Pluralistic: Zincchump Linkdump (01 Mar 2025)

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Originally published at: Pluralistic: Zincchump Linkdump (01 Mar 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow



Today's links


Jigsaw puzzle pieces, scattered in an NYC gutter.

Zincchump Linkdump (permalink)

I've got a really good excuse for finishing this week with a folder full of links that didn't make it into the newsletter – I'm on a crazy book tour and I've been in four cities this week alone. Time for another linkdump! Here's the previous 28 'dumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I like to start these 'dumps off on an upbeat note, and this week, I've got something gratifyingly cool and wondrous. Stars Reach is a "living galaxy sandbox MMORPG" led by Raph Koster, the legendary designer of games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxy. It's kickstarting right now:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/starsreach/stars-reach

Here's the pitch:

Whether it’s water turning dirt to mud or forests growing back after a devastating fire, every action leaves a mark. This isn’t a static world built by developers – it’s a living, breathing galaxy shaped by you. Resculpt landscapes, build entire cities, and yeah, ruin more planets just like humanity ruined their original eight homeworlds. That’s okay – there are always more worlds in our endless galaxy.

I've seen demos of this coming together for years and it is mind-boggling. You can play it like a galactic trade-empire builder, a shoot 'em up, a first person shooter, a resource management game, a MUD, and more. There are thousands of procedurally generated planets with realistic geology, geography and ecosystems. It's like something out of a Neal Stephenson novel. They're mostly done and just raising money to finish and launch. I gave 'em $100. They're projecting delivery in January. I can't wait!

It's pretty wonderful to see accomplished creators like Koster, who have gone from strength to strength, making a series of ever-cooler things as technological advancements let him realize the vision he'd been chasing since the 8-bit days. It's quite a contrast with HP, a company that was once world-renowned for making the highest quality, most reliable instruments and machines, and is now synonymous with the scuzzy inkjet rip-off.

I love a good dig at HP. This week, The Register's Paul Kunert scored a direct hit with a short news squib about the executive compensation package announced for HP CEO Enrique Lores: "261,658 toner cartridges" (that is, $19.36m):

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/26/hp_ceo_pay_for_2024/

I would like to live in a world in which all unreasonable expenses were denominated in HP printer cartridges (much as the BBC compares ever extremely large or massy thing to a London double-decker bus). Anything to make it easier to grasp the vast forces that shape our world and bring them into focus so we can understand them – and destroy or change them.

One economic school that does this extraordinarily well is "Capital as Power," which concerns itself with the "social power of capital" – that is, how capital shapes our behavior and outcomes. It's a complicated but extraordinarily clear and useful framework for making sense of the world. This week, Naked Capitalism published a long colloquoy on Capital as Power, featuring Michael Hudson (a great economist and historian of debt), political economist Tim Di Muzio, and two of CasP's top proponents, Jonathan Nitzan and Blair Fix (whose work I have featured in this newsletter many times). It's a long, fascinating discussion – just the thing to relax with over a weekend:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/02/capital-as-power-in-the-21st-century-a-conversation.html

Capital as Power grapples with power, the force that neoclassical economists could never figure out how to fit into a neat mathematical model and thus decided to discard. Refusing to think about power gets you into all kinds of trouble, from deciding that markets for human kidneys are "voluntary" to the denaturing of political parties into institutionalist weaklings like the Democrats, who are completely overwhelmed by the power-focused MAGA GOP as it dismantles the nation.

Writing for The American Prospect, Nick Tagliaferro rounds up "Ten Democrats Who Need to Be Primaried":

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-02-27-these-ten-democrats-need-to-be-primaried/

For years, Tagliaferro was the loudest voice on the Primary School newsletter, which covered primary races. In this guillotine-inspiring listicle, he presents such swamp creatures as Levi Strauss failson Dan Goldman (NY-10), who spent $5m of his inherited wealth to win his seat, from which perch he has done everything he can to undermine his more militant anti-Trump colleagues in the House. More familiar names like Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05) – whom Tagliaferro calls "single most needlessly antagonistic centrist in Congress" – and the ardent homophobe Stephen Lynch (MA-08).

OK, I've got to get into my rental car now and make the 3h drive from State College, PA, where I just did a talk at Penn State, to Doylestown, PA, where I'm speaking this afternoon:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1146230880419

From there, I'm going to Baltimore (tomorrow):

https://redemmas.org/events/

and then I'll be in DC on Tuesday:

https://www.loyaltybookstores.com/picksnshovels

You can catch the whole tour schedule here:

http://martinhench.com

New dates that I'll be adding soon include Pittsburgh; Wellington and Auckland, NZ; and Manchester and London, UK.

Before I go, one last wonderful link to be getting on with. Framework – who make the repairable, modifiable laptop that I love more than any hardware I've ever owned – just announced a bunch of fantastic new machines, including a rugged new, 12" touchscreen laptop with a 180' hinge:

https://frame.work/laptop12

and a desktop PC (!) that has insanely high specs and a fully customizable chassis:

https://frame.work/fi/en/blog/introducing-the-framework-desktop

I spend so much time on the road, I have no conceivable use for a desktop PC, but man, this is tempting. What a sweet rig!


A Wayback Machine banner.

