Pluralistic: An end-of-year retrospective (24 Dec 2022)

doctorow · 24 December 2022 12:50

Originally published at: Pluralistic: An end-of-year retrospective (24 Dec 2022) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Today's links

An end-of-year retrospective: 2002, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022.
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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An end-of-year retrospective (permalink)

Every day, I revisit all the posts I've ever made, over more than 20 years of blogging; I review posts from one year, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years and 20 years ago, revisiting my priors and regrounding myself in the arc of stories I've followed for decades. I call it "The Memex Method":

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-memex-method-238c71f2fb46

As I'm about to leave on vacation for two weeks, I won't be blogging until after Jan 7. Normally, I'd just skip over those days for my "This Day in History" posts, but I made the mistake of looking ahead at those holiday-season posts from years gone by and I realized I wanted to handle them, copy-pasting their URLs and publishing them, just to reinfuse them into the supersaturated solution of half-remembered facts that my mind periodically crystallizes into stories, novels, speeches, essays, and nonfiction books.

https://doctorow.medium.com/divination-7cfec2b1a6b8

So I've produced a mega-retrospective, consisting of all the links for #20yrsago, #15yrsago, #10yrsago, #5yrsago, and #1yrago, for every day between now and January 7. See you in 2023!

#20yrsago The music industry STILL owes you $20! https://web.archive.org/web/20030621074412/https://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57111,00.html

#20yrsago New metaverse game launches https://web.archive.org/web/20030203141646/http://www.prod.there.com

#20yrsago Jon Johansen acquitted! https://www.wired.com/2003/01/dvd-cracking-teen-acquitted/

#20yrsago Paleospam: the first-ever spam and the reaction https://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html

#20yrsago William Gibson has a blog https://web.archive.org/web/20030201231918/https://williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp

#20yrsago JWZ’s mom discovers interface cruft https://web.archive.org/web/20021203003049/http://mpt.phrasewise.com/stories/storyReader$374

#20yrsago Samuel Pepys' diary in blog form https://web.archive.org/web/20030126062255/https://www.pepysdiary.com/

#20yrsago Microsoft subverts sunshine laws at state colleges https://web.archive.org/web/20030223094924/https://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=759

#15yrsago From Nazi collaborator to Fortune 500 – companies that got rich on the Reich https://www.cracked.com/article_15767_third-reich-to-fortune-500-five-popular-brands-nazis-gave-us.html

#15yrsago History of guerrilla knitting at 24th Chaos Communication Congress https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2358.en.html

#15yrsago Motley Fool: litigation isn’t a business model, sell RIAA short https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/01/02/were-all-thieves-to-the-riaa.aspx

#15yrsago Sears infects customer computers with spyware https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/02/AR2008010201051.html

#15yrsago New IO9 blog launches https://web.archive.org/web/20080220020221/http://io9.com/

#15yrsago Resigning from Napster takes more than 30 minutes https://www.wired.com/2007/12/why-and-how-i-c/

#15yrsago Neil Gaiman on Little Brother https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/12/changing-planes.html

#15yrsago One-armed man arrested in Belarus for clapping https://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/01/one-armed-man-arrested-for-clapping.html

#15yrsago My free reading of Alice in Wonderland https://ia800501.us.archive.org/21/items/AliceInWonderlandReadByCoryDoctorow/Alice_in_Wonderland_-_read_by_Cory_Doctorow_64kb.mp3

#15yrsago Cockney illustrated Bible from the 14th century https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/holkham-bible-picture-book

#10yrsago Hacker theatre troupe in Berlin to stage “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” https://web.archive.org/web/20130108201819/https://www.c-base.org/projects/c-atre/

#10yrsago Dad hires in-game hitsquad to kill his son’s characters https://kotaku.com/father-hires-in-game-hitmen-to-deter-son-from-playing-5972406

#10yrsago Telcos lobby North Carolina to make community Internet illegal, then abandon the state to second-worst Internet in the country https://ilsr.org/killing-competition-nc/

#10yrsago You need a 1.5 ton gamelan, and I know where you can get it https://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/014711.html

#10yrsago Anatomy of a patent troll who wants $1000 from every scanner user in America: patents are totally, utterly broken https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/patent-trolls-want-1000-for-using-scanners/

