Today's links

• Molly Crabapple's 'Here Where We Live Is Our Country': An essential book for this moment and for the moments that led to it.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Home chemistry sets in danger; Every pirate wants to be an admiral; Painful computer workarounds; JPEG patent invalidated; UBS whistleblower v USA (x USA); David Foster Wallace x tennis; Who cares about "bandwidth hogs?"
• Upcoming appearances: London, Kansas City, LA, Menlo Park, Toronto, NYC, Edinburgh, South Bend.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Molly Crabapple's 'Here Where We Live Is Our Country' (permalink)

Molly Crabapple's Here Where We Live Is Our Country is one of the most important, timely and salient works of history I've ever read. It's a history of the Jewish Labor Bund, a socialist, internationalist organization that once dominated Jewish political identity:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646320/here-where-we-live-is-our-country-by-molly-crabapple/

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were hundreds of thousands of Bund members, both in the Pale of Settlement (the rural regions of the Russian empire that the Tsar confined most Jews to) and in diasporic centers like New York City. The Bund played an important role in the Russian Revolution and in the resistance to the rise of European fascism, and fought valiantly in the antifascist underground guerrilla bands in Nazi-occupied territories.

Despite this faded prominence, the Bund is all but unknown today. I was only vaguely aware of it, even though I attended seven years' worth of Yiddish classes at the Workmen's Circle, a Bund-originated socialist fraternal organization, and was bar-mitzvahed at a Workmen's Circle hall. It wasn't until I read about the Bund in Naomi Klein's essential 2023 book Doppelganger that I first caught a glimmer of its significance:

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

The thesis of Doppelganger is that the world is full of "mirror world" pairs with opposite political valences. For example, the mirror world version of the health justice movement is MAHA. Both MAHA and health justice share many commonalities (such as a skepticism of Big Pharma and its captured regulators), but arrive at totally different conclusions. Health justice demands universal access to medical care, compulsory licenses and patent reform for life-saving medicines, and systemic interventions to address discrimination against gender minorities, women, and racialized people. MAHA starts from the same diagnosis, but arrives at a totally different prescription: "eating clean," buying unregulated supplements from grifters, rejecting vaccines, attributing chronic health problems to personal moral failings, along with a conspiratorial rejection of life-saving medication.

Mirror worlds are everywhere. One chapter of Klein's work deals with the "mirror worlds" of Jewish identity and what radical Jews once called "the Jewish question":

https://ernestmandel.org/english/works/Jewish-Question-Since-World-War-II

In the 19th century, antisemitism was often described as "the socialism of fools." In the real world, we observe the dominance of parasitic finance capital over productive labor and embark upon a great class struggle to seize the means of production. In the mirror world, antisemites observe this same fact, combine it with the fact that some of these bankers are Jewish, and embark on a genocidal program of antisemitic violence.

But antisemites weren't the only mirror-world pairing with a view on "the Jewish question." Early 20th century Jews also lived on either side of the political looking-glass. On one side, you had the Bundists, whose motto (and the title of Crabapple's book) was "Here, where we live, is our country." For Bundists, Jews belonged everywhere Jews were. As the Jewish socialist Meyer London wrote, "Thousands of Jewish boys and girls pray to God not to lead them again out of Egypt, but to help them free Egypt."

The Bund saw its struggle as just one aspect of the universal struggle for liberation. They understood that persecuted minorities everywhere labored under the double bind of racist and class oppression (and further, that women labored under gender oppression), but they also understood that these identity markers were tactical facts about how these workers should set about freeing themselves.

They didn't mistake identity for a strategic difference: the goal was always universal liberation, and the reason to consider identity-based oppression was to ensure that every comrade was brought along in the struggle. As Crabapple writes, the Bund more-or-less invented intersectional analysis, and they practiced it with an eye to all the struggles of the world. Bund newspapers (even those published by the Bund underground in the Warsaw Ghetto) closely tracked the struggles of Black workers in the Jim Crow south, just as the Black radical press of the day reported closely on antisemitic lynchings in Europe. The Bund underground even managed to send telegrams of support to Gandhi from Nazi-occupied Poland.

On the other side of the Jewish mirror was (of course) Zionism. Zionism and the Bund were founded in the same year, in response to the same events. The Bund was founded in secret by exiled radical Jews in Vilna whom the Tsar had banished for their resistance activities. Zionism was founded in Geneva by Theodor Herzl, who sheltered Jews who had fled Tsarist Russia to escape antisemitic violence.

Where the Bund called for universalism and solidarity with all workers to keep Jews safe in every place where Jews lived, Zionists dreamed of a Jewish homeland, a stronghold to which Jews could retreat from the world. Where the Bund fought antisemites who would banish or exterminate Jews, Zionist leaders were willing to align themselves with antisemites, finding common cause in the idea that European Jewry should abandon Europe in favor of Palestine.

Indeed, the Balfour Declaration – which established a plan for the UK handing over its occupied territories in Palestine to create a Jewish homeland – was fomented by vicious antisemites as part of a plan to ethnically cleanse the UK of all Jews:

https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/232119

As Crabapple documents in detail, in the ensuing decades of struggle that followed, Zionist leaders repeatedly entered into alliances with antisemitic politicians, even those who presided over (and sometimes directed) campaigns of racist terror against Jews. Despite their mutual hatred, they shared a common goal: terrorizing Europe's Jews out of Europe and into Palestine.

Meanwhile, Bundists never wavered from their rejection of antisemites. In the Bundists' socialist, internationalist program, the pursuit of a Jewish homeland merely dangled the possibility of Jewish liberation – at the expense of Palestinians, and without having anything to offer to all the other oppressed peoples of the world.

While I discovered the Bund through reading Naomi Klein, many others learned about it from Crabapple's widely circulated 2018 New York Review of Books article, "My Great-Grandfather the Bundist":

https://archive.is/20260518010455/https://www.nybooks.com/online/2018/10/06/my-great-grandfather-the-bundist/

Predictably, Crabapple's article provoked attacks from Zionists who told Crabapple they blamed the Bund for its own extermination. In their telling, the Bund's stubborn refusal to confront antisemitism as "history's oldest hatred" was a suicidal delusion that led their members into the Nazis' mass graves.

But for many Jews, Crabapple's article was a revelation about a different way to be Jewish, an identity that rejected the Apartheid state of Israel (South African Apartheid and the state of Israel share a birth year, and Apartheid South Africa and Israel carried on a robust program of mutual trade in arms and surveillance tools):

https://imeu.org/resources/key-issues/fact-sheet-an-overview-apartheid-south-africa-israel/275

This revelation only gained salience and prominence after October 7, 2023, when Israel responded to a massacre perpetrated by Hamas by embarking on a years-long program of genocide and extraterritorial aggression. Zionists have defended these crimes against humanity as inseparable from Jewish identity and the only plausible answer to "the Jewish question."

Israel's defenders insist that even naming the genocide in Palestine (let alone opposing it) is inherently antisemitic. Ironically, Israel's loudest cheerleaders are the millions of antisemitic evangelical Christian Zionists who vastly outnumber Jewish Zionists, who support Israel in hopes of bringing about a Biblical prophecy in which Christ returns and every Jew is cast down to Hell.

In the years since, Crabapple's work to revive the Bund has only gained adherents, especially among Jews who refuse to accept that their safety can only be secured through mass slaughter and imperial conquest. Crabapple's response to this burgeoning movement is this book, a massive, heroic, brilliant, and pitiless history of the Bund that proposes its own answer to "the Jewish question."

Beyond its political importance, Here Where We Live Is Our Country is a remarkable scholarly and artistic achievement. Crabapple taught herself to speak and read Yiddish so that she could consume primary sources, and she crisscrossed the globe to see and research the key sites of Jewish oppression and the Jewish liberation struggle.

It's a monumental book. Thanks to Crabapple's voluminous research, Here Where We Live delivers a blow-by-blow look at the Bund's rise and its triumphs, but even more importantly, the tactical disagreements, factional disputes, and personal animus that too often snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for these committed revolutionaries.

At times, Crabapple's tick-tock of these fights seems to embody the wry maxim: "Two Jews, three arguments." But the point of all this nuanced, textured detail isn't to rehash the tittle-tattle of the previous century, nor is it to show off Crabapple's prowess as a researcher. Rather, in rehearsing these fights, Crabapple shows how reasonable these disputes seemed at the time, and how terrible the consequences were for all concerned.

In this mode, Crabapple manages the admirable achievement of being both sympathetic and pitiless. Crabapple, after all, is a veteran political activist who has traveled extensively to active war-zones to document atrocities and offer mutual aid to those fighting for justice. She's endured every failure that radical politics can manifest, sat through every kind of bad meeting, and she recognizes in these disputes the same personalities and personal failings that have broken her heart a hundred times. She understands why these people are this way – but she can also see, with perfect hindsight, the ghastly horrors that followed, which swamp any matter of principle these people might have stood on.

There's plenty of this sympathetic pitilessness to go around, and it's not just the Bund or Jews who come in for it. Every factionalist blunder in pre-Revolutionary Russia, in the Soviet Union, in interwar Poland, and in occupied Poland comes in for examination – as do every imprisonment, maiming, rape and death that these blunders opened the door to. Crabapple's heroes are principled, but they are imperfect, and sometimes foolish, and sometimes self-deluding (for example, the Palestinian leader who insists that his rank-and-file fighters want to establish a multi-ethnic democracy, despite the undeniable presence in their number of people who want to banish all Jews from Palestine).

The twentieth century was a charnel house, and so the cost of these mistakes is high. Often, these mistakes lead to mass graves, with these mistake-makers tangled among the bodies. They never had the chance to learn from their mistakes. But, through Crabapple's work, we might.

It is in the postscript to this book that its true message lands. After 480 pages, we arrive at Crabapple's conclusion. In reflecting on these people, who died in their millions and whose memory was all but erased, she asks, "Did the Bund fail?"

Her answer is a resounding no. The Bund lost, but it did not fail. The Bund was failed, as were the Zionists, the Roma, European socialists, disabled and queer people – everyone the Nazis burned, gassed, or buried alive. These people cried out to the rest of the world – to America, to Canada, to the UK, to all the places that were not under Nazi occupation – and begged for help, for safe passage, for rescue.

The world slammed its doors. Even after they joined the war, they refused to admit Jews and other victims of Nazi genocide. They refused visas, closed borders, turned back boats of escapees, sometimes sending them back to occupied Europe to be slaughtered.

In his review in the New York Review of Books, historian Adam Hochschild writes:

Imagine that the United States had not passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which essentially slammed the door on almost all newcomers for more than forty years. Without it, Jewish immigration to the US would surely have soared during the 1920s and 1930s. Some 2.5 million Jews, most of them hoping for a better life than they had in tsarist Russia, had already come here between 1880 and 1924. Then, even in the decade before Hitler took power, Jews still had many reasons to leave Europe. Poland, whose Jewish population of 2.8 million was the continent’s largest, was a cauldron of antisemitism between the wars, with outbreaks of deadly violence, segregated seating and de facto quotas in many universities, and numerous other humiliations.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/05/28/a-dream-of-a-socialist-commonwealth-the-jewish-bund/

No one who's paid attention during this century's xenophobic policies and attacks on refugees can fail to see the parallels. And no one who's paid attention to the genocide in Gaza and the official response in the "free" world to Palestinian solidarity movements can fail to see those parallels, either.

For the Jews who are told – by Zionists, including the millions of American gentile Zionists who outnumber Jewish Zionists 30:1 – that all this is being done for us, that our continued existence requires it, Crabapple's history of the Bund shows us what's on the other side of the mirror. As NYT editor Max Strasser writes in his review of Here Where We Live:

[The Bund was] the kind of movement leftists today dream about — political party, social movement, mutual aid group — with tens of thousands of members. The Bund published newspapers and ran soup kitchens and summer camps; its athletes competed in a socialist version of the Olympics. Bund activists organized across Eastern Europe and beyond — they helped elect a congressman on the Lower East Side.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/books/review/here-where-we-live-is-our-country-molly-crabapple.html

The politics we dream of isn't a fantasy. It's the politics our grandparents lived – a politics that wasn't lost, but rather, erased. Erased by Nazis and Stalinists, who committed wholesale slaughter of Bundists. But that politics was also erased by Zionists, who swept through the Displaced Persons' camps of post-war Europe, imposing a draft on the Jews who'd been penned in those stinking camps by a world that refused to welcome Jews, even after the horrors of the death-camps were widely known. Zionists bullied and coerced these Jews – including Bundists who rejected their cause – to serve as foot-soldiers in the Israeli army, even beating elderly parents until their sons and daughters agreed to fight.

Bundists always rejected all forms of ethno-nationalism. As Jews, they had lived in the violence and oppression that always attended every ethno-nationalist program. They never imagined that Israel would escape this fate. As the Bundist leader Henryk Erlich wrote in 1933: "We are not a chosen people. Our nationalism is just as ugly, just as harmful as the nationalisms of all the other nations."

Crabapple has done heroic and important work in excavating this history. She has vindicated the sacrifices made by the Bundist archivists who smuggled their papers out of Nazi occupation and gave their lives to ensure that some day their story could be told.

In so doing, she has also vindicated her own great-grandfather, Sam Rothbort, a Bundist who fled the Pale of Settlement for New York City, whose art-practice traveled to Crabapple through her mother, who is also a painter. It wasn't just the art-practices that traveled – it was also the art, and it was one of Rothbort's paintings ("Itka, the Bundist," depicting a girl throwing a rock through a window) that set her on this journey.

This volume is also graced by Crabapple's own art, stark monochrome ink-washes in her characteristic style, which bring these long-dead people to vivid life. They're a reminder of the role that culture plays in every radical movement, of the ways that the Bund welcomed its members to live a radical life through sport and song and picnics, and not just meetings and street-demonstrations.

