News

Sunday 2026-05-24

05:00 AM

02:00 AM

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting [The Business of Printing Books]

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

Ah, Microsoft Word. The software has become synonymous with writing and page layout. 

Every aspiring author who even imagines writing and publishing has, in one way or another, experienced MS Word. Microsoft Office introduced Word back in 1983, making it over 40 years old. 

During its long tenure, Word has set the bar for word processing, editing, and page layout for millions of authors. 

While today there are a lot of other options for writing your book, Word remains an effective and affordable tool. But when it comes to page layout, the Word of today doesn’t have the features and options most creators will need.


Finding the Right Version of Word

There are essentially three different versions of Word available today. Each version has its own pros and cons. I encourage you to look at Microsoft’s own comparison of the free web version and the paid desktop version. 

  • Word Free Online - Word for the web is free to use at word.cloud.microsoft. You’ll need to create a Microsoft account. Word will run in your browser and save your files to OneDrive. While this version is nice for writing, it lacks the full functionality of the other options. 
  • One-time Purchase - This is a one-time purchase (sometimes called a "perpetual license") for what is essentially Office 2024. Home and Student starts at $149.99 and includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You pay once, install on one computer, and own that version forever. The downside is that you’ll be locked to that version and won’t get updates from Microsoft.
  • Microsoft 365 Subscription - This is the broad, online suite that Microsoft is fully supporting. Pricing is annual and great if you’ll use all of the tools regularly. The subscription version also includes a desktop app, which offers the layout and formatting tools the free version lacks.
Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

Today, we’re going to focus on Word’s free, online version. 

If you choose to pay for a subscription to Office online, you’ll get access to the desktop app. The biggest benefit for authors is that you’ll have better page layout control with this paid version. The free version of Word is more suited for writing a book than formatting one.

For books with more complex designs, you’ll want to use something like Affinity (for free), Scribus (if you like open source), or Adobe InDesign. Even the paid versions of Word won’t get you the page layout options these true design programs offer.

But! If you’re looking for a tool to write, edit, and do a simple page layout (like a novel or memoir), Word is more than sufficient. Even the free version. 

Setting Up a Microsoft Word Account

Access to Microsoft’s online suite is free with an account. Once you’ve created an account, you’ll see a basic search screen for all Microsoft products. 

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

This is a nice way to access anything you’ve created in the Microsoft environment. You can search your OneDrive and select from the available apps. 

Not everything will be fully available for the free Microsoft version. Specifically, you won’t have the Chat or Notebooks options (apps powered by Microsoft’s Copilot AI). Again, not necessary to use Word for your writing and formatting.

To open Word, click the icon for the app. You’ll see a new tab with the Word home screen.

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

Now you’re ready to start a new file or upload an existing one! For our examples, I’m going to use a public domain version of Call of the Wild by Jack London. 

Writing in Microsoft Word

At its core, Word is a writing tool. It offers a variety of basic templates for things like resumes, trackers, invoices, and meeting notes. But really, you’re probably just going to create a blank template and work from there.

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

This should look familiar. While lots of little things have changed and evolved, the writing space paired with a ribbon of commands is THE model for word processors. Google Docs layout mirrors the design Word popularized, just like almost every other writing platform out there.  

The modern version of Word online gives you all the most important tools for writing:

  • Fonts & text sizing
  • Styles
  • Lists, indents, and line spacing
  • Header & Footer
  • Paragraph-level formatting

You will be limited to a few free fonts, but the list is still quite long and includes many of the most common fonts for books. Other than that, Word’s free online version has everything you might need to write a book.

It’s also worth noting that Word has free Android and iOS apps. They offer limited writing and editing abilities, but are pretty nice for a quick note or to reference a document while away from your computer.

Editing with Microsoft Word

Word is the original platform for tracked changes, though WordPerfect did technically have a redline & strikethrough function first. What Microsoft created in their commenting and in-line editing options set the gold standard. We still basically use the same functionality (alongside cloud-stored files) to collaboratively edit text in real time. 

By default, your document will be in ‘Editing’ mode, but you can switch to ‘Reviewing’ to manage tracked changes, leave comments, and review spelling & grammar. There’s a quick switcher via a dropdown on the right side of the ribbon. Or you can click the ‘Review’ tab to see reviewing options while still in Editing mode. 

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

Editing in Word is probably its best feature. Even with the desktop version, you can save the file to a cloud service (OneDrive is Microsoft's and works best for Word documents) and add collaborators to edit the file with you. This is perfect for bringing in an editor and having a back-and-forth about updates.

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

Deleted and edited text is retained until the edit is accepted. Alongside that editing, you can leave comments tagged to specific pieces of text. 

Microsoft also has a really good spelling and grammar checker (better than Google Docs in my opinion). If you’re a fan of more advanced checkers like Grammarly, you can still use that as well (since Microsoft 365 is accessed through a browser). 

How to Edit Your Book Online With Track Changes
Edit a manuscript with Microsoft Word Track Changes & Google Docs Suggest Mode. Learn the built-in editing tools used by authors, editors, & proofreaders.
Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and FormattingThe Business of Printing BooksPaul
Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

Text Formatting & Page Layout in Microsoft Word

I mentioned this earlier, but I’m going to say it again: Word is not meant for or very good at complex page layout. If you’re writing a resume to be printed on a couple of 8.5 x 11 sheets of copier paper, it’s just fine. Great, even.

I’m going to use the rest of this post to show you how to manually use Word online’s features to set up your pages. If you’re using a desktop version of Word, either the one-time purchase or subscription, you’ll also have the option to use our free templates.

The web browser version of Word will not accept these files for editing. 

For a novel or memoir, Word is still pretty good. So long as you don’t need complex headers or footers, have a ton of images, or need varied page layouts, you can probably do what you want in Word.

Word’s Page Layout is Good For:

  • Novels
  • Memoirs
  • Poetry or Short Story Collections
  • Projects with minimal design/formatting

Word’s Page Layout is Bad For:

  • Magazines
  • Children’s Books
  • Manuals
  • Projects with heavy design/formatting needs

What you can do in Word is adjust page size, margins, and styles. That means you can set your page to match your book’s size, adjust margins to ensure printing is accurate (no text running off the page), and define text size, font, and position. 

The very first thing you’ll do before working on your page layout is to reveal any hidden characters in your document. 

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

It’s annoying to find. The ribbon will change what it shows or hides based on your screen size, and it often will be tucked into a sub-menu.

What this option does is reveal EVERYTHING in your document. Note in my screenshot the dots between words, the pilcrow symbol at the end of the paragraph, and ‘Page Break’ text. These are all hidden characters that Word naturally hides to make it easier on you while writing. 

These characters are, essentially, your formatting. 

With your characters revealed, you’ll do almost all of your formatting work in either the ‘Home’ or ‘Layout’ menus (from the ribbon).

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

The Layout menu is how you control the page size, margins, orientation, and line spacing. Word does a good job of keeping this fairly simple while including enough functionality to prepare a file for printing. Here are the key layout factors:

  • Page size that matches your book size (including bleed)
  • Margin space to prevent text from running off the page or appearing crowded
  • Text layout, like size, spacing, and indents
  • Page orientation and breaks

One key thing to note here: Word doesn’t have an option to add a bleed margin. The page sizes they offer are ‘finish’ sizes—the actual size of the page. But for printed books, pages are oversized and cut down to ensure they’re uniform. You’ll want to manually adjust the page size and margins to include a bleed margin before you export your PDF.

What Is Full Bleed Printing?
Full Bleed is the term for page layout incorporating a trim margin for printers. Learn how to prepare your file for full bleed printing.
Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and FormattingThe Business of Printing BooksPaul
Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

Adjusting Page Size

To change the size of your pages, select Layout from the ribbon. Word will present you with some common sizes, but to set up for full-bleed printing, you should select Custom Page Size and enter the dimensions for your pages. Remember, to print your book, you’ll need to increase the page size by 0.25 inches to allow for trimming.

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

In this example, I’m creating an A5-sized book. The final size will be 5.83 x 8.27, but I’ve increased the page size in Word to include the bleed margin. Here’s another visual example of the page size, including margins and gutter.

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

Headers, Footers, and Page Numbers

This will be the biggest challenge for page layout in Word. You can insert a header and footer, each with two columns, to add content (like page numbering, your title, or your author name). But you won’t have much control over the layout or design. 

You can’t use Section Breaks in Word online, which is the biggest problem for formatting headers and footers. Without sections, you can’t control where the page numbers start and end, so you won’t be able to remove them from your front matter. 

The workaround would be to create a separate document for the front matter and merge the two PDFs outside of Word. It’s a pain, but the only way I’ve found to have page numbering isolated to a section of the book.

Creating a Print-Ready PDF in Microsoft Word

The final step in the process is to create your PDF for printing. It’s very simple. You’ll go to the ‘File’ menu and select Export > Download as a PDF. Then you’ll have an option to download it or email yourself a download link.

That’s it. That’s your PDF.

There’s not a lot you can do to control or manage the download, but here are the most important variables you can manage in Word online:

  • Accept or reject Track Changes and Comments
  • Make sure images are 300 ppi
  • Use grayscale for black-and-white interiors or sRGB for full-color interiors
  • Use the free fonts to ensure they are embedded

When You’ll Need the Desktop Version of Microsoft Word

There are numerous limitations to the free and online versions of Word. When you’re making a file for your print-on-demand book, the most noticeable ones are:

  • Lack of section breaks
  • No gutter control
  • PDF export settings

Without section breaks, you won’t be able to control the content of your header or footer—it will be 100% all or nothing. The lack of specific gutter controls can be problematic for longer books. The gutter is a small, additional margin placed on the inner edges of the page. That means it will alternate from side to side for each right- and left-hand page. The gutter adds space to ensure all of the text is easily readable when the book is held open.

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

You’ll only have control over your overall margins.

The PDF settings are the biggest potential issue. Other limitations impact how you can style and design your pages, but without proper PDF settings, your file may not be accepted for printing. Font embedding, image PPI, and colors can all vary based on PDF export settings. With Word online, you won’t have access to any of those settings. 

You just get what you get.

If you need to manage colors, are using color images, or you’ve got some non-standard fonts, you’re almost certainly going to need to use the desktop version of Word (or a true page layout software like InDesign or Affinity).

Watch our Tutorial for Export with Word (Desktop)

The Pros & Cons of Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word has always been a great word processor. For a long time, it also tried to act like a page layout tool. When the self-publishing boom hit in the 2000s, authors and individual creators who were comfortable with Word looked to it for their print files, too.

This was a bit of a misstep, as it’s never been Word’s specialty. 

Today, with Word’s free online editor, it’s become even more apparent that Word is not meant for page layout.

So the pros and cons are really easy to define. 

Pro: Word is an excellent, free web-based word processor. It’s on par or better than everything else in the market at that price point.

Con: Word is mediocre to terrible for page layout.

That’s really all there is to it. Microsoft has done a solid job upgrading its word processor, but if you want a professional-looking page layout, you’ll at least need the desktop version of Word and more than likely an advanced tool like InDesign.

Using Microsoft Word for Your Book Writing and Formatting

Your Free Lulu Account

Create a Lulu Account today to print and publish your book for readers all around the world

Create a Free Account

Kanji of the Day: 罪 [Kanji of the Day]

罪

✍13

小5

guilt, sin, crime, fault, blame, offense

ザイ

つみ

犯罪   (はんざい)   —   crime
謝罪   (しゃざい)   —   apology
無罪   (むざい)   —   innocence
有罪   (ゆうざい)   —   guilt
罪悪感   (ざいあくかん)   —   feelings of guilt
殺人罪   (さつじんざい)   —   murder
有罪判決   (ゆうざいはんけつ)   —   guilty verdict
犯罪被害者   (はんざいひがいしゃ)   —   victim of crime
冤罪   (えんざい)   —   false charge
犯罪者   (はんざいしゃ)   —   criminal

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 秀 [Kanji of the Day]

秀

✍7

中学

excel, excellence, beauty, surpass

シュウ

ひい.でる

優秀   (ゆうしゅう)   —   superior
最優秀   (さいゆうしゅう)   —   best
秀作   (しゅうさく)   —   excellent (piece of) work
秀逸   (しゅういつ)   —   excellent
最優秀選手   (さいゆうしゅうせんしゅ)   —   most valuable player
秀才   (しゅうさい)   —   bright person
俊秀   (しゅんしゅう)   —   genius
秀句   (しゅうく)   —   splendid haiku
秀でる   (ひいでる)   —   to excel
秀歌   (しゅうか)   —   splendid tanka

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Saturday 2026-05-23

11:00 PM

Is it plugged in? [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

If your toaster isn’t working, this is the first place to start. A combination of an easy first step and also the likelihood that it’s the problem.

The troubleshooting for things not working in our interactions with others isn’t as obvious, but we can think about it in a similar way.

The first question: Is it working for anyone? Is there someone in a similar situation who is finding clients, shipping the work and accomplishing their goals?

If so, then the next two questions might be:

What story am I telling the world?

and…

What story am I telling myself?

These are harder to diagnose than a toaster, but it might be a good place to begin.

      

07:00 PM

I heard you liked categories, so I added... [F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository]

This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Friday, 22 May 2026, Week 21

F-Droid core

Exploring user feedback for client version 2.0, we heard users articulating the need to easily find apps. One way to improve this is search, and we’ve made great strides there. Another way is with Categories, which were improved three-fold.

First, we’ve expanded the categories list so in just two touches you get closer to a selection of apps resembling your wish, even without searching.

Second, to make the expanded list of new categories more user friendly, we’ve added “meta” categories (work in progress for standardization in the F-Droid ecosystem) in the Discover tab, and these account for the first touch mentioned above.

Third, search uses categories and their descriptions to enhance the results and to guide the user closer to a good FLOSS app.

This week we’ve also destroyed the Games category and re-created it as 17 unique ones, separating games by gameplay type.

Community News

Fennec F-Droid was updated to 151.0.0 adding the long awaited AI control setting to the mobile client. Will you keep it ON or OFF? Short changelog here.

FLARE was updated to 1.15 but the package is missing libraries and assets. Please skip this update, we will fix it in the next version.

Flux News was updated to 2.0.0 becoming an actual podcast player too, with subscriptions, downloads, offline listening, playback speed control, sleep timer, chapter selection and progress synchronization via the Miniflux backend.

GitNex for Forgejo and Gitea was updated to 13.0.1 with a revamped app UI from the ground up to be M3 Expressive. Read the full changelog for the long list of improvements.

Hermes Agent, Run local AI models with chat, files, voice, and Android tools, was just added, but maybe just avoid installing it for now. The app is a fork using an appid that was initially fine but eventually rejected by the original upstream developers. The fork developer is working to re-include the app with a fresh appid (as our docs advise) soon.

MakeACopy was updated to 4.1.1-paddle now being powered by the newly open-sourced PaddleOCR lib.

OONI Probe was updated to 6.0.2, the UI got cleaned up in version 6.0.0 so this one just adds up to the experience. The devs also posted about protecting the public records and how journalists and media organizations use the app around the world.

Orgzly Revived was updated to 1.20.0. Besides the usual fixes, one new feature we missed to highlight since 1.16.0 is the “calendar provider”. Now your notes with SCHEDULED and DEADLINE timestamps appear as calendar events in a new local calendar named “Orgzly”. Entries get updated on every change, calendar color can be customized, you can save search results as a calendar, handle recurring events and link back from calendar notes to Orgzly notes (in Android Settings, Apps, Orgzly, open by default, Add, check entry).

WAFRN was updated to 1.13.5 polishing the way the app is built and used. Another improvement is that the app is now build reproducible signed by the developer. If you’ve installed the app before this week, better uninstall it and install the new version. Tip: Users of F-Droid and Basic client 2.0-alpha will immediately notice this in the MyApps page

Spring Cleaning

While we always plan on doing continuous cleaning of old apps, it takes time for contributors to delve into apps info, gather candidates, have others verify, amend and merge once decided.

Last major cleanup was in September 2024 and we explained then how this process works from our point of view and what users should expect.

The cleanup listed below took into consideration the date of the last update (more than 2 years ago) and the targetsdk of the app (less than 24 aka Android 7). We’ve explained what targetsdk is all about in our Feb 2024 post. Basically, we archived apps that were targeting Android versions older than 10 years, that themselves didn’t see any development for the last 2 years and were no longer installable on Android 15 and later.

If you are using our latest F-Droid or Basic client 2.0-alpha versions you can already see any app that was archived being listed in the Apps with issues section of My Apps screen. Please take some time to either replace the app with one that is still developed, or feel free to long-press and ignore the warning.

Fun fact: 2.0 client requires Android 7 or later too.

