedom of speech and expression, and treat all workers well.

It is the responsibility of all of us to seek the truth and speak truth to power, regardless of any pressures and threats the powerful may place on us. And it is our responsibility to work toward a society based on inclusion rather than exclusion.

Mind you, these ideals do not belong to one political party or one part of America. They are fundamental. They underpin the education you have received. They form the basis of our lives together. They are central to the meaning of a good society.

I’m not going to minimize the challenges you face – from authoritarianism to climate change, to the job market, and a world in turmoil. But I know that you will take what you have learned at this wonderful place, and teach others what is worth doing, how to do it better, how to protect the powerless and how to hold accountable the powerful.

This is the great unending chain of inspiration and responsibility. All of you are products of it and all of you have the capacity to keep it going.

No pressure at all, but we’re counting on you. We believe in you.

We also love you. The people who have gathered here today to see you get your degrees – your families, friends, and significant and insignificant others -- love you. We the faculty who have poured our hearts into teaching you and have learned so much from you, we love you.

And those of you embarking on the adult part of your life today – the part where you’re on your own, when your life is really yours – well, treat it as you would someone you love, too. Not in order to boast or gloat. Not to look down on anyone else. Not to be rich or famous. But to learn to be you, authentically you. To know yourself. To be patient and kind to yourself. And to be the best version of yourself you can possibly be. You are the teachers and the leaders the world needs.

Thank you.

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Friends,

I’ve been spending much of the last month watching and listening to Democrats trying to find their core message for the upcoming midterms.

The sad truth is that (with a few exceptions, such as Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, and AOC) a clear Democratic message isn’t getting through about the dangers Trump poses to America and the world, and what must be done.

So I’ve begun to look farther afield for effective messengers.

The best advertising I’ve seen alerting Americans is being done by the The Lincoln Project. Some excellent videos are being done by More Perfect Union and, modesty aside, Inequality Media Civic Action.

Several individuals in the media are doing an excellent job educating the public about the dangers of Trump. Among the most effective are Amy Goodman, co-founder, host, and executive producer of the independent news program “Democracy Now!” Also, Substack’s Heather Cox Richardson, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell and Ali Velshi, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver of “Last Week Tonight” (on HBO).

I’d add New York Times columnists Jamelle Bouie and Michelle Goldberg, Dana Milbank (formerly with The Washington Post and about to join a new Allbritton-backed news organization), actor Robert DeNiro, and The View co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin.

But my candidates for the people who have been most successful in educating the public about the dangers Trump poses are listed below. In my view, each can teach us a great deal about how to be effective communicators and powerful voices against the neofascist takeover of this nation and world.

Hence, your Office Hours assignment today is to select from the following list the person you think has been the most effective of all, or suggest someone else and explain why. Here’s the list:

Read more

Friends,

Recently, people have been asking me who I’m voting for in the California gubernatorial primary. Normally, I prefer to stay out of the primaries (I myself was involved in a contested primary way back when, but that’s another story).

Like most voters I know in California, I’ve been holding onto my ballot. It’s been an especially bruising campaign season, and folks are tired of the attack ads.

But it’s now time to commit. California voters must support a candidate for governor who will do the job the way it should be done.

I’m voting for Tom Steyer.

You may be thinking: a billionaire? Hear me out. Steyer is the only candidate with a plan to tax the wealthy and corporations to invest in public services.

Yes, the billionaire is the only candidate with a plan to tax billionaires.

Steyer is the only candidate who has said he’d vote for the billionaire wealth tax, and he’s also said we need to go even further. Under his revenue plan, he’d raise taxes on corporations and other billionaires to fund schools and healthcare.

Steyer understands that economic growth depends on a strong middle class, not trickle down nonsense.

On the issue of artificial intelligence, Steyer is the only candidate with a plan to tax Big Tech and share the gains with working people. Under Steyer’s plan, he will guarantee every worker impacted by AI has a good-paying job.

When it comes to single-payer healthcare, Steyer is also committed to making California a model for the rest of the nation.

But don’t take my word for it. Steyer’s progressive policies have won him the support of nurses, teachers, and other labor unions across the state. At the same time, PG&E, Chevron, and MAGA billionaires are spending millions against him.

We’ve had wealthy Democratic politicians before. FDR and JFK had tremendous fortunes, yet they enacted some of the most progressive policies in American history.

Meanwhile, the other candidates in the race for governor haven’t taken a stand on the billionaire wealth tax. Why? I fear it’s because they don’t want to upset the wealthy donors and corporations backing their campaigns. It’s that simple.

I love California. It’s been my home for nearly 30 years. We need progressive change, not more of the same.

Tom Steyer is the only viable candidate to deliver that change in Sacramento.

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Friends,

Donald Trump just stole over A BILLION DOLLARS from you and me and every other taxpayer. And he’s using it to reward cronies and criminals who committed violence on his behalf.

If this sounds corrupt as hell, that’s because IT IS corrupt as hell.

The Justice Department announced that it is establishing a taxpayer-funded $1.8 billion dollar “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

The massive slush fund will give violent criminals and crooks pardoned by Trump a way to seek payouts over bogus claims that the government was “weaponized” against them.

This includes the FIFTEEN HUNDRED insurrectionists charged or convicted of storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6. And it includes some of the fraudsters Trump pardoned after they made huge donations to his Super PAC.

This so-called “weaponization” fund was created after Trump agreed to drop his egregious $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax returns.

In addition, the Justice Department revealed today that it has agreed not to pursue any legal matters against Trump and his family, including those involving Trump’s tax returns, that are currently pending — such as any audits of Trump or his family. In 2024, The New York Times reported that a loss in an IRS audit could cost Trump more than $100 million.

Remember: Donald Trump was literally suing his own government for damages, while lawyers from his own Justice Department handled the lawsuit. Hello?

The case was rightfully facing skepticism from the judge presiding over it. So, instead of pressing forward, Trump and his regime have established the weaponization fund to effectively get around the judge.

Now, Donald Trump will control a five-person commission that decides on how the $1.8 billion, taxpayer-funded slush fund will be spent with little to no oversight.

Some Democrats in the House are trying to block this outright theft from the American taxpayer. Impeachment should be on the table too.

Friends, I’ve been around politics for over 50 years. I’ve never seen anything as brazenly crooked and corrupt as what Trump and his cronies did yesterday.

Donald Trump makes Richard Nixon look like a choir boy.

Call your members of Congress and tell them not to allow this travesty. Phone (202) 224-3121. The operator can connect you directly to the office of any representative or senator.

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Friends,

Stephen Colbert’s last show is this Thursday evening.

CBS refused to renew his contract, and you know exactly why: He mocked and criticized Trump.

CBS says it’s ending “The Late Show” because the show was costing CBS some $40 million a year. That’s utter bullsh*t. Colbert enabled CBS to charge higher fees to local affiliates, because he attracted millions of viewers to those affiliates’ 11 p.m. news programs in anticipation of his “The Late Show” airing right after. The show was also a promotional gold mine for CBS, whose series stars were often interviewed by Colbert. No wonder CBS was “feverish” to lock Colbert into a new contract only three years ago.

What really happened couldn’t be clearer. Führer Trump was furious at Colbert’s mocking, and publicly called for CBS to cancel him (or “put him to sleep NOW” as Trump wrote in one social media post). At the same time, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, was on the verge of a lucrative merger deal that Trump could interfere with.