Even before this book, Crabapple had made a mark through her paintings and writings. But with Here Where We Live Is Our Country, Crabapple has given us a magnum opus, a book that might help us turn the tide of history.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• What Is a Dickover? https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover

• Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI https://sites.google.com/view/elizaarchaeology/book

• Inside Graham Platner’s Plan To Wield Power https://www.levernews.com/graham-platners-power/

• mcmodernslopcore https://www.tumblr.com/mcmansionhell/817896092499869696/mcmodernslopcore

• Locus Award for Best Non-fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_Award_for_Best_Non-fiction

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Sign a letter supporting the BBC’s online archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060704182401/http://www.freeculture.org.uk/letters/CreativeArchiveLetter

#20yrsago Home chemistry under assault https://web.archive.org/web/20060603021709/http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry_pr.html

#20yrsago Cliches to avoid when writing about women and video-games https://web.archive.org/web/20060704223941/http://www.richardcobbett.co.uk/codex/clicktoread/filingcabinet/writing_a_girls_in_games_article/

#20yrsago JPEG patent invalidated https://web.archive.org/web/20060613015757/http://www.pubpat.org/Chen672Rejected.htm

#20yrsago SF story about AI-human love https://www.salon.com/2006/05/30/perfect_man/

#15yrsago Sensation: Acerbic novel about pop culture and popular madness as functions of parasitic manipulation https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/30/sensation-acerbic-novel-about-pop-culture-and-popular-madness-as-functions-of-parasitic-manipulation/

#15yrsago Every Pirate Wants to Be an Admiral: why less copyright gets you more culture https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2011/may/30/internet-piracy-cory-doctorow

#15yrsago Social incentives vs economic incentives in crowdsourced work https://web.archive.org/web/20110602184500/https://blog.crowdflower.com/2011/05/designing-incentives-for-crowdsourcing-workers/

#15yrsago Painful workarounds from computer novices https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/hmlmd/what_is_the_most_painful_way_you_have_seen_your/

#10yrsago To imagine the ocean of the future: picture a writhing mass of unkillable tentacles, forever https://web.archive.org/web/20160530145354/https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/octopuses-may-indeed-be-your-new-overlords/

#10yrsago When Brad Birkenfeld blew the whistle on UBS, the US government paid him $104M and sent him to jail https://web.archive.org/web/20160602152611/http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/the-whistleblower-05-23-2016

#10yrsago The last time there were this many unsold $100M+ homes on the market, the world economy imploded https://web.archive.org/web/20160529040314/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/business/a-worrisome-pileup-of-100-million-homes.html

#10yrsago David Foster Wallace’s essays on tennis, finally collected between one set of covers https://www.csmonitor.com/Arts-Culture/Books/2016/0530/String-Theory-gathers-the-brainy-witty-tennis-writing-of-David-Foster-Wallace

#10yrsago United Arab Emirates hacked UK journalist https://citizenlab.ca/research/stealth-falcon/

#10yrsago Internet economics 101: “bandwidth hogs” considered harmless https://web.archive.org/web/20160530155601/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/should-broadband-data-hogs-pay-more-isp-economics-say-no/

#20yrsago JPEG patent invalidated https://web.archive.org/web/20060613015757/http://www.pubpat.org/Chen672Rejected.htm

#20yrsago SF story about AI-human love https://www.salon.com/2006/05/30/perfect_man/

#15yrsago Sensation: Acerbic novel about pop culture and popular madness as functions of parasitic manipulation https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/30/sensation-acerbic-novel-about-pop-culture-and-popular-madness-as-functions-of-parasitic-manipulation/

#10yrsago To imagine the ocean of the future: picture a writhing mass of unkillable tentacles, forever https://web.archive.org/web/20160530145354/https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/octopuses-may-indeed-be-your-new-overlords/

#10yrsago When Brad Birkenfeld blew the whistle on UBS, the US government paid him $104M and sent him to jail https://web.archive.org/web/20160602152611/http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/the-whistleblower-05-23-2016

#10yrsago The last time there were this many unsold $100M+ homes on the market, the world economy imploded https://web.archive.org/web/20160529040314/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/business/a-worrisome-pileup-of-100-million-homes.html

#10yrsago David Foster Wallace’s essays on tennis, finally collected between one set of covers https://www.csmonitor.com/Arts-Culture/Books/2016/0530/String-Theory-gathers-the-brainy-witty-tennis-writing-of-David-Foster-Wallace

#10yrsago United Arab Emirates hacked UK journalist https://citizenlab.ca/research/stealth-falcon/

#10yrsago Internet economics 101: “bandwidth hogs” considered harmless https://web.archive.org/web/20160530155601/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/should-broadband-data-hogs-pay-more-isp-economics-say-no/

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• 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: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with David Williams (Fitler Club/Philadelphia Citizen), Jun 25
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-book-event-tickets-1990110326559

• 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

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• 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

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

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ISSN: 3066-764X

Friends,

In light of my post yesterday about Trump’s plans for a Trump rally on the mall to celebrate the start of America’s 250th birthday festivities — designed, in his words, for “patriots” and promising to be “wild” — several of you wanted to know more about how it’s being planned and paid for.

This year’s 250th anniversary events, commemorating America’s founders’ refusal to be bound by a tyrant, were supposed to be planned by a nonpartisan, nonprofit group created by Congress in 2016 via a bipartisan congressional caucus of more than 350 members.

That nonpartisan, nonprofit group is called “America250.”

“America250” still exists, at least in theory. It lists as Honorary National Co-Chairs George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama. Its ex-officio members include present and former government officials drawn from both parties. You can read more about it at the “Official website of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission,” here.

But “America250” is not planning this year’s 250th anniversary events on the mall or anywhere else in official Washington. Trump and his MAGA allies circumvented Congress and created their own planning committee, confusingly named “Freedom 250.”

Trump’s “Freedom 250” describes itself in much the same way “America250” does — as a “non-partisan organization leading the celebration of our Nation’s 250th birthday.” See here.

But unlike “America250,” Trump’s “Freedom 250” is bankrolling events promoting Trump and his political agenda (which is why most of the performing artists who originally agreed to participate dropped out last week when they learned of the ruse).

The “Freedom 250 toolkit” lists as its “core theme” elevating “President Trump’s Freedom 250 vision” — boosting Trump’s supposed achievements and not his many failures (such as two impeachments, criminal conviction on 34 felony charges, attempted coup against the United States, incitement of an attack on the U.S. Capitol, disastrous war in Iran, etc.) — analogous to Trump’s executive order requiring that the Smithsonian remove details about his impeachments from museum exhibits.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s “Freedom 250” is also designed to make money for Trump. Trump’s personal business is now trademarking the term “Trump 250,” along with a logo nearly identical to America250’s logo.

The Trump Organization has filed several trademark applications in connection with America’s 250th anniversary celebration, all featuring the Trump name as a centerpiece of the highly anticipated festivities. In one filing, a “Trump 250” image was trademarked to be used on a variety of merchandise including bumper stickers, tote bags, drinkware, clothing items, and golf balls. A wordmark application was also submitted for the name “Trump 250” on Friday.

Trump’s online store is already selling sweatshirts, a $200 dollar blanket, and golf balls with that logo.

Like the White House ballroom project, Trump’s “Freedom 250” is also a pay-to-play scheme. People and companies with financial interests likely affected by Trump are encouraged to make tax-deductible donations to gain access to, and seek favors from, him.

Corporations pay between $500,000 and $10 million to become Freedom 250 “sponsors.” A corporation giving $1 million or more will be invited to a “private Freedom 250 thank you reception” hosted by Trump. For $2.5 million or more, sponsors will even get a speaking role at the Fourth of July celebration in Washington. (Major donors so far include Lockheed Martin, ExxonMobil, Oracle, Palantir, Mastercard, and United Airlines.)

Who else is paying for Trump’s “Freedom 250” festivities? You and I, at least in part.

Tucked away inside last year’s sprawling 870-page “One Big Beautiful Act” was an allocation of $150 million for “events, celebrations, and activities surrounding the observance and commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.”

Most of those funds are going to Trump’s “Freedom 250” rather than to the nonpartisan “America250.” Why? When Congress appropriated the $150 million, only America250 was planning celebrations for the 250th. But now that Trump’s Freedom 250 is up and running, Trump’s Interior Department has doled out $100 million to it ($25 million has gone to the nonpartisan America250).

Oh, and unlike other groups created by Congress, Trump’s Freedom 250 doesn’t have to disclose anything about its spending until 2027.

So the answer to your questions about how America’s 250th is being planned and paid for — and why it’s becoming a propaganda vehicle celebrating Trump — is that Trump has pushed aside the nonpartisan group Congress set up in 2016 to plan it and substituted his own Trump-loyalist group, to which Trump’s Interior Department is siphoning off most of the taxpayer funds.

This is exactly what Trump did to the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Capital Planning Commission, and every other semi-public body Congress established for the common good.

This is the way authoritarianism substitutes for democracy — slowly and incrementally, until the whole system suddenly tips over.

But this particular example is especially ironic because “America250” was supposed to celebrate our fight for democracy against arbitrary tyranny. Trump’s “Freedom 250” is doing exactly the opposite.

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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:

“Instead of using taxpayer money, he should fill his slush fund by melting ICE.”

(Congratulations, Laurence Hoffmann.)

“What flavor is Ben and Gerrymander?”

(Congratulations, Mike Hammer.)

Runners-up:

“With him it’s always ‘self-serve.’”

(Congratulations, Rachel Brown.)

“They’re fascistly delicious.”

(Congratulations, Doug O’Connell.)

“Looks like Kool-Aid to me.”

(Congratulations, Steven Horowitz.)

“Best served with a Whopper.”

(Congratulations, Marak Robokoff.)

“Every flavor tastes like contempt for the rule of law!”

(Congratulations, Russwin Francisco.)

“Apparently we need to go commit a crime in his name before we can get a slushy!”

(Congratulations, Sue Schneider.)

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This week on my podcast, I read AI and a world without migrants, a recent essay from my Pluralistic blog, which psychoanalyzes the sociopathic fantasies that are driving the AI investment bubble.

I don’t care who you are, there will always be times when hell is other people. Not because other people are horrible – quite the opposite! Other people are wonderful, but boy are they ever stubborn.

From boardgames to romance, team sports to movement politics, business ideas to construction projects, there’s so much important, enjoyable and essential stuff you can’t do alone. But other people insist on having their own priorities and goals, and they mulishly refuse to organize their lives to suit your priorities.

Our species has put a lot of work into resolving this conundrum. Not only did we evolve a whole brain structure – the neocortex – that helps us understand others’ perspectives, but we also evolved many social structures (like laws and teams and governments and families and committees and bureaucracies) to help us coordinate with others to do superhuman things (that is, things that exceed the capacity of a single human).

These structures are imperfect, but they’re better than the alternative: coercion. Persuading others is not without its pitfalls, but compared to forcing others to bend to your will, “persuasion” is the hands-down favorite.

MP3

Friends,

Trump often confuses himself with America, and America with himself.

Not surprisingly, his plan for celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary is looking more and more like a celebration of Trump.

Trump’s face will be engraved on a $250 bill. It will be etched onto both sides of a celebratory gold coin. It’s already on passports issued this year. His signature is on dollar bills. He’s emblazoning his name on every edifice possible. If you still fail to get the point, his visage will soon be draped over federal buildings.

There’s also a 250th anniversary summer concert series on the National Mall. It was to have started June 25 with country music star Martina McBride. But McBride announced Thursday she wouldn’t perform, because, as she explained, although she had been “assured this was a nonpartisan event,” that assurance “turned out to be misleading.”

So far, seven of the nine featured musical acts have backed out of the concert series after discovering it would be more a celebration of Trump than of America.

So, what does Trump do? Yesterday, he posted:

“I understand Artists are getting ‘the yips’ having to do with their performance … so I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!”

It’s difficult to read this without laughing, but it’s no joke. His malignant narcissism is ramping up even higher than its usual galactic level.

Trump followed this post by revealing his real intention all along:

I am ordering my Representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an AMERICA IS BACK Rally on Wednesday, Washington, DC, same time, same location. Only Great Patriots invited — It will be a Wild and Beautiful Celebration of America!”

Only “Great Patriots” invited? It will be “wild?”

Anybody recall the last rally Trump held on the mall, to which he invited patriots and promised it would be “wild?”

I doubt he’ll instigate another attack on the U.S. Capitol this time. More likely, he’ll renew his attacks on immigrants, Somali-Americans, Muslims, Democrats, trans people, “coastal elites,” RINOs, judges who have ruled against him, and anyone “woke” (including the artists who refused to participate in his glorification).

In other words, Trump will star in his own hate rally on the National Mall, to celebrate America’s Trump’s 250th anniversary.

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Friends,

It’s impossible to understand American politics without also understanding the American economy (and vice versa). Politics and economics may be different disciplines, but they’re two sides of the same coin.

This came home to me again when I saw Thursday’s report on the U.S. gross domestic product.

Numbers can be pretty boring, but bear with me. Worker compensation — wages and benefits — grew 0.8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026. Corporate profits grew 2.7 percent.

When you adjust for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019. Corporate profits have risen 50 percent.

Workers’ share of the nation’s income has now dropped to the lowest it’s been since records began in 1947. Profits’ share is the highest since 1950.

Most people who depend on wages for a living are struggling, while a small minority at the top who own most shares of stock and private equity — that is, people who rely on capital gains — have never had it as good.

The trend toward lower wages and higher profits began in the 1980s, increased in the 2000s, picked up speed after the pandemic, and is about to explode as Artificial Intelligence takes over.

In coming months, three companies centered on AI will go public — SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic — with expected valuations of around $1 trillion each (reflecting the gargantuan profits investors expect). But what about workers?

This is not just morally wrong. “Income from capital risks replacing income from labor,” Pope Leo wrote in Magnifica Humanitas, his encyclical letter devoted to the effects of AI, released this week.

It also threatens the future stability of our economic and political system.

What accounts for the increasing shift of the American economy from wages to profits, even before AI?

One big reason is monopolization. The economy has become concentrated in a few giant corporations with the power both to raise prices and keep wages down.

Sure, there are still lots of small businesses and mom-and-pop operations. But the gravitational center of the U.S. economy is now Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, Kroger, United Health, Cigna, CVS, AT&T, Verizon, ExxonMobil, Chevron, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Vanguard, Fidelity, Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR.

These giants control large swathes of the economy. They also exert significant political power. They’re like black holes in space, sucking in vast sums of money.

Their political power makes it impossible to know whether government policy is based on the public interest or private gain.

Consider Trump’s war in Iran and its resulting surge in energy prices. The energy-price rise has caused after-tax disposable income to drop and the profits of energy companies to soar. Did Trump decide to go to war because he thought it necessary, or because Big Oil nudged him into it?

Workers, meanwhile, no longer have any countervailing power. In the 1950s, over a third of workers in the private sector were unionized. That gave them enough bargaining power to claim a significant share of the total economy. Now, only 6 percent of workers are unionized. Their bargaining power has been further eroded by their easy replacement by lower-wage workers in Asia and by software. AI will further erode it.

This trend is not sustainable. It feeds growing anger at the system, which demagogues like Trump exploit for their own ends.

What should be done? Let me list five steps (I’ll go into each in greater detail in coming months).

1. For one thing, we’re going to need a new era of antitrust. Giant corporations will have to be busted up.

2. We’ll also need to tax those at the top, especially on the value of their ownership of capital. (California voters will likely be asked to vote on a billionaire tax in November.)

3. We’ll need to regulate AI and simultaneously provide a universal basic income to cushion those who lose their jobs because of it.

4. Universal health care will be a necessity (perhaps via Medicare for all) along with subsidized childcare and eldercare.

5. Finally, we’ll need to distribute capital far more widely, so that the broad American public has a palpable stake in the rip-roaring stock market and the AI tsunami.

None of these fixes will be easy. Even if all are implemented, they may still be insufficient.

But, my friends, we have no choice but to try. We’ve already witnessed what mass anger can do to America, in the form of Trump. Unless we act soon, we’re likely to have Trumps, or worse, as far as the eye can see.

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Friends,

I can’t overstate the importance of Judge Kathleen Williams’s decision on Friday to reopen Trump’s $10 billion case against the IRS.

She said she wants to investigate “grievous allegations” that the hasty deal to resolve it was “premised on deception,” and she ordered Trump’s lawyers to tell her by June 12 whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because “the court was the victim of a fraud.”

The “deception” and “fraud” Judge Williams refers to were allegedly carried out by Trump and his Justice Department.

This is a big deal.

Judge Williams’s decision came in response to court papers filed on Wednesday by a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges who urged her to revive the case and dig into the details of the agreement to settle it.

The judges’ brief is also a big deal. They call it a motion for relief from judgement or order or, alternatively, “leave to appear as amici curiae by thirty-five former federal judges.”

I don’t recall a similar instance of 35 former federal judges filing such a motion or amicus (friend of the court) brief.

In it, the judges argue that the parties’ — Trump and the Justice Department’s — so-called “settlement” agreement was made to circumvent the court’s possible finding that the case presented no actual controversy, since Trump is on both sides of it.

This, they conclude, constitutes a fraud on the court.

Let me quote the remarkable brief filed by the 35 former federal judges:

“The parties have used this lawsuit—which was never an adversarial proceeding over which the Court even had jurisdiction—as a means to allow a “commission” controlled by the President to dole out $1.776 billion in taxpayer dollars without constitutional or congressional authority to do so, and to confer unlawful private benefits to the President and his family by purportedly prohibiting the United States from prosecuting any and all claims against them.

And the parties have plainly tried to shield this conduct from necessary judicial scrutiny by short-circuiting this Court’s inquiry into whether the lawsuit is in fact an actual case or controversy by [seeking to dismiss the case] before they announced the “settlement”—clearly in hopes of preventing the Court from ever completing that inquiry, which, if it comes out against the parties, will undo their collusive “settlement.” ….

Accordingly, because “[t]he parties’ ‘collusive’ activity perpetrated a fraud on the judicial machinery itself, by fostering an appearance that the litigation involved adverse parties, when, in fact, it did not,” the Court should void its prior dismissal and reopen the case to assess in due course whether a fraud occurred.”

In her order on Friday, Judge Williams said she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies.

She added that a federal court rule requires attorneys to ensure that court filings are “not presented for any improper purpose” and that “a party’s decision to file a frivolous lawsuit for the sole purpose of forcing a settlement may qualify as such an improper purpose.”