596 apps were archived but not forgotten
(expand for the full list)
  • 16-bit Clock Widget: Binary clock
  • 24game: Simple arithmetic game
  • 24h Analog Clock: Clock Widget
  • Abstract Art: Live Wallpaper
  • AcDisplay: Handle new notifications with ease
  • ActivityForceNewTask: Xposed module that forces activities to open in a new task
  • adbWireless: Wireless adb
  • ADSdroid: Get technical datasheets
  • AeonDroid: Planetary hours and astrological transit app
  • agram: Anagram lister
  • AIProute: Change IP routes for the Wi-Fi interface
  • AJShA Android Java Shell App: Run Java code directly
  • Alarm Clock: Disable alarm by solving a math problem
  • Alldebrid: Client for alldebrid.com
  • AnagramSolver: Find anagrams
  • Analytical Translator: Natural language translator
  • andFHEM: Home Automation client
  • Andhrystone: Dhrystone benchmark
  • anDOF: Calculate DOF for photography
  • andRoc: Model railway controller client
  • AndroFish: Simple game
  • Android Explorer: Get device information
  • Android Resources: List Android Resources
  • AndroidCPG: Upload photos and videos to coppermine
  • Androidomatic Keyer: Morse code keyer
  • Androzic: Navigation for ozf2/3 maps
  • Anstop: A simple stopwatch
  • Anton Widget: Agenda on the homescreen
  • Any Cut: Create shortcuts for anything
  • AnySoftKeyboard: French: Language pack for AnySoftKeyboard
  • AnySoftKeyboard: Malayalam: Language pack for AnySoftKeyboard
  • AnySoftKeyboard: NEO2: Neo2 Keyboard Layout for ASK
  • AnySoftKeyboard: SSH: Language pack for ASK
  • Apod Classic: NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Classic
  • App Locker: Protect apps with a password or pattern
  • ArchNews: Show news about Arch Linux
  • Ask me anything meaningful: Questions for a good conversation
  • Asqare: Coloured squares game
  • Attendance Viewer: Attendance tracker for Indian colleges
  • Auto-Away: Auto respond calls and messages
  • AutoAnswer: Auto-answer phone calls
  • AwesomeWallpaper: Live wallpaper with a happy llama
  • Balance: Widget that shows the value of a given ussd code
  • Balanduino: Controller for a robot
  • Barcode Box 2: Barcode scan history
  • Barcode Scanner: Scan barcodes on products, or barcodes containing URLs, contact info, and so on
  • Bats! HIIT: Practice high intensity interval training
  • Battery Dog: Battery level logger
  • BatteryFu: Battery saving
  • BeepMe: Experience sampling (ESM/DES)
  • Beta Updater for WhatsApp: Update WhatsApp to latest beta release
  • Bewegungsmelder: Get event information for Hamburg, Germany
  • Birthdroid: Keep track of birthdays
  • Bitcoinium Prime: Monitor Bitcoin prices
  • Bites: Recipes cookbook
  • BLExplorer: Bluetooth Low Energy Explorer
  • Blue Mono Sound: Redirect audio to bluetooth headset
  • BlueChat: Chat locally over Bluetooth
  • Bluetooth Viewer (LITE): Bluetooth connection debugging tool
  • Bluez IME: Set up bluetooth controllers
  • BluezIME HID Enabler: Addon for Bluez-ime
  • BoardGameGeek: Search boardgame data
  • Bodha Converter: Convert binary, octal, decimal, hex and ASCII
  • Bomber: Single player arcade game
  • Botifier: Send notifications via Bluetooth
  • Bushido Blocks: Block-matching game
  • CAdroid: Certificate importer
  • CALCVAC-VACLINE: Calculate logitudinal one-dimensional pressure profiles in vacuum pipes
  • Calendar Trigger: Trigger actions on calendar events
  • CallerID: Caller identification
  • CamCov: Use your camera as background
  • Camera Color Picker: Capture colors using the camera in realtime
  • CamTimer: Camera timer
  • Car Bus Interface: Connect to car computers via Bluetooth
  • Card Game Scores: Track game score
  • Carts Bus Boarding: Detect bus boarding event
  • Catan Dice Game: Resource dice game
  • Catverbs: More than 8000 Catalan verbs fully conjugated
  • CCDroid: Monitor build systems and individual builds
  • Character Recognition: Extract text from images
  • Checkey: Info on local apps
  • Chess Walk: Chess game and FICS client
  • ChessWatch: Simple chess clock
  • Chinese Checkers: Board game
  • ChronoSnap: Take photos in intervals
  • CIDR Calculator: Network engineer IP calculator
  • CineCat: Get information about Catalan movies
  • CKPool Watcher: Check status of CKPool’s Bitcoin miners
  • Clear List: Add todo items and alarms
  • Clipboard Beam: Share clipboard between devices
  • Clock Live Wallpaper: LiveWallpaper featuring a clock
  • CMIS Browser: Enterprise CM browser
  • Cmus Remote: Remotely control CMUS instances
  • Color Namer: Names for colours
  • Coloring for Kids: Coloring game for kids
  • Comics Reader: Comic and image viewer
  • Community compass: Feature Compass
  • Compass Keyboard: International keyboard
  • Concurseiro: Helps you studying
  • Constellations: Show star charts and data
  • Contact Owner: Contact info on lock screen
  • Content Provider Helper: Discover, view and query data of content providers
  • Copy to Clipboard: Copy via the share menu
  • Core: Simple game
  • Corporate Addressbook: Lookup Exchange GAL for contacts
  • Countdown Timer: Set up a countdown timer
  • Cowsay: Cowsay port
  • crushr: Manage TODO list via widget
  • Cryptfs Password: Disk encryption password changer
  • Dalvik Explorer: System info
  • Darkness Map: Crowd-sourced mapping
  • DeadPixel: Spot dead pixels
  • debDroid: Search for debian packages
  • DebianDroid: Tools for Debian project members
  • Decimal Time Clock Widget: Shows decimal clock as a widget
  • Deep Scratch: Scratch audio samples
  • Defendo: A tower defense game
  • Dew Point: Calculate the dew point
  • Diccionario castellano: Browse Castilian dictionary
  • Diccionario Chileno: Chilean word dictionary
  • Dicer: Roll dice
  • Diktofon: Take voice notes
  • Dimmer: Lower brightness
  • Diolinux: View www.diolinux.com.br
  • DioLite: Client for BeC3
  • Direct Dictaphone: Record short audio notes
  • Disable Manager: Assists the disabling of pre-installed apps
  • DNS man: Set DNS lookup server
  • DNSSetter: Change DNS servers of your mobile connection
  • DoF Calculator: Depth of field calculator
  • Dongsa: Shows Korean verb conjugations for learners of Korean.
  • Dot-Race: 1 or 2 player game. Touch-control a spaceship and win all stars from the openent
  • DotDash Keyboard: Morse code keyboard
  • Dotty: Am open source multi touch demonstration app and debugger.
  • DownloadFilesWeb: Download files referenced within a website
  • DPixel: Convert density-independant/normal pixels
  • DragonGoApp: Go game for DGS
  • Drawterm: Access your Plan 9 machines from your phone or tablet using Plan 9 standards.
  • Droid Draw: Automated drawing
  • DroidAtomix: Puzzle game
  • Droidentify: Generate a device summary sheet
  • Droidgain: Normalizer for audio files
  • DroidLife: Conway’s Game of Life
  • DroidZebra: Reversi game
  • Dudo: Dudo game
  • Dumbphone Assistant: Copy contacts to SIM card and back
  • E numbers: Food additives reference
  • Earmouse: Train your musical ear by practising intervals and chords!
  • Earth Live Wallpaper: Map Pack: Map Pack for the live wallpaper
  • Easer: User-defined explicit automation for Android
  • ED_Tool: Companion tool for Elite:Dangerous
  • Eddy Malou: Eddy Malou sound board
  • Effects Pro: Apply filters to images
  • Epoch Launcher: Homescreen and launcher
  • Etheric Synthesizer: Theremin-like synthesizer
  • Etherwake: Wake computers on the same network
  • Eve-control: Control eVenement instances
  • Eve-control: Control your e-venement tickets
  • Evergreen Wishlist: Lookup books on Amazon wishlists at local library
  • Exalted Dicer: Dicing app
  • Exceer: Supporting your Exercise Progressions
  • Eyes-Free Shell: Alternative homescreen
  • Eylca: Control a lumix camera remotely
  • F2L: Lock Phone using proximity sensor
  • Fake Dawn: Gentle alarm clock
  • falling for reddit: Simple reddit.com client
  • Fancy Places: Store your FancyPlaces (geobookmarks)
  • FareBot: Transport card reader
  • FillUp: Calculate fuel mileage
  • Fissure: Create and view GIFs
  • FixMyStreet: Report street problems to FixMyStreet instances
  • Flame Haze Shana Animated Wallpaper: Anime animated wallpaper
  • Flashback: When somebody calls, Flashback shows recent calls and SMSes to/from the caller
  • Flexible Wallpaper: Use images with any aspect ratio as a wallpaper
  • flickit: Family game of skill
  • Flier: Live wallpaper
  • Floating Image: Display images from galleries
  • Floating Stickies: Sticky notes in a mini-window
  • FLock: Floating lockscreen button
  • Fon: Auto connect to FON network
  • fooCam beta: Autobracketing camera
  • Food Restrictions: Place orders with food restrictions in multiple languages
  • Footguy: Footguy widget
  • Fortunes: View Unix fortunes
  • Free Fall: Accelerometer-based game
  • FreeShisen: Shisen-Sho game
  • Frog Password Generator: Helps to remember passwords
  • Frozen Bubble: Bubble shooting game
  • Frozen Bubble LevelEditor plus: Edit and load custom level packs for FrozenBubble
  • Game of Life: Conway’s Game of Life simulation
  • GCstar scanner: Scan items for your collections
  • GCstar Viewer: View and manage your collections
  • Geometri Destroyer: Simple game
  • Get ID: Get device id and information
  • Ghost Log: Show logcat in an overlay
  • Gift Card Guard: Manage gift cards, their current values, and an image of the most recent receipt
  • Gilga: Local chat via Bluetooth
  • GLImageViewer: View local and remote images
  • Gloomy Dungeons 2: First-person shooter
  • Gmote: Remote control
  • GogoDroid: Graphical frontend of gogoc
  • Gomoku: Five in a Row Game
  • Gore Companion: Ski conditions for Gore Mountain
  • GPSTether: GPS server
  • Gradr: Keep track of your grades
  • Gravity Defied: Trail racing game
  • Hacker Live Wallpaper: Cascading numerals
  • HandyNotes: Sticky notes widget
  • Hangar: Access recent and top apps
  • Hangman: English language Hangman game
  • Hdhomerun Signal Meter: Signal meter for TV tuners
  • HeartRateMonitor: Heart Rate Monitor
  • HeatCalc: Heatsink calculator
  • Here GPS Location: Shows current GPS coordinates
  • Heriswap: Match three objects to get points
  • Hex: Two-player game
  • Hey! Meditation: Helps with meditation sessions
  • HIIT Timer: Timer for high intensity training
  • HoloKenMod: KenKen game
  • HSTempo: Tempo Measurement
  • httpmon: HTTP monitor
  • HUD: Heads-up display for your car
  • Hydra Slayer: Adventure game
  • Hypnotoad Live Wallpaper: Live wallpaper
  • IceCondor: GPS Location recording and sharing
  • IITC Mobile: Map addon for the Ingress game
  • IMCKTG: Generates ringtones from strings, either as Morse code or spoken text
  • Inetify: Wi-Fi Internet access helper
  • Instant Readme Demo: Auto-include readme files in your apps
  • INSTEAD: Interactive fiction player
  • IntentRadio: Intent-driven internet radio player
  • Isotopes: Isotope Information
  • J 拼图: Play a jigsaw puzzle game
  • Japanese Name Converter: English names in Japanese
  • Java installer: Install a full Java runtime
  • Juggling Lab: Animated juggling patterns
  • Just Sit: Meditation timer
  • K2: Catch the moon
  • Kaleidoscope: Create patterns.
  • KeePass NFC: Unlock database with tags
  • Kitchen Timer: Simple Timer
  • Klaxon: SMS-based pager
  • Kolab Client: Sync contacts/calendar
  • Kung Foo Barracuda: Play a beat’em up arcade game
  • Kwaak3: Quake 3 port
  • L9Droid: L9Droid is the android port of Level 9 Interpreter v5.1
  • Lampshade: TV tropes wrapper
  • LASKmobile: Data entry app for the field record LASK
  • LASKmobile: Mobile part of the field catalog LASK
  • LCARS Wallpapers: Star Trek style background
  • Learn Music Notes: Music sight reading training game
  • LexinProject: Swedish dictionary for learners
  • Libero Vocab: An app for Android to practice with vocabularies in the KVTML format.
  • Library: Browse BibTeX files
  • LibreTasks: Trigger actions when certain events happen
  • Light Controller: The best way to control your LED Bulbs, Including Home and Lockscreen widgets
  • Linux Counter Updater: Companion for LinuxCounter project
  • List My Apps: List apps
  • LocalWifiNlpBackend: UnifiedNlp location provider (local Wi-Fi database)
  • Lock Pattern Generator: Generate a random lock pattern
  • Logcat to UDP: Wireless logging
  • LogMeIn: Login to campus networks
  • Lumicall: SIP softphone
  • Mach3Pendant: Control your Mach3 CNC via Wi-Fi
  • MagiaDNI: OCR reader for Spanish id cards
  • Mahjongg Builder: Solitaire games
  • Mandelbrot Maps: A Mandelbrot and Julia fractal viewer, aiming to demonstrate their relationship.
  • MapEver: Offline navigation on photographed maps
  • Marble One: Peg solitaire (or Solo Noble) board game
  • Marine Compass: Compass
  • Masterwork Tools: Pathfinder Open Reference: RPG reference manual
  • MaximaOnAndroid: Computer Algebra System
  • Media Button Router: Map headset buttons
  • Meerkat Challenge: Whack-a-mole game
  • Meeting Cost Clock: A Time-is-Money Stopwatch for Meetings
  • Meme Creator: Generate meme pictures
  • MH4U Database: Look up the MonsterHunter 4U database
  • MicDroid: Pitch correct your voice
  • Microchip: Show processor usage in status bar
  • MidiSheetMusic: Graphical midi file player
  • Mighty Knight: Infinite runner
  • Minecraft Clock: Minecraft clock widget
  • Minidoro: Minimalist and reliable Pomodoro® Technique timer
  • Minilens: Free Puzzle Platform Game
  • Minimal: Minimal TODO lists
  • Mirror Mirror: Non-reversing mirror
  • Misbothering SMS Receiver: SMS alerts filter
  • MobilePrint: Mobile Printing through a server
  • Moloko: Todo list
  • MoneyBalance: Track group expenses
  • Mongo Explorer: Browse MongoDB databases
  • Month Calendar Widget: Calendar widget
  • Month Calendar Widget: Calendar widget of the current month
  • Moon Phase: Show moon phase information
  • MorphClock: Bedside clock
  • Moss: Statistics on the home screen
  • MoTAC: Digital TAC board
  • Mountie: Automount USB external storage
  • Mozc for Android: Japanese Input Method Editor
  • MrWhite: Bright-screen torch
  • MSnake: Classic snake game
  • Multi Sms: Send SMS to many contacts
  • Multipicture Wallpaper: Slideshow wallpaper
  • MultiPing: Ping multiple websites at once
  • music-cyclon: App to synchronize music over network by using the beets web server
  • My Banq: BAnQ reminder notifications
  • My Contacts: Quickly access your contacts
  • My Position: Share your location
  • myLock utilities: Lockscreen improvements
  • MyMusicQoE: A fork of ultrasonic with QoE evaluation features purposes
  • MyOwnNotes: Notes management for ownCloud
  • MythDroid: MythTV remote control system
  • nanoConverter: Money conversion
  • Napply: Widget for taking quick naps
  • NATO Alphabet Memorizer: Learn the NATO phonetic alphabet
  • NDEF Tools for Android: Read/write NFC tags and read/send beams
  • nds4droid: Nintendo DS emulator
  • Netclip: Transfer text from your PC to the clipboard
  • NetCounter: Bandwidth usage tracker
  • NetTTS: Text-to-Speech over network
  • Network Log: See what’s accessing the internet
  • Network Scanner: Scan connected networks
  • NetworkMapper: Frontend for Nmap
  • Neural Network Simulator: Educational tool to learn about computational neuroscience and electrophysology
  • NFC Drivers License Reader: Read Japanese driving licenses
  • NFC Key: Unlock KeePass database with NFC
  • NFCard: Read info from cards
  • Ninja: Open links from other apps in the background
  • nitroxCalc: Nitrox Calculator for Diving
  • Noiz2: Shoot-em-up
  • NorthDog Audio Compass: 3D Audio Compass
  • Notable Plus: Add and manage reminders
  • Notey: Location-aware notes
  • Notification Plus: Recurring acoustic notifications
  • Notify Lite: Notification management tool
  • NoWhatOpen: Clickable links for WhatsApp
  • Null Black Wallpaper: Live wallpaper that does nothing
  • Nuntius: Push notifications to a desktop PC
  • OASVN Pro: Subversion client
  • ObjViewer: Basic 3D model viewer
  • Obsqr: The most lightweight QR code reader
  • Oburo.O: Check your working hours
  • Ogame on Android: Third-party client for Ogame
  • Ohm Calc: For e-cigarette users
  • OI About: General app addon
  • Olam: English-Malayalam dictionary
  • Open Flood: A simple but addictive flood fill game
  • Open in browser: Allows to open HTML file or image from a filemanager in a browser
  • OpenGPX: Paperless geocaching
  • OpenMapKit: Browse OpenStreetMap features to create and edit OSM tags
  • openmentoring-mobile: Helps access and share practical educational content on digital security
  • OpenPass: Reimplementation of SafeNet MobilePass
  • OpenWLANMap: Help create a Wi-Fi coverage map
  • OpenWLANMini: Help create a Wi-Fi coverage map
  • opsu!: Open-source rhythm game supporting Osu! beatmaps
  • OrbitalLiveWallpaper: Animated wallpaper
  • OsciPrime: Oscilloscope to measure signals
  • Oware: Abstract African board game
  • Packet Sender: Send/Receive UDP/TCP
  • PaddleTennis: Pong clone
  • PAFCalc: DIY fertilizer calculator for planted aquariums
  • PageTurner: Synchronising e-reader
  • Papuh: Display live wallpapers
  • PassCard: Generate password card
  • PasswordMaker Pro: Password maker
  • PC_DIMMER: Remote light control
  • PdDroid Party: Run Pure Data patches
  • Peanut Encryption: Encrypted password manager. Only local stored
  • Penroser: Scrolling Wallpaper
  • Pentago: Five-in-a-row game
  • Peppy Flowers: Live wallpaper
  • Permission Friendly Apps: Rank apps by permissions
  • PGPAuth: Send PGP-verified requests
  • Phoenix: Requires root!Reboot your phone in a given interval and start an application
  • Photographer’s Notebook: Photographer’s Notebook stores and manages metadata of analog photos.
  • Piano: Virtual piano keyboard
  • Piclice: Slice pictures for easy sharing
  • Pijaret: Encrypt text by rotation
  • Piraten Karte: Plakate App der Piraten Partei Deutschland
  • Pixel Dungeon: Rogue-like
  • Pizza Cost: Calculate optimal offer out of three round pizzas
  • Planet Rider: Escape from an infinite alien desert using your hover bike
  • PlayMusic Widget (sample): Play music from a widget
  • PluckLock: Lock phone on accelerometer changes
  • PlusMinusTimesDivide: Train children in arithmetic
  • Pocket Gopher: A fast, elegant and modern Gopher Client
  • Point & Hit: Fast-paced tilt-based game
  • Polar Clock: A polar clock
  • Polipoid: Wrapper for the polipo proxy
  • Polite Droid: Calendar tool
  • Portal Timer: Timer for Ingress portals
  • Postcode: Get your postcode (UK only)
  • Practice Hub: Tools for musicians
  • PrBoom For Android: PrBoom Doom game engine
  • Presentation Timer: Simple presentation timer
  • Prestissimo: Change the speed of playback
  • Pretty Good Music Player Launcher Mode: Music player running as launcher
  • Prism: Demonstrates the basics of ray diagrams
  • Protect Baby Monitor: Baby Monitor
  • pttdroid: Walkie Talkie/Push to Talk
  • pyLauncher: Launch scripts on a server
  • Quake2: Quake 2 port
  • Quest Player: Russian interactive fiction
  • Quick Dice Roller: Flexible, complete and handy dice roller
  • Quick Settings: System settings tool
  • Quickly quit: Quickly quit what you were doing
  • RainTime: Two hour rain forecast in The Netherlands
  • React: Test your reaction time
  • Recursive Runner: Run, jump and score points
  • Red Dot: An intriguing animated dot reacting to time
  • ReGalAndroid: Viewer for remote image galleries
  • Rehearsal Assistant: Multipurpose audio recording app. Supports high-fidelity uncompressed recording.
  • ReLaunchX: Launcher for eInk/eBook devices
  • Remindly: Set up reminders
  • Remote Droid: Remote control your device
  • Remote Keyboard: Remote keyboard via telnet
  • Remuco: Remote control for media players
  • Repay: Keep track of lended money
  • Replica Island: Side-scrolling platform game
  • RepWifi: Connect to Wi-Fi using an external USB adapter
  • Retroboy: Retroboy provides vintage imaging technology
  • RGB Tool: Get RGB and HEX values of a color
  • Ridmik Dictionary: English-Bengali Dictionary
  • RiverFerry: Seine-Maritime river ferries
  • Roaming Info: Notify about SIM operator changes
  • robotfindskitten: A retro Zen simulation
  • RoomMates: Rent and tip calculator
  • Root Verifier: Check if device is rooted
  • ROT13 Translator: Encode/decode ROT13 text
  • Rotation Lock + Landscape: Stop screen auto-rotation
  • Rule of Three: Simple “calculator” for the rule of three
  • RvClock: Clock widget
  • Salat Times: Show prayer times
  • SamLib Инфо: Track new Russian publications
  • SAnd: Show orientation, height and airpressure
  • Satoshi Proof: Prove chronology of events
  • Say My Texts: Read out received text messages
  • Score Tarot: Count points for Tarot games
  • scrabble: Scrabble en Francais pour jouer seul
  • Screen Shift: Change screen resolution, density and overscan
  • ScreenInfo: Display screen configuration
  • ScrollSocket: Scroll wirelessly using touchscreen
  • SD Scanner: Rescan storage media
  • SeaMapDroid: Browse OpenSeaMap on your phone
  • Search searx: An unofficial Searx app
  • Seismo Wallpaper: Live wallpaper
  • Send to Computer: Send web pages to your computer
  • Send to SD card: Copies any file from any application through “Share” menu to a filesystem.
  • Send With FTP: Upload files via FTP
  • Sensor Readout: Realtime graphs of sensor data
  • Sequence Hunt: Puzzle game
  • Serval Mesh: Peer to peer communications
  • Service Menu: Start hidden service menu
  • SetEdit - Settings Database Editor: Open source version of the 4A Settings Database Editor
  • Settings Database Provider: allow other apps to edit all parameters in android settings.db database
  • ShareToBrowser: View in different browser via the share function
  • ShellsMP: Play shells game with your friends
  • Shiurim: Talmud unit conversion tool
  • ShoppingList: Simple centralized shoppinglist
  • Shopt: Manage shopping lists and compare prices
  • Shortcuts for Calendar/Contacts: Add shortcuts for new calendars and contacts
  • Show Me Hills: Mountain identification
  • Shutdown: Shutdown dialog
  • SickStache: Sickbeard client
  • Sigfood: Get current menus (University of Erlangen, South)
  • Signature Spoofing Checker: Test the signature spoofing capability of your OS
  • Silectric: Calculate electric bill
  • Silent Night: Auto disable sound on the night
  • Simple Deadlines: Deadline/task manager
  • SimpleStatsWidget: Displays simple statistics on phone calls and sms
  • Slide: Minimal presentation tool, perfect for using Takahashi method
  • SlideItLoud: Turns on loud speaker if the keyboard is opened
  • SliderSynth: Basic musical instrument
  • SLW Cpu Widget: SLW Cpu WidgetFree, open source widget.
  • SLW Traffic Meter Widget: SLW Traffic Meter WidgetFree, open source widget.
  • Smart Gadget: Connect to your Sensirion Smart Gadget via BLE
  • Smart Remote Control: Interface with IR-LEDs from Samsung devices
  • Smoke Reducer: Track your smoking habits
  • SMS Filter: Filter text messages by keyword or address
  • Snooder 21: remake of Motorola’s standard card game Snood™ 21
  • Sokoban: Puzzle game
  • Solar Compass: Find directions using the position of the sun
  • Son of Hunky Punk: Interactive fiction player
  • Sonorox: Compose quick beats and loops
  • Sound Manager: Volume level scheduler
  • Soundboard: Play short sound samples on touch
  • Space Trader: Port of the Palm OS game of the same name
  • SpacePeng!: A small but fun space shooter
  • Speech Trainer: Speech training
  • Speed of Sound: Adjust volume according to speed
  • Speedmeter: Lightweight speed meter
  • Spydroid: Stream camera to desktop
  • Squeez: Archive manager
  • Starun: Follow a cute star’s travel
  • Stickeroid: Stickers collection manager
  • Stop-o-Moto: Make gif and video files by taking single pictures
  • Stopwatch: Stopwatch build into the notification bar
  • StorageTrac: Record and plot changes in external storage
  • Studiportal: Check for test results at HS Furtwangen
  • Styrkur: Track your workouts
  • Subsurface: Legacy GPS tool for the Subsurface desktop application. Use the new app !
  • Sudoku Free: Numerical puzzle game
  • Sudoku Generator: Generate sudoku patterns
  • Summation: Add values from a list
  • SuperGenPass: Implementation of SuperGenPass
  • SVG redirect: Open SVG files with your browser
  • Swiss Chess Tournament: Manage tournaments
  • SWJournal: Track your workouts
  • SyncWifi: Control account authorities by connection
  • Tabulae: Show, record and edit raster maps, tracks and POIs
  • TAC Database Client: Gather and upload TAC data
  • Tacere: Silence phone on calendar events
  • TAG Notepad: Tag-based notebook
  • tagdrop: Decode data URIs in QR codes
  • TaigIME: Taiwanese Input method
  • Taipei Youbike Offline: Find bike stations in Taiwan
  • Tallyphant: Counter
  • Tanks of Freedom: Indie Turn Based Strategy in Isometric Pixel Art
  • Tap the black tiles: Touch the correct tiles to win
  • Taponium: Reflex-oriented arcade game
  • Taps Of Fire: Guitar Game
  • TapUnlock: NFC-enabled lockscreen
  • Taskwarrior: Unofficial version of Taskwarrior - console task management tool
  • TeaCup: Configurable music widget
  • Tether companion: Show battery level and networking mode on a webserver
  • Text Fiction: Interactive fiction interpreter
  • The Knights of Alentejo: Guide knights through a dungeon
  • Theia Icon Theme: Icon theme
  • Thermometer Extended: Thermometer in your pocket thanks to Thermometer Extended ad-free application.
  • Throughput: Notification monitor for network throughput
  • Thugaim: A 2D space shooter game
  • TiltMazes: Logical puzzle game
  • Timeriffic: Scheduled settings
  • ToDo List Widget: Notes in the homescreen
  • Toggle Headset 2: Widget for re-routing audio
  • ToGoZip (’==> Zip’): ToGoZip: Add to Zip for android-s share/send menu.
  • Tram Hunter: Locate trams in Melbourne
  • Trans: A escaping game
  • Transports Bordeaux: Transport info for France
  • Transports Rennes: Transport info for France
  • Tri Rose: Generate unique rose graphs
  • Tri-Valley Buses: View and track Tri-Valley Wheels bus locations, stop times, and routes
  • Trolly: Shopping list
  • Trouve ton campus: Find your campus in Strasbourg
  • Truly Creative live wallpaper: LiveWallpapers ported from ReallySlickScreensavers
  • Trycorder: Upgrade your mobile device to a full-fledged tricorder
  • Tryton: Enterprise resource management
  • TSCH_BYL: Calculates radiation doses and consequences after nuclear power accidents.
  • Tttris: Tetris clone
  • TuCanMobile: Campus system TUCaN of the TU Darmstadt
  • TunesRemote+: DACP remote control
  • Turo: Build a Tower
  • Twisted Home Manager: Manage launchers
  • Twister: Client for Twister
  • Type and Speak: Text to speech
  • UCLL Student: Student app for UCLL students
  • Unicode Map: Copy Unicode characters
  • Units: Powerful unit converter
  • Unix Time Clock Widget: Show Unix Epoche as a widget
  • Unreal Tracker: Track UT and UE development
  • USB HID Terminal: Access USB HID devices
  • USB-Dataloggerreader: Interface to USB dataloggers.
  • Vaporizer Control Crafty: Control vaporizers via BLE
  • VIMTouch: Text editor
  • Volume Control: Change volume without buttons
  • Voodoo CarrierIQ Detector: Check for Carrier IQ spyware on the device
  • VotAR: Vote with augmented reality
  • VX ConnectBot: SSH (remote access) client
  • Wa-Tor: A simple population dynamics simulator
  • WebSearch: Search the web from within apps
  • WhatExp: Scientific calculator
  • When Ze Bus: Show London bus arrival time predictions
  • WhereAreTheEyes: Build a map of surveillance cameras with other activists
  • Wi-Fi Privacy Police: Prevent leaking sensitive data on Wi-Fi
  • WiFi ACE: Wi-Fi advanced config editor
  • Wifi Fixer: Resets broken Wi-Fi connections
  • WIFI_EAP_SIM_Conf: Wi-Fi EAP-SIM configuration tool (Free Mobile)
  • WifiAutOff: Turns off the WIFI based on scan result
  • WiFiKeyboard: Remote Wi-Fi keyboard
  • WiseRadar: See Canadian Weather Radar Imagery on your Android Device
  • Word Power Made Easy: Build your vocabualary
  • WorkoutLog: A minimalistic app for tracking your workouts
  • WREK Online: Listen to WREK Atlanta 91.1 FM
  • Wrong Pin Shutdown: Shutdown after 10 unsuccessful logins
  • WTF‽ (The MirOS Project): Offline acronym translator
  • WWWJDIC for Android: Japanese online dictionary
  • X11-Basic: BASIC interpreter
  • Xda Feed Reader: Feed reader for XDA Developers
  • Xearth: Xearth live wallpaper
  • XMouse: Remotely control X11 via SSH commands generated by your phone or tablet
  • YAAB: Control screen brightness
  • Yabause: Sega Saturn emulator
  • Yahtzee: Yahtzee/Kniffle game
  • YASFA: Build and speak out sentences
  • Zen: Meditation sketch
  • Zensuren: Organize teaching