Paramount had already sucked up to Trump by offering him $16 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” although he had almost no chance of prevailing in court.

In a monologue, Colbert called the settlement a “big fat bribe,” which it was. Days later he got word he’d been canceled. About a week after that, the deal was approved.

***

Before Colbert started at CBS, he hosted Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” where he played a right-wing, blowhard, curmudgeonly TV host.

I was often a guest, presumably because I was a good foil for the blowhard that Colbert was acting. (I’ve also been a guest on his “The Late Show.”)

The first time I came to do “The Colbert Report,” I was nervous. I didn’t know how to respond to someone who’d be acting as a conservative asshole but wasn’t one in real life.

I was sitting alone in the greenroom when Colbert popped in. He introduced himself, sat down, and then, smiling, said, “Just wanted to warn you that I play a real jerk out there.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “I’ve watched the show.”

“Good. Don’t argue with me. Just play along,” he counseled.

“I’ll try not to argue,” I said. “But I go on so many of these combative shows that I may automatically start arguing.”

Colbert laughed. “That’s fine. Just let me do the heavy lifting. I’ll be so obnoxious that viewers will see the wisdom in your argument!”

“Sounds good,” I said, still nervous.

“Just have fun!” Colbert advised, before vanishing to his set.

Here’s one of our discussions:

Colbert was anything but a right-wing jerk. In fact, as I’ve come to know him over the years, he’s remarkably self-effacing and wicked smart. He’s progressive in his politics, of course, but never dogmatic. Even when he skewers Trump on his “The Late Show,” he does it with gentle humor and no trace of anger or bitterness.

I’ve done many thousands of interviews over my adult life. Some interviewers, like the late Bill Moyers, have been so thoughtful and well-prepared that I’ve barely had to think; I just fall into a natural conversation with them. Others are so stilted or slick that they hardly listen to what I say, and the interview has the tortuous feel of gears grinding from one topic to another.

Colbert is like Moyers in being well-prepared and listening intently. But he adds a rapid-fire wit that can make a serious point while putting an audience in stitches.

When Colbert interviewed me last August about my latest book, CBS had just announced that his contract wouldn’t be renewed and that by late May the show would be off the air for good.

A stagehand met me at the side door to the old Ed Sullivan Theater. As he led me to the greenroom, I asked him how everyone there was taking the news.

“Not well,” he said. After a pause he said, “We’re like a family here.”

Some time later, Stephen came by the greenroom. I asked him how he was doing. “Oh, I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll find something else to do. But there are about a hundred people here who will be out of jobs, and frankly I’m worried about them.”

They are like a family — Stephen Colbert, his executive producer, the segment producers and directors, showrunners, writers, cameramen, gaffers, grips, lighters, stagehands, custodians, musicians. Stephen has treated them like a family. His respect and concern for them is unusual in the business but consistent with the courtesy and kindness I discovered the first time I met him.

In sharp contrast is the way CBS and Paramount’s new owners, Larry and David Ellison, have treated Colbert and all those who have made “The Late Show” such an important part of our entertainment and political firmament.

Behind the Ellisons lurks Trump, who treats everyone like shit except strongmen he can’t control such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

After this Thursday’s show, the Ed Sullivan Theater will go dark, and we’ll lose one of the nation’s funniest and most courageous, truthful, and gentlemanly critics of Trump and his lawless regime. Our society and democracy will be the worse for it.

Farewell, and thank you, Stephen.

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Today's links

• There's no such thing as "age verification": The foreseeable and foreseen consequences of "something must be done"/"there, I've done something."
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Apple Stores exist; Responsible spam; Australia loves Hollywood('s copyright); TCP over Syrian donkey; Icelandic Pirate get funded; Algorithmic cruelty; Trump loves data brokers; Douglas Adams, vindicated; Blog history; Sex names; Flickr's Gamma; "Fuzzy Nation"; The Intercept publishes Snowden docs; Software version of CIA sabotage manual; Who owns covid vaccines? Anal clenching v depression; Web is 10; Danish birds x ringtones; Office-supply X-wing; Nintendo 3DS license sucks is unbelievably bad; Public Interest Internet.
• Upcoming appearances: Berlin, Hay-on-Wye, London, Kansas City, LA, Menlo Park, Toronto, NYC, Edinburgh.
• 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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There's no such thing as "age verification" (permalink)

"Object permanence" is the ability to understand that even if you can't see something, it still exists. Most toddlers acquire a thorough sense of object permanence by the age of two. But when it comes to technopolitics, object permanence eludes even full-grown lawmakers. These motherfuckers would lose a game of peek-a-boo.

Over and over again, politicians are warned about the ways that their pet policies will a) produce enormous collateral damage, and; b) be easily evaded by the people they're seeking to control, giving rise to a cascade of ever-more extreme measures. And yet, they swallow a spider to catch a fly and then act baffled and hurt when we tell them it's their own damn fault that they now have to swallow a bird to catch the spider:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/13/wanting-it-badly/#is-not-enough

The foreseeable and foreseen consequences of bad technopolicy are all around us, but in the eternal now of a politics utterly devoid of object permanence, no one is allowed to remember what happened the last time we did something stupid, especially not when we're on the verge of doing that same stupid thing again, only worse:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/07/foreseeable-outcomes/#calea

Technopolitics are defined by Bruce Schneier's "security syllogism," which goes, "Something must be done! There, I've done something." "Something" doesn't have to fix the problem, and "something" doesn't have to anticipate what will happen next. So long as "something" is done, the issue is resolved and the politician can chalk up a win.

This gives rise to some genuinely bizarre consensus hallucinations, in which we pretend that the reality decreed by policy matches up with actual reality. Take "streaming." There is no such thing as "streaming." A "stream" is just "a download that is transmitted to an application that doesn't have a 'Save As…' button":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/01/fulu/#i-am-altering-the-deal

Once you decree that there is such a thing as a stream, you must bend heaven and earth to ensure that no "Save As…" buttons are added to the "streaming" program. You have to pass laws that make it illegal to inspect code. To modify code. To report on defects in code. To index information about defects in code. To index information about mods. To link to indices that compile defects and mods. You have to swallow the fly, the spider, the bird, the cat, the dog, and the whole damned horse:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

Then there's that perennial fave, "bans on working cryptography." To ban working cryptography, you have to outlaw free/open source software. You have to inspect every device that comes into your country. You have to erect a Great Firewall that blocks every site that might carry working cryptography. You make it impossible to reliably update the software in pacemakers, anti-lock brakes and nuclear power plants, and you make it easy for identity thieves, foreign powers and corporate spies to raid your government, your corporations, and your households – and it still won't work!

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

The latest consensus hallucination to take over our political classes is "age verification," a thing that manifestly does not exist. You can't "verify the age" of an internet user – you can only attempt to attribute every byte that traverses the entire internet to affirmatively identified persons:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/14/bellovin/#wont-someone-think-of-the-cryptographers

This comes at enormous cost. It is a gift to every future dictator, every identity thief, and every would-be sexual exploiter of children, who will have access to the hacked, leaked, and badly secured troves of data that this doomed effort produces.

Yes, doomed. Because even when it comes to kids, "age verification" is just a way of convincing young people to familiarize themselves with VPNs. This was entirely obvious from the very instant that "age verification" was mooted, and yet our policymakers pretended they couldn't hear the chorus of people who pointed it out to them. When cornered on the issue, they were affronted: "Can't you see that something must be done? How dare you attempt to stop me from doing something?"