She also noted that the settlement appeared to run afoul of Department of Justice policies that require any settlements to be “specifically limited to the immediate subject matter of the claim.”

Finally, Judge Williams pointed out that a settlement addendum that waives all tax claims the U.S. may currently have against Trump, his two eldest sons, and his businesses and trusts was signed only by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general.

This could result in questions being asked of Blanche. Ultimately, it could result in his disbarment or even imprisonment. Recall that Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, was convicted of conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice for his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up. He served 19 months of a two-and-a-half to eight-year sentence in federal prison before being paroled. He was the first attorney general in United States history to be incarcerated.

Let me just say that there are forces in this country — specifically, Judge Kathleen Williams and the bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges — bent on preventing Trump from exercising authoritarian power.

In so doing, they’re displaying extraordinary courage and commitment to democracy and the rule of law. They are in effect representing all of us, seeking to create a bulwark against Trump’s and his regime’s corruption.

We owe them a great debt of gratitude. (I’m awarding them this week’s Joseph N. Welch Award for Courage in the Face of Tyranny.)

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Today's links

• Carneyism without Carney: Eh?
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Replacing pharma patents with bounties; USTR v cheap leukemia meds; Plutocrats x wealth segregation; Anonymous Analytics; Scott Walker sells off donors; Anonymization v metadata; Probably; Amazon warehouse workers are the future of Amazon coders; Warcraft eggs; Brainwashing school; People who don't know The Onion is satire; "Company Town"; America is a scam.
• Upcoming appearances: London, Kansas City, LA, Menlo Park, Toronto, NYC, Edinburgh, South Bend.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Carneyism without Carney (permalink)

The "Third Way" in liberal politics involves saying things that working people love, but doing things that sociopathic plutocrats love. It works …right up until voters notice that you're not doing the things. That realisation breeds cynicism and fury and paves the way for fascist strongmen.

It's really ugly, and no one does it uglier than Canada's Liberal Party. Remember that time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marched with Greta Thunberg to protest Canada's shitty, planet-wrecking climate policies?

https://globalnews.ca/news/5959371/election-campaign-climate-march/

Gee, Justin – it sure would be great if you could have a word with the fella who decided to bail out America's doomed tar sands pipeline and vowed to pump and torch 173,000,000,000 barrels of Canadian oil:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-country-173-billion-barrels-203807530.html

Trudeau's "Third Way" eventually proved so unpopular that he opened the door to an authoritarian takeover of Canada by an otherwise totally unelectable, Trump-aligned far-right maniac. The only thing that saved Canada from a fate dumber than Trump was Trump himself, who wouldn't stop promising to make Canada the 51st state, an idea that was even more repellent to Canadians than five more years of Third Way bullshit:

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/pierre-poilievre-joe-rogan-podcast-143318576.html

And boy did Canadians find a Third Way bullshitter to move into 24 Sussex Drive: Mark Carney, an austerity-crazed central banker who will endorse incredibly progressive policies…provided he never has to do any of them. When it comes to championing working Canadians while royally screwing them, Carney is the only Canadian politician capable of out-Trudeauing Trudeau.

But we shouldn't reject Carneyism due to the mere fact that Carney refuses to deliver Carneyism. The problem with Carneyism isn't Carneyism itself – the problem with Carneyism is Mark Carney.

Take Carney's policy promise to charge US tech giants a 3% tax, a move that would defeat their incredibly clever gambit of pretending to be Irish and thus not owing any tax, anywhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/17/erin-lets-go/#circumvention-haven

That was a good policy! So was Carney's "elbows up" policy of sticking it to America in retaliation for Trump's flagrant violation of CUSMA, the free trade agreement negotiated by (checks notes) one Donald J Trump:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/06/trump-carney-meeting-canada-tariffs-trade

Unfortunately, Mark Carney didn't get the memo from (checks notes) Mark Carney, and the very instant Trump arranged his face into his trademarked confused scowl, Carney dropped the tax, apologising profusely:

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/06/canada-rescinds-digital-services-tax-to-advance-broader-trade-negotiations-with-the-united-states.html

In the last days of the Trudeau government, the Liberals passed a bill that transformed Canada's Competition Bureau from the weakest antitrust regulator in the world into one of the strongest (on paper, at least):

https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/how-we-foster-competition/education-and-outreach/guide-june-2024-amendments-competition-act

It's impossible to overstate how useless the Competition Bureau was before this bill passed. In its entire history, the Bureau had only challenged three mergers, and had never successfully challenged a merger. Canada's do-nothing competition enforcers allowed the country to be captured by Made-in-Canada oligarchs whose ripoffs and abuses would make the Hudson's Bay Company blush:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/05/ted-rogers-is-a-dope/#galen-weston-is-even-worse

If Canada was ever going to be a real country (and not just two monopolists and a mining company in a trenchcoat) it needed a serious competition enforcer. Nominally, it has one, thanks to the 2024 Competition Act. The only problem was Carney, who made sweeping real-terms cuts to the Bureau's funding. Thanks to Carney, Canada has a Competition Bureau with all the powers it needs to save Canada from its oligarchs – but it can't afford to do any of that stuff.

Monopolists rip Canadians off like crazy. We even have a guy who mistook Les Miz for an HBR case-study, and embarked upon the country's worst-ever price-fixing campaign, gouging the country on bread prices:

https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/the-bread-price-fixing-scandal-is

You don't have to be a monopolist to steal from Canadians. Ripping off Canadians is the game everyone can play! Consumer protection agencies are incredible value for money, saving the public hundreds for every dollar that we spend on them. Guess who just eliminated Canada's consumer protection agency?

https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/carney-government-slashes-consumer

Oh, to be a scammer in Mark Carney's Canada! Whatever Galen Weston doesn't steal is yours for the taking!

But again, the problem isn't Carneyism – the problem is Carney. Carneyism is great. Carneyism gave us that remarkable speech at Davos, where Mark Carney declared a "rupture" in the US-dominated global system of trade and politics, promising a future of "minilateralism" in which "middle powers" like Canada band together for mutual prosperity:

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/

If only Mark Carney had been there to hear those stirring words! He might have understood what a fucking insane idea it is to turn over Canada's military to Palantir, the company that, more than any other, has fused itself with the Trump regime's domestic program of ethnic cleansing and its international program of extraterritorial aggression:

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/canadas-deal-with-us-data-giant-palantir-is-legitimate-defence-minister-says/article_e49b9c32-8f76-466c-86ed-36a4110ba45a.html

Carneyism isn't merely a rejection of the old international order. Domestically, Carneyism promises technocratic excellence, skilled leadership that delivers first-class services for the Canadian people. This is a great pitch! It got Mamdani elected, and Mamdani's sincere pursuit of governmental excellence thrills New Yorkers in new ways every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/24/mamdani-thought/#public-excellence

Here, too, Carneyism is entirely sound – the problem is Carney's vicious anti-Carneyism and his plan to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with AI chatbots. It's not just that chatbots are terrible substitutes for skilled public officials, they're also controlled by US corporations that are entirely beholden to the Trump regime:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-artificial-intelligence-strategy-9.7213733

Unlike Mark Carney, I support Carneyism. Carneyism promises protection for Canadians, from monopolists and mad emperors, petty thieves and potholes. But Carney himself ardently opposes these policies. This will only get worse when the AI bubble pops and vaporises a third of the US stock market, spreading contagion to global capital markets. That will be Carney's cue to roll out his favourite go-to tactic: austerity.

We cannot afford this. Austerity is how we lose the country. Austerity – more than any other force – drives working people into the arms of fascists:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/12/always-great/#our-nhs

The thing is, Mark Carney has shown his political opponents how to beat him: just embrace Carneyism. The things Carney says are incredibly popular. Now we just need to elect someone who'll do them.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Websites have a new way to spy on visitors: analyzing their SSD activity https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/05/websites-have-a-new-way-to-spy-on-visitors-analyzing-their-ssd-activity/

• Cory Doctorow on Why the Internet Feels So Broken https://thewalrus.ca/cory-doctorow-on-why-the-internet-feels-so-broken/

• AI sticker shock hits corporate America https://www.axios.com/2026/05/28/ai-spending-roi-enterprise-costs

• A Fran Lebowitz Sampler https://jonwinokur.substack.com/p/a-fran-lebowitz-sampler

• Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back their AI jobs apocalypse prophecies as they eye blockbuster IPOs https://fortune.com/2026/05/26/sam-altman-dario-amodei-walking-back-ai-jobs-apocalypse-prophecies-ipo/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago World of Warcraft Easter eggs https://web.archive.org/web/20060614223838/http://www.wow-europe.com/en/contests/noblegarden/winners.html

#15yrsago Bernie Sanders introduces anti-pharma-patent bill, aims to replace drug monopolies with prizes https://web.archive.org/web/20110528053922/http://keionline.org/node/1147

#15yrsago Life at a brainwashing “school for troubled teens” https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens/comments/hk0xy/a_gay_teen_describes_her_experience_at_a_utah/

#15yrsago Facebook updates from people who don’t know The Onion is a humor site https://literallyunbelievable.tumblr.com/

#10yrsago Untangling the Web: the NSA’s supremely weird, florid guide to the Internet https://www.techdirt.com/2016/05/27/nsas-guide-to-internet-is-weirdest-thing-youll-read-today/

#10yrsago Company Town: Madeline Ashby’s tale of sex and Singularity cults is a locked-door mystery at sea https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/28/company-town-madeline-ashbys-tale-of-sex-and-singularity-cults-is-a-locked-door-mystery-at-sea/

#10yrago US trade rep threatens Colombia’s peace process over legal plan to offer cheap leukemia meds https://web.archive.org/web/20160725174757/https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/05/26/bernie-sanders-novartis-patent/

#10yrsago Security researcher discovers glaring problem with patient data system, FBI stages armed dawn raid https://dailydot.com/politics/justin-shafer-fbi-raid

#10yrsago Wealthy families are most responsible for American wealth segregation https://web.archive.org/web/20160530195842/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/10/the-incredible-impact-of-rich-parents-fighting-to-live-by-the-very-best-schools/

#10yrsago Someone just snuck warrantless email access into the Senate’s secret intelligence bill https://web.archive.org/web/20160526201753/https://theintercept.com/2016/05/26/secret-text-in-senate-bill-would-give-fbi-warrantless-access-to-email-records/

#10yrsago Wells Fargo, who preyed on black borrowers, sponsors Black Lives Matter luncheon https://web.archive.org/web/20160527184755/https://theintercept.com/2016/05/27/wells-fargo-sponsorship-of-black-lives-matter-panel-draws-scorn/

#10yrsago Anonymous Analytics: self-proclaimed Anon “faction” that tanks companies through stock reports https://web.archive.org/web/20160527155031/https://news.softpedia.com/news/anonymous-hackers-turned-stock-analysts-are-targeting-us-chinese-corporations-504495.shtml

#10yrsago Scott Walker, saddled with $1.2m debt from failed presidential bid, pawns his own donors https://ghanasoccernet.com/uk/2016/05/24/scott-walker-rents-out-donor-list-to-pay-campaign-debt/

#10yrsago Study shows detailed, compromising inferences can be readily made with metadata https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1508081113

#10yrsago EFF fights order to remove public records documents detailing Seattle’s smart-meters https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/may/26/court-grants-temporary-restraining-order-forcing-r/

#5yrsago Probably https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/27/probably/

#1yrago AI turns Amazon coders into Amazon warehouse workers https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/rancid-vibe-coding/#class-war

#1yrago America is a scam https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/28/cheaters-ever-prosper/#caveat-america

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• 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: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with David Williams (Fitler Club/Philadelphia Citizen), Jun 25
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-book-event-tickets-1990110326559

• 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

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

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• 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

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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

---

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

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

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

---

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ISSN: 3066-764X

Friends,

Heather is back (after a grueling week; we wish her mother a speedy recovery).

Today we take a deep dive into Trump’s Department of Injustice, now headed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who’s criminally prosecuting Trump’s enemies — including private citizens such as E. Jean Carroll.

We also examine Trump and the Republican Party’s obsession with testosterone — part of the so-called “manosphere” — which includes the scheduling of UFC cage matches on the White House’s South Lawn, denigrating Democrats such as Senate candidate James Talarico as being “low T,” ridiculing LGBTQ+ people, Trump and Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth’s hyper-aggressiveness, and Trump’s fear of strong women who stand up to him.

We also discuss the blatant corruption of the Trump regime and its relationship to the horrific U.S. economy.

So please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, and join in the conversation.

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💾

Friends,

When the history of the sordid and cruel megalomaniac who now occupies the Oval Office is written, it may well be that his deal with himself to set up a $1.8 billion fund for reimbursing anyone he feels was harmed by the federal government is chronicled as the final straw.

Why not Trump’s absurd tariffs, which are really import taxes passed on to consumers? Why not Trump’s needless war against Iran, which caused prices to soar and is unlikely to result in a better deal on its nuclear ambitions than the one struck by Obama? Why not his cruel ICE and Border Patrol dragnets? Why not the Epstein files or dozens of other lawless or outrageous things he’s done?

I think because almost everyone knows that the fund will be used to pay off Trump’s supporters — including the 1,500 who attacked the U.S. Capitol and then were imprisoned for it — and that paying them is a bridge too far.

This morning a federal judge barred the government from taking steps to launch the fund or process payments at least until a hearing is held in June in a pending lawsuit challenging its legality.

The order came in a case brought by a group of individuals and entities who say they have faced partisan attacks by the Trump regime but who say they expect to be excluded from accessing the fund.

It’s unusual, to say the least, that such a group would be recognized by a court as having standing to bring such a suit, because their status is entirely speculative. They merely expect to be excluded. But such is the level of cynicism about the motives and processes of Trump that even a district court judge would automatically recognize the validity of such an expectation.

It is impossible to conceive that those who have been attacked by Trump’s Justice Department — such as former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — would be compensated by Trump’s fund. Nor would the former federal prosecutor who claims he was fired for his work on the January 6 investigation, or people arrested while protesting immigration raids.

Other lawsuits challenging the fund have been filed in the District of Columbia and in California. But the interesting thing is it’s not just lawsuits, and it’s not just Democrats. A number of prominent Republican lawmakers have publicly objected to the fund.

The fact that public money would be spent, and that the fund would be entirely under Trump’s control, also figures in.

Remarkably, 35 former federal judges on Wednesday urged the judge who closed Trump’s case with the IRS — the origin of the fund — to take another look at the terms of the deal. I can’t recall another instance of former judges petitioning a sitting judge to take another look at the terms of a settlement.

The stench of Trump’s self-dealing, compounded by the absurdity of his suing his own Justice Department for $10 billion — and the department’s responding with a “deal” that would give him $1.8 billion to reward his supporters, and future immunity from IRS audits — seems to have tipped some set of cosmic scales.

The scales of justice and also the political scales. Republican members of Congress are hearing an uproar from their constituents about this, which persuaded many to leave town without acting on Trump’s second big reconciliation bill.

I asked earlier this week if Trump has finally overplayed his hand. I believe the cumulative effects of all his wanton and harmful initiatives over the last several months are now setting in. The $1.8 billion fund will be seen as the straw that broke Trump’s legal and political back — the act of hubris that illuminated all the other acts of hubris, the very emblem of Trump’s contempt for anything and everyone beyond himself and his own self-glorification.

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Friends,

Trump’s Department of Injustice Justice has opened a criminal investigation into writer E. Jean Carroll.

I’ve spoken with E. Jean about her cases against Trump and her fabulous (and, believe it or not, hilarious) book about what she’s been through — Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President, which I can’t recommend highly enough. (See the interview Heather Lofthouse and I did with E. Jean on March 14, above.)

First, some background:

In 2022, Carroll alleged that a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s ended violently — that Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights, and forced himself into her.

In May 2023, a federal jury in New York unanimously found that Trump was liable for sexually abusing Carroll. The judge in that trial clarified that Trump didn’t just “sexually abuse” her. He “raped” her:

The finding of sexual abuse “does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.” Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

(When Trump sued ABC News over George Stephanopoulos’s assertion that Trump had raped Carroll, ABC chose to give in and pay Trump $16 million rather than rely on the judge’s clarification.)