Newly Added Apps

12 more apps were newly added
  • Aucards: Create reusable cards for quick access when non-verbal communication is needed
  • Concert Diary: A personal diary for concerts and festivals
  • Egyptian Writer: View, write and export ancient Egyptian texts
  • Files Shortcut: Open Android’s built-in Files app
  • Frame Extractor: Extract high-resolution frames from any video with millisecond precision
  • Health Disconnect: View your Health Connect data in charts and widgets. Offline. Private. No ads.
  • Heliodos: AR overlay of the sun’s path at solstices, equinox, and now on your camera
  • jSlide2: A short 3D Platformer with an Online Highscore and viewable Replays
  • Lotus: Music player designed with Material You
  • Markleaf: Local-first Markdown notes with tags, search, and file export
  • Quire: Self-hosted EPUB reader for calibre-web. No telemetry, no cloud, your data.
  • Subtitle Blocker: Overlay to mask hard-coded subtitles on videos and social media

Updated Apps

265 more apps were updated
(expand for the full list)

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF 🙂

Please subscribe to the RSS feed in your favourite RSS application to be updated of new TWIFs when they come up.

You are welcome to join the TWIF forum thread. If you have any news from the community, post it there, maybe it will be featured next week 😉

To help support F-Droid, please check out the donation page and contribute what you can.

01:00 PM

The FDA Takes Its Turn Burying Studies Showing The Safety Of COVID, Shingles Vaccines [Techdirt]

The fuckery that is going on across HHS and vaccine programs is just plain incredible. As the Trump administration continues to provide whatever cover it can so that RFK Jr. can wreck shop on the health of Americans, the damage Kennedy is doing to our inoculation programs is going to take years, if not decades, to unwind. Led by a man who doesn’t believe in the foundational theory of modern medicine, America’s health agencies have begun to engage in direct misinformation campaigns via the censorship of real scientific information. Warnings about bogus autism treatments were removed from FDA websites. The CDC buried a report demonstrating how effective COVID vaccines are under dubious justifications.

And now it seems that it’s the FDA’s turn to likewise hide studies about the safety of COVID and shingles vaccines from the public.

The Food and Drug Administration blocked the publication of several studies supporting the safety of vaccines against Covid and shingles in recent months, a Health and Human Services Department spokesperson confirmed Tuesday. FDA scientists worked with data firms to analyze millions of patient records for the studies, which found side effects of the shots to be rare, The New York Times first reported on Tuesday. 

In October, the scientists were directed to withdraw two Covid shot studies that had been accepted for publication in medical journals, the Times reported. In February, top FDA officials did not sign off on submitting study abstracts on Shingrix, a shingles vaccine, to a drug safety conference, the paper added.

Now, spokespeople for HHS have stated that the studies were withdrawn because either they drew conclusions not supported by the data, or that the designs of the studies were done “outside of the agency’s purview.”

That’s bullshit. We all know it’s bullshit. And they know that we know it’s bullshit. And they simply don’t care, because this is not about medicine, or health, or even traditional politics. This is about the ego of one man, Kennedy, and his cohort of tinfoil hat wearing bumblefucks.

As the New York Times article itself quotes knowledgeable professors of medicine, this is censorship.

Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, a Harvard University medical professor who studies F.D.A. regulation, said he had worked with the agency on a number of research papers and found its work to meet “the highest standards of scientific investigation.” He suggested that the request to pull the papers was an act of “censorship.”

He added: “At any other time in history, this would be a major scandal that would lead to congressional hearings and resignations of leadership, and I hope that’s what happens next.”

These studies were seen by people who know what they’re talking about in the pre-publication stage. It’s not just Kesselheim who is pointing out that these studies seem both perfectly valid and very useful for evaluating the safety and efficacy of these vaccines. And the conclusions they draw are as full-throated as they are at odds with Kennedy’s anti-vaxxer nonsense.

Take one study, which worked to examine millions of health records for those who received a COVID shot at anywhere from 6 months old to 64 years old.

That study examined the records of 4.2 million Covid vaccine recipients and examined their later experience with 17 conditions, including swelling of the brain, major blood clots, stroke and heart attacks. The study found rare cases of fever-related seizures and myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, known to be associated with Covid vaccines.

“Given the available evidence, F.D.A. continues to conclude the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks,” the study said.

Angela Rasmussen, an editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said the paper had been withdrawn by the authors.

Dr. Caleb Alexander, a drug safety and methodology expert at Johns Hopkins University, reviewed both studies at the request of The Times and said that “no study answers every question” but “there is nothing inherently problematic regarding these reports.”

The point earlier was a good one: this is god damned scandal. Or, rather, it should be, except the talking heads on our televisions are far too busy covering every other scandal or ginned up controversy the administration creates, and more than half of our elected officials can’t be bothered to do real political combat out of fear of who knows what. And so the health of Americans is put at risk instead, because our government is made up of an unholy combination of crackpots and cowards.

At this point, I could be convinced that Kennedy and some portion of the government is actually attempting to cause people to die. I can’t understand another coherent motivation for this kind of censorship of scientific information, other than pure ego.

And if one man’s ego really is standing in the way of getting us back on track on matters of life and death, then impeach Kennedy and let’s get back to sanity. This really isn’t that complicated.

10:00 AM

From ICE…To Slush [The Status Kuo]

Image courtesy of The Atlantic

Trump keeps creating big headaches for his own party as we tick closer to November’s midterms. The public outcry over ICE had not even cooled before Trump launched a war of choice in Iran. And rather than address soaring gas prices, Trump announced he would seek $1 billion in public funding for his ballroom and would (checks notes) hand billions in public funds to criminals and insurrectionists through an unsupervised federal “victims” slush fund.

That announcement, along with anger over Trump’s primary challenges to intraparty critics in Congress, was too much for some lawmakers, who control the balance of power in a closely divided Congress.

On three separate questions in a few days, GOP lawmakers have said no, or close enough to no that it counts. This isn’t a dam breaking. But it is a dam beginning to crack.

Subscribe now

Finding their balls over the ballroom

We know the disturbing history here. Trump demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for a 90,000 square-foot structure—roughly the size of two football fields—that he claimed would be funded by “patriot donors,” including multinational tech giants and defense contractors.

The project is deep into construction, but Trump has two problems that Congress could solve for him. First, courts have raised serious questions about whether he had the legal authority to build on public land without congressional authorization. Second, the price tag has ballooned so far past its original estimates that he now wants public money to cover the gap, despite earlier promises that it would be privately funded.

Republican committee chairs with direct jurisdiction over White House property matters have gone silent. Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who chair the relevant congressional energy and natural resources committees, declined to comment. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), who chairs the House Interior appropriations panel, said the project wasn’t “in his purview.” Even Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN)—the stalwart Trump ally who has proposed putting Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore and tried to change the Constitution to allow Trump a third term—told Politico he wasn’t aware of any legislation in process to authorize the ballroom.

Then came the funding ask. Senate Republicans, at the president’s behest, attempted to slip $1 billion for White House “security”—including $220 million specifically for ballroom security—into a larger budget bill. But four Republican senators publicly said no: Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Then came the procedural hurdles. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled late Saturday that the $1 billion provision violated the Byrd Rule, the strict Senate requirement that reconciliation bill provisions have a direct budgetary impact and fall within the jurisdiction of the committees that drafted them. Thune’s office initially responded with a shrug: “Redraft. Refine. Resubmit,” framing it as a routine procedural setback. Trump, less sanguine, raged at MacDonough on Truth Social and demanded she be fired.

But as the week went on, the vote count problem became undeniable. Intraparty anger over the ballroom funding grew through Wednesday, and Politico reported it would be cut from the bill entirely. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters Republicans simply didn't have the votes.

The opacity of the project is a particular irritant to senators. Trump originally said the ballroom would cost $100 million and be privately funded. The price tag has since increased tenfold, and the project has expanded to include a multi-level underground complex. Cassidy, who told CNN this week he’d be voting no on the funding, captured the confusion precisely: “There’s no architectural plans. There is no environmentals. There’s no engineering. There’s no sense of—when we ask—how did it happen to cost exactly a billion. It could cost a lot less, it could cost a lot more. I just don’t get it.”

A $1.776 billion fund for… very aggrieved people

As much as the American people hate the ballroom, they’re going to hate the new insurrection slush fund even more.

The Department of Justice announced on May 18 the creation of a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund”—the dollar amount a none-too-subtle nod to the year of American independence—to compensate individuals who claim they were improperly investigated or targeted by the federal government. The fund grew out of a settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leaking of his tax records, though the negotiated deal was cleverly crafted to keep the questions separate to avoid judicial review of the fund as part of the settlement’s terms.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense attorney, said the fund would operate through a five-member commission reviewing claims of “lawfare.”

The first claimant to file was Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump ally and former HHS spokesperson, who is seeking $2.7 million. Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in organizing the January 6 attack before being pardoned by Trump, told Reuters he planned to apply, estimating he deserved between $2 million and $5 million. “I’m not greedy,” Tarrio said. “But my life was all f—ed up because of this.”

The pushback, even from within the GOP, came fast. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a former FBI supervisory special agent representing a purple district that Democrats have targeted for 2026, sent a letter to Blanche raising “urgent concern” about the fund’s legal authority, funding source, eligibility standards and lack of congressional oversight. “This is not a unilateral executive decision,” Fitzpatrick told reporters. “If you’re dealing with appropriated money, that’s got to come through us.” He told reporters his plan: “We’re gonna try to kill it.”

Trump publicly warned Fitzpatrick that it “doesn’t work out well” for people who break from his agenda. Hours later, Fitzpatrick introduced a bipartisan bill with Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York called the Bipartisan Transparency for American Taxpayers Act, which would bar federal funds from being used to pay any claims submitted to the fund. These two sponsors understand that Congress holds the power of the purse, and the executive branch cannot manufacture a multibillion dollar compensation program without an appropriation from Congress.

The Senate fallout was even more dramatic. Blanche was dispatched to a Republican caucus lunch on Thursday to sell the fund to GOP senators. The meeting had been scheduled as a tribute to this weekend’s Indianapolis 500, complete with regional food and race regalia courtesy of Indiana Sen. Todd Young.

It did not go well. The session ran well over two hours, with the majority of Republican senators venting anger and pressing Blanche on the fund’s legal basis, who would qualify, and how the commission overseeing payouts would work. They left with fewer answers than when they arrived.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski told reporters the fund had been dropped like “a bomb in the middle of a pretty well planned out reconciliation bill.” Sen. Ron Johnson called it “a galactic blunder.” Sen. Thom Tillis called it “stupid on stilts,” then elaborated: “Taxpayer dollars will compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, got convicted—and now we’re going to pay him for that? This is absurd.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, who by this point had already broken with Trump on the ballroom and the Iran war, tweeted that “people are concerned about paying their mortgage or rent, affording groceries and paying for gas, not about putting together a $1.8 billion fund for the president and his allies to pay whomever they wish with no legal precedent or accountability.”

Susan Collins, who said she opposed the fund in part because it could pay Jan. 6 rioters who had assaulted law enforcement, told the Times after the meeting: “It is in real trouble—and it should be.” Even barely-standing-on-his-own Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate Republican leader in history, issued a statement that left nothing to interpretation: “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong—take your pick.”

