Every complex ecosystem has parasites: The only way to eliminate fraud and waste is to become a trivial walled garden.

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11439282…

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Cory Doctorow

2025-04-24 11:58:35

Patrick "patio11" McKenzie is a fantastic explainer, the kind of person who breaks topics down in ways that stay with you, and creep into your understanding of other subjects, too. Take his 2022 essay, "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero":

bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/opt…

--

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/2025/04/24/her…

1/

The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero

Counterintuitively, businesses, customers, and society prefer having fraud to what they'd need to do to not have it.

^{Patrick McKenzie (patio11) (Bits about Money)}

Hey look at this

* DIY Book Lamp voltpaperscissors.com/diybookl…

* Your primary source for news primarynewssource.org

* "A Lot of Emotion": The Rocky Marriage of Instagram and Facebook bigtechontrial.com/p/a-lot-of-…

4/

#20yrsago French court bans DRM for DVDs web.archive.org/web/2005042402…

#20yrsago Why governments make stupid copyrights ft.com/content/39b697dc-b25e-1…

#20yrsago London Review of Books’s personals are really dirty and funny web.archive.org/web/2005042600…

#20yrsago German crooner’s megaphone-style covers of modern rock palast-orchester.de/en

#15yrsago British Airways leaves stranded passengers all over world, jacks up prices on tickets home theguardian.com/news/blog/2010…

5/

#15yrsago Google highlights fair use defense to YouTube takedowns publicpolicy.googleblog.com/20…

#15yrsago Microsoft wins its $100M tax-break and amnesty from broke-ass Washington State web.archive.org/web/2010042906…

#10yrsago Privilege: you’re probably not the one percent jacobin.com/2015/04/1-99-perce…

#10yrsago Marissa Mayer makes 1,100 Yahooers jobless, calls it a “remix” web.archive.org/web/2015042518…

6/

#10yrsago Canadian Big Content spokesjerk says the public domain is against the public interest michaelgeist.ca/2015/04/canadi…

#5yrsago Riot Baby pluralistic.net/2020/04/23/rio…

#5yrsago Mayor of Las Vegas says the "free market" will decide what's safe pluralistic.net/2020/04/23/rio…

#1yrago "Humans in the loop" must detect the hardest-to-spot errors, at superhuman speed pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/max…

7/

Yesterday's threads: Sarah Wynn-Williams's 'Careless People'; and more!

mamot.fr/@pluralistic/11438774…

8/

Cory Doctorow

2025-04-23 14:28:26

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: Sarah Wynn-Williams's 'Careless People'; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2025/04/23/zuc…

#Pluralistic

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Pluralistic: Sarah Wynn-Williams’s ‘Careless People’ (23 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

^{pluralistic.net}

My last nationally bestselling novel was "The Bezzle," an ice-cold revenge story of high-tech finance crime starring the forensic accountant Martin Hench.

us.macmillan.com/books/9781250…

Signed copies from Chevalier's Books:

chevaliersbooks.com/product-pa…

--

My latest nonfiction book is "The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation" from Verso Books:

seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Signed copies available from Book Soup:

booksoup.com/book/978180429124…

Both are national bestsellers!

9/

Book details - Macmillan Publishers

New York Times bestseller Cory Doctorow's The Bezzle is a high stakes thriller where the lives of the hundreds of thousands of inmates in California’s pris...

^Macmillan

My ebooks and audiobooks (from 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."

craphound.com/shop/

10/

Upcoming appearances:

* #Auckland: Unity Books, May 2, 6PM
eventbrite.co.nz/e/an-evening-…

* #Wellington: Unity Books, May 3, 3PM
unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-even…

* #Pittsburgh: Picks and Shovels at White Whale Books, May 15
whitewhalebookstore.com/events…

* #Pittsburgh: PyCon, May 16
us.pycon.org/2025/schedule/

* Virtual: Writing to Resist (California Writers Club Berkeley):
cwc-berkeley.org/writing-to-re…

11/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #PDX: Teardown 2025, Jun 20-22
crowdsupply.com/teardown/portl…

* #PDX: Picks and Shovels with BUNNIE HUANG at Barnes and Noble, Jun 20
stores.barnesandnoble.com/even…

* #London: How To Academy with Riley Quinn, Jul 1
howtoacademy.com/events/cory-d…

* #Manchester: Picks and Shovels at Blackwell's Bookshop, Jul 2
eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-…

* #Manchester: Co-operatives UK Co-op Congress keynote, Jul 3
uk.coop/events-and-training/ev…

12/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #NewOrleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
contraflowscifi.org/

13/

Recent appearances:

* Beyond the Web (Ostrom Workshop)
youtube.com/watch?v=-WfO-9G4Eg…

* Can we use the Internet for Democracy?
youtube.com/watch?v=Zh_HON6iql…

* Fightback Against Trump's Tariff Attack (Avi Lewis)
youtube.com/watch?v=P9sgIAc6z_…

14/

You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: pluralistic.net/2025/04/24/her…

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If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is ad-/tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🚅". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!

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15/

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.

Catch me in #NewZealand at UNITY BOOKS in #AUCKLAND (May 2, 6PM):

eventbrite.co.nz/e/an-evening-…

and #WELLINGTON (May 3, 3PM):

unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-even…

More tour dates (PDX, Pittsburgh, London, Manchester) here:

martinhench.com

eof/