#10yrsago XKCD on New Year’s resolutions https://xkcd.com/1154/

#10yrsago Congress decides every aspect of your electronic life can be spied on without a warrant and you can’t know how much spying is going on https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/congress-disgracefully-approves-fisa-warrantless-eavesdropping-bill-five-more

#10yrsago Soviet space-program Christmas cards https://www.mazaika.com/postcard01.html

#10yrsago Lord Buckley recounts the life of Christ: The Nazz! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0x5x8lyON8

#10yrsago Gary Gygax explains why Christians shouldn’t celebrate Christmas https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2012/12/gary-gygax-on-christmas-and-christianity.html

#5yrsago Jeff Sessions encourages courts to continue practice of fining poor people for being too poor to pay their fines https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-rescinds-justice-dept-letter-asking-courts-to-be-wary-of-stiff-fines-and-fees-for-poor-defendants/2017/12/21/46e37316-e690-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html

#5yrsago Senator Bob Corker owed $120.5M when he was elected; now he’s worth $69M https://web.archive.org/web/20171222165110/https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-bob-corker-corrupt-what-a-surprise-w514493

#5yrsago American inequality is unequally distributed, and got lumpier after the Great Recession https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/11/01/how-wealth-inequality-has-changed-in-the-u-s-since-the-great-recession-by-race-ethnicity-and-income/

#5yrsago Virginia is the most unequal state in the union, and is more unequal than at any time in (post-Reconstruction) history https://thehalfsheet.org/post/139863776503/virginia-is-exceptionally-unequal

#5yrsago 2018: the year that America’s ISPs hiked their prices https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Hikes-Prices-Increases-Sneaky-Fees-for-2018-140907

#5yrsago Woman who accused Roy Moore is homeless after her house burned down, fire investigated as arson https://www.al.com/news/2018/01/roy_moore_accusers_home_burns.html

#5yrsago Gwyneth Paltrow wants you to squirt coffee up your asshole using this $135 glass jar https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/gwyneth-paltrows-goop-wants-you-to-start-2018-right-with-a-135-coffee-enema/

#5yrsago Nebraska State Senator proposes constitutional amendment to allow corporations to create tiny, sovereign nations with no laws, taxes or rules https://journalstar.com/legislature/senator-proposes-sovereignty-as-a-way-to-economic-development/article_614923bd-b962-541f-8a6c-0d9c92b6fa0c.html#tncms-source=infinity-scroll-summary-siderail-latest

#5yrsago The story of how sf writer and editor Judith Merril founded Toronto’s astounding sf reference library and changed the city https://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/once-upon-a-city-archives/2018/01/04/little-mother-of-science-fiction-birthed-new-chapter-for-genre-in-canada.html

#5yrsago Astounding coincidence: Intel’s CEO liquidated all the stock he was legally permitted to sell after learning of catastrophic processor flaws https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/intel-ceos-sale-of-stock-just-before-security-bug-reveal-raises-questions/

#5yrsago Virtually every modern computer is vulnerable to a pair of devastating attacks, and there’s only a fix for one of them, and it sucks https://spectreattack.com

#5yrsago For 20+ years, Japan’s largest companies have been riddled with corruption and fraud https://www.ft.com/content/26d4843a-e743-11e7-97e2-916d4fbac0da

#5yrsago Print of “lost” britcom discovered in Nigerian basement and restored with X-rays and laser-cutters https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2017-12-morecambe-wise-video-film-archive-restoration

#5yrsago The guy whose DRM for juice company cratered last year now sells “raw water” packed with all the microbes and amoebas you can stomach https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/dining/raw-water-unfiltered.html

#5yrsago All that stuff that was “killed by the net”? The real culprit was hedge funds https://www.ft.com/content/17dfa7fe-eaf7-11e7-8713-513b1d7ca85a

#5yrsago Tehran’s police tell women that violations of religious dress codes will henceforth be treated as civil offenses, not criminal offenses https://apnews.com/article/iran-tehran-ap-top-news-middle-east-hassan-rouhani-6677791532f441e8a5bfadb0ef223229

#5yrsago China’s new army of nationalist trolls is an all-volunteer force https://www.ft.com/content/9ef9f592-e2bd-11e7-97e2-916d4fbac0da

#5yrsago The GOP tax plan will pay millionaires to subsidize failing religious schools https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/12/28/572587727/this-tax-loophole-for-wealthy-donors-just-got-bigger