The collateral damage from the slush fund push was immediate. Senate Republicans had been on track to pass a $72 billion reconciliation package to fund ICE and Border Patrol—a top Trump immigration priority—before the Memorial Day recess. But the slush fund blew up that timeline. Thune sent his members home without a vote, punting the ICE and Border Patrol funding to June. A senior Republican aide told NBC News the ICE funding package “would have been passed, if not for the actions of the administration.”

What if they threw a war and Congress said no?

The most consequential break came Tuesday. It has been nearly three months since Trump first announced “major combat operations” against Iran on February 28, launching a massive joint U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iranian military, government, and infrastructure sites. He did not seek or obtain a declaration of war from Congress. He did not consult congressional leadership in advance. Congress has been voting on war powers resolutions to reassert its authority ever since and losing—until this week.

On Tuesday, four Republican senators—Paul, Collins, Murkowski and a newly liberated Cassidy—voted to advance a war powers resolution on Iran out of committee on a 50-47 discharge vote, the first step toward forcing Trump to end a war that Congress never authorized. The resolution still faces significant obstacles, including a final Senate vote, the House, and a near-certain presidential veto. But the votes are tightening as the war drags on, gas prices soar ahead of the summer driving season and the 2026 midterms approach.

In the House, the picture is now equally volatile. Even before this week, the fractures were showing. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska—a pro-interventionist centrist who had voted against past Iran war powers resolutions—told Axios he felt “very split” on the upcoming vote. “It’s a tough vote, because we have the Constitution and Article One authorities,” Bacon said. “The President doesn’t like it. Granted, he would prefer not to have Congress.” Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, the last Democratic holdout who had previously voted against Iran war powers resolutions, announced he would vote yes, noting it was past the 60-day threshold under the War Powers Act at which a president must terminate unauthorized military operations.

A war powers resolution on Iran deadlocked 212-212 last week, with Fitzpatrick, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and Tom Barrett of Michigan crossing party lines to support it. A tie vote in the House means a measure fails—but only barely.

Then on Thursday night, House Republican leadership abruptly pulled a second Iran war powers resolution from the floor before its scheduled vote. The tell was a basic procedural vote on an unrelated bill—the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum—that went down 204-216, with eight Republicans absent and six voting with the Democrats.

Leadership recognized the building mutiny and yanked the war powers resolution before it could come to the floor. Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the resolution’s sponsor, told reporters: “No question about it, we would have succeeded.”

Speaker Johnson then sent the House home for the long holiday weekend.

Why now, and what it means

The breaks described above aren’t random, and they aren’t all the same. They fall into roughly three categories, each with its own, often cynical logic. Together they tell a story about where the cracks in Republican unity are appearing.

The first crack is institutional—a belated defense of Congress’s core prerogatives against an executive that has been systematically routing around them. The war powers fights, the slush fund pushback and the ballroom authorization battle all touch on Congress’s core prerogatives, including the power to declare war and the power of the purse. When the White House makes an end run around Congress, it creates an opportunity for objection that even “loyal” Republicans can raise without appearing to oppose Trump on policy. Fitzpatrick, for example, isn’t arguing that alleged victims of government overreach don’t deserve redress, though that’s probably why he’s opposed. He’s arguing that Congress has to be the one to appropriate the money.

The second is self-preservation, and it’s doing a lot of heavy lifting. Fitzpatrick represents a swing district. The 2026 midterms are just six months away, and paying January 6 rioters with taxpayer money, slipping $1 billion for a gilded ballroom into a budget bill, and running an unauthorized war with no clear endgame are not winning themes in competitive districts. Even Karl Rove, writing in the Wall Street Journal this week under the headline “Gerrymandering Isn’t Enough for the GOP”—made the electoral case explicitly: “The more undisciplined the White House messages on war and the economy, the more at risk GOP candidates will be,” Rove wrote. “Gerrymandering helped Republicans. But the president’s actions are helping Democrats. That could give Democrats the House.”

The third category is, in a karmic—comic?—twist, entirely of Trump’s own making. Trump’s habit of kneecapping lawmakers who displease him has a paradoxical consequence. It removes the one lever that kept them in line. Primary them out or push them into retirement, and you’ve freed them. Sen. Bill Cassidy voted on Tuesday to advance the Iran war powers resolution after losing his Louisiana Senate primary last week—in large part because Trump endorsed his opponent. He is now in the final seven months of his Senate term, with no primary to fear, no future campaign to protect, and no more patience for a president who worked to end his career. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who publicly opposed ballroom funding, announced he would not seek reelection after bucking Trump on the Big Beautiful Bill’s Medicaid cuts. Collins and Murkowski have long-established independence and safe enough seats to sustain it. These are not profiles in courage, exactly—they’re profiles in having nothing left to lose. But the effect is the same.

The professionals inside the Republican operation are not blind to any of this. One senior Senate Republican operative, speaking anonymously to Politico this week, put it bluntly: “Those so-called victories over the last couple weeks are just a mirage. They are self-owns. We’re not actually beating Democrats, and we’re not actually advancing legislation.”

Despite this pushback, we should remain clearheaded about what this does and doesn’t mean. Most Republicans remain firmly in line, even if the majorities on these votes are thin. The ballroom may yet get its billion. The slush fund may survive. The war powers resolution may never pass.

Yet the midterm pressures are only going to build. Something changed in the Republican caucus this week, and the cracks in the GOP dam are deepening and spreading.

09:00 AM

Ken Paxton Wanted To Crack Down On Forum Shopping. Now Lawyers Say He’s Improperly Seeking Out Favorable Courts. [Techdirt]

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.

In October, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued pharmaceutical companies tied to Tylenol in state court, repeating claims made a month earlier by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the pain relief drug was linked to autism and ADHD in children.

Paxton, a close ally of the Trump administration who had already announced a U.S. Senate bid, accused drugmakers of marketing Tylenol to pregnant mothers without disclosing its dangers. “The reckoning has arrived,” the state’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies Johnson & Johnson, Kenvue Brands and Kenvue Inc.

“By holding Big Pharma accountable for poisoning our people, we will help Make America Healthy Again,” Paxton proclaimed in a news release that echoed Kennedy’s slogan.

Paxton hired the Chicago law firm Keller Postman to argue the case in state court. The firm had served as lead counsel in a similar case about Tylenol’s safety that was dismissed a year earlier by a New York federal judge who found the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses unreliable.

But the court the attorneys chose to bring the suit in wasn’t in Austin or any of the state’s large counties that have extensive experience and multiple judges handling large, complex litigation. It was in Panola County, a community of 23,000 residents on the Louisiana border that Trump carried by 67 points two years ago and whose sole state district court judge is a Republican.

At a hearing that month in the three-story brick courthouse in the county seat of Carthage, Kim Bueno, the lawyer representing the drugmakers, accused Paxton’s office of pushing a baseless lawsuit through forum shopping — seeking out judges and juries that plaintiffs believe will be most favorable to them, rather than filing suit in the courts that most commonly handle similar cases.

“These claims have been rejected over and over and over again in courts of law by the same plaintiff’s counsel,” said Bueno, who declined an interview request. “And now they’re trying, once again, to suggest that Tylenol is harmful for women when pregnant. And it’s been soundly rejected.”

The case was not the first that Paxton’s office had filed in a county with little connection to the allegations of wrongdoing made by his office. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have identified at least 30 cases filed by the attorney general over the past nine years that have a tenuous connection to the counties in which they were filed.

The filings mark a striking departure from Paxton’s previous opposition to the practice. In a 2017 legal brief that Paxton wrote on behalf of 17 states, he urged the U.S. Supreme Court to crack down on forum shopping in federal courts. The practice, he wrote, “has the pernicious effect of reducing confidence in the fairness and neutrality of our Nation’s justice system.”

Paxton’s approach also subverts what the Legislature intended when it passed a law in the 1990s that required plaintiffs to file lawsuits in counties where a “substantial” part of the alleged violation took place, according to three legal experts. That was done at the behest of conservatives who felt trial lawyers were flocking to venues favorable to them to win big damage verdicts against businesses.

“It looks like the attorney general’s office is interested in engaging in litigation games that it would otherwise decry if the shoe were on the other foot,” said Michael Ariens, a professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, who has studied laws regulating where lawsuits can be filed.

Neither of Paxton’s Republican predecessors, Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, appears to have employed this strategy. ProPublica and the Tribune reviewed hundreds of cases filed outside of the state’s five large urban counties during their tenures. Each had a clear connection to the venue Abbott or Cornyn chose.

Neither Abbott nor Cornyn, who Paxton is trying to unseat, responded to requests for comment. Trump on Tuesday endorsed Paxton in the race.

Texas’ major consumer protection law gives the attorney general some flexibility with those cases despite the state’s broader restriction on forum shopping. The office does not have to prove that a substantial part of the events in a consumer protection case happened in the place where it files suit but can instead file in counties where a defendant has done business.

But Paxton has stretched the boundaries of that law, too, according to legal experts and to former staffers of the attorney general’s office who argued against him in court. Last year, for example, the attorney general filed a lawsuit against the gaming platform Roblox in King County, a ranching community of about 200 people east of Lubbock. Its key justification for selecting the tiny county was that residents there had internet access.

Paxton, who did not respond to requests for comment or to written questions, has not spoken publicly about his office’s decisions to file lawsuits in courts with little connection to the cases.

At the November hearing in Panola County, Judge LeAnn Rafferty, a Republican first elected in 2016, did not question the attorney general’s office on its venue choice but asked, “Do you disagree with the defendants’ assertion that Tylenol is the safest choice for pregnant women who have a fever?”

“It depends on — oh, you said for having a fever? That probably is true,” replied J.J. Snidow, a partner at Keller Postman. “There are not alternatives in the pain relief space to Tylenol that don’t also have risks.”

Tylenol makers, Rafferty said, already tell pregnant women to consult with a doctor before taking the drug. Rafferty declined to comment about the case. Snidow said Keller Postman had no comment. Paxton has repeatedly turned to the firm as he has grown increasingly reliant on private attorneys to litigate major cases for his office.

Kenvue directed ProPublica and the Tribune to a statement on its website that said there is “no proven link” between acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, and autism. A spokesperson for Johnson & Johnson said the company has had nothing to do with making or selling the drug since splitting with Kenvue in 2023.

Rafferty threw out five of the six claims in the attorney general’s lawsuit. She dismissed one for insufficient evidence. In the other four, Rafferty ruled that the state did not have jurisdiction over Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue Inc. because they do not manufacture or sell Tylenol in Texas.

She allowed one claim to proceed that alleged Kenvue Brands had violated the state’s consumer protection act by making false claims about Tylenol’s safety.

With most of the claims thrown out, the attorney general’s office doubled down on its strategy.

Two weeks later, it filed a new case against the pharmaceutical companies.

This time, it chose Bailey County, a community of 7,000 residents on the New Mexico border.

Paxton’s Pivot

For decades, plaintiffs’ attorneys from across the U.S. swarmed courts in small Texas counties that had reputations for sympathetic judges and generous juries. The practice became so ubiquitous that The Wall Street Journal branded the Texas judicial system a “Wild West embarrassment.”

In 1995, Robert Duncan, then a Republican state representative from Lubbock, resolved to crack down on the practice. He authored a bill that required a “substantial part” of a lawsuit’s claims be connected to the county of filing.

An attorney himself, Duncan recalls traveling hundreds of miles from his home in the Texas High Plains to the Rio Grande Valley for cases that had no connection to the border region. Forum shopping, Duncan told ProPublica and the Tribune, had led to too many attorneys choosing courts where there was “no reason to be there other than the bias or prejudice of whatever the plaintiff’s lawyer is trying to establish that would favor the case, as opposed to giving the defendant a fair opportunity.”

Duncan declined to comment on Paxton’s practice of filing lawsuits in counties with little connection to the allegations of wrongdoing.

Paxton was not in the Legislature when Duncan’s bill passed but, as a freshman representative in 2003, he supported legislation that gave judges more power to dismiss lawsuits they concluded belonged in another state.

He also railed against “rampant forum shopping,” asserting that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 should restrict the practice after plaintiffs in patent infringement lawsuits began flocking to courts that most often ruled in their favor. The Eastern District of Texas had become the most popular venue for the lawsuits, even though few of the cases had clear connections to the area. Most cases landed on the docket of a judge based in rural Harrison County, 140 miles east of Dallas, where plaintiffs won 78% of the time, according to legal researchers.

That waned after justices ruled that federal courts must strictly enforce a decades-old law requiring corporations in patent disputes to be sued only in their home states.

Since then, Paxton has repeatedly engaged in forum shopping in state courts, legal experts said. In fact, his office, or attorneys on behalf of his office, have filed 11 cases in Harrison, the same county where he argued that federal courts should limit plaintiffs from filing.

“It’s hypocritical for the AG to criticize patent litigants for forum shopping but then to forum shop himself,” said Paul Gugliuzza, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “Forum shopping, judge shopping — it’s usually not unlawful, but it is highly opportunistic, and, in many circumstances, probably shouldn’t be lawful.”

Paxton notched one of the biggest wins of his tenure in Harrison County. He secured a $1.4 billion settlement from Meta after alleging that the Facebook parent company captured Texans’ biometric data without their consent. Paxton’s office contended in court filings that Harrison was a proper venue for the 2022 lawsuit because the company had done business in the county and a substantial part of the alleged lawbreaking occurred there. The office did not provide specifics.

Meta has an office in Travis County, home to Austin, not in Harrison, where only about 0.2% of Texans live, but the company did not challenge the venue. The company didn’t admit to wrongdoing in the settlement and did not respond to questions about the case. It’s unclear why its lawyers did not seek a different venue, but the judge in the case, Republican Brad Morin, denied a transfer in at least one other lawsuit involving Paxton during the Meta litigation.

Paxton has not limited his efforts to find more favorable courts solely to small counties. The attorney general has repeatedly filed cases, particularly political ones, in Tarrant, the state’s largest Republican county and home to Fort Worth.

In August, Paxton’s office chose the county as the venue to sue former Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke and his political organization, Powered By People, after the group helped pay expenses for Democratic members of the Texas Legislature who left the state to block the passage of new congressional maps. The maps, drawn at Trump’s behest, favored the GOP.

The attorney general’s office stated in court documents that the case had a “substantial” connection to Tarrant County because the group planned a rally in Fort Worth. When O’Rourke sought to move the case to El Paso County — where he lives and where the group is headquartered — Paxton accused him of forum shopping. O’Rourke did not respond to an interview request.

Paxton secured a court order in Tarrant that prohibited Powered by People from fundraising while the case was pending. But within weeks, the 15th Court of Appeals overturned the decision. It noted that Paxton was a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, which created an incentive to blunt Democrats’ ability to campaign. The judges said the order infringed on the organization’s free speech rights before a court had determined guilt.

Legal experts say such forum shopping erodes trust in the court system. It is especially problematic when it comes from the attorney general, who is supposed to defend state laws and preserve public trust in the justice system, they said.

“It’s hard to respect the system if you think it’s being employed in a way you fundamentally think is unfair,” said Paul Grimm, a former U.S. district judge in Maryland and an advocate of restricting forum shopping.

“Not the Law”

In at least two recent cases, Paxton has tested a novel interpretation of state law governing where lawsuits can be filed. His office has argued that if a company does business over the internet, it can be sued in any Texas county.

One such case was a 2022 lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. Two law firms filed the case against the company under a law that allows private attorneys to sue on behalf of the attorney general. The lawsuit accused AstraZeneca of defrauding Medicaid by giving kickbacks to healthcare workers in exchange for prescribing the company’s products. The company, which did not respond to a request for comment, said in legal filings that the lawsuit sought to punish its innocuous outreach to doctors and did not identify a single patient harmed or taxpayer dollar wasted.

Paxton’s office formally joined the case in July. Attorneys working on behalf of his office argued that Harrison County was the proper venue because the firm’s website could be accessed from there, company salespeople had visited the county and a local clinic had a brochure for one of the company’s drugs.

When AstraZeneca asked Morin, the lone Harrison County judge, to transfer the case to Travis County, he refused without explanation. The company appealed and, in November, the 15th Court of Appeals overruled Morin’s decision. The court concluded that he abused his discretion in declining to move the case. Morin did not respond to a request for comment.

The court also found that Paxton’s office failed to provide proof that any of the alleged lawbreaking occurred in Harrison County. It ordered the case transferred to Travis County, where it is ongoing.

That month, the attorney general’s office argued that Roblox could be sued in King County, an expanse of rolling plains with no incorporated communities, because third-party retailers there sold gift cards to access the online gaming company.

Then the office made another bold claim: that companies with websites can be sued anywhere, no matter how small the county.

“This is a case about ubiquity, about being online and accessible to all children throughout the state,” Mark Pinkert, a Florida lawyer whom Paxton’s office had hired as outside counsel, argued at a hearing to discuss a request from Roblox that the case be moved to Travis County. “They are advertising broadly.”

Pinkert did not respond to a request for comment.

Roblox’s attorney Ed Burbach was stunned by the argument. He’d previously led the civil litigation division at the attorney general’s office under Abbott. The office’s longstanding practice, Burbach told the judge, was to file statewide consumer protection cases in Travis County.

This new argument by the attorney general’s office would obliterate the Legislature’s attempts to limit forum shopping by allowing any company to be sued in any county, Burbach said.

“That is simply not the law,” Burbach said, adding that most Texans, including lawmakers, would “be shocked to hear that outside counsel of the AG’s office would be arguing that.”

The judge transferred the case to Travis County, where it is ongoing.

Burbach declined to comment, but Paul Rogers, a law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, warned of the dangers if Paxton succeeds at getting courts to side with his expansive interpretation. The attorney general, he said, would have “a lot of power to file any lawsuit, in any county, for any reason, whether the underlying lawsuit has merit or not.”

Highlighted section of a court transcript: So the only dispute here is whether (a) (3) applies, (a) (3) being is there a where does a .. in substantial part of the case arise? And. Your Honor. this case does not substantially arise in Travis County, in Dallas, in Harris County. This is a statewide case. This is a case about ubiquity, about being online and accessible to all children throughout the state, about having their content promoted with major marketing brands on YouTube. Million one trillion hits of their content on YouTube, TikTok. Facebook. They are advertising broadly.

Doubling Down

In Washington, Trump and Kennedy’s public rebukes of Tylenol have tapered off. Paxton, however, continues to vigorously pursue his lawsuit against the drugmakers in state court.

After the setback in Panola County, the attorney general’s office filed an urgent request in Bailey County, arguing that Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue should be barred from selling any products in Texas until they filed paperwork and paid a $750 fee to register with the secretary of state. (Such registration would allow Paxton’s office to strengthen its case in Panola County.)

Though Paxton’s office was already involved in a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical companies in Panola County, the attorney general’s office stated in court filings that it did not know the companies’ attorneys, so it could not notify them of the suit.

Without hearing from the drugmakers’ lawyers, Judge Gordon Green ordered the companies to register. He said they could be barred from doing business in Texas if they didn’t. Paxton proclaimed the ruling a “major win” over Big Pharma.

The victory was short-lived. A week later, the drugmakers’ lawyer Aaron Nielson, who had previously served under Paxton as the state’s solicitor general, attended a hearing in Green’s court. He accused Paxton’s office of sleight of hand by trying to relitigate claims that had already failed to persuade the Panola County judge.

“This is blatant forum shopping and taking another bite at the apple,” said Nielson, who did not respond to a request for comment. “They decided to bring Your Honor into this, rather than let the Court that they chose continue with its own proceedings, which we think is highly improper.”

At the end of the hearing, Green withdrew the order requiring the companies to register. He did not respond to a request for comment.

The Panola and Bailey county cases are awaiting a ruling from the 15th Court of Appeals.

In the meantime, the attorney general’s office tried yet another gambit in Panola, where the judge had allowed one of its original claims to move forward.

