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davidallengreen_feed25th February 2026
Public procurement, like constitutional law, should be boring.
It should be about the mundane everyday activity of public bodies purchasing things so that they can fulfil their public functions.
But it is currently exciting, and my pieces at the Financial Times and here on the Ministry of Defence contracts with Palantir were disconcertingly popular.
But as a preliminary remark: nothing which follows is disparaging about the greater number of those engaged in public procurement and contract management for public authorities whose professionalism keep things from being a lot worse. The public are lucky to have you.
The points below are generally about the faults of a system – and about how it benefits cynical contractors acting in their commercial self-interest and about how non-procurement officials and their political masters lack realism.
The points below are not about those that somehow stop greater abuses from happening.
*
The first point is about money.
Loads of money.
And as with the fog at the start of Bleak House, money everywhere.
Billions – not just millions.
If you can get a lucrative public services contract, you and your pension plan and your family are not just made for life, but also for generations.
Public procurement is an absolute geyser of cash.
And – this is the important thing – central and local government are good reliable payers.
There are hardly any defaults, and there are hardly any early terminations.
Many contracts just rollover, just like the public authorities that let them.
Public authorities suing on a contract is almost unheard of, more is the pity.
Sometimes a public authority will assert its contractual rights – and this will grab attention like any rare event – but mostly public authorities will keep funnelling the money to contractors.
And because central and local government are good reliable payers then the canny contractor can use the revenue stream effectively as security for other aspects of the business.
The returns on savings or an investment fund are nothing as the percentages a contractor will make on a public contract, especially if they then sub-contract the actual provision of goods, services or works at a discount to sub-contractors – who, in turn, are sometimes made up of the very same people who provided the same things for the public authority in-house before being out-sourced.
Some may complain (and no doubt will complain below) that the above is a horrible caricature: but in my experience there is enough truth in the depiction set out above for it to be offered as a concern on this blog.
And it gets worse.
*
The second point is the general lack of transparency.
Public procurement for no good reason whatsoever is shrouded in secrecy.
Routinely the facts about public procurement – that is when huge amounts of public money are spent on things (supposedly) so public functions can be discharged – are not disclosed to the, well, public.
And this is an attitude often at the highest levels of public authorities.
The magic phrase “commercial confidentiality” is constantly invoked, often by those who want you to nod-along with their mock-earnestness.
But “commercial confidentiality” in public procurement is utter balderdash and complete flapdoodle – at least after the contract has been let.
And this secrecy cloaks so may inefficiencies and abuses – on both sides of the transaction.
But those involved know that any attempts to force public disclosure of commercial information about these contracts can be avoided, at least in any timely way.
In principle – because of the amounts of public money involved and the need for public functions to be discharged, as well as because of pretty basic things like transparency and accountability – there should not be as a general rule “commercial confidentially” in public procurement.
The contractors get the benefit of huge amounts of cash, paid on a regular and reliable basis. They really should be happy with that.
And so the price of such contracts for the contractor should include full public transparency – unless there is a reason other than commercial confidentiality for non-disclosure.
*
The third point is that the law and practice of public procurement will often favour a small group of large providers – often with deliberately forgettable corporate names – who can afford the risk and the expense of participating in elaborate procurement exercises without guaranteed return.
Some procurement exercises with their multitude of stages and questionnaires and voluminous tender documents cost a small fortune for a bidder.
Public procurement should be about non-discrimination and avoiding bias, but – counterintuitively – the complex rules to give effect to such laudable aims have the practical effect of excluding almost all providers.
Like how profit and sustainability rules in football have the practical effect of favouring already established clubs – disclosure, Aston Villa fan here – the rules of public procurement have the effect of favouring a small group of established providers.
*
The fourth point is about the closeness of some (but not all) contractors and public authorities – with the famous “revolving doors”.
Those who let contracts really should not then work for the contractors to whom those contracts were let.
Even if the integrity of such individuals is beyond reproach, unbiased public procurement – like justice – not only needs to be done, it needs to be seen to be done.
*
The fifth point is a personal bugbear about contracts which involve informational technology and intellectual property (IT/IP).
