It's not just that Texas DA Gocha Ramirez charged a woman with murder for having an abortion (something he wasn't allowed to do, even in Texas); it's that Ramirez paid for his mistress's own abortion, after he impregnated her while having an affair with her *and* her sister:
archive.is/20250812192203/hous…
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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:
pluralistic.net/2025/08/13/the…
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
This is perfect Magaism, as captured by Wilhoit's Law:
> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l…
Maga is a coalition of turkeys voting for Christmas, and ax-sharpening farmers planning to make a meal out of them.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The Maga base wants a bunch of stuff that the Maga elites would never tolerate, but that's OK, because the Maga elites are pretty sure they will never have to suffer under the laws they pass for others. Peter Theil is happy to support a political movement whose dominant factions would like to put him - and every other gay man - in a concentration camp, because he's pretty sure that only applies to the poor gays, not the billionaire gays.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Financiers who back Trump know that they can afford to transport their daughters, wives, mistresses and the housekeepers, babysitters and teenagers they impregnate across state lines (or national borders) to get an abortion should the need arise. Their participation in Maga was a bet that after victory was attained, the base could be made to settle for performative cruelty against people *other than them*:
pluralistic.net/2025/01/06/how…
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Pluralistic: Winning coalitions aren’t always governing coalitions (06 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The finance sector is *the* critical faction in Maga, because the financialized ideal is to accumulate wealth and power without exposure to any real-world risks. As Doug Rushkoff writes in *Survival of the Richest*, the finance move is to "go meta" - don't drive a taxi, buy a medallion and rent it to a taxi driver. Don't buy a medallion, start a rideshare company. Don't start a rideshare company, *invest* in a rideshare company.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Don't invest in a rideshare company, buy *options* to invest in a rideshare company:
pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/col…
Crypto is as meta as it gets, so no wonder crypto bros are all-in on Trump, and no wonder Trump is all-in on crypto.
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Pluralistic: 13 Sep 2022 Survival of the Richest – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
As Hamilton Nolan writes:
> Crypto coins... are pure speculative baubles, endowed with value only to the extent that you can convince another person to pay you more for them than you paid. They are a claim on nothing. They are the grandest embodiment of Greater Fool Theory ever invented by mankind.
hamiltonnolan.com/p/scams-and-…
Trump's tariffs are blowing up the economy and wiping out the agricultural sector.
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Scams And Bribery Are Becoming the Foundation of Our Economy
Hamilton Nolan (How Things Work)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
All those rural, Christmas-voting turkeys are getting it in the neck:
kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/tari…
Trump's answer to this is to fire the government statisticians and replace them with work-for-hire fiction hacks who'll publish whatever numbers he tells them to:
prospect.org/blogs-and-newslet…
You'd think that this would worry the finance sector, but fake numbers are actually *good* for finance, provided you're on the right side of them.
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Cooking the Inflation and Jobs Numbers
Robert Kuttner (The American Prospect)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Plenty of people got *dynastically* rich off of the fake numbers that propped up the pre-2008 housing bubble and the pre-2001 dotcom bubble. Those same people - and their ideological heirs - are now all-in on AI. It's impossible to overstate how structurally important AI is to the US economy. AI bubble companies now account for the value of *35% of the US stock market*:
wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui…
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The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble
Edward Zitron (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The instant that bubble pops, the US economy gets a 35% amputation. It's no surprise that, under Trump, the FTC and DoJ have brought the Biden administration's antitrust enforcement against Big Tech to a screeching halt:
citizen.org/article/deleting-e…
Nothing would be worse for the AI bubble than antitrust and securities-law enforcement.