The jury also found that Trump had defamed Carroll by saying she had lied about the assault. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million.

Trump appealed, but the verdict was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. A three-judge panel unanimously rejected Trump’s request for a new trial, concluding that he had “not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings.”

(Last November, Trump asked the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling. It has yet to decide whether to hear the case.)

After the verdict, Trump denied he had assaulted Carroll, called her claims “a complete con job” and a “Hoax and a lie,” and said she was not his “type.”

Trump’s comments caused Carroll to charge Trump with defaming her once again. After this second trial, a unanimous jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million.

The verdict included $65 million in punitive damages. The jury found that Trump had acted with malice in defaming Carroll a second time. Her lawyers had argued that a large verdict was necessary to “make him stop” his attacks on her — which he continued at news conferences, in social media posts, and during the trial itself.

The $83.3 million verdict was upheld by a Second Circuit appeals court in a unanimous three-judge ruling, in which the judges found that Trump “never wavered or relented in his public attacks” on Carroll and that she was subjected to public harassment as a result of his statements, including death threats and threats of physical injury.

Trump has vowed to appeal this case to the Supreme Court as well.

And now Trump is using the Justice Department as another cudgel against the woman he sexually abused (the judge said “raped”).

The mainstream media is characterizing this as “the latest chapter” in Trump’s retribution campaign carried out by the Justice Department — following the department’s criminal investigations of former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and other Trump opponents.

Wrong. This investigation marks a dangerous escalation of Trump’s use of the Justice Department for personal vendettas.

In going after Carroll, Trump is no longer simply weaponizing the department against people he considers political enemies. Carroll has never been a politician; she’s never served in a president’s administration; she’s never been a prosecutor. She’s a private citizen whom a jury unanimously found Trump had sexually abused (raped), and two juries unanimously found he had defamed.

Hell, if Trump can use his Justice Department to criminally investigate private citizens who have held him civilly accountable for past brutality, there’s no logical end to his potential vindictiveness. Any of us who has tried to hold him accountable, in any way, could be next.

A criminal investigation isn’t a party invitation. It’s hugely costly to the people targeted, time-consuming, often grueling and anxiety-provoking.

The Justice Department’s trumped-up criminal investigation is looking into whether Carroll committed criminal perjury when she said in a 2022 deposition before her first civil lawsuit against Trump that she hadn’t had outside help in funding it — although some of her legal bills were paid by a nonprofit financed by Reid Hoffman (a major Democratic donor and founder of LinkedIn, who may also be the target of a criminal investigation).

But this issue was already considered, and dismissed, in Trump’s appeal of that first verdict — in which Trump’s lawyers accused Carroll of concealing financial support from Hoffman, and her lawyers argued in response that Hoffman’s financial support was irrelevant to Carroll’s legal claims and that she had nothing to do with obtaining the outside funding.

The appellate court found that she had “plausibly … forgotten about the limited outside funding counsel obtained” and that “Carroll simply was not involved in the matter of who was or was not funding her litigation costs.”

For Trump’s Justice Department to now launch a criminal investigation of Carroll on the same claim his lawyers made years ago, which was dismissed by an appellate court, is a transparent abuse of justice, harassment of a private citizen, and violation of the rule of law.

Even worse, Todd Blanche, Trump’s acting attorney general, was the lawyer who represented Trump in Trump’s appeals of Carroll’s verdicts and who made the very argument that the appellate court rejected and the Justice Department is now turning into a criminal investigation.

Although Blanche is said to have recused himself from the probe because of his prior representation of Trump in Carroll’s cases, his fingerprints are all over it. Blanche is desperate for Trump to promote him to full attorney general, and, to this end, has been even more accommodating of Trump’s thirst for revenge than his predecessor, Pam Bondi. Moreover, officials from department headquarters have been involved in the decision to investigate Carroll — officials who directly report to Blanche.

Friends, I was an attorney in the Justice Department soon after Richard Nixon had tried to turn it against his enemies and Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell had gone to jail for his role in Watergate. I was fortunate enough to work for Edward Levi, Gerald Ford’s attorney general, who sought to insulate the department from any similar abuses in the future and regain the public’s trust in our system of justice. President Ford supported Levi’s efforts. Levi’s successors, Griffin Bell and Benjamin Civiletti, continued Levi’s work to depoliticize — and professionalize — the department, with the support of Jimmy Carter.

The next president and attorney general must rededicate themselves and the Justice Department to the same principles.

Nixon’s Justice Department was bad. Trump’s is far worse, and more dangerous.

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Friends,

I sometimes share with you perspectives about what we’re up against from non-American writers and journalists. Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., and a former journalist, published this short essay, titled “Trump Will Overplay His Hand: Here’s How to be Ready,” on December 1, 2024, in Politico Magazine, just weeks before the start of Trump’s second regime. Eighteen months later, I still find this essay a useful guide.

***

American democracy is about to undergo a serious stress test [this was written January 1, 2025.] I know how it feels, in part because I lived through the slow and steady march of state capture as a journalist working in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey.

Over a decade as a high-profile journalist, I covered Turkey’s descent into illiberalism, having to engage in the daily push and pull with the government. I know how self-censorship starts in small ways but then creeps into operations on a daily basis. I am familiar with the rhythms of the battle to reshape the media, state institutions and the judiciary.

Having lived through it, and having gathered some lessons in hindsight, I believe that there are strategies that can help Democrats and Trump critics not only survive the coming four years, but come out stronger. Here are six of them.

1. Don’t Panic — Autocracy Takes Time

President-elect Donald Trump’s return to power is unnerving but America will not turn into a dictatorship overnight — or in four years. Even the most determined strongmen face internal hurdles, from the bureaucracy to the media and the courts. It took Erdoğan well over a decade to fully consolidate his power. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Law and Justice Party needed years to erode democratic norms and fortify their grip on state institutions. [Reminder: On April 12, 2026, Péter Magyar led his Tisza party to victory with an extraordinary 138 seats over Orbán's Fidesz party, which retained only 55 seats, and the far-right Our Homeland, with 6.]

I am not suggesting that the United States is immune to these patterns, but it’s important to remember that its decentralized system of governance — the network of state and local governments — offers enormous resilience. Federal judges serve lifetime appointments, states and governors have specific powers separate from those granted federally, there are local legislatures, and the media has the First Amendment as a shield, reinforced by over a century of legal precedents.

Sure, there are dangers, including by a Supreme Court that might grant great deference to the president. But in the end, Donald Trump really only has two years to try to execute state capture. Legal battles, congressional pushback, market forces, midterm elections in 2026 and internal Republican dissent will slow him down and restrain him. The bottom line is that the U.S. is too decentralized in its governance system for a complete takeover. The Orbanization of America is not an imminent threat.

2. Don’t Disengage — Stay Connected

After a stunning electoral loss like this, there’s a natural impulse to shut off the news, log off social media and withdraw from public life. I’ve seen this with friends in Turkey and Hungary with opposition supporters retreating in disillusionment after Erdogan’s or Orbam’s victories. Understandably, people want to turn inwards.

Dancing, travel, meditation, book clubs — it’s all fine. But eventually, in Poland, Hungary and Turkey, opponents of autocracy have returned to the fight, driven by a belief in the possibility of change. So will Americans.

Nothing is more meaningful than being part of a struggle for democracy. That’s why millions of Turks turned out to the polls and gave the opposition a historic victory in local governments across Turkey earlier this year. That’s how the Poles organized a winning coalition to vote out the conservative Law and Justice Party last year. It can happen here, too.

The answer to political defeat is not to disconnect, but to organize. You can take a couple of days or weeks off, commiserate with friends and mute Elon Musk on X — or erase the app altogether. But in the end, the best way to develop emotional resilience is greater engagement.

3. Don’t Fear the Infighting

Donald Trump’s victory has understandably triggered infighting inside the Democratic Party and it looks ugly. But fear not. These recriminations and finger-pointing are necessary to move forward. In Turkey, Hungary and Poland, it was only after the opposition parties faced their strategic and ideological misalignment with society that they were able to begin to effectively fight back.

Trump has tapped into the widespread belief that the economic order, labor-capital relations, housing and the immigration system are broken. You may think he is a hypocrite, but there is no doubt that he has convinced a large cross-section of American society that he is actually the agent of change — a spokesman for their interests as opposed to “Democratic elites.” This is exactly what strongmen like Erdoğan and Orban have achieved.

For the Democratic Party to redefine itself as a force for change, and not just as the custodian of the status quo, it needs fundamental shifts in how it relates to working people in the U.S. There is time to do so before the midterms of 2026.

4. Charismatic Leadership Is a Non-Negotiable

One lesson from Turkey and Hungary is clear: You will lose if you don’t find a captivating leader, as was the case in 2023 general elections in Turkey and in 2022 in Hungary. Coalition-building or economic messaging is necessary and good. But it is not enough. You need charisma to mobilize social dissent.

Trump was beatable in this election, but only with a more captivating candidate. For Democrats, the mistake after smartly pushing aside President Joe Biden was bypassing the primaries and handpicking a candidate. Future success for the party will hinge on identifying a candidate who can better connect with voters and channel their aspirations. It should not be too hard in a country of 350 million.

Last year’s elections in Poland and Turkey showcased how incumbents can be defeated (or not defeated, as in general elections in Turkey in 2023) depending on the opposition’s ability to unite around compelling candidates who resonate with voters. Voters seek authenticity and a connection — give it to them.

5. Skip the Protests and Identity Politics

Soon, Trump opponents will shake off the doldrums and start organizing an opposition campaign. But how they do it matters. For the longest time in Turkey, the opposition made the mistake of relying too much on holding street demonstrations and promoting secularism, Turkey’s version of identity politics, which speaks to the urban professional and middle class but not beyond. When Erdoğan finally lost his absolute predominance in Turkish politics in 2024, it was largely because of his mismanagement of the economy and the opposition’s growing competence in that area.

Trump’s appeal transcends traditional divides of race, gender and class. He has formed a new Republican coalition and to counteract this. Democrats too, must broaden their tent, even if means trying to appeal to conservatives on some issues. Opposition over the next four years must be strategic and broad-based.

Street protests and calls to defend democracy may be inspirational, but they repel conservatives and suburban America. Any grassroots action must be coupled with a clear, relatable economic message and showcase the leadership potential of Democratic mayors and governors. Identity politics alone won’t do it.

6. Have Hope

Nothing lasts forever and the U.S. is not the only part of the world that faces threats to democracy — and Americans are no different than the French, the Turks or Hungarians when it comes to the appeal of the far right. But in a country with a strong, decentralized system of government and with a long-standing tradition of free speech, the rule of law should be far more resilient than anywhere in the world.

Trump’s return to power certainly poses challenges to U.S. democracy. But he will make mistakes and overplay his hand — at home and abroad. America will survive the next four years if Democrats pick themselves up and start learning from the successes of opponents of autocracy across the globe.

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[Question to you: Does this essay still ring true? In what ways does it seem especially relevant today? Are there ways in which it seems either naive or overly optimistic?]

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Today's links

• Hold on for dear life: Not your keys, not your wallet, entirely your problem.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Who owns "Web 2.0"; EFF saves bloggers' sources; Non-porn porn; Redaction fails; Canadian Tories say markets, not government, will help flood victims; Forced gold-farming; Walkaway cover; Oracle eats shit in Java API case; Captain America was a Nazi spy; Who Broke the Internet? (Pt IV).
• Upcoming appearances: 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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Hold on for dear life (permalink)

From the earliest days of technopolitics, the role of technology in resisting authoritarianism was unclear. On the one hand, there's the indisputable fact that modern cryptography, properly implemented, can deliver a degree of privacy that is proof against all technological attacks.

That is to say, if you pull out your distraction rectangle, fire up the camera, and tap the shutter button, in the ensuing eyeblink instant the image you've captured will be scrambled so thoroughly that it could never be unscrambled without the secret key unlocked by your passphrase or biometrics. Even if every hydrogen atom in the universe were converted into a computer, and even if all those computers spent all the time between now and the end of the universe trying to guess what the key was, we would run out of universe and time long before we ran out of possible keys.

What's more, this extremely robust form of scrambling and descrambling can be combined with other techniques to block tampering with the encrypted data, and to allow parties to reliably identify who scrambled the data and also to restrict who may unscramble it. These remarkable technological facts have inspired many excited debates about what they mean for our politics, most notably among a group of people who called themselves "cypherpunks":

https://web.archive.org/web/20151102012232/https://www.wired.com/1993/02/crypto-rebels/

One cypherpunk faction believed that modern cryptography could enable a kind of technological secession: by allowing ordinary people to communicate, transact and collaborate without the possibility of state interception or control, crypto could make states themselves obsolete.

But another faction pointed out that no amount of mathematics could help you if an agent of the state – or a criminal the state failed to protect you from – tortured you until you revealed the secret passphrase needed to unlock your secrets. This was (ironically) called "rubber hose cryptanalysis" (as in "Tell me your passphrase or I'll hit you with this rubber hose again"). Later, this became known as a "wrench attack" after a famous XKCD comic about $1m worth of security technology being defeated by hitting someone with a $5 wrench until they divulged the password:

https://xkcd.com/538/

Once you stipulate to the problem of wrench attacks and rubber-hose cryptanalysis, it becomes apparent that your cryptography is only as good as your physical defenses. What's more, the most effective physical defenses we have come from a strong rule of law, because even the thickest safe door benefits from the threat of prison for anyone who breaks into the safe, and the most effective tool for preventing a cop from hitting you with a rubber hose is the existence of a judge who can send that cop to prison for abusing your civil rights.

But what do you do if you already live under tyranny? The rule of law is a great defense, but cryptography alone can't bring about the rule of law. What is the role of technology in this foundational struggle?

My technopolitics faction – the faction associated with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where I've worked for a quarter-century – has an answer: the role of encryption is to provide a measure of privacy and security that is best used to organize political struggles to demand the rule of law and respect for human rights. Encryption isn't proof against rubber hoses, but it is effective against many other forms of state repression, and it can provide a technical edge for those engaged in a political struggle.

Another faction – the faction most associated with bitcoin and subsequent cryptocurrency projects – rejects the role of the state altogether, and seeks to replace states (and state-regulated institutions like courts and banks) with mathematics. Rather than asking courts to interpret contracts, we can put our trust in self-executing "smart contracts," and rather than asking banks to safeguard our financial integrity, we can use cryptographic software to ensure that money only moves when the person it belongs to tells it to.

This has many problems. Smart contracts are slow, expensive, and unreliable. The number of people who understand contracts is small, the number of people who understand the software that embodies smart contracts is likewise small, and the Venn intersection of the two is more of a sphincter. What's more, there is irreducible ambiguity in all but the simplest of contracts, which means that even a "self-executing" contract ends up relying on a human adjudicator (an "oracle") who can be bribed or intimidated into cheating:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/14/externalities/#dshr

And when it comes to transactions, crypto proves to be unwieldy, expensive and complex, so that nearly all crypto users end up directing an intermediary (like Coinbase) to hold and move their cryptographic assets for them. The upshot is that cryptocurrency mostly replaces banks – imperfect, but heavily regulated and insured – with unregulated tech platforms with murky ownership and often defective security procedures, who may or may not be insured (or even locatable) in the event of a collapse or a breach. Consequently, cryptocurrency has become a scam magnet of unprecedented and unstoppable power, and hardly a day goes by without people being ripped off in the most ghastly ways imaginable:

https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/

For bitcoin maxis and other anti-state cypherpunks, this is just a skill issue. Anyone who doesn't understand how to manage their own keys and turns to a platform to hold and move their crypto is getting what they deserve. As the maxim goes, "Not your keys, not your wallet," which is cypherpunkspeak for "caveat emptor."

That's where the wrench attacks come in. Because if you are in possession of keys that can be used to irreversibly and instantaneously steal large sums of money and move it to jurisdictions where the perpetrators are beyond any legal or physical recourse (e.g. North Korea), then there is a massive incentive for your adversaries to kidnap you and hit you with a wrench or a rubber hose.