And now, every single one of these chucklefucks is proposing bans on VPNs, from Utah:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/utahs-new-law-regulating-vpns-goes-effect-next-week

To the UK:

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/05/18/mozilla-warns-uk-breaking-vpns-will-not-magically-fix-britains-age-check-mess/5241770

They were warned that this would happen. We told them not to swallow that fly. Now we're telling them not to swallow whole bucketloads of spiders. I fully expect that next year, they'll be telling us that once they swallow this herd of horses, it will all be OK.

(Image: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html, modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• November Reign https://theneedlenews.com/2026/05/november-reign/

• The Filipino virtual assistants behind LinkedIn's "thought leadership" content mill https://restofworld.org/2026/virtual-assistant-linkedin-engagement/

• rip.so https://rip.so/

• On the Media: American Emergency https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/american-emergency-movement-kill-fema

• DMA: The FSFE intervenes against Apple before European Court of Justice for the second time https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260519-01.en.html

• The Ox That's Breaking Your Fantasy Map https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIqpvpNS5pI

---

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago The Hubble Constant is 42 https://web.archive.org/web/20010607103335/http://www.best.com/~sirlou/42.html

#25yrsago The history of weblogs http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html

#25yrsago Head-shaver’s FAQ https://web.archive.org/web/20010616023912/http://www.geocities.com/shaverg/

#25yrsago "Sex" in your surname https://web.archive.org/web/20010830005021/http://bissex.net/paul/profanity.gif

#25yrsago Apple announces retail stores https://web.archive.org/web/20010521193320/http://www.apple.com/retail/

#25yrsago ISOC standard for "responsible" spam https://web.archive.org/web/20030923030913/ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3098.txt

#25yrsago Anal clenching v depression https://web.archive.org/web/20011201070537/http://members.aol.com/nishigaki3/index.htm?mtbrand=AOL_US

#25yrsago The Web is 10 https://www.w3.org/Talks/C5_17_May_91.html

#25yrsago Danish birds imitate ringtones https://web.archive.org/web/20010603204210/http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_288774.html?menu

#20yrsago Wired News publishes damning docs from EFF vs AT&T https://web.archive.org/web/20060602044459/http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70908-0.html

#20yrsago Canadian privacy commissioners against DRM https://web.archive.org/web/20060530122338/https://www.intellectualprivacy.ca/

#20yrsago How the RIAA’s suit against XM came from Napster, MP3.com and Grokster https://web.archive.org/web/20060524092537/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004679.php

#20yrsago Gmail downgraded, no longer cracks PDFs https://web.archive.org/web/20060603055956/https://akira.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/andreas/blog/archives/2006/05/gmail-cripples-drmed-pdf-files-view-as-html-functionality.html

#20yrsago Australia puts out for Hollywood with new copyright law https://web.archive.org/web/20060520192521/https://blogs.smh.com.au/mashup/archives//004567.html

#20yrsago FeedRinse: filters for your RSS and a happier Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20060915062158/http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/003114.html

#20yrsago Flickr goes Gamma https://web.archive.org/web/20081219225627/http://blog.flickr.net/en/2006/05/16/alpha-beta-gamma/

#15yrsago UK copyright reforms sound sane, useful https://web.archive.org/web/20160724041821/https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/may/17/copyright-law-overhaul-for-uk

#15yrsago Life with Ubuntu and a ThinkPad https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/may/17/computing-opensource

#15yrsago Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation: a masterful, likable reboot of one of the great sf classics https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/16/scalzis-fuzzy-nation-a-masterful-likable-reboot-of-one-of-the-great-sf-classics/

#15yrsago Piracy sends “Go the Fuck to Sleep” to #1 on Amazon https://web.archive.org/web/20110516023258/http://www.baycitizen.org/books/story/go-f-sleep-case-viral-pdf/

#15yrsago Serendipity, the net and cities: are we living in bubbles? Do we have to? https://ethanzuckerman.com/2011/05/12/chi-keynote-desperately-seeking-serendipity/

#15yrsago Texas close to banning TSA searches, TSA invents desperate new constitutional interpretations https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2011/05/14/in-public-statement-tsa-lies-about-the-constitution/

#15yrsago Syrian dissidents use donkeys to smuggle videos to Jordan https://web.archive.org/web/20110518132126/http://www.dbune.com/news/world/6097-donkeys-take-over-from-dsl-as-syria-shuts-down-internet.html

#15yrsago Walter Jon Williams uses pirate ebooks to rescue his backlist https://www.walterjonwilliams.net/2011/05/crowdsource-please/

#15yrsago Chicago water boss: if we took the sewage out of the Chicago River, people might swim and drown! https://web.archive.org/web/20110516121105/https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chibrknews-official-cleaning-chicago-river-a-waste-of-money-20110513,0,7553787.story

#15yrsago HOWTO Make an office-supply X-Wing Fighter https://www.instructables.com/X-Wing-Fighter-from-Office-Supplies/

#15yrsago Yale opens up image library, starts with 250,000 free images https://web.archive.org/web/20110514111440/https://opac.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=8544

#15yrsago Nintendo 3DS license: We’ll brick your device if we don’t like your software choices, you have no privacy, we own your photos https://web.archive.org/web/20110518014329/https://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/227957/nintendo_3ds_targeted_in_antidrm_campaign.html

#10yrsago Copyright trolls Rightscorp are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy https://web.archive.org/web/20160518103417/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/anti-piracy-firm-rightscorps-q1-financials-read-like-an-obituary/

#10yrsago Trump campaign cancels interview after overhearing reporter speaking in Spanish https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adriancarrasquillo/trump-campaign-canceled-a-reporters-interview-after-they-hea#.ul9L3rXy8

#10yrsago Phoenix airport threatens to kick out TSA, hire private (unaccountable) contractors https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2016/0514/Is-Phoenix-airport-opting-out-of-the-TSA

#10yrsago US Gov’t survey: Half of Americans reluctant to shop online due to privacy & security fears https://www.ntia.gov/federal-register-notice/2016/request-comments-benefits-challenges-and-potential-roles-government-fostering-advancement-internet

#10yrsago Iceland’s Pirate Party to receive millions in election funding https://web.archive.org/web/20160514102817/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/icelands-pirate-party-secures-more-election-funding-than-all-its-rivals-as-it-continues-to-top-polls-a7027606.html

#10yrsago Nebula Award swept by record number of women writers https://gizmodo.com/women-swept-the-2015-the-nebula-awards-1776706665

#10yrsago Algorithmic cruelty: when Gmail adds your harasser to your speed-dial https://web.archive.org/web/20160515184025/https://blog.lizdenys.com/2016/05/14/inboxs-accidentally-abusive-algorithm/

#10yrsago Transport for London blames Tube delays on “wrong type of sun” https://web.archive.org/web/20160516133847/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/london-underground-blame-too-much-sunshine-for-tube-delays-a7031986.html

#10yrsago The Intercept begins publishing Snowden docs https://web.archive.org/web/20160516172510/https://theintercept.com/snowden-sidtoday/

#10yrsago A software developer’s version of the CIA’s bureaucratic sabotage manual https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/05/updating-a-classic.html

#5yrsago Who owns the covid vaccines? https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/16/entrepreneurial-state/#patient-zero-money