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Deleting Tech Enforcement - Public Citizen
Public CitizenCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Companies that cook their balance sheets and suck up hundreds of billions in investment capital cannot function in a world with an orderly market system overseen by publicly accountable referees charged with keeping everyday people from having their life's savings stolen.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
And indeed, Trump's enforcers are running *away* from their duties, as fast as they can. The latest wheeze is to change the rules so that you can "invest" your retirement savings in cryptocurrency and private equity funds (two tired old swindles whose ropers are scraping the barrel looking for new marks):
prospect.org/power/2025-06-13-…
Not that AI is much better. AI is *hemorrhaging* money and bringing in pennies:
wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-money-…
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AI Is A Money Trap
Edward Zitron (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
And things are looking grimmer for AI by the day. It's not just that Openai's latest, "fifth-generation" model was such a spectacular flop that they've been forced to bring back the old version. Far more important is the utter uselessness of AI as a way of realizing cost-savings for the companies that try it:
nytimes.com/2025/08/13/busines…
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
After all, AI is implicitly a bet on firing workers. The hundreds of billions in investment, the trillions in valuation - these can't be realized by merely making workers' jobs easier or more satisfying. AI isn't a bet on making radiologists better at diagnosing solid-mass lung tumors: it's a bet on firing nearly all the radiologists and using the remainder to be "humans in the loop" for AI, in order to absorb the blame when you die of cancer.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
There are plenty of radiologists who might welcome AI as a tool they use in their workflow - but their bosses aren't about to hand over vast fortunes just to make those workers happier.
This is why AI users often sound like they're using totally different technologies. Workers who get to decide whether and how to incorporate AI into their jobs are doubtless finding lots of utility and delight from the new tool. These workers are "centaurs" - people assisted by machines.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The workers who describe their on-the-job AI as a hellish monstrosity are being *ordered* to use AI, in workplaces where mass firings have terrified the survivors, who are told they must use the AI to make up for their jobless former colleagues. They are *reverse*-centaurs: machines assisted by human workers:
pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/ran…
There is no way that AI can be worth 35% of the economy if all it does is produce some happy centaurs.
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Pluralistic: AI turns Amazon coders into Amazon warehouse workers (27 May 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The only way that 35% bet pays off is if half the workers get fired and replaced by AI, which is a thing that AI pitchmen are promising, to the letter (a letter that is credulously repeated by the dutiful stenographers of the press):
marketingaiinstitute.com/blog/…
The problem is that when businesses fire a bunch of workers and replace them with AI, they don't get the promised savings.
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Anthropic CEO: AI Could Wipe Out 50% of Entry-Level White Collar Jobs
Mike Kaput (Marketing AI Institute)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Instead, they end up with a system that's so broken that all the wage savings are incinerated by the cost of making good on the AI's failures.
But for Maga's finance wing, this is all OK. They're going meta. Don't hire workers, hire AI. Don't hire AI, make AI. Don't make AI, invest in AI.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
So long as the number keeps going up, finance wins, even if that's only because every structurally important firm in America is being thimblerigged into filling their walls with AI-powered, immortal asbestos that is destined to transform their firms into Superfund sites.
They're betting that when the bubble finally bursts, that they will have become too big to fail, and will thus be in for the bailouts that rescued the finance sector in 2008.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
They think that so long as they curry favor with Trump, he'll make sure they're all OK, because they are the people the law protects, but does not bind.
This is a pretty good bet. Trump's a gangster capitalist, and fascists love a "dual state" - a system where the law is followed to the letter, except when it suits someone with the protection of the ruling clique to wipe their ass with it:
archive.ph/8T8of
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
And bailouts for finance crooks are a bipartisan consensus. Remember, it was Obama, not Bush, who took his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's advice to allow the bailed-out banks to steal their borrowers homes and trigger the foreclosure crisis, because this would "foam the runways" for the crashing banks:
salon.com/2014/05/14/this_man_…
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This man made millions suffer: Tim Geithner's sorry legacy on housing
David Dayen (Salon.com)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The Obama wing of the party insists that they're the responsible adults in the room, the ones that will govern wisely and hold their gigadonors to account when they wreck the economy. They tell us Zohran Mamdani is - despite all evidence to the contrary - too unpopular to win an election:
pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mam…
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Pluralistic: Antitrust defies politics’ law of gravity (28 Jun 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
They ratfucked Katie Porter, one of finance's most savage and talented opponents, teaming up with the crypto-bros who are Maga's bagmen. Joke's on them, because it looks like Porter is gonna be California's next governor:
prospect.org/politics/2025-08-…
(I donated $100 I can't afford to her campaign; maybe you will donate, too?)
