Today's threads (a thread)

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: Demand destruction vs fuel-superceding infrastructure; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/04/hope-in-the-dark/

#Pluralistic

1/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

I'm coming to #Guelph, Ontario this Friday (May to deliver the Musagetes Lecture:

Guelph Lecture—On Being

Presented by ArtsEverywhere Festival The 2026 Guelph Lecture—On Being will be presented by Cory Doctorow on the “enshittification” of the internet.

River Run Centre (riverrun.ca)

2/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

Demand destruction vs fuel-superceding infrastructure: Will Trump hormuz us into the full Gretacene?

Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr)

Attached: 1 image No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose *Hope in the Dark* got me through the first Trump administration and whose *A Paradise Built In Hell* inspired my novel *Walkaway*: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/ -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/04/hope-in-the-dark/#hormuzed-into-the-gretacene 1/

Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du Net (mamot.fr)

3/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

Hey look at this

* A Long and Probably Boring Process Post https://dreamcafe.com/2026/05/01/a-long-and-probably-boring-process-post/

* The Supreme Court is Corrupt. This is What We Can Do About It. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRzS61buXkQ

* NHS Goes To War Against Open Source https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/

* An open letter asking NHS England to keep its code open https://keepthingsopen.com/

* Top 20 Fiction to Inspire Climate Action https://thebookslist.com/20-fiction-books-to-inspire-climate-action/

4/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#25yrsago Beck dumps Winona and becomes a Scientologist https://web.archive.org/web/20010502151355/http://www.suntimes.com/output/zwecker/zp30.html

#25yrsago Fuck San Francisco https://craphound.com/fucksf.html

#25yrsago Desktop Linux rant https://web.archive.org/web/20021204051712/http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3297/1/

#25yrsago History of ASCAP and BMI https://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/royalty-politics.html

#25yrsago AUSA: If we let you decrypt DVDs, airplanes will start falling out of the sky https://web.archive.org/web/20010504221956/https://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,43485,00.html

#25yrsago Microsoft shits on open source https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/03/business/technology-microsoft-is-set-to-be-top-foe-of-free-code.html

5/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#20yrsago Dan Gillmor explains “citizen journalism” https://web.archive.org/web/20060512043722/https://sf.backfence.com/bayarea/showPost.cfm?myComm=BA&bid=2271

#20yrsago UN plans a treaty to kill podcasts https://web.archive.org/web/20060512141428/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004619.php

#20yrsago Sen Stevens tries to sneak the Broadcast Flag into law https://web.archive.org/web/20060505054724/http://ipaction.org/blog/2006/05/breaking-news-broadcast-flag-is-back.html

#20yrago How the US Navy queered San Francisco https://web.archive.org/web/20060504024636/http://ask.yahoo.com/20060502.html

#20yrago Help wanted: new DRM czar for Sony-BMG https://web.archive.org/web/20060512063724/http://www.paidcontent.org/sonybmg-director-new-technology-content-protection-nyc

#20yrsago Rich Americans as sick as poor Brits https://web.archive.org/web/20060516225807/http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9098&feedId=online-news_rss20

6/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#15yrsago Sculpture embodies lossy copying using much-copied house-key https://web.archive.org/web/20110316215804/http://www.danielbejar.com/Visual_Topography_of_a_Generation_Gap.html

#15yrsago Piracy and poor countries: Big Content wants to have its cake and eat it too https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/may/03/why-poor-countries-lead-world-piracy

#15yrsago Brust’s Tiassa: versatile fantasy in three modes https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/02/brusts-tiassa-versatile-fantasy-in-three-modes/

#15yrsago Why New Zealand was dumb to let the USA write its copyright laws https://web.archive.org/web/20110601173727/http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/7615

7/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#15yrsago Canadian neocon Tories take a slim majority in election, pro-Internet New Democrats form the opposition https://web.archive.org/web/20110503041720/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/new-political-era-begins-as-tories-win-majority-ndp-grabs-opposition/article2006635/

#15yrsago Will technology make us freer, and if so, how? https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-techno-optimism/

#15yrsago Wikileaks: America will foot the bill for record company enforcement in NZ if NZ will let America write its laws

8/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

#15yrsago Horology considered hazardous: the “German Time Bomb” clock with its deadly mainspring https://web.archive.org/web/20110516102538/https://www.anniversaryclocks.org/aci/haller-gtb.pdf

#5yrsago Political economy vs inflation https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/01/mayday/#inflationary-political-economy

#1yrago Apple faces criminal sanctions for defying App Store antitrust order https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup

#1yrago AI and the fatfinger economy https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpis-off/#principal-agentic-ai-problem

9/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

Saturday's threads: The prehistory of the Democratic Nuremberg Caucus; and more!

Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr)

Attached: 1 image Today's threads (a thread) Inside: The prehistory of the Democratic Nuremberg Caucus; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/02/denazification/denazification.jpg #Pluralistic 1/

Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du Net (mamot.fr)

10/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:

Just a moment...

(us.macmillan.com)

--

My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:

Just a moment...

(us.macmillan.com)

11/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."

https://craphound.com/shop/

12/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

Upcoming appearances:

* #Guelph: Musagetes Lecture, May 8
https://riverrun.ca/whats-on/guelph-lecture-on-being-2026/

* #Barcelona: Internet no tiene que ser un vertedero (Global Digital Rights Forum), May 13
https://encuentroderechosdigitales.com/en/speakers/

* Virtual: How to Disenshittify the Internet with Wendy Liu (EFF), May 14
https://www.eff.org/event/effecting-change-enshittification

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

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

13/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

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

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

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

14/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

Recent appearances:

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

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

* Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612

* The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P

* Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech

15/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

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Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/04/hope-in-the-dark/

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16/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

I'm also on Bluesky. Read today's thread there at:

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) (@doctorow.pluralistic.net)

No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose *Hope in the Dark* got me through the first Trump administration and whose *A Paradise Built In Hell* inspired my novel *Walkaway*: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/ 1/

Bluesky Social (bsky.app)

17/

[pluralistic@mamot.fr]

I'm coming to #Guelph, Ontario this Friday (May to deliver the Musagetes Lecture:

Guelph Lecture—On Being

Presented by ArtsEverywhere Festival The 2026 Guelph Lecture—On Being will be presented by Cory Doctorow on the “enshittification” of the internet.

River Run Centre (riverrun.ca)

eof/

[jannpoppinga@norden.social]

@pluralistic I for one prefer the Ghibellin lecture

[jd@ottawa.place]

@pluralistic

Great read: Love his use of a new (to me) word: the Gretacene: the wholesale shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power.