There is a tendency by non-procurement officials in public authorities – and even their political masters – towards bespoke IT/IP development.
And this suits the contractor just fine – especially if the contractor retains the property rights and gets to charge for testing and ongoing management.
And so sometimes you end up with public authorities beholden to that contractor for the IT/IP development long after the term of the initial contract.
The public body is captured.
Of course, public authorities should use, where possible, commercially-off-the-shelf (COTS) products or open source software.
And if there is a need for proprietary bespoke software then there has to be robust exit management plans and licensing arrangements so that a public authority does not become dependent on one provider.
But it seems some non-procurement officials and their political masters like gleaming new things, with wish-lists of white-boarded specifications.
Aspire-ware, vapour-ware.
Public authorities should stick to COTS products or open source software where possible, and if there really – really, really – has to be an exception, then considerable thought needs to go into not only the terms of the contract, but also into the practical contract management and re-letting of the contract, so as to avoid capture by a supplier.
*
And now to the sixth point, the saddest point of all.
The only thing worse than having (often inflexible and elaborate) public procurement rules is having no public procurement rules at all.
The recent experiences of Covid and the abuses of PPE show what happens when the rules are suspended and an anything goes approach is adopted.
The sheer amounts of cash at stake mean that corruption is pretty-much inevitable.
Ideally one would have disinterested public authorities picking-and-choosing the right supplier without the fuss of public procurement rules; but instead of picking-and-choosing you will get pick-pocketing, and at a vast scale.
As some Victorian statesman once said, not all problems have solutions.
*
And in conclusion: we are fortunate that because of the professionalism of many procurement officers and contract managers within public authorities that things are not a lot worse.
But non-procurement officials and their political masters really need to get a grip on what is going on.
For contractors, acting cynically in their own commercial self-interest, know exactly what is going on.
**
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muccamukkThis short film follows two Navajo weavers whose work preserves memory, identity, and ancestral knowledge.
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spankulert: Icon post #122.On Thursday 12 March (7pm GMT), lose yourself in the hit production of The Importance of Being Earnest at our free YouTube premiere. Can’t make it? The stream will remain accessible on demand, for free, for one week only.
Even at your worst, you are replaceable.
Ask yourself, why are you using the tool to do this? Do I have nine other things to do, and this will make my life faster? Or am I trying not to pay a journalist?
'll just add, as someone who's been doing investigative reporting for decades, all publications doing real journalism (i.e., not a sockpuppet or Some Guy on the Internet)--they have MANY layers of editorial & legal review.
goodbyebird
timothy_snyder_feedWhat is the state of Trump? He is failing at fascism. For Trump to succeed in is fascist transition, he needs a bloody, popular, victorious war. And that is out of his reach. The State of the Union was full of fascist atmospherics. But it was also blowhard exhaustion.
Trump’s problem is not with idea of fascism. It suits him well. Just consider the atmospherics of last night. Fascism celebrates a leader who transcends law and aims to unites the people with their destiny. It denies truth in favor of grand stories of struggle against a chosen enemy. It posits an imaginary golden age. All of that was in the speech.
Fascism demands a chosen enemy, and victims. Trump called the Democrats in the audience “crazy” and associated them with illegal immigration and crime. The United States is engaged in an enormous cleansing project. ICE raids celebrate physical force in the cities and our concentration camp system is landscape of domination in the countryside. The murder of civilians in Minnesota was greeted by big lies about the victims.
All of this is awful. But it is also stasis. Trump is unpopular, the economy is weak. When the government murdered Americans, this did not deter protest. To actually change the nature of politics, to move beyond the current state of affairs (competitive authoritarianism) to something else, to fascism, Trump needs another kind of conflict.
Fascism demands a major foreign war to kill one’s own people and thereby generate a reservoir of meaning that could be used to justify indefinite rule and further oppression, to make the world seem like an endless struggles and submission to hierarchy as the only kind of life.
Trump senses that he needs such a war, but, characteristically, he wants a short cut. In the State of the Union, Trump portrayed Olympic hockey as a major international conflict, with the weird announcement that a goalie would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. After the extraction of Maduro from Venezuela, Trump compared the action the Second World War, which is absurd.