#5yrsago Big Pharma's vicious battle against universal covid vaccination https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/15/how-to-rob-a-bank/#roll-the-dice

#5yrsago The S&L crisis perfected finance crime https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/15/how-to-rob-a-bank/#crimogenics

#5yrsago Newsom's California fiber dream https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/15/how-to-rob-a-bank/#fiber-now

#5yrsago The Public Interest Internet https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/17/disgracenote/#enclosure

#5yrsago Paygo, false consciousness and the IRS https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/17/disgracenote/#false-consciousness

#1yrago Trump's CFPB kills data broker rule https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/15/asshole-to-appetite/#ssn-for-sale

---

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 18
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow-in-der-friesenstrasse-23-kreuzberg-praesentiert-von-otherland.html

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

• Kansas City: Facing the Future (Woodneath Library Center), Jun 10
  https://www.mymcpl.org/events/119655/facing-future-cory-doctorow

• LA: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Brian Merchant (Skylight Books), Jun 19
  https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-cory-doctorow-presents-reverse-centaurs-guide-life-after-ai-w-brian-merchant

• Menlo Park: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Angie Coiro (Kepler's), Jun 21
  https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow-2026

• Toronto: TBA, Jun 23

• NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
  https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

• Philadelphia: TBA, Jun 25

• Chicago: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Rick Perlstein (Exile in Bookville), Jun 26
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/50628

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

---

Recent appearances (permalink)

• On Enshittification – and what can be done about it (Re:publica)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhINQgPMVSI

• EFFecting Change: How to Disenshittify the Internet (EFF, with Wendy Liu)
  https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-enshittification

• The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
  https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/

• Enshittification (99% Invisible)
  https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/

• Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

---

Latest books (permalink)

• "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

---

Upcoming 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/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "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

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

---

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. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

---

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.

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

ISSN: 3066-764X

Friends,

On Saturday, Trump took revenge on Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy for Cassidy’s vote five years ago to convict Trump, in his second impeachment, for instigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Cassidy thereby became the first GOP senator defeated by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a Republican primary. (Other Republican senators who have stood up to Trump — such as North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Utah’s Mitt Romney — saw the writing on the wall and didn’t seek reelection.)

Trump’s purge of Cassidy comes in the wake of Trump’s purges of House Republicans who stood up to him, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney.

Trump’s next Republican target in the House is Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, who had the guts to oppose U.S. military involvement in Iran, demand release of the Epstein files, and criticize Trump’s spending bills for adding to the national debt. Massie appears likely to be defeated by a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary.

Trump is marshaling the full force of his MAGA machine — spending more than $30 million on a House Republican primary — to purge another of his political enemies from the Republican House. Even Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth is flying to Kentucky today to campaign for Massie’s challenger. It’s all seen as an investment in intimidating and disciplining Republican office-holders who might otherwise think of straying.

Trump has also purged state legislators who have refused to do his bidding, such as the seven Indiana Republicans who refused to redistrict the state as Trump demanded they do, and who Trump insured were defeated in their recent primaries.

The message is clear to every current or aspiring Republican politician: Be a toady to Trump, or you’re out.

In his concession speech Friday night, Cassidy stated the obvious reference to Trump:

“Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution. And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”

Nicely put but sadly irrelevant because Trump — who’s clearly serving himself rather than the American public — now possesses all levers of power in the official Republican Party.

As Republican senator Lindsey Graham said yesterday on Meet the Press, “There’s no room in this party to destroy [Trump’s] agenda.”

Former generations of Republican politicians had principles, beliefs, ideals. They thought the federal government too large. Or believed it spent too much money. Or was too lenient on criminals. Or was too eager to support the civil rights of Black people. Or any number of issues with which Democrats disagreed.

Today’s Republican Party no longer has any purpose other than achieving whatever Trump wants, which is mainly to make Trump richer and more powerful. The GOP is now Trump’s; it is no longer America’s.

Today’s Republican voters, by contrast, are showing increasing frustration with Trump. Those who think of themselves as traditional Republicans don’t like Trump’s expansive use of federal power. Those who are fiscally conservative, like Thomas Massie, are upset by Trump’s wanton spending, tax cuts, and soaring debt. “America-first” Republican voters are concerned about Trump’s intrusions into Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and elsewhere. And they want the rest of the Epstein files released.

Yet for elected Republicans, survival now depends on personal loyalty to Trump.

All of which raises a fundamental question: Has the official Republican Party — now nearly purged of anyone willing to reflect the concerns of Republican voters rather than Trump’s will — become complicit in Trump’s criminality? Is it aiding and abetting Trump’s lawlessness?

A case can be made that the official Republican Party is indeed complicit.

For Trump, the first and most basic sign of loyalty to him — and therefore survival as a politician in Trump’s Republican Party — is a willingness to publicly proclaim as truth what we know to be two big lies: that Trump won the 2020 election, and that he did not seek to overturn its results by illegal means. As a result, almost all congressional Republicans are now election deniers.

Trump has also made it clear that loyalty to him bars any criticism of his unlawful immigration dragnet, which has so far resulted in the murders of three U.S. citizens by ICE agents and the detention and deportation, without a hearing, of people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.

To Trump, loyalty requires full support of his foreign policy — including the abduction of a foreign leader, an undeclared war with Iran, and the killing on the high seas of people only suspected of smuggling drugs, in violation of international law.

Loyalty also demands unquestioned support for other of his lawless acts — using the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents, building a mammoth White House ballroom, issuing no-bid contracts to his friends, promoting his family’s businesses and implementing policies favorable to them, accepting gifts from foreign powers, and defying court orders.

Is it fair to conclude from all of this that today’s official Republican Party — the people who are in office because Trump has put them there, or who maintain their office because they back whatever Trump wants — has in effect become a criminal organization, analogous to the mafia or a drug cartel, whose members are blindly loyal to their criminal bosses?

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Friends,

Please submit your caption in the Comments section and, as before, please use the Comments section only for captions.

Winners will be announced next Sunday. For consideration, please post your caption by Monday at 9 pm PT, 12 midnight ET.

Leave a comment

Last week’s winner:

“Oh, we still believe in diversity. We stick minorities in diverse congressional districts.”

(Congratulations, Steven Horowitz.)

Runners-up:

“If we add 3 here, subtract 7, carry the 5, divide by party loyalty, that should equal 1950’s America.”

(Congratulations, Adam Laurie.)

“Ladies and gentleman, I give you the real swamp creature, the gerrymander.”

(Congratulations, Jeff Schwartz.)

“The Court has ruled: The right to vote is sacred; the right for that vote to matter is optional.”

(Congratulations, John F. M. O’Sullivan O’Shea.)

“Remember kids, racism is over. Over here and over there.”

(Congratulations, David A Pitock.)

“Welcome to Rigging an Election 101.”

(Congratulations, Carol Nylen.)

“Ensuring the white to vote.”

(Congratulations, Andrea Wolper.)

“The only minority we allow to vote is the Wealthy Epstein class.”

(Congratulations, Laurie Blair.)

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This week on my podcast, I present an hour-long excerpt from the audiobook for The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, which is currently on pre-order through my latest Kickstarter campaign:

A short, provocative guide to what’s good, bad, and stupid about AI and the discourse around AI, by the author of Enshittification.