Paxton’s lawyers amended their original lawsuit in the county. They noted that Green had ordered the drugmakers to register to do business in Texas, which meant Texas now had jurisdiction to pursue the claims that had been dismissed.

They omitted the fact that Green voided that order.

By referencing the order as if it were still in effect, the attorney general’s office risks losing credibility with the Panola County judge, Gugliuzza said.

“If you knowingly are presenting false information to the court, that is textbook sanctionable conduct,” Gugliuzza said.

06:00 AM

France’s Terrible Copyright Law, Hadopi, Is Not Quite Dead [Techdirt]

One of the best demonstrations that an obsession with protecting copyright’s intellectual monopoly drives politicians insane is the French law known as Hadopi, an acronym for ‘Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des oeuvres et la protection des droits sur internet’ (High Authority for the Dissemination of Works and the Protection of Rights on the Internet). The Hadopi mechanism has been trying – and failing – to police copyright’s intellectual monopoly in France for 15 years now, and it is one of the main villains in the Walled Culture book (free digital versions available).

Here’s how Hadopi’s “graduated response” approach worked when a revised version came into operation in 2010. Alleged infringers were warned twice; if another allegation was made within a year of the second warning, the subscriber’s Internet connection could be suspended. A fine of €1,500 could also be imposed. The first notices were sent out in September 2010; by December of that year, copyright companies were issuing between 25,000 and 50,000 infringement allegations per day. At the end of July 2013, Hadopi had issued 2 million first notices and 200,000 second notices. There were 710 investigations to ascertain whether those who had been accused three times should be referred to the prosecutors.

That gives an idea of the scale of the investigations into people’s everyday use of the Internet in France, and of the databases of personal data that were created. And yet the first and only disconnection order, issued in June 2013, turned out to be unenforceable, because the disconnection only applied to Web access – other services like email, private messaging, the telephone line or TV services had to be preserved somehow – and was later dropped.

By 2020, Hadopi had been in existence in various forms for a decade. Working from Hadopi’s annual report for that year, the French magazine Next INpact calculated that in total the agency had imposed €87,000 in fines. The cost of running Hadopi was picked up entirely by French taxpayers and came to €82 million. In other words, a system that had failed to discourage people downloading unauthorized copies of copyright material, had also cost nearly a thousand times more to run than it generated in fines.

As Walled Culture reported at the time, in 2023 the French digital rights organization La Quadrature du Net brought a challenge to the Hadopi system, still running in theory, on the grounds that it was incompatible with the two EU laws defining Europe’s data protection regime, the General Data Protection Regulation and the ePrivacy Directive. Shockingly, in 2024 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the EU’s top court, ruled that “the general and indiscriminate retention of [Internet Protocol] addresses does not necessarily constitute a serious interference with fundamental rights”. La Quadrature du Net did not give up. Alongside the case at the CJEU, it was also taking legal action in France:

In 2019, we asked the Conseil d’État to overturn Hadopi’s central decree, which authorises the storage of personal data needed for the graduated response system (IP addresses, civil identity and downloaded material). The case was referred to the Constitutional Council and in 2020 we had our first partial victory: the Constitutional Council restricted Hadopi’s broad access to personal data (the law at the time provided that it could access “all documents”). However, despite to our initial assessment, this did not necessarily mark the end of the Hadopi.

The defeat handed down by the CJEU in 2024 offered a glimmer of hope:

The outcome was disappointing, as we lost on the principle: the CJEU agreed to weaken its case law. It accepted that access to metadata might, in certain cases, not be subjected to prior independent review. However, it required numerous conditions to this possibility, relating to both the retention of such data and the requirements for prior independent review.

Those two issues – retention of metadata and the requirement for prior independent review – have now been acknowledged as problematic by the Conseil d’État in a new ruling:

the Conseil d’État finally agreed with us on these two points. Firstly, it found that the retention of metadata is not carried out in a manner that safeguards civil liberties. The CJEU required “watertight separation” of IP addresses and civil identity data (which can be understood as two distinct databases, or files, that can only be technically correlated after a formal request for access by Arcom). The Conseil d’État notes that “no legal provision imposes such retention, under these conditions, on electronic communications operators”.

Secondly, it also notes that access to this data is not subject to independent review. It fully endorses the conclusions already made by the CJEU, that Arcom [the body that took over Hadopi’s role] cannot be both judge and jury: it cannot request access and then review the legality of that access itself, even though it is an independent authority. However, like the CJEU, the Conseil d’État considers that this lack of review is only an issue from the third access to the data onwards, the stage at which a registered letter is sent.

As La Quadrature du Net notes, in practical terms, this latest ruling means that Hadopi is “stalled”:

The Arcom can no longer take you to court, as the requirements set by the CJEU are not satisfied. And it can only send you an email if it has first ensured that your internet service provider has stored your metadata with a “watertight separation”. It has now been downgraded to the function of a giant spam machine.

Hadopi is not quite dead yet: the French government could try to solve the two problems pointed out by the CJEU and confirmed by the Conseil d’État, by setting up yet more independent bodies to handle these specific aspects of Hadopi. That would involve throwing even more taxpayers’ money at an approach that has not only failed completely, but which is fundamentally misguided. Clearly, trying to keep the moribund Hadopi alive in this way would be an irrational and wasteful thing for the French government to contemplate; but given this is the world of copyright, it might well try to do it anyway.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally posted to Walled Culture.

05:00 AM

Journalists Identify Murder Victims Of Trump’s Boat Strike Program [Techdirt]

It’s hard to believe we once were shocked to hear a government figure proudly declare that we kill people based on metadata.

What’s happening now is even more disturbing. We’re killing people simply because they happen to be in boats spotted exiting certain shores and headed towards international waters.

The War on Drugs has always been evil. It has always relied on the ends justifying the malicious means, especially when the means usually meant the killing or incarceration of non-white people.

Under Trump, it’s gotten even worse. Trump has pretended the mere existence of a drug trade — something that involves the exchange of money for goods by consenting adults — justifies the wholesale slaughter of people in boats in international waters.

The Defense Department and Trump himself have posted clips of boat strikes on social media, almost always accompanied by self-serving statements about protecting Americans from foreign-based drug cartels.

But the government has offered very little in support of its social media postings and public statements. Almost no documentation exists to buttress assertions about the at-sea execution of alleged drug traffickers. Almost nothing connects these random murders to cartel activity.

The government has shown absolutely no interest in identifying the victims of its extrajudicial murder program. And why would it? Identifying drone strike victims might undercut the government’s unproven assertions. Worse, it might expose it for what it is: small-scale genocide meant to kill non-white people whose ultimate destination might be the United States.

It’s up to everyone else to do what this government and its historically large deficit won’t do: address the human cost of its antagonism towards any nation located south of the US border. Those doing this heavy lifting don’t have the benefit of billions of dollars of funding or internal pressure to discover the truth. They’re doing it because our government won’t.

Twenty journalists involved with the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) have managed to identify 13 victims of Trump administration drone strikes. And even though it’s only a small percentage of the nearly 200 people our nation has murdered in open waters since Trump took office, it still matters.

This administration may prefer these people to remain faceless and nameless, since it makes their killing that much easier to shrug off. But anyone with an operating conscience shouldn’t pretend this effort is too small to matter. It does, and these are the names of a small portion of the people this administration has presumably straight-up murdered — an assumption that should stand until the administration is willing to produce evidence that says otherwise.

Of the 16 victims now identified, eight are Venezuelans: Juan Carlos Fuentes, 43; Luis Ramón Amundarain, 36; Eduard Hidalgo, 46; Dushak Milovcic, 24; and Robert Sánchez, Jesús Carreño, Eduardo Jaime and Luis Alí Martínez, whose ages are unknown. Three are Colombians: Alejandro Andrés Carranza Medina, 42, and Ronald Arregocés and Adrián Lubo (ages unknown). Two are from Ecuador: Pedro Ramón Holguín Holguín, 40, and Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Solórzano, 34; two are Trinidadians: Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo (age unknown); and one is from Saint Lucia: Ricky Joseph (age unknown).

Some of the people murdered by Trump’s Defense Department were simply going from one country to another to secure employment. Some of them may have been transporting drugs, but they were mules, rather than key members of international drug cartels. What’s actually known about the nearly 200 people the administration has killed is minimal. And the one entity that could provide more insight on its drone strike targets isn’t interested in sharing this information with anyone.

In the eight months since the airstrikes began, the US has not provided any evidence that any of the 194 victims were involved in drug trafficking.

Read that again: the US government has not provided evidence about any of its 194 murder victims. Instead, it has produced a steady stream of baseless invective meant to persuade the stupidest of Americans that these killings were justified.

What is being said by government officials doesn’t erase its refusal to provide evidence backing its claim, much less justify killings it’s unwilling to honestly discuss with the US public or its congressional oversight.

A spokesperson for US Southern Command said that all the strikes were “deliberate, lawful and precise, directed specifically at narco-terrorists and their enablers. We have full confidence in the operations and intelligence professionals who inform our missions.”

This is not evidence of anything. This statement is conclusory, which is the exact opposite of evidence, as any court will tell you. It simply says the government is in the right because the government says it’s in the right. That’s not justification. That’s someone representing entities swallowing up billions of federal officers telling the people paying its outsized paycheck “because I said so” and expecting that to be the end of the discussion.

The American public is not the government’s child. It’s actually the other way around. The government is reliant on the public, which makes the general public the adult in this conversation. That far too many MAGA enablers refuse to be the adults in the room makes it that much easier for the government to pretend it owes the public nothing. But that doesn’t change how this actually works. The government works for us, rather than the other way around. And when it doesn’t, it’s up to the public to remind it of its place.

In this case, it took people in other countries to generate the modicum of accountability this nation — under Trump — appears unwilling to do itself. That’s just fucking sad.

Daily Deal: Headway Premium Memorial Day Sale [Techdirt]

Unlock a world of knowledge with a Headway Premium subscription. This exclusive deal gives you unlimited access to Headway’s massive library of 1500+ book summaries, with 30-50 new ones added monthly. Cover any topic you can imagine, from personal development and business strategies to health and wellness. It’s usually on sale for $60 for new users only, but for a very limited time you can get it for $47.97.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

03:00 AM

SpaceX’s IPO Filing Shows Elon’s Twitter ‘Business Genius’ Was A Fantasy [Techdirt]

Elon Musk, business genius. When Elon Musk announced his plans to buy Twitter, some of his billionaire friends rushed to text him to say they’d throw whatever money they wanted into the deal. Larry Ellison casually offered “a billion… or whatever you recommend.” Marc Andreessen offered $250 million, no questions asked. This all came out in the lawsuit when Musk tried to back out of the deal:

Publicly, these billionaires insisted that Elon was a sure shot business genius who would easily make them much richer. Elon then sent around a presentation to other investors who would perhaps take a bit more convincing. The NY Times got its hands on Elon’s clearly pulled-out-of-his-ass projections. $26.4 billion in revenue by 2028! That included $12 billion from advertising, $10 billion from subscriptions and the rest from licensing.

Remember, at the time, Twitter’s ad revenue was decent: $4.51 billion in 2021 (its last full year as a public company) with another half a billion in licensing revenue. So Elon was suggesting he had the magic formula for massively increasing ad revenue and subscription revenue.

There was plenty of reporting over the last few years on how the opposite happened. Ad revenue absolutely tanked. It got so bad that the company started suing advertisers for not advertising on the newly renamed X (and threatening advertisers that choosing not to advertise would get them added to the lawsuit), pretending that it was some sort of antitrust violation. It took a court to point out that this was utter nonsense.

Anyway, given the private nature of X, we didn’t have any real official confirmation on some of the revenue numbers. But in the last year and a half, Elon has been merging his Xs. He merged X into xAI, then merged xAI into SpaceX. And now SpaceX has filed for a massive IPO, giving us an S1 with some financial information about how X is actually performing after all.

Of course, by merging all these companies, it gives Elon a bit of a chance to obfuscate the numbers. The user metrics, for example, show both users of X and xAI’s grok (which are not all the same). Also, somewhat ironically given Elon’s pretextual whining about how there were too many bots on Twitter, the S1 admits that a lot of the activity on X these days is almost certainly bots and they apparently have no way to break out how many humans still use the service:

“supported accounts” refers to, when used in the context of our X platform and Grok, a human, bot or similar account that logged into the X platform or Grok. The total number of supported accounts may include fake, spam or bot accounts if they are active.

Gosh. I thought you were taking over the site to get rid of all the bots and spam.

Anyhoo, now that we have some numbers, let’s compare them to what Elon sold his investors.

Remember, the plan was $26.4 billion by 2028. We’re more than halfway there. How’s it going? Well… when he combines xAI (grok) revenue with X revenue (so not even just breaking out X’s ad revenue)… we get… a total of $3.201 billion in 2025. So, just to put this in perspective… when he took over in 2022 he laid out a five year plan to take the company that had $4.5 billion in ad revenue the year before he bought it up to $12 billion in five years. Three years in and… it’s now somewhere pretty far below $3 billion. And they’re proud of the fact it’s finally started to go up again:

Revenue for the year ended December 31, 2025 increased by $581 million, or 22.2%, compared to the prior year ended December 31, 2024. This increase was primarily due to an increase in advertising revenue of $116 million as advertising spend increased from advertising partners on X and an increase in AI solutions and infrastructure revenue of $465 million.

So… from 2024 to 2025… they increased advertising revenue on X… by… $116 million, after knocking it down by somewhere in the range of $2 billion? BUSINESS GENIUS.

But, that’s okay. Part of the pitch was that he was going to get advertising to be less than 50% of Twitter’s revenue by 2028 because it was going to be replaced by a massive wave of subscription revenue. $10 billion by 2028! Musk predicted 69 million users of Twitter Blue (what became X Premium) by 2025 and 159 million in 2028. And then also another 104 million subscribers to a mysterious “X” subscription by 2028, which was not explained in the pitch. Even though this was before the rollout of ChatGPT, if we want to grant Elon credit to think he had already planned to launch an AI subscription service called “X” by then… how are we doing towards those numbers?

As of March 31, 2026, we reached approximately 6.3 million active paid subscribers, which was comprised of approximately 4.4 million X Premium and Premium+ paid subscribers and approximately 1.9 million SuperGrok, SuperGrok Heavy and SuperGrok Lite paid subscribers.

Leaving aside the Grok subscribers… they have… 4.4 million X Premium subscribers. That seems a bit short of the 69 million paid subscribers (which was almost certainly chosen because Musk is, emotionally, a 12-year-old boy). Once you combine that with the Grok subscribers (most of those plans cost significantly more than X Premium) and you get a grand total of… $365 million. Given the breakdown of X vs. Grok subscribers and the different pricing, X subscribers likely account for less than two-thirds of that revenue — call it under $250 million. That seems juuuuust a bit short of $10 billion.

His initial pitch to investors also projected that by 2028 the payments business would be bringing in over a billion dollars. It’s now 2025 and while the S1 mentions payments, it’s very much a future thing:

We plan to further broaden the value proposition of X through offerings like Money, a product we launched in beta in November 2025, which aims to expand platform utility by enabling payments and other financial services.

In the pitch to investors, the plan was to have that generating revenue by 2023. A bit behind schedule, it seems.

Also, part of the pitch was that all the debt he’d taken on would be paid back through free cash flow. He even says that by 2025 (hmm… last year…) the company would grow to $3.2 billion. Uh, not so close. Again, that almost matches the revenue number, but the cash flow was… decidedly negative. The entire AI part of the business lost over $6 billion last year. I don’t think Elon’s paying off the debt with free cash flow any time soon.

Look, obviously, forward looking projections and investor pitches are fantasies. They always are. That’s kind of the point. And also, obviously, the consumer AI/LLM race which really became a consumer phenomenon started right after Musk closed the purchase, and shifted the landscape somewhat. Also, obviously, by merging X into xAI and then merging that combined company into SpaceX, the various investors are likely to make out just fine (even if it is stacking multiple houses of cards on top of each other).

But, given how there was a group of Silicon Valley VCs and Wall Street banker types who absolutely insisted that Elon had a Midas touch and would absolutely know how to turn Twitter into revenue gold, it seems worth checking in on just how badly those plans failed. Yes, he’s been able to paper that over with mergers between companies he owns, but the actual numbers don’t lie.

So where does this leave the investors who lined up to hand Elon a few billion dollars, no questions asked? Probably fine, actually. The SpaceX IPO will almost certainly value the combined entity at a number that makes early Twitter/X investors more than whole. That’s what merging a struggling social network into a so-so AI startup into a deeply in debt (but in strong demand) rocket company will get you — the underlying failure gets laundered by the valuation of everything else in the stack.

But the operational track record is what it is. Twitter was generating $4.5 billion in ad revenue the year before Musk bought it. Three years into his five-year plan to reach $12 billion, the combined X/xAI advertising business is at somewhere under $3 billion — and that’s counting the separate AI business he launched after acquisition. The 69 million paid subscribers became 4.4 million. The $10 billion subscription business became $250 million. The payments business that was supposed to be generating revenue in 2023 just launched in beta in November 2025.

The “business genius” narrative was always doing a lot of work. Now we have the numbers. They don’t.

01:00 AM

Kanji of the Day: 宮 [Kanji of the Day]

宮

✍10

小3

Shinto shrine, constellations, palace, princess

キュウ　グウ　ク　クウ

みや

宮城   (きゅうじょう)   —   Imperial Palace (esp. from 1888 to 1946)
大宮   (おおみや)   —   imperial palace
宮城県   (みやぎけん)   —   Miyagi Prefecture (Tohoku area)
神宮   (じんぐう)   —   high-status Shinto shrine with connection to imperial family
宮崎県   (みやざきけん)   —   Miyazaki Prefecture (Kyushu)
迷宮   (めいきゅう)   —   labyrinth
子宮   (しきゅう)   —   womb
二宮   (にぐう)   —   the Two Ise Shrines
宮殿   (きゅうでん)   —   palace
明治神宮   (めいじじんぐう)   —   Meiji Shrine

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 膨 [Kanji of the Day]

膨

✍16

中学

swell, get fat, thick

ボウ

ふく.らむ　ふく.れる

膨大   (ぼうだい)   —   huge
膨らむ   (ふくらむ)   —   to expand
膨張   (ぼうちょう)   —   expansion
膨らみ   (ふくらみ)   —   swelling
膨らます   (ふくらます)   —   to swell
膨れる   (ふくれる)   —   to swell (out)
膨れ上がる   (ふくれあがる)   —   to swell up
着膨れ   (きぶくれ)   —   bundling up (in layers of clothes)
膨潤   (ぼうじゅん)   —   swelling (with fluid)
膨脹   (ぼうちょう)   —   expansion

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Friday 2026-05-22

11:00 PM

Spanish Court Declines to Fine NordVPN Over LaLiga Piracy Blocking Order [TorrentFreak]

nordvpnIn February, the Commercial Court No. 1 of Córdoba labeled VPN services as “technological intermediaries,” ordering them to actively block IP addresses that host illegal LaLiga matches.

The “dynamic” injunction specifically targeted NordVPN and ProtonVPN and it was granted without the companies being heard. In addition, there was no immediate right of appeal either.

Both VPN providers questioned the Spanish court’s jurisdiction, as they are both incorporated outside the EU. NordVPN called the approach unacceptable and warned of overblocking.

LaLiga, in its turn, pointed out that NordVPN failed to fully implement the Spanish interim order, and it asked the court to punish the VPN provider with fines.

Fines Rejected

According to NordVPN, the court declined this request. In a blog post published today, the company says the Córdoba judge dismissed LaLiga’s request for coercive fines, because it could not conclude that NordVPN had deliberately and without justification breached the February order.

The technical evidence that NordVPN presented in court relied on two points.