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago KGB Guide to London released by MI5 https://web.archive.org/web/20050303022107/https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2005/highlights_march/march1/default.htm

#20yrsago Euro software patents reanimated through corrupt officials 0wned by Microsoft https://yro.slashdot.org/story/05/02/28/2223232/eu-commission-declines-patent-debate-restart

#20yrsago Deluded Sony music exec can’t read his own study https://constitutionalcode.blogspot.com/2005/02/us-market-not-antagonistic-towards-drm.html

#20yrsago Greedy DRM vendors want more in royalties than the total market for digital music https://web.archive.org/web/20050912194259/http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2005-02-25-drm-infighting_x.htm?POE=click-refer

#20yrsago Halle Berry accepts “Razzie” for Catwoman, calls it a “piece of shit” https://web.archive.org/web/20050306093431/https://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=7748301&type=entertainmentNews

#20yrsago Help rat on people who sing Happy Birthday! https://unhappybirthday.com

#20yrsago Comp sci profs smackdown the movie studios https://web.archive.org/web/20050303023425/http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000776.html

#20yrsago Costa Rican telco wants to criminalize VoIP https://www.networkcomputing.com/network-infrastructure/costa-rica-may-criminalize-voip

#15yrsago If chess were redesigned by MMORPG developers https://akma.disseminary.org/2010/03/if-chess-were-invented-by-mmog-developers/

#15yrsago Super Punch’s webby Tarot https://web.archive.org/web/20121127052014/https://www.superpunch.net/2010/03/introducing-super-punch-tarot.html

#15yrsago Profile of ex-narc who’s declared war on the “War on Drugs” https://web.archive.org/web/20110522054851/http://trueslant.com/stephenwebster/2010/02/25/barry-cooper-drug-war-insurgent/

#15yrsago Cyberwar hype was cooked up to sell Internet-breaking garbage to the military https://www.wired.com/2010/03/cyber-war-hype/

#15yrsago Petition to make “Hella” the prefix for 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 https://web.archive.org/web/20160411032355/https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Official-Petition-to-Establish-Hella-as-the-SI-Prefix-for-1027/277479937276?v=info

#15yrsago Architectural fan-drawings of classic sitcom houses https://www.markmoorefineart.com/artists/mark-bennett

#15yrsago Biggest-ever ACTA leak: secret copyright treaty dirty laundry motherlode https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2010/03/acta-leak-with-country-positions/

#15yrsago UK Digital Economy Bill will wipe out indie WiFi hotspots in libraries, unis, cafes https://web.archive.org/web/20100301020722/http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,40057470,00.htm?tag=mncol;txt

#10yrsago Ad-hoc museums of a failing utopia: photos of Soviet shop-windows https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/28/ad-hoc-museums-of-a-failing-utopia-photos-of-soviet-shop-windows/

#10yrsago Your voice-to-text speech is recorded and sent to strangers https://www.vice.com/en/article/strangers-on-the-internet-are-listening-to-peoples-phone-voice-commands/

#10yrsago Internet-fired elections and the politics of business as usual https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/27/internet-era-politics-means-safe-seats-are-a-thing-of-the-past

#10yrsago Kansas Senate wants to imprison teachers who assign books it dislikes https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article11212511.html

#10yrsago First-hand reports of torture from Homan Square, Chicago PD’s “black site” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/27/chicago-abusive-confinment-homan-square

#5yrsago Jury refuses to convict Extinction Rebellion activists https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/01/shared-microbial-destiny/#necessitydefense

#5yrsago America's uninsured will turn a covid crisis into a covid disaster https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/01/shared-microbial-destiny/#covidclasswar

#5yrsago The US already has Medicare for All https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/01/shared-microbial-destiny/#NHS2PTOH

#5yrsago The wealthy are chartering jets to avoid coronavirus https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/01/shared-microbial-destiny/#plutesinspace

#5yrsago Trump's rhetoric fits eerily well into the Tolkien canon https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/01/shared-microbial-destiny/#maketolkiengreatagain

#5yrsago Venezuelan women's "army" break into dead factories to reboot them https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/27/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-27-feb-2020/#chavismo

#5yrsago Neoliberalism kills, the coronavirus edition https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/27/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-27-feb-2020/#pandemiccapitalism

#5yrsago Talking Radicalized with The Next Chapter https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/27/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-27-feb-2020/#thenextchapter

#5yrsago Norman Rockwell turned into a radical civil rights activist https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/27/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-27-feb-2020/#murdermississippi

#5yrsago Ripping the window-dressing off the .ORG selloff https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/27/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-27-feb-2020/#itsanethos

#5yrsago CDC guide to filter-mask-friendly facial hair https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/27/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-27-feb-2020/#zappa

#5yrsago Don't trust Google to build Toronto's Smart City https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/27/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-27-feb-2020/#minorityreport

#5yrsago How to lie with (coronavirus) maps https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/28/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-28-feb-2020/#cartonerd

#5yrsago Let's Encrypt issues its billionth cert https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/28/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-28-feb-2020/#letsencrypt

#5yrsago Clearview AI's customer database leaks https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/28/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-28-feb-2020/#petard

#1yrago When private equity destroys your hospital https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

#1yrago Hypothetical AI election disinformation risks vs real AI harms https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/27/ai-conspiracies/#epistemological-collapse

#1yrago Amazon's financial shell game let it create an "impossible" monopoly https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • 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/

  • Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

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

  • The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

  • Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It https://craphound.com/news/2025/02/26/with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshittification-conquered-the-21st-century-and-how-we-can-overthrow-it/

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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