That's precisely what's going on. People with substantial cryptocurrency holdings face grave personal danger, and the physical attacks on their person grow bolder, more violent, and more sadistic by the day:

https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks/blob/master/README.md

As crypto critic David Rosenthal writes, this problem is even worse than it seems at first blush:

https://blog.dshr.org/2026/05/wrench-attacks.html

For one thing, cryptocurrencies depend on "public ledgers" that indelibly, publicly record every transaction in the network. Cryptocurrency is nothing without these ledgers, and they have to be immutable and public to work. This is very bad news for anyone who relies on anonymity as their defense against physical attacks.

That's because "reidentification attacks" (where an anonymous person in a dataset is positively identified) get easier to perform over time. You might be represented in a database of hospital prescribing activities by a random number, and that number might be hard to associate with your real identity…at first. But with every subsequent release of data – whether in the form of an anonymized data-set or a breach – it gets easier to cross-reference the facts associated with your record with other facts from other records, such that a detailed, identifying picture of you emerges one fact at a time.

For example, if the taxi company you use suffers a breach that reveals journeys associated with every doctor's appointment at the hospital, now an attacker can pick out the home or work address of the single person who visited the hospital just before you received your prescription. The longer an "anonymized" data-set sits around in public view, the easier it gets to de-anonymize it:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3

Combine the fact that permanent ledgers make it progressively easier to identify people whom you can torture into revealing their crypto keys with the irreversible, instantaneous nature of crypto transfers and you get some very juicy targets indeed. "Not your keys, not your wallet" means it's "not anyone else's problem" when you get robbed. You can't ask the bank to interdict or reverse the transaction.

Rosenthal provides a litany of the escalating security measures crypto holders are turning to as this problem goes progressively more dangerous and terrifying. There's the guy who splits his keys up in four physical vaults at four separate locations, whose management is instructed to make him wait a minimum of seven days when he asks to retrieve them. Despite all this, he keeps his identity secret:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-19/crypto-conferences-up-security-after-attacks-scams

Rosenthal quotes Nicholas Weaver, who asks what kind of "internet of money" bitcoin can be if it can't be safely stored on a computer connected to the actual internet:

https://doi.org/10.1145/3208095

But an equally valid question is, what kind of escape from tyranny is it that requires you to hide your identity at all times lest you be snatched off the street and brutally tortured? What kind of "liberty" requires you to spend $860,000 armoring your two top execs' personal vehicles to protect them from gunfire and light artillery?

https://www.ft.com/content/71d7486d-89b5-48ac-8f94-857578c0a03b

It costs $6.2m/year to protect Coinbase's CEO – "more than the combined amount that JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Nvidia Corp. spent on their respective CEOs":

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-18/crypto-high-rollers-go-big-on-bodyguards-to-deter-kidnappers

Crypto true believers exhort one another to "HODL" (hold on for dear life). Selling your crypto during downturns is considered a moral failing. But now, crypto holders – especially those who manage their own keys – are literally holding on for dear life, as they are hunted by crime syndicates and state actors alike.

It's a good reminder of how badly crypto has failed on its own terms, delivering its biggest users into an existence of fear and physical peril that rivals the plight of even the most hunted dissidents in the most repressive societies. Worse: as cryptocurrency lobbyists have fused crypto with the world's largest and most corrupt governments (especially the Trump regime), crypto now has all the exposure to state coercion that made banks so unsuitable, but without the (inconstant, insufficient) protections offered by traditional banking.

And that's before we talk about the energy consumption problems, the scams enabled by crypto, and the rampant human trafficking that those scams necessitate:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-human-trafficking-victims-are-forced-to-run-pig-butchering-investment-scams

People in my technopolitical faction have a saying of our own: "'Crypto' means cryptography." Cryptography plays a hugely important role in protecting people from crime and state repression. It is no substitute for the rule of law and democracy, but it remains a key tool for securing and defending both:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/27/the-best-defense-against-rubber-hose-cryptanalysis/

Cryptocurrency, on the other hand? That's the worst of all worlds.

---

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Un internet post americano, resistente a la mierdificación https://supernovainterna.substack.com/p/traducir-sin-ia-mi-interpretacion

• Best sketches from SNL season 51 https://a.wholelottanothing.org/best-sketches-from-snl-season-51/

• Revenge of The Business Idiot https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-revenge-of-the-business-idiot/

• Uber, Lyft drivers in Massachusetts form first US ride-share union https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/uber-lyft-drivers-massachusetts-form-first-us-ride-share-union-2026-05-26/

• Star Trek Title Card Generator https://trek.epicrandomness.com/

---

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Can anyone own “Web 2.0?” https://memex.craphound.com/2006/05/26/can-anyone-own-web-2-0/

#20yrsago iRiver gives customers the choice of switching off DRM https://web.archive.org/web/20060619150812/http://www.iriver.com/mtp/

#20yrsago EFF scores win against Apple: bloggers’ sources are protected https://web.archive.org/web/20060602020337/http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog?entry_id=1489151

#15yrsago Anonymous pre-paid credit-cards and money-laundering https://web.archive.org/web/20110529001021/https://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/05/23/technology-lt-fea-plastic-money-laundering_8481416.html

#15yrsago More incompetence revealed on the part of France’s “three-strikes” copyright enforcer https://web.archive.org/web/20120520073256/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/french-three-strikes-anti-piracy-software-riddled-with-flaws/

#15yrsago Montage: Non-pornographic scenes from pornographic movies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVBhVDXLpaI

#15yrsago Improper court record redaction: a study https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2011/05/25/studying-frequency-redaction-failures-pacer/

#15yrsago Texas anti-TSA-grope bill killed by threat to shut down all Texas airports https://www.texastribune.org/2011/05/24/fed-threat-shuts-down-tsa-groping-bill-in-texas/?r

#15yrsago Canadian Tories refuse to send soldiers to help flood victims because they’d compete with the private sector https://web.archive.org/web/20110527053822/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebec/ottawa-initially-refuses-request-for-more-troops-to-aid-quebec-flood-victims/article2033562/

#15yrsago Gold-farming in a Chinese forced-labor camp https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

#10yrsago Edward Snowden performs radical surgery on a phone to make it “go black” https://web.archive.org/web/20160527125043/https://www.wired.com/2016/05/snowden-vice-cell-phone-hack/

#10yrsago FBI is investigating copyright trolls Prenda Law for fraud https://web.archive.org/web/20160526005012/https://popehat.com/2016/05/25/fbi-actively-investigating-prenda-law-team-for-fraud/

#10yrsago How a pharma company made billions off mass murder by faking the science on Oxycontin https://web.archive.org/web/20160524112437/http://static.latimes.com/oxycontin-part1/

#10yrsago GOP officials won’t let the FEC stop bosses from forcing employees to give to PACs https://web.archive.org/web/20160526114245/https://prospect.org/blog/checks/fec-deadlocks-over-employer-political-coercion

#10yrsago Undetectable proof-of-concept chip poisoning uses analog circuits to escalate privilege https://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2016/papers/0824a018.pdf

#10yrsago “Pickup artist” douche uses copyright to sue Youtube critics, fans raise $100K defense fund https://www.gofundme.com/f/h3h3defensefund

#10yrsago The best thing you will read about the revelation that Captain America was a Nazi spy https://web.archive.org/web/20160623131614/https://storify.com/rahaeli/captain-america

#10yrsago Revealed: the amazing cover for Walkaway, my first adult novel since 2009 https://reactormag.com/cover-reveal-walkaway-cory-doctorow//

#10yrsago Tor Project is working on a web-wide random number generator https://blog.torproject.org/mission-montreal-building-next-generation-onion-services/

#10yrsago Jury hands Oracle its ass, says Google doesn’t owe it a penny for Java https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/eff-applauds-jury-verdict-favor-fair-use-oracle-v-google

#10yrsago Arcade cabinet enthusiasts discover trove of 50+ games in ship, derelict for 30 years https://arcadeblogger.com/2016/05/06/arcade-raid-the-duke-of-lancaster-ship/

#5yrsago Monopolists are winning the repair wars https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/26/nixing-the-fix/#r2r

#1yrago Who Broke the Internet, Part IV https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/26/babyish-radical-extremists/#cancon

---

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• 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.

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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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,

I do not wish Trump ill. While he hasn’t shown a shred of compassion for anyone other than himself, this doesn’t justify our lacking compassion for him.

It’s also in the interest of America and the world that he be physically and mentally able to discharge the duties of his office.

So we have reason to be concerned about Trump’s visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center early Tuesday for what the White House called a “routine annual dental and medical assessment.”

Trump turns 80 next month. I feel entitled to comment on the practical meaning of this milestone because I’ll also turn 80 next month (he was born 10 days before me).

Let’s just say that reaching it doesn’t mean altogether good things, unless you consider the alternative.

Even in a healthy person, small things begin to break down as one approaches 80. Everything takes just a bit more time and effort. Joints ache. Energy isn’t quite as abundant.

The 80-year-old mind isn’t as quick. The frontal lobe’s capacity to remember names goes to shit. (Yesterday, I could barely remember the name of a garage mechanic whom I’ve known for nearly half a century.)

Taken separately, such minor frailties are typically no more than a personal frustration, but they begin to mount up. In a president of the United States, they can pose a major challenge to the nation and world.

Trump frequently proclaims he’s in excellent health. “Just finished my 6 month physical at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. Everything checked out PERFECTLY,” he wrote on Truth Social early yesterday afternoon. “Thank you to the great Doctors and Staff! Heading back to the White House.”

But even “PERFECTLY” is a relative concept for someone ending his seventh decade and beginning his eighth, who’s the oldest person to assume the presidency and the second-oldest to hold the office. (Joe Biden was 82 when he left in 2025.)

Presidents aren’t legally required to release their medical records, but, given the effluvium of lies in which Trump permanently floats, we’d be excused if we didn’t entirely trust this PERFECTLY report.

Plus, there are his bruised hands, swollen ankles, bouts of drowsiness, exceedingly long blinks during official meetings (some call them “naps”), and erratic — if not off-the-charts weird — behavior.

Add in the frequency of his health “checkups.”

Tuesday’s visit to Walter Reed was Trump’s third in-person doctor’s visit in a little over a year. His first physical of this term of office was in mid-April last year. He returned in early October for a “semiannual physical.” In early January, he had what was described as a brief dental appointment. Earlier this month, another dental appointment. Followed by his return to Walter Reed on Tuesday for his third “annual” physical in 13 months.

Consider also the shifting explanations. In July, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, Trump’s physician, explained that bruises on Trump’s right hand were “consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking.” The explanation seemed plausible until the bruises spread to his left hand.

Then there’s the changing story about Trump’s scans. In December he told reporters that he’d had an MRI in October but wasn’t sure what part of his body was scanned. “It wasn’t the brain,” he said, defensively, “because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.” Barbabella then issued a memo explaining it had been a scan of his heart and abdomen, and that in both cases the advanced imaging was “perfectly normal.”

In January, Trump altered his story to say it was a CT scan rather than an MRI. Why? Trump being Trump, he doesn’t want anyone to know anything about his health that might reveal something he fears enemies and critics might see as a weakness.

“In retrospect, it’s too bad I took [the scan] because it gave them a little ammunition,” Trump said. “I would have been a lot better off if [I] didn’t, because the fact that I took it said, ‘Oh gee, is something wrong?’ Well, nothing’s wrong.”

What’s he afraid of? Probably that the American public will catch on to his rapidly diminishing capacities.

Three years ago, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, only 28 percent of the public thought Trump insufficiently healthy to hold the nation’s highest office. Earlier this month, the same poll found that 55 percent of the public thought his health insufficient for him to serve effectively.

Behind the public’s mounting worries is a growing sense that Trump isn’t mentally all there.

Physical and mental health aren’t easily separated, especially as one reaches 80. I often can’t remember where I put my wallet and keys or why I’ve entered a room. I also have less patience than I used to. I’m less tolerant of long waiting lines, automated phone menus, and Republicans.

But if Trump can’t remember where he put, say, a top-secret memo or why he entered the Situation Room, or if he expresses bizarre impatience, it’s a potential risk to the nation and world.

Worse, Trump is exhibiting clear symptoms of dementia.

“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” Trump exploded on his social media Easter morning, adding an Islamic prayer to the end of the post.

The following Tuesday he threatened that unless Iran struck a deal in 12 hours, its whole civilization would die.

When Iran shot down two U.S. airmen, aides who were getting minute-by-minute updates reportedly kept Trump out of the Situation Room because they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful, a senior administration official said.

Then came Trump’s rant against the pope.

“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. … I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t! … Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!”

During a subsequent Q&A with reporters, Trump doubled down: “I don’t think he’s doing a very good job. He likes crime, I guess. … I am not a fan of Pope Leo.”

Days later Trump posted an AI-generated portrait of himself as a kind of American Jesus. When this caused a wave of criticism and outrage (much of it from fundamentalist Christians), he insisted he was portraying himself “as a doctor, making people better.”

Rather than helping Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections by, for example, embarking on an “affordability tour” (as White House aides have urged him to do), Trump has been on a “revenge tour” against Republican members of Congress he deems insufficiently loyal — a gambit that may cost Republicans dearly in the midterms.

At yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, Trump touted the primary wins of Republicans he endorsed, including yesterday’s Texas victory of Ken Paxton over incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn.

Paxton carries more baggage than the U.S. Postal Service — including abuse-of-office allegations from his top staff, an indictment for securities fraud, impeachment by Texas’s Republican House, and an ongoing divorce initiated by his wife, who alleges adultery — which will help the Democratic challenger, James Talarico.

Yet Trump insisted at the Cabinet meeting that “I don’t care about the midterms.” He was referring to Iranian officials who “thought they were going to outwait me” by relying on mounting political pressures to force him to give up, but he might as well have been talking about the blowback from his revenge tour.

Trump ended yesterday’s Cabinet meeting with further evidence of his mental decline in another rant against Somali-Americans. “The Somalians, what they’ve done to Minnesota, the Somalians, crooked as hell. Ilhan Omar, crooked as hell,” he said, in reference to the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota. “They’re all crooks, and we got them, we got them. Now we’re putting the clamps on,” Trump said.

His antipathy toward Somali-Americans is growing, with his dementia. In December, weeks before ICE went on a rampage in Minneapolis, Trump claimed Somalis made Minnesota a “hellhole,” saying “the Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country.” Of Somalia-born Omar, Trump said, “she shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman, and I’m sure people are looking at that. She should be thrown the hell out of our country.” A day earlier, he called the congresswoman “garbage,” saying he didn’t want Somalis in the U.S.

Can you imagine any other president of the United States singling out a group of foreign-born Americans like this? Of course not.

The evidence continues to mount. Trump is both physically and mentally incapable of discharging the duties of president of the United States.

The sooner the 25th Amendment is invoked, or he is impeached, the safer America and the world will be.

Share

Friends,

Trump’s war in Iran is entering its third month. Gas is $1.50 more at the pump than it was before February 28. Other prices are rising. The American economy is showing signs of the dreaded stagflation (the combination of inflation and stagnation that’s difficult to overcome). There’s a loud outcry over revelations about Trump’s self-dealing, including his $1.8 billion slush fund and permanent immunity from any IRS audits of him and his family.

Given all this, some political observers I rely on tell me Trump has finally overplayed his hand. He’s a lame duck who’s now facing the beginning of the end. His power is disappearing. Not all political observers I’ve been consulting agree.

Hence, this week’s Office Hours question: In your view, has Trump finally overplayed his hand, and, if so, what are the likely consequences for him, America, and the world?

I’ve grouped the responses I’ve received from seasoned political observers into several categories, which I’ve summarized below. I’d appreciate your thoughts.

Read more

Today's links

• AI and a world without migrants: It's solipsism all the way down.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Manuscript rabbits; "What Will Come After"; Pastejacking; Terrorism phrenology; Vaccine waivers were promised 20 years ago.
• Upcoming appearances: 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.

---

AI and a world without migrants (permalink)

I don't care who you are, there will always be times when hell is other people. Not because other people are horrible – quite the opposite! Other people are wonderful, but boy are they ever stubborn.