To complete the fascist transition, Trump has to give the country a war it does not want, and win it, and transform the society. He has brought us to the doorstep of a major war with Iran: but in the State of the Union, speaking about war preparations, he was looking around hopelessly and waving his hands. He is happy to talk about war with Iran, and hope somehow that others will deliver it. But he cannot do it himself.
Americans do not want such a war. But that is not exactly Trump’s problem. Germans did not want a war with Poland in 1939, either. But Hitler fought one anyway, and won it quickly. Trump’s problem is that he does not know how to fight a war. And he flounders.
So what happens next in Iran policy? One could imagine a patient pressure campaign on Iran, a mixture of sanctions and promises, with demands for freedom of expression and support of civil society. But not, of course, from this administration. They have abolished the relevant institutions and forsaken the appropriate tools. There are only two real scenarios.
In one, nothing much happens in Iran. Trump forgets about the tens of thousands of murdered protestors he claims to champion. The navy sails away. Maybe some missiles are fired first, maybe not. And Trump claims that somehow this has all been an incredible victory and that now there is a miraculous peace. But this will have no effect on domestic politics.
In the other scenario, we invade. That is the only escalation that could possibly work to advance the fascist transition. But it would not work. Trump is incompetent and so are his advisors. And war is hard. And Americans will not be patient. Perhaps they would change their minds if Trump had an explanation of what he is doing, but he doesn’t. Or if there were a rapid victory, which there won’t be. An invasion of Iran would likely be so catastrophic in domestic politics that Trump would not see the end of his term, or even the end of this year, as president.
Trump wants it both ways. He wants to be the warlord whom everyone fears, but he also wants to make lots of money and to have his corruption defined as peacemaking. The word “deal,” which he always uses in the context of Iran, means: “we can be bribed.” And if there is a common thread running through American foreign policy under Trump, it is this. And then Trump wants to be told that the combination of threats and bribes makes him a great peacemaker and that he deserves a prize.
Consider the biographical trajectory. A guy from Queens wants to break rules and make money in real estate so that he will be accepted and admired in Manhattan. He fails at that. And then he attempts the whole venture again on a larger scale. He breaks rules and does make money as the president of the United States. But at the end he wants the acclamation, the acceptance, the bourgeois recognition of a remodeled house and gold trinkets.
And so the state of Trump is that he is stuck. He is failing at fascism. He can break things, but he cannot make things. He can bluster, but he cannot triumph. He is tired, and every day is harder than the day before, and there are rivals in the wings, and elections coming.
Between now and November 2026 he has two moves: win a war, which he cannot; and suppress the vote, which he has telegraphed that he will try to do. This is a man, after all, who has already tried to steal an election. But he failed then. And the fact that he tried and failed once means that he should certainly fail again.
There is one more (obvious) trick which Trump can try, a combination of the two: he can claim that the very disaster of the war that he himself started in Iran (or elsewhere) means that there can no elections because of the associated terrorist threats. But if journalists and judges and others are prepared for this gambit it will fail.
What is the state of the Union? Fascism does not fail on its own. People have resisted: millions in protests, thousands or tens of thousands in cities when it mattered. Individual expressions of courage and commitment are everywhere. Even as many major media outlets collapse and concede, others do good work, and local reporting keeps us informed. Civil society groups make plans and file lawsuits. Trump has brought us to a threshold that he cannot cross. But there is no such thing as normality. There is no going back. What comes next is open.
Trump is stuck, but he is stuck in a terrible place. The United States remains in competitive authoritarianism, with fascists in positions of authority, and federal institutions carrying out policies of oppression that cannot be reconciled with the rule of law. There will be more bad news in the next six months, and more moments of courage and organizing.