1. The flagged IP addresses changed frequently, often within hours, so the provided lists no longer matched the live addresses by the time blocking could take effect.

2. The blanket IP-level blocking demanded would have resulted in broad overblocking, rendering thousands of lawful websites inaccessible to users in Spain and beyond.

“What the ruling does is confirm something we said openly from day one — the technical concerns are real and evidenced, and a Spanish court has now recognized that,” the blog post reads.

The court’s findings, as described to TorrentFreak by NordVPN, are more measured. The company says the judge accepted its technical evidence as relevant to compliance but stopped short of ruling its experts right and LaLiga’s wrong, instead finding that the two reports deserved “the same consideration” while reaching “the opposite conclusion.”

For a closer look, TorrentFreak asked NordVPN for a copy of the order, but the company said it could not share it at this stage.

Update: Shortly after publication, LaLiga informed TorrentFreak that it couldn’t share a copy of the order either. The league confirms that the decision merely sets aside the coercive fines while the proceedings continue, stressing that it does not exempt NordVPN from implementing IP blocks where LaLiga can prove piracy is taking place.

Not the Final Word

By NordVPN’s own account, the decision is narrow. The company describes it as a procedural ruling at the preliminary stage, not a judgment on the merits. This means that the main proceedings are still ahead.

At the same time, the VPN provider also points out that there is broader opposition growing against the Spanish blocking effort, where overblocking affected legal sites and services at Cloudflare, Vercel, GitHub, Docker, and elsewhere.

“Inside Spain, the consequences of indiscriminate IP blocking have become almost impossible to ignore,” NordVPN writes.

The friction has reached parliament. On April 29, a congressional committee passed a non-binding motion urging the government to reform Spain’s Digital Services Law, introducing a principle of “technological proportionality” to address and limit overblocking.

For now, however, the original February injunction remains in place and the underlying case continues. Whether the technical objections that NordVPN presented in court will also hold up when they are reviewed on the merits has yet to be seen.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

10:00 PM

The second thing [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

It’s useful and satisfying to have people go along with your wishes and your taste.

But hoping that they’ll be delighted to do so and thank you for pointing out their previous errors might be asking for too much.

It’s one thing for people to act as if you’re right. It’s a whole other thing for them to acknowledge that they are wrong. It might not be worth what it costs to achieve.

      

Amazon Gets Into The AI Podcast Slop Business [Techdirt]

Late last year we wrote about a new startup that was flooding the internet with AI-generated podcast slop. Featuring fake hosts having fake discussions, the startup proudly stated it was creating about 3,000 new AI-generated podcasts every single week. The owners of the startup (who called critics of AI slop “Luddites,”) stated that because they cost so little to produce, even selling 30 episodes for a dollar nets them a tidy profit when scaled up appropriately.

That this results in an internet positively full of lazy mass-produced cack — and what that does to the public interest, authentic creators, and informed consensus — doesn’t really enter into it.

Not to be outdone, Amazon appears poised to join the AI slop podcast race. The company announced this week that it had begun mass producing AI-generated podcasts featuring two fake experts having conversations about all sorts of stuff. More specifically, Amazon is reformatting Alexa+’s extended answers on different topics and turning them into “podcasts.”

During this process, Jeff Bezos owned software will express manufactured opinions on all sorts of things, from the death of monoculture to the health of the U.S. recording industry:

“In an example clip shared by Amazon of the new Alexa Podcasts feature, the two AI-generated hosts discuss “the latest music releases.” A male Alexa+ narrator says more than 50% of music listening now comes from unsigned artists. “The monoculture is just gone,” a female-voiced Alexa+ narrator chimes in. The male Alexa+ host says there has been “stoner metal,” indie pop and experimental hip-hop music “all dropping on the same Friday,” and adds, “That’s not chaos — that’s the healthiest the music ecosystem has ever been.”

Cool.

For some reason the Variety story didn’t quote the best part of the shared Amazon example clip; namely where software in a female voice informs you that there’s no gatekeeping anymore and authenticity rules the day:

“There’s no gatekeeping anymore. If you make something real people are going to find it, and the algorithm is working for artists in a way it wasn’t five years ago.”

Clearly concerned that people would accuse them of creating yet more lazy and quickly automated engagement slop in the era of AI obituary scams, Amazon is pinky swearing that journalists will play a central role in fact-checking the content:

“Seemingly to dispel the notion that these “podcasts” will be AI audio slop, Amazon emphasized that it has deals with major news organizations to ensure “accurate, real-time news and information.” Those include the Associated Press, Reuters, the Washington Post, Time magazine, Forbes, Business Insider, Politico and USA Today; publications from Condé Nast, Hearst and Vox Media; and more than 200 local newspapers across the U.S.”

All that extra journalistic manpower just laying around from places like the Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post (which just fired 300 journalists and shitcanned its last black female opinion columnist). Or Business Insider, one of the cornerstones of what I call “CEO said a thing!” pseudo journalism. Or Forbes, which now just lets any random yahoo contribute as a “regular columnist.” Or Vox, which is about to be sold off to Rupert Murdoch’s kid. Or Politico, the website owned by a rich German Trump fan.

You know, all the places that have been hollowed out by layoffs and mismanaged into the ground by incompetent billionaires who have no idea how anything works and are keen to produce a giant badly automated engagement ouroborus that shits money without needing to pay human beings a living wage (or health insurance).

In effect they’re using software automation to algorithmically hijack and repackage the informed expertise of other people, then reselling it to you as something new. With some lip service to the idea that there are enough journalists left to maintain factual quality control over large language models prone to errors, plagiarism, and all sorts of disastrous fuckery at scale.

I desperately want to believe that as we accelerate into the era of badly automated mass engagement slop, there will be a value premium placed on authentic expertise. That the bland homogenized vibe coded half-assed sameness being plattered up at impossible new scale will usher forth a renaissance for real connection, genuine skill, actual talent, and human expertise.

But then I remember what most people buy at the grocery store. And the kind of people dictating the contours of both large language models and our increasingly consolidated, authoritarian-friendly media gatekeeping systems. And I quickly have my doubts that authentic expertise and connection has any meaningful chance of being heard above the din.

01:00 PM

Post Loss Clarity: Bill Cassidy Rediscovers His Spine As A Lame Duck Senator [Techdirt]

Just a few days ago, I wrote a post about how Bill Cassidy had been primaried out of returning as a senator for Louisiana and how all of this bootlicking of the Trump administration obviously didn’t do the job he hoped it would do. As a result, he has been left as a lame duck senator with a legacy that will be primarily about his decision to belay his own moral stances generally and his heavy hand in RFK Jr. leading HHS under Trump 2.0.

The point of that post was two-fold. First, I wanted to highlight just how damning to his legacy the appointment of Kennedy to HHS has become to his legacy. Second, I wanted to highlight that this supposedly serious senator was perfectly willing to give up on his principles the moment he thought, incorrectly as it turns out, that it would be politically expedient to do so.

And if you need a bow to put on that second point, you can get it now that Cassidy has flipped his vote on the Senate bill to end America’s involvement in the war with Iran until the Trump administration gets authorization from Congress.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who just lost his primary for renomination over the weekend after he faced opposition from Trump, voted “yes” to advance the measure, the first time he has done so after having repeatedly voted “no.”

“While I support the administration’s efforts to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, the White House and Pentagon have left Congress in the dark on Operation Epic Fury,” Cassidy said in a statement. “In Louisiana, I’ve heard from people, including President Trump’s supporters, who are concerned about this war. Until the administration provides clarity, no congressional authorization or extension can be justified.”

It’s amazing how post-election-loss clarity can assist someone in rediscovering their own spinal cord. Now, you can read Cassidy’s comments about how Congress has been left in the dark and that he’s hearing from people worried that maybe this whole warlord routine by Trump isn’t so great and believe that Cassidy came to all of these epiphanies in the last couple of days… if you want. But I’m going to point at you and laugh in your face if you do.

Now that Cassidy has nothing to lose, he’s decided to do the right thing. That isn’t some feather in his cap. It’s a self-indictment of all of his actions leading all the way up to his primary loss. If Cassidy thought this vote was the right thing to do today, what made it the wrong thing to do a week ago? The answer is nothing.

Even if a vote is taken and the bill passes, it would still need to get through the Republican House and survive a presidential veto. There is little chance of either happening. But that isn’t the point.

The point is that Bill Cassidy could have been a patriot over the past year and a half since Trump’s reelection, but he chose not to until he didn’t have a Senate seat to defend. And that makes him a coward.

12:00 PM

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Message In A Bottleneck [Techdirt]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed.

In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by civil liberties lawyer Jennifer Granick. Together they discuss:

Support the podcast by joining our Patreon, with special founder membership available until May 28th.

09:00 AM

Pluralistic: Shopping isn't politics (21 May 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->-> Top Sources: None -->

Today's links

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


A grocery store egg refrigerator, lined with stacks of egg cartons. The middle stack has been replaced with the capitol dome.

Shopping isn't politics (permalink)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

  • "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.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

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

ISSN: 3066-764X

Pluralistic: It's not a crime if we do it (to nurses) with an app (22 Apr 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->-> Top Sources: None -->

Today's links


A 1950s killer robot with eye lasers; it has collected four bell jars in which float the heads of disembodied nurses. It is zapping one jar with its lasers. In the background is a golgotha, taken from a Dore Old Testament engraving.

It's not a crime if we do it (to nurses) with an app (permalink)

If I could abolish one piece of received wisdom about tech policy, it would be this: "Tech moves at the speed of innovation and regulation moves at the speed of government, so regulation will always lag behind tech."

(If I could abolish two pieces of received wisdom about tech policy, the other one would be "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Decent treatment is not a customer reward program, and "voting with your wallet" only works if you're a billionaire whose wallet is thicker than all the other wallets put together.)

To be clear, there are times when tech enables new forms of conduct that don't fit neatly into the existing policy framework. For example, we apply copyright to anyone who makes or handles a copy of a creative work, and that used to be a pretty good proxy for "someone in the supply chain of the media industry."

The problem is that computers work by making dozens and dozens of copies every time you click your mouse, and we all use computers for everything, and clicking a mouse doesn't make you part of the entertainment business. The fact that we've had hyperinflation in "making and handling copies" but continued to apply an esoteric industrial framework to pretty much everything everyone does all the time is a huge problem that desperately needs fixing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/the-internets-original-sin/

Copyright notwithstanding, tech generally does not outrun our capacity to regulate it. Rather, tech bosses come up with incredibly flimsy reasons why their business doesn't fit into the existing regulatory framework, and policymakers accept these ridiculous excuses so readily that one can only assume they're in on the racket.

Take "fintech," all those neobanks and the cryptocurrency junk and shitcoins and stablecoins and NFTs and so on that a group of pump-and-dumpers, money launderers and stock swindlers have pushed for more than a decade now. As Trashfuture's Riley Quinn says, "Whenever you hear 'fintech,' you should think 'unregulated bank.'" It's not hard to apply existing regulations to these companies: they fall under banking law, usury law, securities law and gambling law.

There's no (good) reason not to apply these legal frameworks to the crypto industry – but there are plenty of bad reasons not to. The most obvious reason not to apply those regulations is that you are on the same side as the pump-and-dumpers, money launderers and stock swindlers. The reason we struggle to regulate fintech is that we just don't want to.

Then there's Uber, which claimed that it wasn't a taxi company, it was a "transportation network company," which meant that none of the regulations we apply to taxis should apply to Uber. To call this a transparent ruse is to do great violence to the good, hardworking transparent ruses putting in the hard yards to run honest scams. "Uber isn't a taxi company, it's a transportation network company" is about as plausible as those t-shirts that read "It's not a bald spot, it's a solar-panel for a sex-machine."

Emboldened by the success of the "transportation network company" wheeze, Uber launched Uber Eats, claiming that it wasn't a "food delivery company" but rather a "delivery network company." This set up the template for a remorseless tide of new sex-machine solar-panels that have pushed Uber's system of wage-theft and worker misclassification into an expanding constellation of labor categories.

From fintech to price-fixing to gig-work, the entire industry runs on the very stupid proposition that "it's not a crime if we do it with an app":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loading

One of the worst of these sex-machine solar-panels is to be found in nursing, where a cluster of heavily capitalized apps that nurses must rely on to get shifts insist that they aren't "healthcare staffing agencies," rather, they are "healthcare worker platforms" that should be exempted from the regulations that we started applying to the former after a string of calamities and disasters.

This phenomenon is detailed in eye-watering detail in "Uber For Nursing," a must-read new report by Katie J Wells, Maya Pinto, and Funda Ustek Spilda for the AI Now Institute:

https://ainowinstitute.org/publications/uber-for-nursing

If "Uber for nursing" rings a bell, you might be thinking of "Uber for Nursing: How an AI-Powered Gig Model Is Threatening Health Care," an earlier report that Wells and Spilda wrote for the Roosevelt Institute in late 2024:

https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/uber-for-nursing/

The Roosevelt Institute report contained many eye-popping findings, most notably that at least some of the leading national nursing gig-work platforms were using data-brokers to find out how much debt nurses were carrying, and offered lower wages to the nurses with the most debt, on the grounds that the most economically desperate nurses will accept the lowest pay:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

The new report describes how, in the absence of a muscular policy response, these nursing gig-work companies have raised fantastic sums of money, some of which they have diverted to regulatory capture projects in a bid to states to recognize their solar-panel sex-machines, with great success. These companies haven't merely refined their lobbying game, either – as a sphincter-puckering appendix detailing the experience of nurses with these apps shows, they have also made great strides in immiserating nurses and transferring their earning power to gig platforms and the hospitals that rely on them.

This degradation of the work experience is characteristic of the new world of AI-powered jobs. AI isn't taking workers' jobs, but it is enshittifying them, with degrading, neurosis-inducing surveillance and high-handed discipline:

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/what-does-it-mean-to-work-under-algorithmic-eyes

Algorithmic oversight is a terror for any worker, but it's particularly bad when applied to healthcare workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

But gig-work companies remain laser-focused on healthcare workers, likely because that is one of the only growing professions left in America. They're trying to screw over healthcare workers for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: "That's where the money is." The corollary here is that the 15% of the American workforce that is employed in the healthcare industry is on the front lines of the battle against gig-work and algorithmic management.

Like parasites that attack the sick and weak, gig-work and algorithmic management come first for industries that are already bad for workers and the people they serve, making things much worse while insisting that they're just trying to apply a cool digital fix to a broken analog system. That, too, was Uber's playbook: attacking the medallion taxi system as corrupt and sclerotic – while replacing it with a system that's corrupt, extractive and dynamic, able to evade all attempts to improve things for drivers and riders (such as drivers' unions).

That's what's happened with healthcare staffing agencies. These have long been a fixture in healthcare, partly because there was always a large cohort of skilled healthcare professionals who valued the flexibility of short term contracts (for example, "travel nurses") and partly because hospitals love hiring contractors who aren't part of their workers' unions.

Staffing agencies weren't good. A string of scandals led to waves of regulations in states like Colorado, Minnesota and New York that required agencies to "register annually, disclose shareholders and executive officers, certify worker credentials, report to state authorities on the number of workers employed, document service rates charged to facilities, and list average wages paid to workers by job category." These regulations also banned staffing agencies from locking up workers with noncompete agreements and ripping them off with finder's fees.

Rather than strengthening these protections, gig nursing platforms avoid them. Where staffing agencies secure multi-week contracts for travel nurses, gig platforms typically assign workers to single-day shifts. Where staffing agencies let nurses bargain for their scheduling needs, gig platforms present take-it-or-leave-it offers and no opportunities to speak to a human when things go wrong. And where staffing agencies evaluated the workers on their roster based on employer feedback, the gig platforms install apps that continuously surveil and evaluate workers, downranking them and cutting their hours and pay based on algorithmic judgments that are never explained and cannot be appealed.

Platforms match nurses with shifts, claiming to regulators that they're little more than a "job-notice board." But when they pitch hospitals, they tell a different story, about their ability to use algorithms to erode wages and blacklist workers who make trouble. Healthcare gig-work apps push workers to accept shifts that require more travel and pay less, at facilities they don't want to work at. Refusal to accept a shift can permanently compromise your ability to get future shifts, and/or lower the wage you're offered in future.

In addition to these poor working conditions and low wages, gig platforms have resurrected the prohibited practice of charging workers "finder's fees," by layering on junk fees that take money out of every paycheck. Staffing agencies aren't allowed to do this, but the gig-work platforms' "solar panel for a sex-machine" gambit transforms the finder's fee into a "platform fee" that somehow escapes regulators' grasp.

How is it that a regulator can't see that a "platform fee" is exactly equivalent to a "finder's fee?" This is not a case of technology outpacing regulation – it's a case of lawmakers colluding with profitable firms to evade regulation in order to steal from workers.

The platforms are aslosh in investor cash – Clipboard Health, Intelycare, and Shiftkey are all valued at more than $1b, and Shiftkey just completed a $300m private equity raise. This leaves them with lots of ready cash to spend on regulatory entrepreneurship. In Georgia, Clipboard lobbied "to exempt gig nursing platforms from state unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation laws." In Ohio, Shiftkey and Clipboard are pushing a bill "to classify gig nurses as independent contractors, exempting gig platforms from minimum wage and other worker protection laws." In Utah, Nursa is praising a bill that a state senator called "lightest-touch regulation." All in all, 17 states have nurse gig platform deregulation bills underway.

In 2022, the healthcare gig-work platforms tried to get a California ballot measure to carve nursing platforms out of all state labor laws. They withdrew it, but pursued an "under the radar" approach to get the same thing by seeking changes in administrative rules, rather than state laws. Lobbying for administrative law changes to exempt healthcare gig-work platforms from regulation is also underway in Missouri, Louisiana and Utah.

One bright light in all this comes from New York state, where a 2025 law "affirmatively recognizes gig nursing platforms as entities that must comply with the state’s healthcare staffing agency rules." The existence of this law proves that the crisis of gig-work healthcare platforms is not an example of tech racing ahead of regulation. If New York's state leg can figure out that a gig-work platform is just a staffing agency in app form, then other states can do so as well. If they don't figure that out, that's because they don't want to.

Sometime in this century, our political class and our financial class arrived at a consensus that Douglas Rushkoff describes as "go meta," in his 2022 book Survival of the Richest:

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

The "go meta" ethos insists that the most important, smartest and most valuable move is always away from productive labor. Don't drive a cab: go meta and own a medallion that you rent to a cab driver. Don't own a medallion, go meta and start a gig-work ride-hailing company. Don't start a gig-work ride-hailing company, go meta and invest in a gig-work ride-hailing company. Don't invest in a gig-work ride-hailing company, go meta and buy options in a gig-work ride-hailing company – and so on and so on, into ever more abstracted forms of gambling and rent-collection.