From boardgames to romance, team sports to movement politics, business ideas to construction projects, there's so much important, enjoyable and essential stuff you can't do alone. But other people insist on having their own priorities and goals, and they mulishly refuse to organize their lives to suit your priorities.

Our species has put a lot of work into resolving this conundrum. Not only did we evolve a whole brain structure – the neocortex – that helps us understand others' perspectives, but we also evolved many social structures (like laws and teams and governments and families and committees and bureaucracies) to help us coordinate with others to do superhuman things (that is, things that exceed the capacity of a single human).

These structures are imperfect, but they're better than the alternative: coercion. Persuading others is not without its pitfalls, but compared to forcing others to bend to your will, "persuasion" is the hands-down favorite.

Not for everyone, though. There has always been a group of people who refused to acknowledge that other people have perfectly valid reasons for wanting to pursue their own goals rather than yours. We call most of those people "toddlers" and devote sizable social effort to helping them outgrow this belief.

But there's another group of people who carry this belief into adulthood. If they're of regular means, we call those people "bullies." However, if they're sufficiently wealthy, we call them "billionaires" (this is the same force that allows money to transmute a "hoarder" into a "collector").

Just lately though, we've come up with a new solution to the problem of hell being other people. Rather than coercing other people into arranging their affairs to suit our needs, we've devoted trillions of dollars to replacing people with pliant chatbots, in the hopes that these chatbots can be made so effective that we can just dispense with other people altogether.

Many everyday people have replaced their romantic partners with chatbots ("AI boyfriends"/"AI girlfriends"), and they've formed active communities to revel in the delights of pursuing love with someone who demands no moral consideration or compromise, glorying in a world of love without lovers:

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-the-naked-emperor/episode/16215328-e1-love-bots

There's a whole community of people who have stopped listening to music created by people in favor of made-to-order slop, exulting in a world of music without musicians:

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/937059/nobody-wants-to-tell-me-why-they-only-listen-their-own-suno-slop

These are foundationally solipsistic exercises, fantasy worlds in which you are the only real person and everyone else is a bot, an NPC, a phantom. AI has democratized solipsism, a privilege that was once the exclusive purview of billionaires, whose belief that most other people weren't fully real let them inflict the kind of mass pain on millions that is a prerequisite for amassing a truly vast fortune:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/#npcs

No surprise then that billionaires were easy marks for AI hustlers, who promised the possibility of a world without people, where an army of "agents" could do the jobs that presently demand the contributions of unreasonable human beings who refuse to acknowledge that your priorities trump theirs.

Jeff Bezos built the world's most advanced automated warehouses, and the workers in those warehouses are seriously injured at 300% of the national rate, and they are not allowed pee breaks (nevertheless, these workers unreasonably insist on metabolizing fluids and expelling the waste). The automation and the injuries aren't unrelated facts. The inhumane treatment is caused by the automation, because when you commit hundreds of billions to automation capex, you need to work those assets to recoup the investment. In a human/machine collaboration, humans will always be the bottlenecks. To maximize return on automation, you need to drive the human peripherals that serve the machines at the absolute limit of human endurance. Jeff Bezos's machines don't just use humans, they use them up:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/rancid-vibe-coding/#class-war

Billionaires poured trillions into AI because they are obsessed with the fantasy of a world without people. Mark Zuckerberg would like to replace your on-platform friends with chatbots. Sure, your friends are the reason you're stuck on his platforms, but your friends are stubborn and thus suboptimal. Remember: hell is other people, so while your friends unreasonably refuse to leave Facebook with you and follow you to another platform (this is bad for you, but good for Zuck), they also refuse to organize their social media lives to "maximize your engagement" and thus the number of ads you see (which is bad for Zuck). By replacing your friends with chatbots, Zuck hopes to reinvent social media without the socializing:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/17/for-youze/#forever

Billionaires are betting that bosses (and other would-be billionaires) will spend trillions buying AI products, captured by the fantasy of a workplace without workers. They think AI could be the remedy for the ancient, nameless dread that bosses experience every time they contemplate the fact that if they don't show up for work, everything hums along fine; whereas if the workers don't show up, the whole enterprise collapses. Secretly, bosses are haunted by the fear that they're not driving the car, they're strapped into the back seat, amusing themselves with a toy steering-wheel:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-wheel/#billionaire-solipsism

That's what the Hollywood strikes were about: studio bosses' fantasy of movies without actors and screenplays without screenwriters. Since the invention of the studio system itself, studio bosses have wrestled with the fact that talented people who are beloved by audiences have bargaining leverage, which they use to demand better outputs and higher wages (this is the same conundrum faced by hospital administrators confronting nurses and doctors, college administrators confronting faculty, etc):

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/20/i-would-prefer-not-to/#i-cant-do-that-boss

This solipsistic drive is what powers investment in AI "persuasion" technologies, making billions for latter-day Cambridge Analyticas who peddle the outlandish tale of having built a mind-control ray. It's a winning sales-pitch because it plays into the fantasy of a world where customers do as they're told, organizing their lives according to your priorities, at the expense of their own wellbeing:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/#credulous-dolts

It's not just captains of industry who are occupied with furious, all-consuming fantasies of a world without people. Dictators, autocrats and technocrats in the political world love AI because it dangles the possibility of a world without bureaucrats and public officials. If the civil service can be replaced with chatbots, then the will of the dictator can be translated directly into policy without any tedious negotiations with experts who understand how things work and have deep moral commitments to the public good:

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

A world without people is especially attractive to politicians presiding over aging, declining nations whose most ardent voters have been convinced that migrants are a threat to their nation (rather than its salvation).

Objectively speaking, the only way that a rich country with an aging workforce can remain wealthy and powerful is by wooing working-age people from elsewhere to migrate to that country. Even if every tradwife is kept in a state of continuous gestation courtesy of a fertility-obsessed natalist, there's still going to be decades during which your wealthy, aging population will need young, skilled people to do all the essential labor. From picking crops, to staffing hospitals, to building homes, to filing lawsuits, to preparing tax-returns, your quiverfull child army will be too young to take over for years to come.

Trapped in the political impossibility of a country whose productive activities are absolutely reliant on young, strong, resourceful, skilled migrants, and a xenophobic political movement that scapegoats these migrants and revels in the spectacle of ethnic cleansing, politicians see AI as a way out of their double-bind. If migrants can be replaced with AI, then you can satisfy the racist sadism of your most ardent voters without shutting down the country for lack of workers.

In other words: in feeding the fantasy of a world without people, AI serves the fantasy of a world without migrants. Unlike gastarbeiters, bracero fruit-pickers and Saudi quasi-slaves, AI makes no demands, requires no moral consideration, and does not attempt to germinate a culture, a cuisine, or a language in your sacred soil.

This grotesque fantasy has always lurked in the subtext of the automation story. The plot of Disney's Big Hero 6 boils down to: "In future-America/Japan, it will be more politically possible to have robots look after our aging parents than it will be to welcome the millions of skilled health-workers in the Pacific Rim who are eminently qualified to do the job." Big Hero 6 is the solution to the problem of building a nursing home without nurses.

The wealthy have always dreamed of transforming the proletariat into the precariat: desperate workers who do as they're told. But in the automation story of which AI is the latest chapter (and purportedly the climax), the precariat becomes the unnecessariat: workers who are surplus to requirements and can be vaporized or liquidated or warehoused or simply ignored.

In the fantasy world of total automation, the owners of AI can make the world go around without any of us, which means that we will exist solely at their sufferance, and will therefore have to act like the NPCs they half-believe we are already, organizing everything we do around their priorities.

This is the foundation of Sam Altman's obsession with a biometrically controlled universal basic income. Altman can't stop fantasizing about a world in which all the productive work is done by his software, and the state's sole purpose is to supply us – the unnecessariat – with vouchers we can only redeem for services provided by Altman's robot army. It's charter schools for everything, with Altman at the top, all wrapped up in a layer of dystopian retinal scanning:

https://www.wired.com/story/worldcoin-sam-altman-orb/

Billionaires and would-be billionaires are absolute suckers for this solipsistic bullshit, because they genuinely don't think other people are real. They love "effective altruism" because it counsels them to make as much money as possible, without regard to how many people they cheat, hurt, or kill…provided that they pledge to use these ill-gotten gains to improve the lives of 10^53 imaginary artificial people who will come into existence in 10,000 years. After all, the total benefit of even the most infinitesimal welfare gains experienced by 10^53 people vastly exceeds all the pleasures that all eight billion actual, living people are capable of experiencing:

https://www.semafor.com/article/11/21/2023/how-effective-altruism-led-to-a-crisis-at-openai

It all makes perfect sense – provided you don't believe that other people are really, truly real.

---

Hey look at this (permalink)

• EU's digital sovereignty boo-boo may be the best thing to ever happen to the project https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/05/26/eus-digital-sovereignty-boo-boo-may-be-the-best-thing-to-ever-happen-to-the-project/5244715

• Revealed: Palantir’s NHS tech is ten times slower than current system https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/revealed-palantirs-nhs-tech-is-ten-times-slower-than-nhs-thiel-trump

• The human cost of governing by spreadsheet https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/21-05-2026/the-human-cost-of-governing-by-spreadsheet

• Canadian prime minister Mark Carney is not the climate guy you thought
  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/21/mark-carney-climate-canada

• It's time to talk about my writerdeck https://veronicaexplains.net/my-first-writerdeck/

---

Object permanence (permalink)

#15yrsago California prison overcrowding, in photos https://web.archive.org/web/20110525171353/https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/california-prison-overcrowding-photos

#15yrsago What Will Come After: the sweet melancholy of the zombie apocalypse https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/25/what-will-come-after-the-sweet-melancholy-of-the-zombie-apocalypse/

#10yrsago If Donald Trump ever talks to a real journalist, these are the questions he should answer https://www.nationalmemo.com/21-questions-for-donald-trump

#10yrsago Norwegian Consumer Council broadcasts live, marathon reading of app Terms of Service https://web.archive.org/web/20160526145553/https://www.forbrukerradet.no/vilkar-og-personvern-minutt-for-minutt/

#10yrsago Pastejacking: using malicious javascript to insert sneaky text into pasted terminal commands https://github.com/dxa4481/Pastejacking

#10yrsago Why medieval monks filled manuscript margins with murderous rabbits https://web.archive.org/web/20160614000551/https://jonkanekojames.com/2015/05/02/why-are-there-violent-rabbits-in-the-margins-of-medieval-manuscripts/

#10yrsago Students: court orders government agencies to offer educational discount on FOIA requests https://web.archive.org/web/20160525155102/https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160521/16031934508/appeals-court-tells-government-it-must-extend-educational-institution-foia-fee-price-break-to-students.shtml

#10yrsago The euphemisms news reporters use when a sports figure injures his penis and testicles https://web.archive.org/web/20160525125452/https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/media-groin-draymond-green-steven-adams/

#10yrsago Company says facial features reveal terrorists and pedophiles 80% of the time https://web.archive.org/web/20160525130941/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/05/24/terrorist-or-pedophile-this-start-up-says-it-can-out-secrets-by-analyzing-faces/

#5yrsago We promised this vaccine waiver 20 years ago https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/25/the-other-shoe-drops/#quid-pro-quo

---

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• 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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ISSN: 3066-764X

Friends,

The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act initiative recently submitted enough signatures to be put on the California ballot for the November 2026 elections. Its goal is to raise revenue by imposing a one-time 5 percent wealth tax on California billionaires to offset large cuts to California’s Medicaid caused by the Trump regime and Congress when, in July 2025, they cut federal taxes mainly on the wealthiest.

The reason for targeting California billionaires for new revenue is their wealth has grown faster than anyone else’s in recent years and they currently pay low taxes relative to their large wealth gains. Many borrow against their wealth for living expenses (banks are delighted to lend to them), enabling them to claim little or no taxable income.

As a result, taxing billionaires can both raise substantial revenue and restore tax progressivity at the very top. California is in the vanguard of what the nation must do. I believe they will do it when Democrats are back in control, and when they enact campaign finance reforms so no member of Congress is necessarily dependent on the super-wealthy for the bulk of their campaign contributions.

The following oped appeared in today’s New York Times. It was written by two of my colleagues at Berkeley, Professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman (who is also at the Paris School of Economics). I have reproduced it in its entirety, with permission, and have highlighted paragraphs I believe to be particularly important.

They make the case for the billionaire wealth tax in California, and indirectly for a billionaire wealth tax nationwide. They also answer the arguments against the tax, such as that California billionaires may leave the state in expectation that such wealth taxes would be renewed, possibly reducing future income tax revenue to the state and reducing its economic dynamism as the engine of tech innovation.

With wealth inequality now surging beyond anything ever witnessed in America, the dictum attributed to Justice Louis D. Brandeis has become dramatically relevant: “America faces a choice: We can have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy, but we cannot have both.” A wealth tax is a necessary precondition for everything else.

***

The billionaire class in California includes roughly 250 households, a mere 0.001 percent of the state’s families. Yet its wealth now amounts to more than half of California’s entire annual economic output.

This means that if these billionaires spent all of their wealth, they could buy more than half of the goods and services produced in a year in the entire state.

This extraordinary wealth does not translate into extraordinary tax contributions.

From 2019 to 2025, California billionaires’ wealth grew an average of over 15 percent per year, while they paid, on average, just 0.26 percent of their wealth annually in state income taxes. Their income tax payments accounted for only 2.4 percent of California’s income tax revenue.

For the very richest individuals, the effective burden was even lower. The four wealthiest Californians — former Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, former Google CEO Larry Page, and Facebook’s (Meta’s) Mark Zuckerberg — paid an average of just 0.07 percent of their wealth annually in California income tax over that period, according to our analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission records on stock sales and executive compensation from their companies.

California’s tax system fails to effectively tax ultrahigh-net-worth individuals. The same is true of the United States’ tax system and those of other countries.

The problem is that billionaires’ fortunes are largely held in assets (mainly stocks) that rise in value over time. This rise in value is not taxed unless the assets are sold. Under current law, when billionaires don’t sell their stock, wealth accumulates while taxes on their gains are deferred indefinitely and sometimes avoided entirely.

To understand how California’s billionaires have become so unfathomably rich, it’s helpful to think of their fortunes as icebergs. Some earnings are easy to see — and tax. From 2019 to 2025, Mr. Zuckerberg reported more than $7.1 billion in income from Meta: $181 million in compensation, $1.4 billion in dividends and $5.6 billion in gains from selling stock.

Despite making so much money, Mr. Zuckerberg was taxed a combined state and federal rate of just 27 percent on that income. That’s not much higher than the average California household’s effective tax rate of about 20 percent.Mr. Zuckerberg’s tax rate was relatively low in large part because most of his income was in the form of capital gains — what he made from selling stock that had risen in value. Capital gains are taxed federally at a lower rate than ordinary income.

Most of Zuckerberg’s wealth is hidden from income taxes. Since 2019, Meta has made hundreds of billions of dollars in profit. As Meta’s chief executive, Mr. Zuckerberg has invested much of that money back into the company, of which he owns about 13 percent. These profits have been taxed at a relatively low 17 percent, Meta’s effective corporate income tax rate. Their reinvestment has boosted the company’s value and, therefore, the value of its shares. This caused Mr. Zuckerberg’s wealth to rise by tens of billions of dollars.

The same is true of the wealth Mr. Zuckerberg accumulated as Meta grew and investors became more bullish about the company. This dynamic increased the value of his shares by an additional $142 billion. Unless Mr. Zuckerberg sells his shares, all of this growth remains untaxed.

But he can put his gains to use without selling them, borrowing tax-free against his holdings at low interest rates, as he did in 2023, when he pledged $3.1 billion worth of his Meta shares as collateral for a loan.

California’s other top billionaires have similarly structured fortunes. Without a wealth tax, these tech barons will continue to hoard the rewards of the state’s economic growth while its cities cut services and its workers lose health care.

Google’s founders, Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, are the state’s richest individuals, with more than $600 billion in wealth between the two of them — up from $345 billion last September. They have come out against the wealth tax initiative while making moves to leave the state. They benefit from the status quo.