There will be elections in November, but they will not be unusual elections, requiring an unusual effort. The opponents of authoritarianism can certainly win, in an uphill struggle, involving building big coalitions and thinking about better futures. We cannot go back but we can do much better.
phillips_p_obrien_feedHi All,
A quick piece about last night’s relatively subdued State of the Union address. Having promised fireworks a few days ago, we got something very different from President Trump. While the address was very long and in typical Trump fashion all over the place, it was also different than expected and I would say it was extremely illuminating about his state of mind. If I could boil it down to one thing it is this: Donald Trump is reading the polls, realizes that many of his policies are deeply unpopular, and is scared.
Btw you can read a text of the entire address here and if you want to watch the whole speech, here is a video.
To understand how he now accepts that many of his policies are unpopular and how scared he is, its best to look at what he avoided talking about or more accurately what he talked about as little and as carefully/generically as possible. The first was the Supreme Court after the Tariff ruling last week.
If you remember, when the ruling first came out, Trump was incandescent and lashed out in a historically negative fashion about the Court. He called the ruling an “embarassment” a “terrible” decision and even claimed that members of the Supreme Court were traitors, saying they were "swayed by foreign interests".
It should be noted that in the history of the USA, this was an unprecedented attack. Never before has a President accused the Supreme Court of being traitors.
Last night in the State of the Union address, however, he hardly mentioned the court or the ruling. When he did, he even tried very hard to be presidential, describing the ruling which he had earlier blasted as traitorous only as “unfortunate”. Here was the key text.
And then just four days ago an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down, came down.
Very unfortunate ruling. But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made, right, Scott? Knowing that the legal power that I as president have to make a new deal could be far worse for them. And therefore they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement.
Trump even avoided the whole tariff question as much as possible. In the entire 2 hour speech, he used the word Tariff only 5 times, and he rather rushed through those moments, trying more to convince himself of his arguments it seemed than anything else.
So we went from Tariffs being absolutely central to his political positioning and the Supreme Court being an embarrassing disaster, to very little in just a few days.
I suppose, however, that at least he mentioned both the court and tariffs. One thing that he avoided entirely was ICE (US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement). He not only never mentioned ICE or immigrants and only used the word “immigration” three times. And it is worth noting that these three mentions were general and not specific. Here was the first time he .
For decades, before I came along, we had the exact opposite. From trade to health care, from energy to immigration, everything was stolen and rigged in order to drain the wealth out of the productive and hard-working people who make our country great, who make our country run.
So the Court was treated with kid gloves, ICE was completely avoided, and tariffs and immigration were small issues. What was mentioned—well “prices” and inflation” (a combined 23 times) and the economy were dominant. However, he also spent a great deal of time on foreign policy in a very particular way.
He was desperate to find foreign policy triumphs and ran away from those foreign policy questions he seems to know are unpopular.
For instance there was a long and very detailed section on his supposed Venezuela triumph of kidnapping the former dictator Nicolas Maduro (much longer in total than the total mentions of the Supreme Court, tariffs, ICE and Immigration). However there was no mention of democracy for the Venezuelan people and Trump confirmed that he wants to keep Maduro’s former VP Delcy Rodrigues in power—so much for freedom.
We’re working closely with the new president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, to unleash extraordinary economic gains for both of our countries…
And there was this mention of Iran—which I am still trying to get my head around.
As president, I will make peace wherever I can, but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must. That’s why in a breakthrough operation last June, the United States military obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program with an attack on Iranian soil known as Operation Midnight Hammer.
By going back and claiming that he had already obliterated the Iranian nuclear program last June, is he walking back any argument that he needs to attack now? Hmmm.
Once again he avoided unpopular foreign policy subjects. He barely mentioned Russia and never talked his good friend Vladimir Putin (interestingly the Anchorage Summit was not put forward as one of his successes for the year). He also avoided China entirely, beyond one strange mention of Chinese military technology in relation to his supposed great triumph in Venezuela.
Add it all up and what do you get—a scared president trying very hard to assure Americans that he is succeeding. He understands that he has major popularity problems with some of his flagship issues and is hunting around for triumphs that he can sell.
It was one of the least Trump-like major addresses, and that alone makes it worthy of note.