In modern tech parlance, a centaur is a person who is able to use technology to be a better, more productive version of themself. A reverse centaur is a person who is forced by technology to work at an inhuman pace—a driver made to deliver all day long, nonstop; a warehouse worker made to work without food or bathroom breaks; a programmer made to crank out impossible amounts of code.

The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI is not another anti-AI screed. Cory Doctorow uses AI in his work every day. As a creative person, he has no moral or dogmatic issue with AI—he thinks the technology is useful, even exciting, and full of potential. And yet.

AI has arrived surrounded by unprecedented hype driven by a tech industry desperate to maintain its unprecedented valuation based on its own promises of endless financial growth. Despite the fact that almost all of AI’s real-world implementations have proved underwhelming, AI is projected to be worth more than $16 trillion—a number that only makes sense if AI replaces vast swathes of the wage-earning human workforce. To justify that level of “value,” every story about AI must be presented as inevitable, world-changing disruption. Even the tales of the robot apocalypse are a calculated attempt to bolster the fearsome power of AI.

For Doctorow, it is imperative to see through that hype to the real story, to understand the technology not just for what it does, but for who it does it to and who it does it for. From that point of view, the story of AI is indeed dramatic and unprecedented, having generated an investment bubble so big that it endangers the entire world economy. In The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI—as he so successfully did in Enshittification—Doctorow recounts both how we found ourselves in this dire situation and how we can get through it, to a life “after” AI in which the tools work for us, not the other way around.

MP3

Friends,

My first quote of the week comes from Trump on Air Force One, on his way back from Beijing on Friday — telling David Sanger of The New York Times:

“I had a total military victory. But the fake news, guys like you, write incorrectly. You’re a fake guy. We had a total military victory. I actually think it’s sort of treasonous what you write. You should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it’s treason.”

Note Trump’s use of the pronoun “I.” He didn’t say “we” had a military victory. Trump’s malignant narcissism is worsening.

Also take note of his blatant lie. His war in Iran has been anything but a victory. His delusions and deceptions about the war are escalating.

Americans are far worse off today than we were before Trump started his war. We’re now paying $1.50 a gallon more for gas, on average. Paying even more, indirectly, for the diesel fuel powering trucks that transport much of what we buy. Food costs are also rising because the fertilizer used to grow much of the food we eat can’t move through the Strait of Hormuz. The soaring cost of jet fuel is also being passed on to those of us who fly.

And none of these costs will come down soon, even if the war ends tomorrow, because the price for oil is largely set in a global market, and much of the oil infrastructure of the Middle East is in ruins.

Trump has made it harder for us to switch from oil and gas to renewable sources of energy, in which China is excelling. Trump loves fossil fuels — he’s subsidizing oil and gas and has ended subsidies for renewables (remember his election deal with Big Oil?) — but the future lies with wind, solar, and biomass, and the batteries that store them.

And note the not-so-subtle threat Trump directed at Sanger — that Sanger could be accused of treason if he continued to report that Trump’s war is failing. Trump’s dangerous accusations are intensifying.

Which brings me to my other quote of the week — Trump’s comment just before leaving for China that:

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.”

I believe the first part, that Trump doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation; he never has and never will. But it can’t possibly be that the only thing motivating him is preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

I say this because we were much closer to achieving this goal when Iran was still observing the nuclear deal it struck with Barack Obama — in which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities, including reducing its enriched uranium stockpile and modifying reactors to prevent the production of weapons-grade plutonium. (In exchange, the United States, United Nations, and European Union agreed to lift international economic and financial sanctions on Iran.)

But Trump pulled out of that deal. And Iran’s new leadership is hellbent on creating a nuclear weapon. Trump’s and Israel’s aggression apparently have proven to Iran’s new (and more extremist) leaders how much they need it. And the Trump regime has no idea where Iran is storing its near-weapons-grade plutonium.

Friends, a madman is in charge of American foreign policy — but almost no Republican member of Congress, no major CEO or university president or head of a major foundation, and certainly no member of Trump’s regime is willing to sound the alarm. They are all cowards.

I mentioned to you earlier this week that I had dinner with a group of political operatives who gave 30 percent odds that JD Vance and Marco Rubio would lead a coup within the next three to four months, invoking the 25th Amendment to get rid of the madman. Those odds may be higher now.

But you and I are not powerless. We can achieve the next best outcome — limiting Trump’s power to do more damage — by getting out the vote on or before November 3 and throwing the cowardly Republican senators and representatives out on their assets.

We have less than six months to get the largest midterm turnout in American history — a blue tsunami that will start the process of repair, reform, and return to sanity.

I know how frightening and discouraging all of this has been. I know how daunting the forces of cruelty and corruption can sometimes feel. I also know how hard you’ve been fighting, while at the same time working to keep yourself, your family, and your community on an even keel. And I thank you for it.

Despite Trump, please do not feel shame in America. Feel pride in the ideals we share. Feel honored that you are an activist warrior on the right side of history. Feel strength in our conviction. Feel power in our cause.

Have no doubt: We will prevail against the madman-in-chief and his lawless regime.

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Friends,

To say Trump’s trip to China was underwhelming is to give it even more credit than it deserves. In fact, Trump’s main purpose for making the trip probably wasn’t to accomplish anything important but to deflect attention, even for a few days, from his failing war in Iran (the strait is still closed, and Iran is more determined than ever to build a nuclear bomb) and his failing economy (the closure of the strait continues to push up gas prices in the U.S. to near record levels).

Today, Heather and I take a hard look at these three items — Trump’s China visit, his war in Iran, and the U.S. economy — and put them in the context of the 2026 midterm elections. We also discuss Kevin Warsh’s Fed and the unlikelihood it will cut interest rates any time soon. And we examine the rampant, unprecedented corruption of the Trump regime.

Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, and join the conversation.

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💾

Today's links

• Making sense of Trump's unscheduled sudden midair disassembly of the American empire: Don't mistake "powerful" for "durable."
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Copyrighted law; Viral videos v cops; Crooked banker v tiny bat; "Infested"; Can the means of computation be seized?
• Upcoming appearances: Berlin, Hay-on-Wye, London, LA, Menlo Park, NYC, Edinburgh.
• 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.

---

Making sense of Trump's unscheduled sudden midair disassembly of the American empire (permalink)

For generations, the American empire was the most powerful force on earth, and so we tended to assume that it was the most durable force on earth – surely anything so powerful must also be eternal?

But power and durability aren't the same thing, as Le Guin reminded us with her oft-quoted maxim that "We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings":

https://www.ursulakleguin.com/nbf-medal

Monarchs may be powerful, but that power is derived from a manifestly incorrect belief in special blood, a belief that requires monarchs to inbreed. At best, this produces heads of state who can't stop bleeding and also can't tell you if their blood is blue or red; at worst, it yields heads of state who can't speak intelligibly, much less produce another generation of royals:

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

Oligarchy also produces a sequence of progressively weirder and more terrible rulers who rely on a mix of lies, flattery, coercion and personal cult nonsense to hold their coalition together in the face of mounting evidence for the system's bankruptcy. Thus Reagan begat GW Bush, who begat Trump, whose potential successors are a kennel of the least-charismatic chud podcasters ever to curse an RSS feed.