The reorganization of the economy around parasitic middlemen and financial gamblers (but I repeat myself) is the real reason that we can't regulate tech. Once you've decided that the most important party to a transaction is the person who has the option on the share on the platform on the license that the worker who actually does the job requires, of course you're going to see a solar-panel for a sex-machine in every bald spot.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago PKD ratted out other SF writers to the FBI https://web.archive.org/web/20010428121230/https://www.linguafranca.com/print/0105/cover.html

#15yrsago Weird Al snubbed by Lady Gaga, releases his parody without permission as fair use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUxXKfQkswE

#15yrsago How do you compete with free? A taxonomy of reasons to pay for digital files https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2011/apr/20/digital-free-persuade-pay-cory-doctorow?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

#15yrsago iOS devices secretly log and retain record of every place you go, transfer to your PC and subsequent devices https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/apr/20/iphone-tracking-prompts-privacy-fears

#10yrsago Before 1988 Olympics, South Korea sent ‘vagrants’ to camps where rape and murder were routine https://web.archive.org/web/20160420234916/https://bigstory.ap.org/article/c22de3a565fe4e85a0508bbbd72c3c1b/ap-s-korea-covered-mass-abuse-killings-vagrants

#10yrsago Luxury overnight bus with sleeper cabins shuttles between LA and San Francisco https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/sleepbus-gets-you-from-sf-to-la-for-50.html

#10yrsago Volkswagen’s internal Dieselgate probe stuck because the company used code-words for its cheat software https://web.archive.org/web/20160419095045/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-19/vw-cheating-code-words-said-to-complicate-emissions-probe

#10yrsago Chinese opsec funnies: your foreign boyfriend is a western spy! https://web.archive.org/web/20160420125125/https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/nsed/

#10yrsago UK Chancellor exempts families of “Politically Exposed Persons” from money laundering scrutiny https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/04/uks-osborne-exempts-members-of-parliament-other-politically-exposed-persons-from-money-laundering-oversight.html

#10yrsago Colorado school district wants to arm security staff with assault rifles https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2016/0419/Colorado-school-district-to-equip-security-workers-with-semiautomatic-rifles

#5yrsago McDonald's corporate wages war on ice-cream hackers https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

#5yrsago Real penalties for covid evicters https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cfpb

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)

  • "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, 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.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

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

ISSN: 3066-764X

Pluralistic: Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff's "Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed" (21 Apr 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]


Today's links


The Harpercollins cover for Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff's 'Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed.'

Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff's "Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed" (permalink)

Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff's Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed seeks to describe the ideology that gave rise to Elon Musk, the social forces that gave rise to that ideology, and the terrible future that ideology seeks to bring about:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/muskism-quinn-slobodianben-tarnoff?variant=43838135402530

The book's starting point is that "Muskism" isn't merely the things Musk says, believes and does. It's the ideology that coalesces around him, from the people in his wake and the people he follows. Just as Henry Ford neither defined "Fordism" nor precisely practiced it, "Muskism" is centered on Elon Musk, but it's not Elon Musk's creation.

So what is Muskism? To answer this question, Slobodian and Tarnoff enumerate the factors and influences that produced Musk himself. There's apartheid, with its "rational" system of technocratic authoritarianism, which blended together a life of luxury and plenty (for white settlers), brutal surveillance and state violence (for the Black majority) and fascist control over speech (for everyone), combined with a meat-grinder draft that saw young men of Musk's age being called up to suppress liberation uprisings.

Peak apartheid coincided with peak personal computing, the moment where PCs (and then, modems) were getting cheaper and faster, propagating like mushrooms, offering a young Musk access to a broad world outside of the fascist bubble of South Africa, inspiring global ambitions in Musk.

Closer to home, there's Musk's family: his grandfather, a grandiose and vicious white supremacist who moved to South Africa from Canada because of his love for apartheid and racial hierarchy. There's Musk's father, a violent and abusive fool.

Muskism is also a new variant on techno-libertarianism. Traditional techno-libertarianism seeks to dismantle the state – or better yet, exit from the state, in the manner of an Ayn Rand hero. Techno-libertarianism is intimately bound up with settler colonialism, ever on the hunt for an "empty land" (terra nullius) that can be settled without committing the original sin of expropriation, the gravest offense in a religion organized around the total sanctity of private property:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/14/this-way-to-the-egress/#terra-nullius

Muskism doesn't seek to exit the state, it seeks to colonize and control it. Long before DOGE, Musk was playing the organs of the state to his own tune, securing massive contracts and subsidies for his solar and rocketry businesses, relying on the massive, deep-pocketed government to keep his businesses afloat.

Obviously (DOGE!), Muskism also seeks to dismantle the state, but only the parts of it that can be transferred to Musk's own private hands. Muskism is about big government…for Musk, but not for you. It embodies that important conservative value summarized in Wilhoit's Law:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

This is Musk through and through – a man who demands the right to call innocent strangers "pedo guy" without legal consequence; and also wields the power of the state to shutter businesses that boycott his platform because of its shitty practices:

https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/courtside/elon-musk-sues-advertisers-who-boycott-x-under-anti-trust-laws/

Musk grew up on science fiction novels and weaves stfnal tropes through his offerings (for example, calling his chatbot "Grok"). There's no shortage of reactionary politics in science fiction, but Musk doesn't confine his sf-inspired cosmology to reactionary literature. He's famously very fond of the Wachowskis' "Matrix" movies, and leans heavily into the metaphor of the Matrix in explaining his interest in wiring people directly into computers, in characterizing opposing political beliefs as "mind viruses," and in calling his political enemies "NPCs":

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

But Musk's relationship to this metaphor differs in a subtle and important way from the right's "Red Pill" rhetoric. Musk doesn't want to break out of the Matrix – he wants to control the Matrix. He wants to decide which opinions you're allowed to see and discuss (because "most people have weak firewalls for bad ideas"), he wants to beam ideas directly into your neural link, and he wants to abolish any form of workplace democracy, conquering the world with South African baasskap (boss-ism):

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

Throughout this slim volume, Slobodian and Tarnoff tease these strains of thought out of Musk's deeds and utterances, and in the systems that he has built or colonized through acquisition. The authors are offering more than a psychoanalysis, though – they're surfacing the material basis for Muskism, the benefits it delivers to its adherents, and the victories it has racked up.

They reveal the method in Musk's chaotic and bullying management style, and recount the times Musk has successfully shattered sclerotic processes to make real breakthroughs, especially in aerospace. You'd be hard pressed to read these passages without feeling some grudging admiration.

Muskism gets stuff done…sometimes. At a cost. A high cost. Tarnoff and Slobodian count that cost, identify who pays it, and conjure up the world in which those costs continue to mount for all of us.

It's a chilling vision, a Torment Nexus dystopia run by someone who thinks cyberpunk was a suggestion, not a warning.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#15yrsago US, EU want to delay copyright treaty to help blind people for 3-5 years https://web.archive.org/web/20110423170607/http://keionline.org/node/1114

#15yrsago Is sugar a poison? https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

#15yrsago More watch-part motorcycles https://ummaisoumenos.blogspot.com/2008/11/miniaturas-fantsticasbikesfeitas-de.html

#15yrsago Seeds: comic-book memoir of father’s cancer is moving, sweet https://memex.craphound.com/2011/04/19/seeds-comic-book-memoir-of-fathers-cancer-is-moving-sweet/

#10yrsago Something New: frank, comedic, romantic memoir of a wedding in comic form https://memex.craphound.com/2016/04/19/something-new-frank-comedic-romantic-memoir-of-a-wedding-in-comic-form/

#10yrsago Ben and Jerry arrested at Democracy Spring demonstration in DC https://web.archive.org/web/20160419173913/https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/co-founders-of-ben-and-jerrys-arrested-at-us-capitol/ar-BBrW5tb?li=BBnb7Kz

#10yrsago Competing construction companies stage a bulldozer fight in a busy street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrtnIImGipg

#10yrsago Chicago Police Accountability Task Force Report: racism, corruption, and a “broken system” https://chicagopatf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PATF_Final_Report_4_13_16-1.pdf

#5yrsago Facebook's tonsils https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/19/tonsilitis/#mod-traum

#1yrago Against transparency https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/19/gotcha/#known-to-the-state-of-california-to-cause-cancer

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)

  • "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, 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.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

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

ISSN: 3066-764X

Pluralistic: Comrade Trump (20 Apr 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->-> Top Sources: None -->

Today's links

  • Comrade Trump: Burning down the American empire to save it.
  • Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
  • Object permanence: MPAA's threat-based 'education'; Cuehack; Heinlein on GWB; AT&T v the internet; British tax-havens v HMG; What is neoliberalism?; Newspaper landlords; Watch-part motorcycle; Tax havens bad; Buscemi's eyes; Sesame Street on lead poisoning.
  • Upcoming appearances: San Francisco, London, Berlin, NYC, Barcelona, Hay-on-Wye, London, NYC.
  • 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.


A Soviet propaganda poster featuring Lenin pointing angrily into the distance. It has been altered. Lenin now has Trump's hair and his skin in orange. The hammer/sickle logo behind him has been replaced with a cross.

Comrade Trump (permalink)

There aren't a lot of things I agree with Mark Carney about, but there's one area where he and I are in total accord: the old, US-dominated, "rules-based international order" was total bullshit:

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

Unlike Carney, I never pretended to like that old order, and indeed, I spent my entire life fighting against it – literally, all the way back to childhood, organizing other children to march against Canada's participation in America's nuclear weapons programs:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53616011737/in/photolist-2pFS5kt

All of which means that my experience of the Trump years is decidedly weird. On the one hand, I exist in a near-perpetual state of anxious misery, as Trump and his chud army of Christian nationalists and degenerate gamblers pursue a program of gleeful genocide. But at the very same time, I'm living in a world in which Trump is (inadvertently) dismantling many of the worst aspects of the old order in favor of something decidedly better.

Take Trump's tariff policy. Back during Trump I, he decided that Americans couldn't buy Chinese solar anymore, which had the double benefit of allowing him to pursue the twin goals of throwing red meat to Sinophobic Cold War 2.0 freaks and delivering a giant gift to the planet-wrecking oil companies that had helped him buy his way into office.

This was really bad for America, of course, but those solar panels had to go somewhere. Mostly, they ended up in Pakistan, dumped there at such a massive discount that the country solarized virtually overnight. Pakistani solar installers learned their trade from Tiktok videos set to Tamil film soundtracks, and unwired the country so thoroughly that today, the national power company is in danger of going bust because no one buys their electricity from the grid anymore. Pakistani bridal dowries now routinely include four panels, an inverter and a battery:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-countries

This is an inversion of the normal order of things, in which rich countries get all the good stuff first, and poor countries like Pakistan get scraps after we've gorged ourselves. Think of vaccine apartheid, in which monsters like Howard Dean insisted that we had to prevent countries in the global south from making their own covid vaccines, because poor brown people are too stupid and primitive to run a pharma manufacturing operation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/08/howard-dino/#the-scream

But, thanks to Comrade Trump, Pakistan was first in line to become the world's solar capital. The country's LNG terminal – built with Chinese Belt-and-Road money – is now a stranded asset, because no one there needs gas.

That's gas whose supply has been choked off in the Strait of Epstein…which brings me to Trump's foreign policy and its impact on the global energy shift. Transitory energy shortages have small effects: when your energy bill goes up for a while (because of extreme weather, say), it makes you angry and sad and might result in an electoral loss for whatever politician presided over the price hike. But when you get genuine, prolonged shortages – the sort that are accompanied by rationing – you make permanent changes.

Rationing is so psychologically scarring that it induces people to make long-delayed investments that result in permanent changes to their consumption habits. Maybe you've known for a long time that an induction top would be better for your indoor air quality and your cooking than the gas range you have now, but you don't want to buy a whole new appliance and pay for an electrician to run a high-wattage line in expensive conduit from your breaker panel to your kitchen.

But if you're an Indian restaurateur who can no longer get any cooking gas – because it's being rationed for household use – then you are going out to buy whatever induction top you can lay hands on. Maybe it's a cheap, low-powered single burner one that plugs into your existing electrics, or maybe you're splashing out and swapping out your whole gas appliance. Whichever it is, you are no longer interested in your chef's insistence that real cooking gets done over gas. If your chef can't cook on an induction top, your chef will need to find employment elsewhere.

This is going on all over the world right now, as people buy EVs (and pay to have chargers installed at home – maybe getting a twofer on their conduit runs with two high power lines run through the same conduit infrastructure). In Australia – where the last shipment of gas for the foreseeable came into port last week – people are calling their local EV dealers and offering to buy whatever car is on the lot, sight unseen.

Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, a series of dollar-related crises caused the country to ban imports of internal combustion engines altogether (oil and gas are denominated in dollars, which means you can only get oil if you first sell stuff to Americans or others who'll pay in dollars). The country's fleet of noisy, dirty motorbikes is being swiftly replaced by ebikes that get eight miles to the penny:

https://www.ecofinagency.com/news-industry/0810-49366-ethiopia-expands-vehicle-import-ban-to-trucks-pushing-electric-transport

Ebikes are insanely great technology. Cheap, rugged and reliable, they're basically bicycles that abolish hills. Once you've gotten accustomed to an ebike – maybe you've invested in a folding helmet and a raincoat – you'll never go back. The advantages of an ebike commute over a car commute are legion, but my favorite little pleasure is the ability to easily make a stop at a nice coffee shop halfway between home and work, rather than being stuck buying shitty chain coffee near the office.

Four years ago, another mad emperor, Vladimir Putin, invaded Ukraine – and in so doing, catapulted Europe's energy transition into the Gretacene, with unimaginable defeats for the fossil fuel lobby. Not just subsidies for the clean energy transition, but also policy shifts in areas that had been deadlocked for a decade, like approvals for balcony solar, which is transforming the continent. Even the UK, one of the oil industry's most reliable vassal states, is now greenlighting balcony solar:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-in-solar-available-within-months

This may not sound like much, but the UK is a country whose politics is composed of 50% hatred of migrants and trans people, and 50% incredibly stupid planning battles. Great Britain is a magical land where your neighbors can ask the government to prevent you from installing double-glazing on the grounds that it will change the "historic character" of their neighborhood of terraced Victorian homes.

I once lost a fight to get permission to put a little glass greenhouse on my balcony on the grounds that it would "alter the facade" of the undistinguished low-rise 1960s industrial building I live on top of. The fact that HMG is going to tell your facade-obsessed neighbors to fuck off all the way into the sun so that you can hang solar panels off your balcony is nothing short of a miracle.

Comrade Putin's contribution to oil-soaked Britain's energy transition can't be overstated. Thanks to "free market" policies that sent energy prices soaring after the Ukraine invasion, Brits installed so much solar (despite the existing impediments to solarization) that now the government is begging us to use more energy this summer, because the grid can't absorb all those lovely free electrons:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/14/uk-households-power-renewables-soar

The UK is on a glide-path to adopting the Australian plan. Australia also benefited from Trump I's solar embargo, receiving a ton of cheap solar that would otherwise have ended up in America. Now Australia has so much solar that they're giving away electricity, with three free hours of unlimited energy every day. Stick your dishwasher, clothes-dryer and EV charger on a timer, invest in a battery or two, and fill your boots:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/free-electricity-like-at-no-cost

(Maybe at this point you're thinking dark thoughts about critical minerals and such. That's not the problem you think it is and it's getting better every day. To take just one example, lithium batteries are about to be replaced with sodium batteries. Sodium is the world's sixth-most abundant element:)

https://www.livescience.com/technology/electric-vehicles/china-puts-a-sodium-ion-battery-into-an-ev-for-the-first-time-it-can-drive-248-miles-on-a-single-charge

The Strait of Epstein crisis is going to do more to accelerate permanent, unidirectional migration away from fossil fuels to cleantech than decades of environmental activism. Cleantech is so much better than fossil fuels – cheaper, more reliable, cleaner – that anyone who tries it becomes an instant convert. That's why the fossil fuel industry has been so insistent that no one get to try it!

To take just one example here: Texas ranchers have been solarizing, thanks to the state's bizarre "free market" energy system that sees energy prices spiking so high during cold snaps that you literally have to choose between freezing to death and going bankrupt. Solar is great for agriculture, especially in climate-ravaged Texas, where it provides crucial shade for crops and livestock, while substantially reducing soil evaporation, resulting in substantial irrigation savings.

When the oil-captured Texas legislature introduced a bill to force electric companies to add one watt of fossil power for every watt of solar that their customers installed, furious ranchers from blood red Republican rural districts flooded their town hall meetings, decrying the plan as "DEI for fossil fuels." The bill died:

https://austinfreepress.org/renewables-are-now-the-costco-of-energy-production-bill-mckibben-says/

This is the template for the long-foreseeable future. Thanks to Trump's stupid, bloody, unforgivable war of choice in the Gulf, the world is going to install unimaginable amounts of cleantech. They are going to throw away their water heaters, motorbikes, furnaces and cars and replace them with all-electric versions. They're going to cover their roofs and balconies with panels. The battery industry will experience a sustained boom. The fortunes that fossil fuel companies are reaping from the current shortage is their last windfall.

The writing is on the wall. Trump opened Alaska for drilling and the oil companies noped out because they couldn't find a bank that would loan them the money needed to get started. Then it happened again in Venezuela. This de-fossilizing was already the direction of travel, the only question was the pace at which the transition would proceed – and Comrade Trump has just stomped all over the (liquid natural) gas pedal.

Energy is just one realm where Trump is doing praxis. One of the most exciting developments that Trumpismo's incontinent belligerence has induced is the global technology transition.

For decades, the only people pointing out the dangers of using America's cash-grabbing, privacy invading defective tech exports were digital rights hippies like me, and our victories were modest and far between. Despite the Snowden revelations, despite the tech industry's prolific snood-cocking at EU privacy regulators and Canadian lawmakers, we all just carried on using these incredibly dangerous, steadily enshittifying Big Tech products. We even run our governments and structurally important companies off Big Tech. We let US tech companies update (that is, downgrade) the software on our cars and tractors, our pacemakers and ventilators, our power plants and telephone switches.

There's lots of reasons for this. For one thing, ripping out and replacing all that software and firmware is a prodigious challenge, as is building the data-centers to host it for every "digitally sovereign" country. Add to that the complexity of successfully migrating data, edit histories, archives and identities and you're looking at a very big lift. So long as the American tech bosses kept their enshittificatory gambits to a measured, slow flow, they could keep the pain beneath the threshold where it was worth us boiling frogs leaping out of their pot.