Also, a scared Trump is a dangerous Trump.
doctorow_feed
Selling on Amazon is a tough business. Sure, you can reach a lot of customers, but this comes at a very high price: the junk fees that Amazon extracts from its sellers amount to 50-60% of the price you pay.
That's a hell of a lot of money to hand over to a middleman, but it's not like vendors have much choice. The vast majority of America's affluent households are Prime subscribers (depending on how you define "affluent household" it's north of 90%). Prime households prepay for a year's worth of shipping, so it's only natural that they start their shopping on Amazon, where they've already paid the delivery costs. And because Amazon reliably meets or beats the prices you'd pay elsewhere, Prime subscribers who find a product on Amazon overwhelmingly stop their shopping at Amazon, too.
At this point you might be thinking a couple things:
I. Why not try to sell the non-affluent households, who are far less likely to subscribe to Prime? and
II. If Amazon has the lowest prices, what's the problem if everyone shops there?
The answers to these two questions are intimately related, as it happens.
Let's start with selling to non-affluent households – basically, the bottom 90% of American earners. The problem here is that everyone who isn't in that top 10% is pretty goddamned broke. It's not just decades of wage stagnation and hyperinflation in health, housing and education costs. It's also that every economic crisis of this century has resulted in a "K-shaped" recovery, in which "economic recovery" means that rich people are doing fine, while everyone else is worse off than they were before the crisis.
For decades, America papered over the K-shaped hole in its economy with debt. First it was credit cards. Then it was gimmicky mortgages – home equity lines of credit, second mortgages and reverse mortgages. Then it was payday lenders. Then it was "buy-now/pay-later" services that let you buy lunch at Chipotle on an installment plan that is nominally interest-free, but is designed to trap the unwary and unlucky with massive penalties if you miss a single payment.
This produced a median American who isn't just cash-poor – they are cash-negative, drowning in debt. And – with the exception of a brief Biden intercession – every presidential administration of the 21st century has enacted policies that favor creditors over debtors. Bankruptcy is harder to declare, and creditors can hit you with effectively unlimited penalties and confiscation of your property and wages once your cash is gone. Trump has erased all the small mercies of the Biden years – for example, he just forced 8,000,000 student borrowers back into repayment:
https://prospect.org/2025/12/16/gop-forcing-eight-million-student-loan-borrowers-into-repayment/
The average American worker has $955 saved for retirement:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/955-saved-for-retirement-millions-are-in-that-boat-150003868.html
There's plenty to worry about in a K-shaped economy – big things like "political instability" and "cultural chaos" (the fact that most people are broke has a lot to do with the surging fortunes of gambling platforms). But from a seller's perspective, the most important impact of the K-shaped economy is that only rich people buy stuff. Selling to the bottom 90% is a losing proposition because they're increasingly too broke to buy anything:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/16/k-shaped-recovery/#disenshittification-nations
Combine the fact that the richest 10% of Americans all start their shopping on Amazon with the fact that no one else can afford to buy anything, and it's easy to see why merchants would stay on Amazon, even when junk fees hit 60%.
Which brings us to the second question: if Amazon has the best prices, what's the problem with everyone shopping there?
The answer is to be found in the California Attorney General's price-fixing lawsuit against Amazon:
The suit's been running for a long time, but the AG's office just celebrated a milestone – they've finished analyzing the internal memos they forced Amazon to disgorge through civil law's "discovery" process. These internal docs verify an open – and very dirty – secret about Amazon: the company uses its power to push up prices across the entire economy.
Here's how that works: sellers have to sell on Amazon, and that means they're losing $0.50-$0.60 on every dollar. The obvious way to handle this is by raising prices. But Amazon knows that its power comes from offering buyers prices that are as low or lower than the prices at all its competitors.
Amazon could ban its sellers from raising prices, but if they did that, they'd have to accept a smaller share of every sale (otherwise most of their sellers would go broke from selling at a loss on Amazon). So instead, Amazon imposes a business practice called "most favored nation" (MFN) pricing on its sellers.