Trump's second term has resulted in a rapid, unscheduled, mid-air disassembly of the American empire. As Baldur Bjarnason writes, under Trump, America "first turned on their trading partners, then their allies in Europe, and then they delivered one of this century’s biggest economic and energy crises to their allies in Asia":

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/the-old-world-of-tech-is-dying/

The line comes from an excellent post entitled "The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born," about the impact of Trump's de-Americanization of the world on the US tech industry, and thus the world's relationship to tech more broadly. As Bjarnason writes, Trump's tech giants dominate the world because America dominates the world. It's not because the world likes American tech. As Bjarnason writes:

They are, more often than not, about as popular and respected as tobacco or pharmaceutical companies – some of them and their products are polling in terms of public sentiment in ranges similar to child molesters or authoritarian immigration enforcement entities – and their CEOs are some of the more despised public figures in recent history.

These very, very unpopular tech companies dominate because American trade policy insists that they must. They are allowed to violate local laws because stopping them from doing so would result in trade sanctions. It's true that US tech companies face fines abroad from time to time, but these are "the price list for inflicting societal suffering. Pick the one that suits your business model." US trading partners haven't really attempted to extinguish the unlawful conduct of US tech companies.

All of that is up for grabs now, thanks to Trump's uncontrollable compulsion to repeatedly hormuz himself (and America) in the foot. But – as Bjarnason writes – this didn't start with Trump. As ever, Trump is as much an effect as a cause, and the most important cause of Trump is the conversion of America into a financial economy, which started under Reagan, but was only finalized by Obama, who let the Wall Street looters who destroyed the world economy walk away unscathed, even as they stole the homes of millions of Americans:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170130083243/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/16/how-barack-obama-paved-way-donald-trump-racism

Financial economies "suck the air out of the rest of the economy and make it less competitive." Keeping billionaires in megayachts comes at the expense of "research, education, infrastructure, and healthcare." Countries that financialize lag behind countries where the economy is based on making things, not extracting or financing things.

Generations of both imperial looting and domestic investment made America the richest country on earth. That wealth cushioned America's transition to oligarchy: for a while, the country could survive both "finance and billionaire parasites sucking its blood" and continue to invest in itself. But while you can double the wealth of a billionaire at the expense of a town or two, doubling the wealth of a centibillionaire requires the destruction of whole regions.

As America looted itself into irrelevance, China – a very different kind of autocracy – invested in domestic capacity and domestic consumption. China's hardly a well-run place: like any autocracy, it functions according to the whims of extremely fallible officials, which produces real-estate bubbles and other crises of production (to say nothing of the demographic crisis of the One Child policy) and necessitates steadily increasing oppression, from online surveillance to concentration camps in Xinjiang.

Bjarnason writes about how this Chinese/US world presents a "double bind" for the EU. Siding with the US is increasingly untenable: the EU exists in large part to promote its domestic industries, but the US is no longer content to leave these alone. As Bjarnason says, US economic policy is now, "whatever our oligarchs want to steal this month, they get."

US tech has extended so many tendrils into so many sectors that it's not possible to defend any industrial sector without impinging on the "technopoly," where "the only ideas and thoughts that have social and cultural legitimacy are those that support, are supported by, and are mediated through technology."

This means that continuing to work within the American system means a steady transfer of economic and political control of every aspect of your life to the US, a decaying empire ruled over by a mad king. Nevertheless, there is a strong, vestigial reflex to protect American tech in the EU, which leaves European power-brokers scrambling to come up with reasons that the EU should confine its tech regulation to empty symbolic gestures, while avoiding meaningful action at all costs:

https://cerre.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/CERRE_Horizontal-Interoperability-of-Social-Networking-Services.pdf

But the American tech sector relies on the other sources of American power – the ones that Trump is so bent on destroying. Trump's de-dollarization of the world economy is pushing the world away from using American tech for payment processing and networking. The American empire created the form of the US tech sector. As Bjarnason writes, "without the weight of the US political empire behind it – if Airbnb or Uber had been local startups – much fewer countries in the world would have loosened their regulations and consumer protections to accommodate them to the point where they prospered as they did."

Trump isn't the first US leader to make a strategic blunder (the US has lost every war it's fought since WWII, after all). But Trump's blunders are different in that they "deliberately signal the end [the US] empire." Hormuz and tariffs have driven people away from the US dollar, and everyone knows who to blame for the senseless deaths in the Gulf and the global privation caused by oil rationing.

That's bad news for a software industry that "shifted its entire value proposition from 'we make tools that help you make or save money' to using political clout and the dollar hegemony to capture, control, and loot entire sectors of the various economies of the world. That strategy only works when you’re in charge."

DOGE wiped out the health systems of the global south, and now Trump's trade negotiators are demanding that these countries promise to keep their hands off of US tech in exchange for reinstating a small trickle of the aid they lost. These countries are rejecting those demands:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/zambia-says-us-health-deal-must-be-uncoupled-minerals-access-2026-05-04/

It's all up for grabs, in other words. The post-American internet is being born in a post-American world, and the shape of both is impossible to determine from this side of the veil. Bjarnason quotes Gramsci: "the old is dying and the new cannot be born."

I hold out high hopes for a world of international digital public goods: free and open software that replaces America's extractive, defective black boxes with transparent, auditable, trustworthy alternatives that are under the control of the people who use them:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/16/pascals-wager/#doomer-challenge

But – as Bjarnason says – even the intellectual property framework that the free/open source movement relies on to make its licenses enforceable is an artifact of the collapsing American empire. If the global copyright system collapses with America, there won't be any impediments to reverse-engineering and improving the tech around us – but there also won't be any way to enforce the free software licenses that keep that software open:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/02/limited-monopoly/#petardism

The whole essay is very good and – like so many great essays – it raises more questions than it answers. It's also full of standout one-liners like this one:

How do LLMs affect productivity and quality? (Much like leaded petrol. There’s some potential benefit for individual users with literally decades of expertise, provided nobody else uses LLMs. The results are catastrophic when everybody is using them.)

Consider moving it to the top of your weekend reading.

---

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Your Power Tools Got Worse On Purpose https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-power-tools-got-worse-on-purpose

• The privilege of bad writers https://coreyrobin.com/2026/05/15/the-privilege-of-bad-writers/

• AI as the new avatar of American capitalism https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-as-the-new-avatar-of-american

• Cucked Internet Theory https://www.tikviewer.com/video/7639554103340698912

• Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/05/bill-to-keep-online-games-playable-clears-key-hurdle-in-california/

---

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Is the law copyrighted?
https://web.archive.org/web/20010519134232/http://www.uniontrib.com/news/uniontrib/sun/news/news_1n13own.html

#15yrsago Canadian copyright collective wants a music tax on memory cards https://web.archive.org/web/20110517205114/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5798/125/

#10yrsago FBI Director: viral videos make cops afraid to do their jobs https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/us/comey-ferguson-effect-police-videos-fbi.html?_r=2

#10yrsago Banker implicated in one of history’s biggest frauds says boss beat him with a tiny baseball bat https://web.archive.org/web/20160516173952/http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/barclays-banker-accused-rigging-libor-rate-hit-assistant-baseball-bat-1559792

#10yrsago Infested: an itchy, fascinating natural history of the bed bug https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/14/infested-an-itchy-fascinating-natural-history-of-the-bed-bug/

#5yrsago A weapon of mass financial destruction https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

#1yrago Are the means of computation even seizable? https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/14/pregnable/#checkm8

---

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 18
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow-in-der-friesenstrasse-23-kreuzberg-praesentiert-von-otherland.html

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

• LA: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Brian Merchant (Skylight Books), Jun 19
  https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-cory-doctorow-presents-reverse-centaurs-guide-life-after-ai-w-brian-merchant

• Menlo Park: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Angie Coiro (Kepler's), Jun 21
  https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow-2026

• NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
  https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

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

---

Recent appearances (permalink)

• EFFecting Change: How to Disenshittify the Internet (EFF, with Wendy Liu)
  https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-enshittification

• The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
  https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/

• Enshittification (99% Invisible)
  https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/

• Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

• When Do Platforms Stop Innovating and Start Extracting? (InnovEU)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccDR0YaMt8

---

Latest books (permalink)

• "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

---

Upcoming 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/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "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

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

---

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. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

---

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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

---

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

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

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Dear Friends,

Many of you keep asking how you can see the film that captures my final semester of teaching, The Last Class.