But the most important force defending American internet hegemony was free trade: specifically, the US forced all of its trading partners to adopt "anticircumvention" laws that make it illegal to modify US tech exports. That means that you can't go into business selling your neighbors the tools to use generic ink or an independent app store, much less make a fortune exporting those tools to the rest of the world:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/16/whittle-a-webserver/#mere-ornaments

Enter Comrade Trump. When Trump started weaponizing US tech platforms to take away the working files, email accounts and cloud calendars of judges who pissed him off (by sentencing Bolsonaro to prison, and by swearing out a genocide warrant for Netanyahu), he put the whole world on notice that he could shut down their governments, judiciaries or companies at the click of a mouse:

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

And of course, he's whacked the whole world with tariffs that violate the trade agreements that imposed the anticircumvention obligations that protect America's defective tech exports. Now there's no longer any reason to keep those laws on the books. Happy Liberation Day, everyone! The post-American internet is at hand:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

But Trump has even more praxis up his spraytan-stained sleeves. Trump is succeeding where Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and AOC failed: he's making the case for Democrats to defenestrate their useless, sellout, Epstein-poisoned leaders. All across the country, radical Dems and avowed socialists are sweeping primaries and elections, as voters realize that Blue No Matter Who will doom them to eternal torment in the Manchin-Synematic Universe:

https://prospect.org/2026/02/11/progressive-win-new-jersey-anti-ice-organizing-mejia/

Fury over Trumpismo is pushing even the most useless Democratic leaders to sign up for billionaire taxes:

https://jacobin.com/2026/04/zohran-tax-rich-hochul-nyc

Thanks to Comrade Trump, the median Democratic voter will no longer be satisfied with Kente cloth photo-ops and little ping-pong paddles stenciled with "down with this sort of thing":

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ping-pong-paddles-to-a-gun-fight/

Thanks to Trump, we might see criminal prosecutions – and a primary challenge for any Dem that gets in the way of a serious, Nuremberg-style reckoning with Trumpismo and its gangsters:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/10/miller-in-the-dock/#denazification

Look, all things being equal, I would have preferred that Trump had keeled over from a mid-burger stroke on the campaign trail in 2016. But when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. This is a deeply shitty timeline, but Comrade Trump keeps tripping over his red tie. Let's take the wins.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago The MPAA 'educates the public' with threatening letters https://web.archive.org/web/20120318060108/http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-255961.html&tag=tp_pr

#25yrsago Cuehack for the :CueCat https://web.archive.org/web/20010803172853/http://www.rtmark.com/cuejack/

#25yrsago Microsoft Technical Support vs The Psychic Friends Network https://web.archive.org/web/20010410171616/http://www.bmug.org/news/articles/MSvsPF.html

#20yrsago The novel Heinlein would have written about GW Bush’s America https://memex.craphound.com/2006/04/17/the-novel-heinlein-would-have-written-about-gw-bushs-america/

#20yrsago Hilarious hijinx with security guards who hate building-photographers https://thomashawk.com/2006/04/photographing-architecture-is-not.html

#20yrsago Hundreds ask Smithsonian not to sell out to Showtime https://web.archive.org/web/20060420031124/https://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1554385

#20yrsago How AT&T wants to turn the Internet into mere TV https://web.archive.org/web/20060620095643/http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/04/17/toll/index_np.html

#20yrsago NOLA mayoral candidate doctors Disneyland photo – again https://web.archive.org/web/20060422010054/https://www.wonkette.com/politics/new-orleans/kimberly-williamson-butler-continues-to-astound-us-167923.php

#20yrsago Where He-Man came from https://web.archive.org/web/20060423061651/https://thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000500.php

#20yrsago FBI demand chance to censor muckracking journo’s papers https://web.archive.org/web/20060421045340/https://www.chronicle.com/free/2006/04/2006041801n.htm

#15yrsago Ethiopia’s “newspaper landlords” rent the want-ads by the minute https://www.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/04/19/newspaper.rental.ethiopia/index.html

#15yrsago It’s people like us what makes trouble: the pernicious influence of immigrants in the UK. https://web.archive.org/web/20080314013819/http://feorag.newsvine.com/_news/2008/03/10/1356131-the-pernicious-influence-of-immigrants-in-the-uk

#15yrsago China’s “Jasmine Revolution”: anonymous out-of-country bloggers troll the politburo https://web.archive.org/web/20110412063347/http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/04/the-jasmine-revolution.html

#15yrsago Motorcycles made from watch parts https://www.deviantart.com/dkart71/art/Motorcycles-out-of-watch-parts-18a-204941090

#15yrsago Steve Buscemi’s Eyes: the printable mask https://eyesuckink.blogspot.com/2011/04/free-home-version-of-steve-buscemis.html

#15yrsago Privacy, Facebook, politics and kids https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2011/apr/18/cory-doctorow-networking-technologies-video?CMP=twt_fd

#15yrsago NZ MP votes for anti-piracy law hours after tweeting about her love of pirated music https://torrentfreak.com/kiwi-mp-called-out-as-pirate-after-passing-anti-piracy-law-110415/

#15yrsago Righthaven copyright trolls never had the right to sue, have their asses handed to them by the EFF https://web.archive.org/web/20110418001051/http://paidcontent.org/article/419-righthavens-secret-contract-is-revealedwill-its-strategy-collapse/

#15yrsago TSA considers being upset at screening procedures to be an indicator of terrorist intentions https://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/04/15/tsa.screeners.complain/

#10yrsago The saga of Ian Bogost’s pressure-washer https://bogostpressurewasherstatus.tumblr.com/

#10yrsago Heads of UK’s tax havens to Her Majesty’s Government: go fuck yourself https://web.archive.org/web/20160411112631/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tax-haven-corporate-tax-avoidance-uk-ministers-humiliated-after-cayman-bvi-british-virgin-islands-a6974956.html

#10yrsago George Clooney’s neighbor threw a $27/plate Sanders fundraiser to counter Clooney’s $33K/head Hillary event https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/sanders-supporters-shower-clinton-motorcade-1-bills-n557191

#10yrsago What is neoliberalism? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot?CMP=twt_books_b-gdnbooks

#10yrsago No, tax-havens aren’t good for society (duh) https://web.archive.org/web/20160602053124/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-tax-havens/2016/04/15/76d001d2-0255-11e6-b823-707c79ce3504_story.html

#10yrsago John Oliver and the cast of Sesame Street on lead poisoning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUizvEjR-0U

#10yrsago Supreme Court sends Authors Guild packing, won’t hear Google Books case https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/fair-use-prevails-as-supreme-court-rejects-google-books-copyright-case/

#10yrsago Four years later, Popehat’s favorite con-artist is indicted https://web.archive.org/web/20160419031946/https://popehat.com/2016/04/18/anatomy-of-a-scam-investigation-chapter-14-the-indictment/

#10yrsago Hacking Team supplied cyber-weapons to corrupt Latin American governments for human rights abuses https://www.derechosdigitales.org/wp-content/uploads/malware-para-la-vigilancia.pdf

#10yrsago High profits mean capitalism is cooked https://www.promarket.org/2016/04/16/are-we-all-rent-seeking-investors/

#10yrsago A look back at the D&D moral panic https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/us/when-dungeons-dragons-set-off-a-moral-panic.html

#10yrsago Petition to reassign head of Canada Post to deliver letters at $500k/year https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/help-canada-post-ceo-deepak-chopra-keep-his-job

#1yrago Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/18/chatty-zucky/#is-you-taking-notes-on-a-criminal-fucking-conspiracy

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)

  • "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, 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.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

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

ISSN: 3066-764X

Pluralistic: Georgia's voting technology blunder (18 Apr 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->-> Top Sources: None -->

Today's links


A hand dropping a ballot in a box; the box is a complicated, many-geared machine. On its faceplate is an 'I voted' sticker that has been modified to read 'I voted?'

Georgia's voting technology blunder (permalink)

Nearly 25 years ago, in the aftermath of Bush v Gore, I got involved in a bunch of ugly tech policy fights over voting machines. The hanging chad debacle in Florida prompted Congress to appropriate funds for states to purchase new touchscreen voting machines based on a robust, open standard. The problem was, those machines didn't exist.

The voting machine industry in those days was already very consolidated (it's far more consolidated today). They went shopping for a standards body that would publish a spec for a "standard" voting machine that could soak up those federal dollars in time for the 2004 election. The only taker was the IEEE, who unwisely offered to serve as host for this impossible rush job.

Once the voting machine reps were around a table at IEEE – largely sheltered from antitrust scrutiny thanks to the broad latitude enjoyed by firms engaged in standardization, which is otherwise uncomfortably close to collusion – they admitted what everyone already knew: there was zero chance they were going to develop a new standard in time for the election.

Instead, they decided they were going to publish a "descriptive standard." Rather than designing a new standard, they'd write down the specs of their own products – the same products that were considered so defective they needed to be replaced before the election – and call that the standard.

That was my first encounter with this issue as an activist. I had just started at EFF and a lot of our supporters were IEEE members, who were appalled to see their professional association being used to launder this incredibly politically salient, technically incoherent scam. We got a ton of IEEE members to write to the board, who shut down the standards committee and kicked the voting machine companies to the curb.

The voting machine companies weren't done, though. Diebold – one of the leaders in the cartel – knew that its voting machines were defective. They'd crash, lose their vote-counts and malfunction in other ways that were equally damaging to election integrity.

This was an alarming piece of news, but perhaps just as alarming is the way it came to light. A Diebold employee described this situation in a memo that was subsequently hacked and dumped by parties unknown. That memo, along with the accompanying tranche of extremely alarming revelations about Diebold's voting machine division, was the subject of one of the first mass-censorship copyright campaigns in internet history.

Diebold didn't dispute the veracity of these damning revelations: rather, it claimed that since the memos detailing its gross democracy-endangering misconduct had been prepared by an employee, that they were therefore works-made-for-hire whose copyright was held by Diebold, and thus anyone who reproduced the memo was infringing on the company's copyright.

Under Section 512 of the then-new Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Diebold was empowered to send "takedown notices" to the web hosting providers whose users had posted the memos, and if the web hosts didn't remove the content "expeditiously," they would be jointly liable for any eventual copyright damages, which are statutorily set at $150,000 per infringement.

Every web host folded. No one wanted to take the risk of tens of millions of dollars in statutory damages.

(Incidentally: anyone who tells you that "online safety" requires us to make online platforms liable for their users' speech needs to explain how this wouldn't empower every crooked company whose dirty laundry had ended up online wouldn't just do what Diebold did. It's not technically insanity to do the same thing over again in expectation of a different outcome, but it is awfully stupid and reckless.)

That might have been the end of things, except for the kids at Swarthmore, a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. Two students, Nelson Pavlosky and Luke Smith, were outraged by Diebold and they had accounts on Swarthmore's webserver. So they uploaded thousands of copies of the leaked memos, but linked to just one of them from a page about the leak. As soon as that copy was deleted by Swarthmore's webmasters in response to a DMCA takedown from Diebold, the students updated the link to point to another copy. And another. And another.

That's where EFF got involved. We repped the Online Policy Group, whose page linking to the Swarthmore resources was taken down by a Diebold notice. We won. The memos became a matter of public record. The Swarthmore kids started a nationwide network called "Students for Free Culture." It was pretty danged cool.

That wasn't the end of the Diebold story, though. Diebold was and is a very diversified conglomerate that made a lot of tabulating machines: ATMs, cash-registers, medical monitoring devices…and voting machines. Every one of these machines produced a paper-tape of its tabulations as an audit trail that could be used to reconstruct its calculations if it crashed…except the voting machines. The voting machines that kept crashing, and whose crashes presented a serious risk to the legitimacy of US elections in the wake of the worst electoral crisis in the country's history.

Diebold's stated reason for this was that adding a paper tape was haaaard (even though all its other machines had paper audit tapes). Not only was this a very unconvincing excuse, it was downright alarming in light of the promise of Walden O’Dell (Diebold CEO and prominent Bush fundraiser) to help "Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president":

https://fairvote.org/diebold-partisanship-and-public-interest-elections/

Now, to be clear, I don't think that O'Dell was going to steal the election for Bush (that's the Supreme Court's job). Rather, he was just a loudmouth asshole CEO who supported the (up to that point) worst president in American history, and who also made garbage products that were not fit for purpose.

In the decades since, voting machines have been the subject of lots of scrutiny by the information security community, because they suck. Time after time, the most sphincter-puckering defects in widely used machines have come to light:

https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2006/05/11/report-claims-very-serious-diebold-voting-machine-flaws/

The hits just kept on coming:

https://web.archive.org/web/20061007120655/http://openvotingfoundation.org/tiki-index.php?page_ref_id=1

At Defcon, the amazing Matt Blaze has presided over the Voting Village, where it's an annual tradition for hackers to probe voting machines. This exercise has produced a string of terrifying revelations that precisely described how these machines suck:

https://www.votingvillage.org/cfp

Pretty much everyone I knew thought that voting machines were garbage technology…right up to the moment that the My Pillow guy, Tucker Carlson, and a whole menagerie of conspiratorial Trumpland mutants started peddling a bizarre story about how Hugo Chavez colluded with the Canadian voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems (who bought Diebold's voting machine business when they finally dumped the division) to rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden. They told so many outlandish lies about this that Fox ended up paying Dominion $787.5 million to settle the case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems#Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox_News_Network

That's when something very weird happened. A bunch of people who had been skeptical of voting machines since the Brooks Brothers Riot suddenly became history's most ardent defenders of those same garbage voting machines. The cartel of voting machine companies – who had a long track record of using bullshit legal threats to silence their (mostly progressive) critics – were drafted into The Resistance(TM), and anyone who thought voting machines were trash was dismissed as a crazy person who has been totally mypillowpilled:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210203113531/https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/02/03/voting-machines-election-steal-conspiracy-flaws/

There's a name for this: it's called "schismogenesis": when one group of people define themselves in opposition to someone else. If the other team does X, then your team has to oppose X, even if you all liked X until a couple minutes ago:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

This schismogenic reversal persists to this very day. Every time Trump promotes another election denier to his cabinet, a federal agency, or a judgeship, the idea that voting machines are garbage becomes more Stop the Steal-coded, even though voting machines are, objectively, garbage.

Which is bad. It's bad because we are going into another election season where the stakes are – incredibly – even higher than Bush v Gore, and electoral authorities and state legislatures are making the world's most unforced errors in their voting machine procurement decisions, and if you've conditioned yourself to reflexively dismiss voting machine criticisms as conspiratorial nonsense, then you are part of the problem.

Just because some voting machine criticism is conspiratorial nonsense, it doesn't follow that voting machines are good, nor does it follow that every voting machine critic is a swivel-eyed loon or ratfucking Roger Stone protege.

Take, for example, Princeton's Andrew Appel, a computer scientist who's been publishing well-informed, well-documented warnings about defects in voting machines for years and years. Appel's latest is an alarming note about Georgia's new plan to "tabulate" ballots using OCR software:

https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2026/04/10/ballot-tabulation-by-uploading-scanned-images-for-ocr-is-quite-insecure/

The Georgia legislature has wisely banned the use of QR codes on the paper ballots generated by touchscreen voting machines. We have, at long last, progressed to the point where we use "ballot marking devices" (BMDs) that produce a paper record that can be hand-counted. The problem is that voters barely ever glance at these paper ballots before dropping them in the box to make sure the choices they made on the touchscreen are correctly reflected on the ballot – only 7% of voters carefully inspect their ballots!

This problem is greatly exacerbated if these ballot papers are tabulated by a machine that reads a QR code or barcode, rather than interpreting the human-readable information on the ballot. People are even less likely to pull out their phones and scan the QR code to ensure it matches the words on the paper. That means that a BMD could output different choices in the QR code than it prints in the human-readable part – and the Dominion BMD machines they use in Georgia run outdated software that's super-hackable:

https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2026/02/24/georgia-still-using-tragicomically-insecure-voting-system/

So Georgia's state leg passed Senate Bill 189, which establishes that "The text portion of the paper ballot marked and printed by the electronic ballot marker indicating the elector’s selection shall constitute the official ballot and shall constitute the official vote for purposes of vote tabulation." In other words, you can't count by scanning QR codes, you have to actually interpret the human-readable text on these ballots.

These machines still suck, to be clear (the fact that they don't suck for the mypillovian reasons that Tucker Carlson believes doesn't mean they're good) – but thanks to SB189, they are way less dangerous to democracy than they might be.

But not if Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger gets his way. Raffensperger is another guy who was drafted into The Resistance(TM) after he refused to commit election fraud for Trump, but he's also not good. He can still be terrible in other ways – and he is.

Raffensperger has announced his plan to circumvent the Georgia legislature by using Dominion ICX touchscreens to produce ballots with QR codes, which will then be tabulated in Dominion ICP scanners – but then he's going to "verify" the tabulation by running those same ballots through optical character recognition (OCR) software.

As Appel points out, this is the same stupid plan that Raffensperger tried in 2024, where he called the OCR step an "audit" of the QR tabulation. Back then, he grabbed 200dpi "ballot image files" from the Dominion BMDs and ran them through OCR software run by a company called Enhanced Voting. Appel sums up the fundamental incoherence of this approach.

First, the BMDs are super-hackable, so we don't trust them to print the same info in the QR code as they print in the human-readable text (which no one looks at anyway). If we don't trust them to print accurate info in the QR code, then why would we trust them to accurately generate that 200dpi QR code that's generated for the audit? As Appel writes, "it would be fairly easy for an unsophisticated attacker to alter ballot-image files–just replace the ballots they don’t like with copies of the ones they do like."

Then there's the step where these files are zipped up and transferred to the outside vendor for the audit – a step that Raffensperger has not explained. And even if the files make it to the outside contractor safely, that contractor could "change the inputs (ballot images) or outputs (tabulations)."

So this is very bad. Voting machines suck. Raffensperger sucks.

And here's the stupidest part: as Appel explains, there is a much more secure way to do this, and it's very cheap:

Just use their existing Dominion ICP (polling-place) scanners to count preprinted, hand-marked optical-scan "bubble ballots" that the voter has marked with a pen.

This is what other states are doing. As Appel writes, "This doesn’t even require a software upgrade of any kind. Although it would be a fine idea to install a software upgrade that addresses known security vulnerabilities in the ICX and ICP, the ICP can count hand-marked ballots with or without the upgrade."

This is a purely unforced error, in other words. As such, it's part of a series of shitty vote-tech choices that politicians and officials have been making since Bush v Gore. Truly, we live in the stupidest timeline.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago GW Bush’s iPod contains “illegal” (according to RIAA) music https://memex.craphound.com/2006/04/16/gw-bushs-ipod-contains-illegal-according-to-riaa-music/

#20yrsago Fan fiction community for McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches https://web.archive.org/web/20120112221730/https://mcgriddlefanfic.livejournal.com/profile/

#10yrsago High tech/high debt: the feudal future of technology makes us all into lesser lessors https://web.archive.org/web/20160415150308/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/rental-company-control/478365/

#10yrsago Three pieces of statistical “bullshit” about the UK EU referendum https://timharford.com/2016/04/three-pieces-of-brexit-bullshit/

#10yrsago Southwest Air kicks Muslim woman off plane for switching seats https://web.archive.org/web/20160416041342/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/muslim-woman-kicked-off-plane-as-flight-attendant-said-she-did-not-feel-comfortable-with-the-a6986661.html

#10yrsago China’s Internet censors order ban on video of toddler threatening brutal cops https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2016/04/minitrue-4/

#10yrsago Tiny South Pacific island to lose free/universal Internet lifeline https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/pacific/299017/niue-to-get-better-internet-service-at-a-cost

#10yrsago The Everything Box: demonological comedy from Richard “Sandman Slim” Kadrey https://memex.craphound.com/2016/04/16/the-everything-box-demonological-comedy-from-richard-sandman-slim-kadrey/

#5yrsago People's Choice Communications https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/16/where-it-hurts/#charter-hires-scabs

#5yrsago "Anti-voter-suppression" companies are lobbying to kill HR1 https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/16/where-it-hurts/#tissue-thin

#5yrsago $100m deli made $35k in 2019/20 https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/16/where-it-hurts/#hometown

#5yrsago Mass-action lawsuit against Facebook https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/16/where-it-hurts/#sue-facebook

#1yrago Trump fought the law and Trump won https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/16/weaponized-admin-incompetence/#kill-all-the-lawyers

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)

  • "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, 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.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

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

ISSN: 3066-764X

RSSSiteUpdated
XML About Tagaini Jisho on Tagaini Jisho 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML Arch Linux: Releases 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Carlson Calamities 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Debian News 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML Debian Security 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML debito.org 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML dperkins 2026-05-23 11:00 PM
XML F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository 2026-05-23 07:00 PM
XML GIMP 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Japan Bash 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML Japan English Teacher Feed 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML Kanji of the Day 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Kanji of the Day 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Let's Encrypt 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Marc Jones 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Marjorie's Blog 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML OpenStreetMap Japan 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML OsmAnd Blog 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow 2026-05-23 11:00 PM
XML Popehat 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Ramen Adventures 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Release notes from server 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect 2026-05-23 11:00 PM
XML SNA Japan 2026-05-23 11:00 PM
XML Tatoeba Project Blog 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML Techdirt 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML The Business of Printing Books 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML The Luddite 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML The Popehat Report 2026-05-23 11:00 PM
XML The Status Kuo 2026-05-23 11:00 PM
XML The Stranger 2026-05-24 02:00 AM
XML Tor Project blog 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML TorrentFreak 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML what if? 2026-05-24 07:00 AM
XML Wikimedia Commons picture of the day feed 2026-05-20 06:00 AM
XML xkcd.com 2026-05-24 07:00 AM