Mr. Brin has funded the political campaign against the measure and has funded signature collection for two competing ballot initiatives that could undercut the wealth tax, spending at least $57 million to fight it.

They stepped down from day-to-day management at the end of 2019. That year and in 2020 and 2023, each got from Alphabet, Google’s parent company, only $1 per year in executive compensation.

They didn’t sell stock, and they didn’t receive dividends or any other compensation relating to Alphabet, so they paid no income tax on their wealth related to the company. But their stock wealth rose by $133 billion, driven in part by the reinvestment of their share of company profits, which amounted to $20 billion in those three years. Scenarios like this show why some of the very wealthiest people in America are among the least taxed.

This arrangement violates basic principles of fairness, deprives the government of revenue it needs for public services and fuels wealth concentration.

Overwhelming wealth becomes power — power to influence the direction of corporate behemoths, power to sway society through donations and media ownership, power to steer politics through unlimited campaign contributions to super PACs.

Elon Musk’s recent adventures in the executive branch, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help elect Donald Trump, demonstrate how quickly concentrated wealth can transmute into political control.

We don’t imagine that a one-time 5 percent tax on the wealth of California billionaires, as proposed in the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, would fix all these problems. But it could raise nearly $100 billion in revenue for California. This amount would make up for the funding the federal government is taking away from the state over the next five years. It would also be tiny relative to billionaires’ recent wealth gains.

In the past three years alone, the total wealth of California’s billionaires grew by a staggering 144 percent, to over $2 trillion.

Taking such a small bite out of billionaires’ exponentially growing tech wealth wouldn’t doom Silicon Valley because the value of California’s concentrated tech talent dwarfs the proposed wealth tax. Nvidia’s chief executive, Mr. Huang, who would be one of the biggest payers of the tax, said he would be “perfectly fine” with it.

Other myths about the proposal need to be dispelled. It would tax only billionaires. It has been carefully written to respect the California and U.S. Constitutions. It contains provisions designed to prevent taxation beyond 5 percent of the fair market value of anyone’s shares and to avoid hitting start-ups hard. Billionaire entrepreneurs, with sizable illiquid stakes in newly founded private companies, would be able to defer payments until they began to cash out.

It is too late for superrich Californians to flee the state to avoid the tax. If approved in November, the tax would apply to billionaires who were residents of California as of Jan. 1, 2026. Some affected taxpayers might have left between the ballot initiative’s introduction, in late October 2025, and the end of the year. But it is improbable that any significant number of billionaires fully cut ties with California in that short period.

Critics of the ballot measure have voiced concerns that even a small number of billionaires leaving the state would lead to lower state tax revenues overall. Their math doesn’t add up. California’s billionaires currently pay such a low tax rate that even if all of them left the state, it would take 25 years for the loss of their tax payments under the current set of rules to surpass the amount the state would raise if the one-time tax succeeds this fall.

In 2025, California collected $4.1 billion in income tax from its billionaires. We estimate that California would collect about 25 times that much revenue — about $103 billion — from the proposed wealth tax.

While billionaires who no longer run their businesses day to day may choose to eventually leave California, uprooting an established business that relies on the pool of California’s tech talent and tech ecosystem would be much harder: While Mr. Page and Mr. Brin may leave for Florida or Nevada, there are no discussions of Google leaving Mountain View.

California’s tech sector produces billionaires faster than any other state’s. Its superrich — who have benefited from the state’s infrastructure, universities and networks of people and businesses — have accumulated enormous fortunes almost tax-free. The proposed billionaire tax would finally make them contribute in modest proportion to their gains.

In November, California’s voters should show the nation the way forward.

Share

Today's links

• The AI bubble isn't like the internet bubble: No one had to force-feed the web to workers.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Website graveyard; Anti-librarian witch-hunt; Denmark v Marmite; The unnecessariat.
• Upcoming appearances: 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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The AI bubble isn't like the internet bubble (permalink)

One of the surprise breakout software products of the early web was Lotus Notes, a kind of primitive precursor to all-in-one office productivity suites like GDocs, Office365, etc. It was so important that its creator, Ray Ozzie, was promoted to Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, succeeding Bill Gates himself:

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/podcast/knowledge-at-wharton-podcast/the-man-who-would-change-microsoft-ray-ozzies-vision-for-connected-software/

People who remember Notes tend to deride it for its clunky user interface and demi-functional administrative tools. But what made Notes so central to Microsoft wasn't its polish – it was the fact that Notes represented a brokered peace between IT managers, who wanted mainframe-like control over everything their users could do with business equipment, and the users themselves – workers who kept smuggling internet-based tools into the enterprise network on the very sensible grounds that they had a job to do, and these were the best tools to do it.

The arrival of internet-based tools – especially ones that ran in browsers – represented a major challenge to IT departments, who had been long accustomed to dictating terms to their users. If the IT manager and the compliance department decided that the best way to manage disclosure and leak risks was to block all email attachments for outside users, then that was that: no one could send those attachments.

But after the internet arrived on the corporate desktop, employees who needed to get documents to supply chain partners and customers could treat these IT policies as damage and route around them. Just fire up your Hotmail or Yahoo mail window, or hop on MSN Messenger or ICQ or AIM, or drop the file on an anonymous FTP server and send the link to your counterparty. Job done!

IT managers hated this, and to be fair to them, they weren't (always) wrong. These outside tools came from a variety of untrustworthy sources, including malicious sites that pushed virus-infected versions to their users. Also, by evading firewall rules with these tools, users made it impossible to achieve the compliance goals that IT had been charged with enforcing, and it was IT's asses on the line if the company got in trouble as a result.

Foundationally, IT was being asked to do two irreconcilable things: they were supposed to be enabling workers to get their jobs done, and they were supposed to be stopping those workers from doing things that could harm the business. This can't be done, because the only way to eliminate the possibility that a worker will take an action that harms the business is to gag that worker and lock them in a dungeon. Workers need flexibility and freedom to achieve business goals, and that flexibility and freedom means that those workers might (deliberately or accidentally) thwart the business's goals.

What's more, workers will always run into situations that were not anticipated by policy, and if they are denied any agency or initiative, they will fail to get their jobs done. In work, the exception is the rule, hence the importance of "process knowledge" (all the implicit knowledge shared among workers across the firm and its suppliers and customers, which cannot be captured or recorded):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/08/process-knowledge/#dance-monkey-dance

Indeed, there's a form of labor action called a "work to rule," in which workers only do the things dictated by their rulebooks, without taking any of the routine additional measures dictated by process knowledge. Merely by following every rule to the letter, workers can grind a shop to a halt:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule

Since the dawn of personal computers, workers and IT departments have come into conflict, as workers literally smuggled technology into the business that could do things the IT department had (often arbitrarily and capriciously) prohibited. When Visicalc emerged as the killer app for the Apple ][+, workers snuck these computers into work and used them to sort spreadsheets in ways that IT had declined to permit. They didn't do this to cheat or steal from the company – the whole point was to do a better job.

So it was with the early web: workers discovered a myriad of new capabilities in the free-to-use world of web-based tools and realized how these tools would make them much more effective at their jobs. The fact that IT wouldn't let them do these things was just more evidence that IT – and the managers who set IT's agenda – didn't understand the business as well as workers.

It didn't help that IT managers' first line of defense was the high-tech version of abstinence-only education: "You only think you need your work computers to do this, but really, you don't, so stop trying":

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jun/16/computer-security-abstinence

Abstinence-only education never works, but where "you only think you need this" failed, Lotus Notes succeeded. Lotus Notes provided a whole suite of tools that largely (if imperfectly) replaced the universe of free tools that workers were using to evade their IT departments' edicts, so they could get their jobs done. At the same time, Lotus Notes provided a set of management tools that let IT fine-tune how these tools worked, giving them (some) of the controls they needed to achieve their compliance goals.

Like all brokered peace settlements, Lotus Notes left both sides feeling like they'd made a compromise they could live with, giving up some of their goals, but keeping the things that really mattered to them.

It's impossible to overstate how important Lotus Notes and similar products were, because workers demanded the right to use the web on their work computers, and they made those demands so forcefully that managers had to completely re-do their IT policies, lest those workers treat them as damage and route around them. Back then, the tech press was full of stories about these conflicts, as workers insisted that the new technology that was sweeping the nation was so foundational and transformative that they had to be allowed to use it.

What we never saw back then were stories about how managers had to monitor workers to ensure that they were using the web as much as possible. No one had to force workers to find ways to integrate the web into their workflows.

In other words, the story of the web at work was the opposite of the story of AI at work. Today, you can't turn around without reading a story about bosses who are threatening to fire workers if they don't increase their AI usage:

https://www.businessinsider.com/boss-track-ai-use-career-2025-8

Virtually every major company now has a program to force workers into using AI:

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/05/ai-use-work-employee-monitoring-tech-surveillance.html

It's conceivable that over the past quarter-century, bosses have become technophiles while workers have fallen prey to superstitious technophobia, but it hardly seems likely. Historically, workers have always been enthusiastic about tools that let them do a better job – indeed, it's a truism that labor-led automation produces improvements in quality, while capital-driven automation increases throughput (often at the expense of quality).

Workers aren't the only typical early adopters who find AI lacking. As a group, teenagers and young adults hate AI:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/style/gen-z-ai-gallup-study.html

That's not what it was like during the early web days. Back then, young people entering the workforce were passionate devotees of the web, to the point where the business press routinely ran articles asking how today's workplaces were going to adapt to the demands of these webbed-up workers.

https://www.nber.org/digest/apr03/internet-changes-labor-market

AI boosters insist that the deficits we see in AI – its lack of profitability, its primitive and error-riddled outputs – are no different from the shakedown problems of the early web (and we know how the web turned out!). But this is a profoundly flawed comparison: the early web and AI are very different from one another.

For one thing, the early web may have lost money, but it had great unit economics. Every new web user brought the web closer to profitability, as did every new use of the web, and every new generation of web technology. By contrast, AI has – in the memorable phrasing of Ed Zitron – "dogshit unit economics." Every new AI user makes AI less profitable, as does every new use for AI, and each generation of AI loses more money than the last. AI is the money-losingest endeavor in human history:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence

In other words, the early web was a technology that grew more profitable every day, which workers and young people had to force on their bosses – and AI is a technology that grows less profitable every day, and bosses have to force it on workers and young people.

Now, it's true that some workers don't have to be forced to use AI. Workers who enjoy a high degree of autonomy (that is to say, workers who are positioned to ignore workplace coercion) can adopt AI in ways that they feel suited to, just as those early web users and Visicalc smugglers did. They can fulfill the maxim that labor-driven automation improves quality, while resisting capital's insistence that automation be used to increase throughput at quality's expense.

They can act as centaurs (workers assisted by technology), not as reverse-centaurs (workers who are recruited to serve as peripherals for machines). As with all technology questions, what the technology does is nowhere near as important as who the tech does it for and who the tech does it to:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/11/vulgar-thatcherism/#there-is-an-alternative

And there's another group of workers who adopt AI voluntarily: workers who see that AI can do a lot of work that they view as dull and unimportant for them. These workers might be right – there are plenty of bullshit jobs out there:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/20/david-graebers-bullshit-jobs-why-does-the-economy-sustain-jobs-that-no-one-values/

But it's also possible that they're wrong, and they're substituting AI for something that really should be done by a person.

But on the plus side, at least no one has to force them to adopt AI.

---

Hey look at this (permalink)

• CBC/Radio-Canada secures second consecutive Broadcaster of the Year honour at NYF Radio Awards https://broadcastdialogue.com/cbc-radio-canada-secures-second-consecutive-broadcaster-of-the-year-honour-at-nyf-radio-awards/

• State of Local AI https://llmrequirements.com/state-of-local-ai/

• Private Equity Blocked from Buying Homes. Mostly. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-private-equity

• Gratitude – Aid Coordination https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/gemma-4-good-hackathon/writeups/gratitude-aid-coordination

• Is AI Profitable Yet? https://isaiprofitable.com/

---

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Website graveyard https://web.archive.org/web/20010516224100/http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/

#20yrsago Canadian students ask govt to save them from copyright https://web.archive.org/web/20060629014007/https://action.web.ca/home/cfs/en_alerts.shtml?x=88910&AA_EX_Session=d56bebd39174d9839ec3ee5fa6fe93a4

#20yrsago Lifespan of best-sellers falls 6/7ths in 40 years https://web.archive.org/web/20060601231943/https://www.lulu.com/static/pr/05_19_06.php

#15yrsago Sarkozy’s false-flag E-G8 attracts withering scorn https://web.archive.org/web/20121109010803/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/france-attempts-to-civilize-the-internet-internet-fights-back/

#15yrsago Tool reveals ISP traffic-shaping https://web.archive.org/web/20120514151210/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/new-shaperprobe-tool-detects-isp-traffic-shaping/

#15yrsago Falun Gong sues Cisco over complicity in China’s “Golden Shield” – allege torture, murder https://web.archive.org/web/20110524065718/http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20065219-93.html

#15yrsago Scenes from Los Angeles’s teacher-librarian witch-hunt https://mizzmurphy.blogspot.com/2011/05/message-received.html

#15yrsago Denmark bans Marmite https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/may/24/uk-should-ban-sandi-toksvig

#10yrsago As mobile carriers ramp up bribery program, Internet coalition says no to “zero rating” https://web.archive.org/web/20160524233609/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/medium-mozilla-and-kickstarter-signed-a-letter-against-zero-rating

#10yrsago Philippines’ new “dictator” will give a hero’s burial to Ferdinand Marcos https://web.archive.org/web/20160526135257/http://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/world/philippine-dictator-marcos-to-get-heros-burial-duterte/ar-BBtnPJH

#10yrsago Judge handcuffs public defender for speaking out in court https://web.archive.org/web/20160525151444/http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/las-vegas-judge-handcuffs-public-defender-courtroom

#10yrsago Sanders donors flock to Tim Canova’s campaign against DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz https://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/23/politics/debbie-wasserman-schultz-primary-opponent-fundraising/index.html

#10yrsago Algorithmic risk-assessment: hiding racism behind “empirical” black boxes https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing

#10yrsago Plagiarism detection app vs Russia’s elites: 1-2 fake PhDs discovered every day https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/05/the_thriving_russian_black_market_in_dissertations_and_the_crusaders_fighting.html

#10yrsago Technology’s “culture of compliance” must be beaten back in the name of justice https://bb9.berlinbiennale.de/all-problems-can-be-illuminated-not-all-problems-can-be-solved/

#10yrsago Grass in the park at the center of San Francisco gentrification debate is now for rent https://sfist.com/2016/05/23/rec_parks_pilot_program_allows_you/

#10yrsago Lawsuit: Texas’s largest jail is full of people who are locked up for being poor https://web.archive.org/web/20160524134738/https://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/05/23/3781076/texas-bail-lawsuit/

#10yrsago After the precariat, the unnecessariat: the humans who are superfluous to corporations https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

#5yrsago Watomatic, for lower Whatsapp switching costs https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/24/how-about-nah/#comcom

---

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• 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.

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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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,

He’s no longer even trying to hide it. He makes a deal with himself for a $1.8 billion slush fund to reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on his behalf, and for a pardon of himself and his family for any illegal self-dealing and financial wrongs “FOREVER” (it’s in all caps in the document).

Then, when the deal is widely criticized, he posts:

“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward. I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune. Instead, I am helping others who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE! President DJT.”

Does he really believe he could have settled his case for an absolute fortune — the case that he brought against himself — the case a federal judge doubted was even a “case” because he was on both sides of it?

Last week, a disclosure form showed that Trump’s investment portfolio executed more than 3,600 trades in the first three months of this year alone, many involving companies that he has favored with access or policies.

America is slouching toward the 250th anniversary of our revolution against arbitrary power with a president who shamelessly exercises it. Never before have we witnessed this degree of self-dealing, bribe taking, usurpation of congressional authority, and open defiance of federal courts.

It’s an unconstitutional slippery slope. If Trump can get away with creating for himself a $1.8 billion slush fund that Congress never approved and courts cannot oversee, and wantonly trade the shares of companies his policies are favoring, what’s to stop him from creating a $10 billion or $10 trillion self-dealing slush fund?