The talented team that created the film has announced that starting right now, for the first time ever, you can rent the film directly from the film’s website and watch in the comfort of your own home. Anywhere in the world, whether you live in Paris, Texas, or Paris, France.

Watch the film

When I decided to retire from teaching a few years back, my longtime friend, collaborator, and co-host of our Coffee Klatch podcast, Heather Lofthouse, thought it would be a shame not to document my final semester on camera. She worked with journalist and filmmaker Elliot Kirschner on how best to tell the story.

At first, their ambitions were modest: a short video on YouTube. Then the project morphed into a feature-length documentary. And thanks to many of you, it became a hit. When I compare how the project was pitched to me to what it’s become, I sometimes complain that I was the victim of a “bait and switch” — but I couldn’t be prouder about what emerged.

The film is really a love letter to teaching. It’s about the critical role of education in a democracy and the power of critical thinking. It focuses on my wonderful students at UC Berkeley and our shared hopes for the future.

The link below is your ticket to the film. I hope you’ll see it — and, especially if you like it, tell others about the film and how they can see it.

My thanks and kudos to the more than 40,000 students I’ve taught over my lifetime. And to Heather Lofthouse, Elliot Kirschner, and all the other hugely talented people who have brought this film to life — and to you.

Watch the film

All money received for the film goes to the nonprofit Inequality Media Civic Action to make more films and videos. The film team wants to assure you that if you can’t afford the price, they’ll waive the fee. Just email them at: thelastclassfilm@imcivicaction.org.

Happy viewing!

Share

Fortune just reported that the US alone has 1,200 AI bills and no good test for any of them, because “in the past nine months, the United States has produced more AI legislation than in the prior decade, [that faces] three different [and partly contrasting] theories of what AI policy is supposed to do”.

The lack of clarity coming from that proliferation of rules, said IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, will be the “central question facing AI policy”, because:

1. “The balance between too many regulations, it’s terrible; too few, we may not love the outcome, so we got to find the Goldilocks middle.”

2. Whatever it is, that Goldilocks middle must work both inside the US and abroad, because if the international regulatory landscape turns into a bloated bureaucracy, “that would not be so good for us to win the AI race.”

Is that really the problem, or something else? Never mind

Of course, all those concerns come from one explicit pretension and constitute one implicit, but desperate request: the pretension is that AI for the whole world must be 100% made, deployed and ruled the American Way. Even if, and that’s the request between the lines, the American AI industry is on the verge of the greatest bankruptcy ever, please don’t make it even faster with too many laws!

That’s no news, of course. This AI race will crash big, the sooner the better, but never mind that open secret now. That Fortune article proves me right about something else, and it does with these statements (emphasis mine):

• “By one count, state legislatures introduced over 1,200 AI-related bills in 2025 and enacted just under 150, with the pace accelerating since.”

• “Beneath the volume lies a more fundamental problem. Policymakers at every level are working without a shared test to determine whether their legislative efforts constitute good policy.“

• “State bills creating new accountability rights for automated hiring often duplicate protections already enforceable under [other American laws].”

• “The legislative volume is high, but a shared test for distinguishing good policy from bad has been absent from the debate.”

The piece then goes on to propose a testing framework that “will not, on its own, resolve any specific dispute. Its purpose is to ensure that the questions before state legislators, members of Congress, and federal agencies are the right questions, asked in the right order, before another five hundred bills are introduced and a patchwork is hardened in place that no one designed and few defend.”

Boy, am I happy. Thanks for proving me right!

This mess, which of course isn’t limited to the US, is exactly what I was talking about one week ago, when I wrote:

Imagine if there was [some AI] that, every time a new law proposal is published, everybody could use to easily discover that that proposal violates, contradicts or duplicates in any way other, already existing laws.

Imagine if there was [some AI] that, after reading all the laws of a country, produced a completely equivalent but much shorter, much more readable set of laws. Something that would make it much quicker and easier for everybody to see what’s good and bad in every law, and for whom.

Dear AI companies: if your AI is as good as you claim...

Make your AIs do on all those AI bills just the job I suggested. Make them predict and describe all the cases in which all those hundreds of bills will contradict or duplicate each other, or fail to address some issues.

Make your AIs be the paralegal that does all the boring job that humans, of course, will need to have done before they can start to “determine whether their legislative efforts constitute good policy.” If your AIs can find bugs in AI bills as I suggested last week, it will be great advertising for your products. If it fails, no problem. At least it won’t make anyone aim missiles at schools. What do you have to lose?

So, make AI do all those comparisons. Publish the full result online, in the Public Domain, so everyone can evaluate its quality, with a bounty program for finding errors. Tell all the 120K+ law students in the US that you’ll pay all the present and future educational debt of every student that finds at least one bug.

And of course... don’t limit that work to the USA. Make your AIs repeat the whole program in every country, bounties and all, because every country has the right to get its own AI laws that conform to its own ideals, needs and interests.

Seriously: you have flooded us for years with claim after claim of how superintelligent and super capable and omniscient your models are, so much that they could even kill us all… and I must be the one who has to suggest to use those same models to figure out in the laws that would hinder them?

As usual… Thanks in advance for your subscription (possibly but not necessarily paid) or, even better, donations for any amount, or consulting, writing or speaking work.

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Today's links

• No one wants a permanent gerontocracy: The one policy everyone agrees on.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Wolfengitmo; Facebook condemns Google privacy invasion; Michael Moore on bin Laden; TSA v babies; Tendril perversion; "Buy now"; Uber Ch(eats); Who Broke the Internet (II)?
• Upcoming appearances: Berlin, Hay-on-Wye, London, NYC, Edinburgh.
• 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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No one wants a permanent gerontocracy (permalink)

Perhaps the most demoralizing part of Trumpismo is the fear that the people around you are so cruel and senseless that they approve of the violence, the racism, the pig-ignorant lies and rampant theft:

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/08/who-goes-maga/

One of the things keeping me going in these dark days is the pollster G Elliot Morris, whose "Strength in Numbers" newsletter is a reliable, robust and nuanced source of information about the way other people – including Trump's base – feel about him from moment to moment. Reading items like "A reminder: Very few people support Donald Trump's presidency" make it easier to get through the day:

https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/a-reminder-very-few-people-support

It's a very good piece, breaking down the collapse in support for Trumpismo and confidence in Trump's mental health, even among the people who have historically stood by him, even though – incredibly! – about a third of Americans still support him and believe in his fitness to rule.

But the most interesting part of this post is the eye-popping poll result on a question that is only incidentally about Trump: the extremely broad, bipartisan support for both age limits and term limits for the House, the Senate, the Presidency and the Supreme Court.