Under an MFN arrangement, sellers are allowed to raise their prices on Amazon, but when they do, they must raise their prices everywhere else, too: at Walmart, at Target, at mom and pop indie stores, and at their own factory outlet store. Remember: Amazon doesn't have to have low prices to win, it just needs to have the same prices as everyone else. So long as prices rise throughout the economy, Amazon is fine, and it can continue to hike its junk fees on sellers, knowing that they will pay those fees by raising prices on Amazon and everywhere else their products are sold.
Like I say, this isn't really a secret. MFN terms were the basis of DC Attorney General Ken Racine's case against Amazon, five years ago:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#prime-facie
Amazon's not the only company that does this. Under the Biden administration, the FTC brought a lawsuit against Pepsi because Pepsi and Walmart had rigged the market so that when Walmart raised its prices, Pepsi would force everyone else who carried Pepsi products to raise their prices even more. Walmart still had the lowest prices, but everything everywhere got more expensive, both at Walmart and everywhere else:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/secret-documents-show-pepsi-and-walmart
Trump's FTC dropped the Pepsi/Walmart case, and Amazon wriggled out of the DC case, but the California AG's office has a lot more resources than DC can muster. This is a timely reminder that America's antitrust laws can be enforced at the state level as well as by the federal authorities. Trump might be happy to let Amazon steal from Americans so long as Jeff Bezos neuters the Washington Post, writes a check for $1m to sit on the inaugural dais, and makes a garbage movie about Melania; but that doesn't stop California AG Rob Bonta from going after Amazon for ripping off Californians (and, in so doing, develop the evidentiary record and precedent that will allow every other state AG to go after Amazon).
The fact that Amazon's monopoly lets it control prices across the economy highlights the futility of trying to fix the Amazon problem by shopping elsewhere. A "boycott" isn't you shopping really hard, it's an organized movement with articulated demands, a theory of change, and a backbone of solidarity. "Conscious consumption" is a dead-end:
https://jacobin.com/2026/02/individual-boycotts-collective-action-ice/
Obviously, Californians have more to worry about than getting ripped off by Amazon (like getting murdered or kidnapped by ICE agents who want to send us all to a slave labor camp in El Salvador), but the billions that Amazon steals from American buyers and sellers are the source of the millions that Bezos uses to support Trump's fascist takeover of America. Without billionaires who would happily support concentration camps in their back yards if it means saving a dollar on their taxes, fascism would still be a fringe movement.
That's why, when we hold new Nuremberg trials for Trump and his collaborators, we should also unwind every merger that was approved under Trump:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/10/miller-in-the-dock/#denazification
The material support for Trump's ideology of hate, violence and terror comes from Trump's program of unregulated corporate banditry. A promise to claw back every stolen dime might cool the ardor of Trump's corporate supporters, and even if it doesn't, zeroing out their bank-balances after Trump is gone will be an important lesson for future would-be billionaire collaborators.
2025 State of Clutter Report https://yorba.co/state-of-clutter
A.I. Isn't People https://www.todayintabs.com/p/a-i-isn-t-people
Color Game https://dialed.gg/
Paediatricians’ blood used to make new treatments for RSV and colds https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516079-paediatricians-blood-used-to-make-new-treatments-for-rsv-and-colds/
#20yrsago Princeton prof explains watermarks’ failures https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2006/02/24/how-watermarks-fail/
#20yrsago Palm Beach County voting machines generated 100K anomalies in 2004 https://web.archive.org/web/20060225172632/https://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/19421.html
#15yrsago Sharing the power in Tahrir Square https://www.flickr.com/photos/47421217@N08/5423296010/
#15yrsago 17-year-old Tim Burton’s rejection from Walt Disney Productions https://web.archive.org/web/20110226083118/http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/02/giant-zlig.html
#15yrsago Rare Alan Turing papers bought by Bletchley Park Trust https://web.archive.org/web/20110225145556/https://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/635610
#15yrsago Sony considered harmful to makers, innovators and hackers https://web.archive.org/web/20151013140820/http://makezine.com/2011/02/24/sonys-war-on-makers-hackers-and-innovators/
#15yrsago MPAA: record-breaking box-office year is proof that piracy is killing movies https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/piracy-once-again-fails-to-get-in-way-of-record-box-office/