secure.actblue.com/donate/kpg_…
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Establishment Struggles to Maintain Control of California
David Dayen (The American Prospect)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Maga's finance wing are convinced that the game is rigged in their favor - heads they win and the law protects them, tails we lose and the law binds us. But if there's one thing we know about gangster capitalism, it's that the capo isn't shy about seizing the fortunes of his various underbosses when the mood suits him. One day he's demanding that you quit your job as CEO, the next day he imposes a 15% tax on your products:
firstpost.com/world/trump-meet…
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Trump makes a U-turn on Intel chief, calls him a 'success' after White House meeting
FP News Desk (Firstpost)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
You can bet your ass that if it looks like Trump is gonna lose his grip on power, they'll come sleazing over the Democrats, demanding the defenstration of Mamdani, Porter, and anyone who wants a habitable and just world, rather than a system designed to convert the planet's resources to something that can be sequestered in a luxury bunker or on a private island.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Because for all that they moan about "wokeness," they wouldn't want their kids to have to tolerate a shitty boss; they wouldn't want their kids to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. They wanna live out their cuckold fantasies in peace:
snopes.com/news/2025/06/02/ste…
They don't have any problem with living in a world where there's lip service to social values and Pricewaterhousecooper has a cringe Pride parade float.
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Unpacking rumor that Stephen Miller's wife, Katie, left him for Elon Musk
Anna Rascouët-Paz (Snopes.com)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
They'll happily save a couple bucks on the nanny's abortion by going down to the corner Planned Parenthood rather than flying her to Toronto on the private jet. All that performative cruelty was just a shuck to get some of the dumber surviving turkeys to pull the lever for Christmas. So long as they can live in a world where the law protects them, but does not bind them, they're happy as pigs in shit.
eof/
Lot⁴⁹
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Cavyherd
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •"Joke's on them, because it looks like Porter is gonna be California's next governor"
Holy—FUCK yeah! 😈
(I'd actually chip in another 10% if they'd promise NOT to sign me up for every freaking Dem mailing list in Time or Space....)
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
tlariv
in reply to Cavyherd • • •Hell yeah, if I didn't have to unsub from twelve addresses a day to keep James Carville out of my inbox…
@pluralistic
PieRat
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
huntingdon
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Протест и сопротивление
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
“How do I maintain authority over my security force after the Event?”
At first, I thought those guys played too many video games, but after this phrase, I realized it's the opposite. At least, video games explain to you in no subtle terms that after "the event" nobody maintains control over anything.
They should've listened to Greta. No-one is safe. Nowhere is safe. Our best - and likely only! - common bet is to prevent the event instead of speeding towards it.
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Danny Boling ☮️
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •sandywb14
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •GhostOnTheHalfShell
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •If you want to do this in the extra spicy way that punches back on the far right you characterize what they are actually doing in the same way the far right characterizes everybody they defame.
Call them godless satanic something something because that’s what they actually do. People who confront this evil should be happy calling what they’re doing what it is a crime against all decency.
Greengordon
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Utterly shameless. This guy has to be a sociopath. Cory Doctorow always has fantastic stuff. Shameless hypocrisy is a superpower, unfortunately.
"It's not just that Texas DA Gocha Ramirez charged a woman with murder for having an abortion (something he wasn't allowed to do, even in Texas); it's that Ramirez paid for his mistress's own abortion, after he impregnated her while having an affair with her *and* her sister:"
Kate Nyhan
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Corrections in ink : a memoir | WorldCat.org
search.worldcat.orgCory Doctorow
Unknown parent • • •@solitha It's a good piece (unsurprisingly, given the author).
I think that there are doubtless smart technologists who've hypnotized themselves into thinking they're making AGI (what Riley Quinn characterizes as holding a flashlight under your chin to make a monster face as you say "AAAAAAAA IIIIIIIIIIIII"). And there's certainly credulous investors who've bought the story.
But the VAST majority of capital in AI is not chasing AGI. It's a bet on convincing bosses to fire workers.
Mathaetaes
Unknown parent • • •Sensitive content
@Viss This is the first I had heard of her even running for governor (which doesn't bode well for her campaign, tbh), but that woman is amazing.
The fact that she's not a household name in every home in the state, if not the country, puts conspiracy-style thoughts about news media and rich folks in my head.
I'm a bit too jaded/cynical/depressed to hope it'll actually happen, but I'm damn sure going to support the effort. Thanks for pointing this out!