How broad and bipartisan are these results?

• 80% of Americans want age limits in the House and Senate (D78%, R83%; I79%);

• Most Americans want age limits for the presidency (R73%, I61%) (the most popular age limit is 79);

• Most Americans (65%) want an 18-year term limit for Supreme Court justices;

• Most Americans (79%) want age limits for Supreme Court justices.

As Morris writes, this represents "a level of cross-partisan agreement that’s almost unheard of on a high-salience issue."

There are different ways to parse this out. The past decade has shown that, in the absence of a hard rule to the contrary, incumbents will stay in office long after it's obvious they should step down. That was true of Biden, who continued to campaign for a presidential term long after it was obvious that he was no longer physically and mentally capable of doing the job.

It was true of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, whose commitment to the symbolic value of having her successor appointed by the first woman president allowed Trump to appoint the monstrous Amy Coney Barrett to a lifetime on the Supreme Court, which could well last another 30 years. It was true of Antonin Scalia, who would have handed a Supreme Court pick to the Obama administration if it wasn't for Mitch McConnell's willingness to steal a seat for Neal Gorsuch.

It's true of Kay Granger, a sitting congresswoman whose staff hid the fact that her dementia had progressed to the point that she had to be moved to an assisted living facility – while still holding office:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/14/kay-granger-dementia-dc-media-00210317

It was true of Gerry Connolly, who insisted that he – not AOC – should be the head of the Oversight Committee, despite the fact that he was dying of cancer:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/rep-gerry-connolly-announces-return-of-cancer-steps-down-as-top-oversight-democrat

It was true of Dianne Feinstein, who continued to serve in the Senate despite having advanced dementia:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/04/sen-dianne-feinsteins-saga-is-a-very-public-example-of-a-national-crisis/

These politicians are wed to a system of seniority and patronage that insists that everyone who "pays their dues" should get a turn. It's a system that relies on politicians banking favors from their peers and then paying them back by anointing successors, thus requiring politicians to serve until they are ready to choose that successor.

We have created a system in which no one dares to hand over power, because to do so is to unilaterally disarm, while the other side keeps their permanent gerontocrats in positions of authority. Not only does this system starve the pipeline of young politicians who can progress to fill those new roles, it also exposes each party to significant risk. If your majority rests on a handful of seats and your caucus includes a dozen people who are actuarially certain to die soon, then the whole system could be upended by a couple of highly likely blood-clots:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/01/designated-survivors/

It's not that every politician over the age of 70 (or 80, or 85) is incapable of doing the job: it's that a system that runs on a mix of incumbency advantage, seniority, patronage and hubris is a bad system and the only fix for it is to put hard limits on terms – both based on how many years you hold office, and how many years you walk the earth.

The system where everyone who pays their dues gets a turn was never going to work, and that should have been especially obvious to the system's longest-tenured participants, who've had decades to notice how long-lived their colleagues are, and to compare those lifespans to the number of committee chairs, senate seats and other treasures there are to be had in the halls of power.

There are lots of good ideas – like abolishing the Electoral College or limiting political spending – that are popular with a majority of Americans, but these ideas are often very unpopular with conservatives:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/18/the-people-no/#tell-ya-what-i-want-what-i-really-really-want

But this is a realm in which – as Morris says – there is "almost unheard-of…cross-partisan agreement." It's the one idea that all Americans – including older Americans (at least the ones who aren't in the House, Senate or Oval Office; or on the Supreme Court) agree on: rule by permanent gerontocracy is bad, and should end.

In not so many months, both parties are going to have to pick their next presidential candidates (in the case of Republicans, it may be sooner, depending on Trump's cheeseburger intake). Those primary contests are going to implicitly raise the issue of whether we should be ruled according to the principle of "everyone who pays their dues gets a turn." But a shrewd politician could win a lot of favor among voters (and fury among their colleagues) by campaigning on age- and term-limits for high office.

(Image: Pacamah, CC BY-SA 4.0, modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Internet of Shit: AI Poop Analysis App Offered to Sell Me Database of Its Users' Poops https://www.404media.co/ai-poop-analysis-app-offered-to-sell-me-access-to-its-users-poops/

• How companies weaponize the terms of service against you https://www.theverge.com/podcast/930342/brendan-ballou-companies-courts-forced-arbitration-lawsuits-scalia

• UK begins antitrust inquiry into Microsoft's business software ecosystem https://www.theregister.com/oses/2026/05/14/uk-begins-antitrust-inquiry-into-microsofts-business-software-ecosystem/5240452

• Meta’s New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale https://www.wired.com/story/meta-layoffs-bad-vibes-mark-zuckerberg-ai/

• Verity MCP https://www.iccl.ie/digital-data/verity-mcp/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago The life of a celeb PA https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/may/14/highereducation.comment

#20yrsago DOJ moves in dark of night to quash EFF wiretapping lawsuit https://web.archive.org/web/20060524092447/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004659.php

#20yrsago WolfenGitmo: Guantanamo Bay mod for Castle Wolfenstein https://web.archive.org/web/20060520203517/https://a.parsons.edu/~evan/school/?q=node/29

#20yrsago Where does booing come from? https://web.archive.org/web/20181215223044/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/05/where-do-hecklers-come-from.html

#15yrsago Steven Levy on Facebook’s ironic privacy charge against Google https://web.archive.org/web/20110514121727/https://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/facebook-privacy-problems/

#15yrsago Michael Moore’s “Some Final Thoughts on the Death of Osama bin Laden” https://web.archive.org/web/20110513181408/https://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/some-final-thoughts-on-death-of-osama-bin-laden

#15yrsago DHS’s “Secure Communities” program will deport battered woman for calling 9-1-1 on her abuser https://web.archive.org/web/20110514142235/https://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/05/isaura_garcia_battered_secure.php

#15yrsago TSA: we’ll search your baby and it will make the country safer https://www.loweringthebar.net/2011/05/tsa-says-baby-frisking-justified.html

#10yrsago Telcoms companies try to rescue TV by imposing Internet usage caps on cord-cutters https://www.techdirt.com/2016/05/13/isps-are-now-forcing-cord-cutters-to-subscribe-to-tv-if-they-want-to-avoid-usage-caps/

#10yrsago The weird, humiliating nicknames George W Bush gave to everyone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nicknames_used_by_George_W._Bush

#10yrsago “Tendril perversion”: when one loop of a coil goes the other way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendril_perversion

#10yrsago Clicking “Buy now” doesn’t “buy” anything, but people think it does https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2778072

#5yrsago Uber (Ch)eats https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/13/uber-cheats/#50-companies

#5yrsago The Democratic establishment https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/13/uber-cheats/#party-bosses

#1yrago Who Broke the Internet? Part II https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/13/ctrl-ctrl-ctrl/#free-dmitry

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 18
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow-in-der-friesenstrasse-23-kreuzberg-praesentiert-von-otherland.html

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

• NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
  https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• EFFecting Change: How to Disenshittify the Internet (EFF, with Wendy Liu)
  https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-enshittification

• The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
  https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/

• Enshittification (99% Invisible)
  https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/

• Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

• When Do Platforms Stop Innovating and Start Extracting? (InnovEU)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccDR0YaMt8

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Latest books (permalink)

• "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 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/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "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

• "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. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• 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.

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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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