#5yrsago Hoaxer with a history of fake bomb threats SWATs and murders a random bystander over a $1.50 Call of Duty bet https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swatting-attack/

#5yrsago Charlie Stross’s CCC talk: the future of psychotic AIs can be read in today’s sociopathic corporations https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

#5yrsago California’s record poverty and real-estate bubble are creating a “wheel-estate” boom of people with good jobs living in their cars https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/sd-living-in-cars-in-california-20171227-story.html

#5yrsago Does capitalism breed greed, or elevate the greedy? https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/12/the-people-that-capitalism-makes

#5yrsago The GOP tax plan means millions in extra profits for private prison corporations https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/28/private-prisons-investors-trump-tax-bill

#5yrsago Scotland is still a financial secrecy exporter, laundering billions for Russia’s crime-bosses and oligarchs https://www.heraldscotland.com/business_hq/15793004.revealed-shell-firms-avoid-transparency/

#5yrsago Peter Thiel: the “libertarian” who loves mass government surveillance, monopolies, and censorship https://www.wired.com/story/the-libertarian-logic-of-peter-thiel/

#5yrsago After 8 years of archiving, the Library of Congress will stop ingesting the Twitter firehose https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/files/2017/12/2017dec_twitter_white-paper.pdf

#5yrsago Facsimile editions of the “Negro Motorist Green Books” from 1940, 1954 and 1963 are selling briskly in 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/19/travel-guides-to-segregated-us-for-black-americans-reissued

#5yrsago Utah’s paper of record calls for Orrin Hatch to step down: “his utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power” https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/editorial/2017/12/25/tribune-editorial-why-orrin-hatch-is-utahn-of-the-year/

#5yrsago Ayn Rand supercharged the anti-Communist witch-hunt in Hollywood, in which the FBI classified “It’s a Wonderful Life” as secret Communist propaganda https://www.openculture.com/2014/12/ayn-rand-helped-the-fbi-identify-its-a-wonderful-life-as-communist-propaganda.html

#5yrsago Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband is pissed that his $50m house was barricaded by a bomb squad, called in to investigate a gift-wrapped box of horseshit that someone sent to Steve Mnuchin https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/12/24/a-package-for-steven-mnuchin-caused-a-bomb-scare-it-turned-out-to-be-filled-with-horse-manure/

#1yrago 2021 Daddy-Daughter podcast https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/03/party-like-its-1926/#voice-of-a-generation

#1yrago Neal Stephenson's 'Termination Shock' https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/04/general-ludd/#geoengineering

#1yrago Science fiction is a Luddite literature https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/04/general-ludd/#loomsmashers

#1yrago Hospital beds are a monopoly https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/05/hillrom/

#1yrago Jackpot watch: How the klept operates in the UK https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/07/the-klept/#pep

Colophon (permalink)

Currently writing:

The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. (92849 words total) – ON PAUSE
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, a nonfiction book about interoperability for Verso. REVISIONS COMPLETE – AWAITING COPYEDIT
Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. ON SUBMISSION
Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION
Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. ON SUBMISSION
A post-GND utopian novel, "The Lost Cause." FINISHED
A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues." FINISHED

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Daddy-Daughter Podcast, 2022 Edition https://craphound.com/podcast/2022/12/12/daddy-daughter-podcast-2022-edition/

Upcoming appearances:

Library Learning Experience/American Library Association (New Orleans), Jan 27-30
https://www.2023.alaliblearnx.org/cory-doctorow
Chokepoint Capitalism: Can It Be Defeated? (UCL Faculty of Laws), Feb 1
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/2023/feb/online-chokepoint-capitalism-can-it-be-defeated
Australian Digital Alliance Copyright Forum (Canberra), Feb 17
https://digital.org.au/2022/11/08/doctorow-giblin-first-speaker-announcement-ada-forum-2023/
Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy (Brussels), Mar 2
https://www.brusselsconference.com/registration

Recent appearances:

Page One:
https://www.writegear.co.uk/podcast/e145-cory-doctorow-rebecca-giblin
Capitol Forum:
https://thecapitolforum.com/resources/chokepoint-capitalism-with-author-cory-doctorow/
New Books in Public Policy:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2niuM0c1PxBeU3PLgv2b9V

Latest books:

"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
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

Red Team Blues: "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books, April 2023

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