#15yrsago Super-wealthy clothes horses and their sartorial habits https://web.archive.org/web/20110217045201/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146420210142748.html
#15yrsago Visualizing the wealth of America’s super-rich ruling class https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph/
#10yrsago Obama’s new Librarian of Congress nominee is a rip-snortin’, copyfightin’, surveillance-hatin’ no-foolin’ LIBRARIAN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU8vXDoBB5s
#10yrsago Math denialism: crypto backdoors and DRM are the alternative medicine of computer science https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/24/the-fbi-wants-a-backdoor-only-it-can-use-but-wanting-it-doesnt-make-it-possible
#10yrsago Uganda’s corrupt president just stole another election, but he couldn’t steal the Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20160225095947/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/uganda-election-day-social-media-blackout-backlash-mobile-payments
#10yrsago Archbishop of St Louis says Girl Scout Cookies encourage sin https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/23/girl-scouts-cookies-missouri-catholics-st-louis-archbishop
#10yrsago After appointed city manager illegally jacked up prices, Flint paid the highest water rates in America https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/02/16/study-flint-paid-highest-rate-us-water/80461288/
#10yrsago Baidu browser isn’t just a surveillance tool, it’s a remarkably sloppy one https://citizenlab.ca/research/privacy-security-issues-baidu-browser/
#5yrsago Why Brits can no longer order signed copies of my books https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#brexit-books
#5yrsago Court rejects TSA qualified immunity https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#junk-touching
#5yrsago The Mauritanian https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#gwb-and-gitmo
#5yrsago EVs as distributed storage grid https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#mobile-batteries
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#1yrsago How an obscure advisory board lets utilities steal $50b/year from ratepayers https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/24/surfa/#mark-ellis
Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5
https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/
Victoria: Enshittification at Russell Books, Mar 4
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-is-coming-to-victoria-tickets-1982091125914
Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/
Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
https://conference.bioneers.org/
Montreal: Bronfman Lecture (McGill) Apr 10
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disrupter-tickets-1982706623885
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
Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2
Panopticon :3 (Trashfuture)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/panopticon-3-150395435
America's Enshittification is Canada's Opportunity (Do Not Pass Go)
https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/americas-enshittification-is-canadas
Everything Wrong With the Internet and How to Fix It, with Tim Wu (Ezra Klein)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-doctorow-wu.html
How the Internet Got Worse (Masters in Business)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXlkuVhxMo
"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"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
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 (1020 words today, 37190 total)
"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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torachan
case posting in fandomsecrets
pauraquegoodbyebirdWhy watch the State of the Union, when you could watch your favorite unhinged Bluesky posters share their weird hobbies, niche obsessions, and scorching hot takes?
(streamed here and I'm assuming directly on yt but couldn't find the link)
goodbyebird posting in fandom_icons
likeadeuce - Still herehoarmurath - She is done!davidallengreen_feed - Six Things Wrong About Public Procurementmuccamukk - Links List: Art, A.I., Misogyny (as separate categories)goodbyebird - Let's shriek about AI for a moment.timothy_snyder_feed - Fascist Failurephillips_p_obrien_feed - Trump's State of the Union Address--He Is Reading the Polls And Seems Scaredhikyoekizine in fandomcalendar - Hikyō eki 秘境駅 | A JJK Zine | Applications Opendoctorow_feed - Pluralistic: The whole economy pays the Amazon tax (25 Feb 2026)melroseee in icons - the pitt; robby/abbot season 2 iconsmelroseee in fandom_icons - the pitt; robby/abbot season 2 iconsminoanmiss - Mandarinquatsspookykingdomstarlight in fandomcalendar - MDZS/CQL Read/Watchalongtorachan - Daily Happinessminoanmiss - I should switch namescase in fandomsecrets - [ SECRET POST #6990 ]pauraque - The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories, ed. andré m. carrington (2025) [part 2]olivermoss - Here we go, yogoodbyebird - We tried fun security, but nobody felt safe.goodbyebird in fandom_icons - multi-fandom posttimeasmymeasure