If he can get away with preemptively pardoning himself and his family for any and all future financial wrongdoing, what’s to stop him from pardoning himself and his family for any future criminal acts?

These are only a part of the slippery slope we’re on. If he can abduct a foreign president without Congress’s permission, what’s to stop him from abducting anyone? If he can order the U.S. military to kill a foreign head of state without even Congress declaring a war, what’s to stop him from ordering the military to kill anyone?

If he can target political enemies for criminal prosecution, what’s to stop him from jailing or murdering his opponents?

If he can unilaterally decide that someone on a boat in the high seas is an “enemy combatant” and summarily kill them, what’s to stop him from calling anyone he dislikes an enemy combatant and having them killed?

If he can put his name on buildings all over Washington and take a wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White House, what’s to stop him from taking a wrecking ball to the entire edifice and putting up a Trump tower?

He feels unstoppable because there’s no one around him to tell him no. Instead, he’s surrounded by sycophants who tell him yes. He gets blind loyalty from his lapdogs — his vice president, his Cabinet, and most Republicans in Congress — who work for him rather than for the American people.

He feels indomitable because his billionaire backers — Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Larry and David Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, and Rupert Murdoch, among others — have stuffed his PAC with their money and silenced criticism of him on their media platforms, in order to garner his favors. Meanwhile, his followers feast on his white Christian nationalism and regard him as godlike.

He feels invincible because he was reelected president even though he was impeached twice and has been found guilty of 34 felony counts, and the Supreme Court has shielded him from further criminal prosecution for “official” acts (which he takes to mean any actions while he’s president). Congress is barely an obstacle because, as he demonstrated as recently as last week, he has a chokehold over the Republican Party. He even says he “doesn’t need Congress.”

He feels invulnerable because he’ll never directly face voters again, and therefore will never lose — nor, he assumes, ever be held accountable for anything.

My friends, this is full-frontal neofascism. I suggest we respond in these ways:

On July 4, the 250th anniversary of the nation’s independence, we wear black armbands to acknowledge the near death of our democracy and the rule of law under Trump.

In the weeks and months leading up to the midterm election on November 3, 2026, we commit to getting the largest voter turnout in American history, to take back Congress and stop the neofascist in the White House. Not just a blue wave but a blue tsunami.

On Election Day 2028, we elect a president whose character and temperament are consistent with the founding ideals of the United States — someone both humble and honorable, who’s committed to strengthening democracy and the rule of law, who will revive the self-governing institutions that Trump has shat on and refocus the nation on our vast unfinished agenda of inclusion, rather than exclusion.

Beyond these, we will do whatever we can to learn from this catastrophe and help America learn. We will teach our children and grandchildren the truth of what has happened and how close we’ve come to losing our democracy. And we will educate future generations on what we owe one another as citizens of this great land.

To accomplish all this we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Share

Today's links

• No honor among (ad-tech) thieves: Including "and" and "the."
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Budweiser nunchuks; GOP vote-suppressor voted illegally; Airbnb enshittifies; Oculus enshittifies; Nintendo copyfrauds its fans; Meritocracy to eugenics pipeline; Ultima Online crisis management; SNES cartridge urinal; JJ Abrams x Axanar, "Sex Criminals"; Beating school filters for fun; Orphan works; Japanese ATM heist; How the Sacklers rigged the game.
• Upcoming appearances: 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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No honor among (ad-tech) thieves (permalink)

It shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that a company that uses dishonest tactics to spy on you for profit will also use dishonest tactics to sell the resulting surveillance data.

The only reason this wouldn't be obvious is if you've fallen into the trap of thinking "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Companies that cheat when the opportunity arises will cheat everyone: customers, users, regulators, suppliers and employees. You're the product if the company can get away with making you the product:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The digital surveillance swindle is a con from top to bottom: it's not just that they spy on you, it's also that they lie to you about how and why and where they spy on you and what happens to the data they swindle out of you. They're not just cheats, in other words – they're also liars.

Of course they're liars! If their terms of service were honest, they'd say something like, "By being desperate enough to use this product, you 'agree' that we're allowed to come over to your house and punch your grandmother, wear your underwear, make long-distance calls and eat all the food in your fridge."

So they lie like crazy. But they don't just lie to us: they lie to the people they sell our surveillance data to as well. Of course they do! Those people are the ones giving them the money! By tricking the people paying for the product, these surveillance swindlers can get them to pay more!

This is the basis of Tim Hwang's essential 2020 book Subprime Attention Crisis:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

Core to Hwang's thesis is that these ads aren't just dangerous, they're also ineffective. The danger of these ads is the erosion of privacy and the mobilization of private data for state repression and fraud, but not particularly for persuasion. The idea that ad-tech companies have realized the ancient dream of building a mind-control ray via the novel technique of "hacking your dopamine loop" is a story that the ad-tech swindlers cooked up to help them sell ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/30/dont-believe-the-criti-hype/#ordinary-mediocrities

Critics who repeat these outlandish claims are helping these companies sell ads to credulous advertisers, who are getting robbed to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. This is the process that Lee Vinsel calls "criti-hype," which is when you "take the sensational claims of boosters and entrepreneurs, flip them, and start talking about 'risks'":

https://peoples-things.ghost.io/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype/

Criti-hype is satisfying because the hype itself is so fantastically overblown. These companies claim they're going to save/destroy/conquer the world, transform the very nature of humanity, etc, and so critics who repeat those claims (brackets derogatory) can style themselves as defenders of the world and humanity itself.

This is also a very profitable style of criticism: there's a huge commercial market for people who claim to be defending the world from conquest by evil dopamine-hacking sorcerers and/or superintelligent paperclip-maximizers that can chatbot you into killing yourself and/or voting for Trump (brackets derogatory).

The opposite of criti-hype is materialistic criticism, grounded in independently verifiable claims about how these scams work. To be a good tech critic, you need to start by assuming that a company that lies to its users about what it's doing is perfectly capable of lying to its customers and investors about what it's doing (that is, "even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product").

That's demonstrably, verifiably true of the commercial surveillance industry. Commercial spies lie to their customers like crazy, and always have. Think of the department store magnate John Wannamaker's famous quip that "half my advertising dollars are wasted, I just don't know which half." Man, did someone ever do a sell-job on old Wannamaker: imagine believing that only half of your advertising dollars are wasted. Today, thanks to creepy ad-tech analytics, we know that the true figure is around 99%.

Hwang's book documents lots more ad-tech fraud that's every bit as audacious as the Wannamaker-era con-jobs. For example, there's the fact that when Procter and Gamble zeroed out its $200m/year surveillance advertising program, they saw a zero percent drop in sales because (to a first approximation) all $200m of that annual spend was disappearing down the fraud-hole.

There's been plenty more examples since, rivaling previous eras for audacity and outlandishness. In 2023, Mozilla Labs investigated the ways that modern cars spy on their drivers and concluded that, when it came to privacy, cars were "the worst product category" they had ever evaluated, and recommended that you not buy any of the cars currently offered for sale:

https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/

Mozilla's report investigated two things: which data your car was collecting and selling about you (lots) and what data your car company claimed it had collected about you and was offering for sale (way, way more).

For example, Nissan and Kia claimed that they had data about your sex life, a thing that cannot be reasonably inferred from the sensors in your car (unless you have a highly specific sex life). Six car companies claimed they had your genetic data (again, not a thing that any of the sensors in your car can know about).

What's more, all of these scams have only gotten worse in the intervening three years:

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/22/mozilla-foundation-condemns-data-collection-by-cars/

These companies are spying on you, and lying to you about how much they respect your privacy, and lying to their commercial customers about all the fiendish ways they've cooked up for invading your privacy.

Everyone in the ad-tech sector is lying to everyone else in the ad-tech sector, in other words. It's your basic hive of scum and villainy. Back in 2023, Cox Media – part of the sprawling media conglomerate that includes Cox Cable – told advertisers that they had a new product called "Active Listening" that recorded and transcribed all the conversations you have around your smart speakers, smart TVs, smart watches and phones:

https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/

It was a lie. There are plenty of ways that these devices spy on you, of course. Your smart TV is a cesspool of surveillance and data-exfiltration, but that data doesn't include your conversations:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/03/painful-burning-dribble/#law-of-intended-consequences

Same for your smart speaker, which not only gathers tons of information about you for sale and targeting, but also leaks your voice data all the time, whenever you utter any of its "trigger words," which include over 1,000 phrases that sound like its trigger words:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#triggered

Cox, in other words, was running the same equal-opportunity scam that your auto-maker runs: deceiving you about how little data they were stealing from you, and deceiving their customers about how much data they were gathering on you.

That said, there was something remarkable and unique about Cox's fraud: because they were ripping off other (better-connected) fraudsters, their lies triggered an investigation by Donald Trump's FTC, who never met a scammer they wouldn't defend (from another scammer):

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/marketer-that-claimed-it-could-tap-devices-for-ad-targeting-will-pay-880k-settlement/

Still, there are limits to this "honor among thieves" business. The settlement Trump's FTC extracted from Cox for lying to other liars is less than $1m – basically, change that Cox can find down the back of its sofa:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/marketer-that-claimed-it-could-tap-devices-for-ad-targeting-will-pay-880k-settlement/

Still, the Cox settlement is a great criti-hype object lesson, a reminder that these creepy, lying companies lie to everyone, including their customers, which means that even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product.

---

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Hating AI is good, actually https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/hating-ai-is-good-actually

• The Labour Party’s Main Problem Isn’t Losing Voters to Reform https://jacobin.com/2026/05/uk-elections-labour-reform-greens

• Flipper One — we need your help https://blog.flipper.net/flipper-one-we-need-your-help/

• London mayor Sadiq Khan blocks £50m Met police deal with Palantir https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/21/london-mayor-sadiq-khan-blocks-met-police-deal-with-palantir

• Do AI Risks Require Extraordinary Government Intervention? https://www.normaltech.ai/p/do-ai-risks-require-extraordinary?hide_intro_popup=true

---

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Best email disclaimer award https://web.archive.org/web/20010526174903/http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/19057.html

#25yrsago Kaycee hoax FAQ https://web.archive.org/web/20010629212706/https://rootnode.org/article.php?sid=26

#25yrsago Crisis management in Ultima Online https://web.archive.org/web/20010605015828/http://www.newyorker.com/FACT/

#25yrsago E3 is all softcore porn now https://web.archive.org/web/20010702122044/https://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/05/22/e3_2001/print.html

#25yrsago Canadian payphone infinite long distance glitch https://web.archive.org/web/20010608183145/https://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,43967,00.html

#20yrsago Kids make a sport out of outsmarting school web-filters https://web.archive.org/web/20060821224237/http://news.com.com/Kids+outsmart+Web+filters/2009-1041-6062548.html

#20yrsago Orphan works legislation https://web.archive.org/web/20060531135239/http://www.copybites.com/2006/05/chairman_lamar_.html

#20yrsago U. Florida cops ask fiction writer for fingerprints, DNA https://memex.craphound.com/2006/05/22/u-florida-cops-ask-fiction-writer-for-fingerprints-dna/

#20yrsago HDMI, the Manchurian DRM – a Broadcast Flag dormant until 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20060523193853/https://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060521-6880.html

#15yrsago The Filter Bubble: how personalization changes society https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/22/the-filter-bubble-how-personalization-changes-society/

#15yrsago Last decade’s English libel legal sharks poised to make a new fortune on stupid privacy lawsuits and superinjuctions https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/22/last-decades-english-libel-legal-sharks-poised-to-make-a-new-fortune-on-stupid-privacy-lawsuits-and-superinjuctions/

#15yrsago RIAA boss takes home $3 mil+ https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2011/05/21/another-member-of-the-overpaid/

#15yrsago Vindictive game company invites employees to pan reviewer’s novel after bad review https://maroonersrock.com/2011/05/conduit-2-developer-calls-for-internal-retaliation-against-author-of-negative-joystiq-review/

#15yrsago France lobbies G8 for Internet control and censorship https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2011/05/20/frances-g8-focuses-on-control-and-restrictions-to-online-freedoms/

#15yrsago Budweiser nunchuks: American Ninja https://web.archive.org/web/20110701153712/http://www.todayandtomorrow.net/2011/05/19/american-ninja/

#15yrsago GOP legislative aide works on punitive voter ID bill, boasts of illegally voting in another district https://web.archive.org/web/20110522014606/http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/article_ede5d49e-8272-11e0-a6e0-001cc4c03286.html

#15yrsago Raising a kid without disclosing their sex https://web.archive.org/web/20110523180952/http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/babiespregnancy/babies/article/995112–parents-keep-child-s-gender-secret

#15yrsago Byron Sonne: Canadian security geek jailed for taunting G20 security theatre https://web.archive.org/web/20110518195236/http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/from-print-edition-informer/2011/05/03/how-byron-sonne’s-obsessions-with-the-g20-security-apparatus-cost-him-everything/

#15yrsago HOWTO make a SNES cartridge urinal https://blog.pricecharting.com/2011/05/how-to-build-video-game-urinal.html

#15yrsago German police raid German Pirate Party’s servers two days before election https://web.archive.org/web/20120516010632/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/05/german-police-seize-pirate-party-servers-looking-at-anons-toolkit/

#10yrsago JJ Abrams urges Paramount to drop its lawsuit over fan Star Trek movie https://web.archive.org/web/20160522121940/https://deadline.com/2016/05/star-trek-axanar-lawsuit-ending-jj-abrams-paramount-1201760721/

#10yrsago Pat Buchanan on the Republican Party’s historical opposition to free trade deals https://web.archive.org/web/20160521162845/http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/free-trade-vs-the-republican-party/

#10yrsago United offered men-only “executive” flights until 1970 https://viewfromthewing.com/united-airlines-men-only-executive-service/

#10yrsago Elderly man kills wife because they couldn’t afford her medicine https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/us/florida-man-says-he-killed-sick-wife-because-he-couldnt-afford-her-medicine-sheriffs-say.html?_r=0

#10yrsago Sex Criminals: Robin Hood bank robbers who can stop time when they orgasm https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/21/sex-criminals-robin-hood-bank-robbers-who-can-stop-time-when-they-orgasm/

#10yrsago Airbnb stealth-updates terms of service, says it’s not an insurer and requires binding arbitration https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/20/airbnb-stealth-updates-terms-of-service-says-its-not-an-insurer-and-requires-binding-arbitration/

#10yrsago Oculus breaks promise, uses DRM to kill app that let you switch VR systems https://web.archive.org/web/20160520161939/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/new-oculus-drm-cross-platform

#10yrsago Nintendo claims ownership over fans’ Minecraft/Mario mashups https://web.archive.org/web/20160521193334/http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/nintendo-issues-copyright-claims-on-mario-themed-minecraft-videos/

#10yrsago Paypal refuses to deliver online purchases to UK addresses containing “Isis” https://b2fxxx.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-tyranny-of-algorithm-yet-again.html

#10yrsago 30 students debate mass surveillance on Capitol Hill https://web.archive.org/web/20160521000031/https://theintercept.com/2016/05/20/high-school-debaters-bring-surveillance-encryption-arguments-to-capitol-hill/

#10yrsago What the NSA’s assault on whistleblowers taught Snowden https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon-punished-nsa-whistleblowers

#10yrsago Massive, coordinated ATM heist in Japan nets $12.7 million (¥‎1.4 billion) https://web.archive.org/web/20160523102154/http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160522/p2g/00m/0dm/044000c

#5yrsago How the Sacklers rigged the game https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/23/a-bankrupt-process/#sacklers

#5yrsago Consent theater https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/20/consent-theater/

#5yrsago Debunking the arguments for vaccine apartheid https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/21/wait-your-turn/#vaccine-apartheid

#5yrsago How the filibuster dies https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/22/not-with-a-bang/#theory-of-change

#1yrago Strange Bedfellows and Long Knives https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/21/et-tu-sloppy-steve/#fractured-fairytales

#1yrago The meritocracy to eugenics pipeline https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/20/big-cornflakes-energy/#caliper-pilled

---

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• 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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