Today's links

The Tamakis' "Roaming": Ah, to be young and Canadian in New York City.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

The cover for the Drawn and Quarterly edition of the Tamakis' 'Roaming.'

The Tamakis' "Roaming" (permalink)

Cousins Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki are a graphic storytelling powerhouse, and their latest title, Roaming (from Drawn and Quarterly) is a stunner:

https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/roaming/

Roaming is the story of three young Canadian women meeting up for a getaway to New York City. Zoe and Dani are high-school best friends who haven't seen each other since they graduated and decamped for universities in different cities. Fiona is Dani's art-school classmate, a glamorous and cantankerous artist with an affected air of sophistication.

The three young women check into a youth hostel for a hotly anticipated long weekend, which turns into a complicated and moody marathon of debauchery, bonding, feuding, flirting, resentments and wonders.

The Tamakis' specialty is capturing the charged sexuality, subtle friendship power-moves, and intense but brittle friendship between young women. They're very good at it, which is why they won a Governor General's prize for their 2014 blockbuster This One Summer:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/05/06/review-this-one-summer/

With Roaming we get a dizzying, beautifully wrought three-body problem as the three protagonists struggle with resentments and love, sex and insecurity. The relationships between Zoe, Dani and Fiona careen wildly from scene to scene and even panel to panel, propelled by sly graphic cues and fantastically understated dialog.

Meanwhile, NYC looms large as it only could in a story about young Canadians in the City. It's hard to overstate the glamour with which New York looms in the imagination of (many) young Canadians. Hence the old joke: "How many Canadians does it take to change a lightbulb? Two: one to change the bulb and one to go to New York and make sure lightbulbs are still cool." Or: "Toronto is New York run by the Swiss; the city that never sleeps…in."

I was one of those Canadian adolescents drunk on New York, on several occasions, and even today the City can just floor me. The Tamakis nailed this, from the facial expressions to the body-language of their characters, the push-pull of wanting to go to all the tourist traps and not wanting to be the kind of rube who goes to all the tourist traps.

All my female friends have stories of growing up in intense, three-way friendships that were forever turning into two-on-one fights, with allegiances shifting from moment to moment. Roaming tells the story of one such triangle, forming and shattering and re-forming in a sorefooted, exhilarating weekend in the greatest city in the world (TM). It's a love story about friendship and the transition from adolescence to adulthood, perfectly precise in its depiction of very specific people in a very specific time and place, and yet absolutely universal in the truths it reveals.

Hey look at this (permalink)

We May Not Negotiate Prices for Ten Drugs After All https://prospect.org/health/2023-09-11-we-may-not-negotiate-prices-for-ten-drugs-after-all/
'It's robbery': Salvadorans slow to adopt Bitcoin https://news.yahoo.com/robbery-salvadorans-slow-adopt-bitcoin-191002188.html (h/t Slashdot)
The oracle problem and the future of DeFi https://www.bis.org/publ/bisbull76.pdf (h/t Naked Capitalism)

A Wayback Machine banner.

This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago Help pay back the RIAA’s 12-year-old victim https://web.archive.org/web/20040215051659/http://funkbunny.com/datatype/archives/000076.html

#20yrsago 'Amnesty' for Music File Sharing Is a Sham https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-sep-10-oe-vonlohmann10-story.html

#15yrsago Canadian man changes name to beat no-fly list https://web.archive.org/web/20080917202919/https://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2008/09/11/nofly-name.html

#15yrsago Michigan GOP attacks right-to-vote for the recently foreclosed https://web.archive.org/web/20080911193036/https://michiganmessenger.com/4076/lose-your-house-lose-your-vote

#15yrsago North Texas house burns because local authorities switched off hydrants “to fight terrorism” https://web.archive.org/web/20080913150058/https://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa080827_lj_hawes.1983f2d0.html

#15yrsago Terror cops hunt down ornamental castor bean plant https://web.archive.org/web/20080914224719/http://www.abc4.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=f2396fa3-c730-457d-825c-257c263a831c

#15yrsago Seaweed: Lush, hilarious oversized indie graphic novel https://memex.craphound.com/2008/09/11/seaweed-lush-hilarious-oversized-indie-graphic-novel/

#10yrsago NSA reveals that it illegally gathered thousands of phone records, to the appalled astonishment of FISA court judge https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/10/nsa-violated-court-rules-data-documents

#10yrsago Revisiting Milgram’s obedience experiment: what did he actually prove? https://psmag.com/social-justice/electric-schlock-65377

#10yrsago This is the crypto standard that the NSA sabotaged https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/government-announces-steps-to-restore-confidence-on-encryption-standards/

#10yrsago How the feds asked Microsoft to backdoor BitLocker, their full-disk encryption tool https://mashable.com/archive/fbi-microsoft-bitlocker-backdoor

#10yrsago US border laptop searches: the other warrantless surveillance https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/documents-shed-light-border-laptop-searches

#10yrsago Knife use workshops for kids https://web.archive.org/web/20130913132151/http://www.nepafamily.com/events/sharp-kids/

#10yrsago Scholar shows ‘three strikes’ programs don’t reduce piracy https://www.itnews.com.au/news/three-strikes-laws-do-not-reduce-online-piracy-study-356360

#10yrsago Report: Rich Chinese perps hire body-doubles to do their time https://web.archive.org/web/20130910225855/https://www.vocativ.com/09-2013/chinas-prisoners-for-hire-is-that-you-bo-xilai/

#10yrsago UK gov’t wants to ban dirty words in UK domain names; tell them to #£@* off https://web.archive.org/web/20140810230219/http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/latest/nominet-announces-registration-policy-review

#10yrsago WILD: sweet picture book about a feral child who won’t be tamed https://memex.craphound.com/2013/09/10/wild-sweet-picture-book-about-a-feral-child-who-wont-be-tamed-2/

#10yrsago Replica ‘Enterprise’ bridge used to sell surveillance to Congress https://slate.com/technology/2013/09/surveilliance-and-spying-does-the-army-have-a-star-trek-lair.html

#5yrsago Thanks to a Chinese and Korean fad, California’s wild succulents are being poached and smuggled to Asia https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2163157/californias-succulent-smugglers-plant-poachers

#5yrsago The sheriffs who cheered Trump’s attack on the press have long histories of shady dealings, revealed by the press https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/08/sheriffs-donald-trump-media-scrutiny

#5yrsago Good news: California ends cash bail! Bad news: It’s been replaced with a black-box algorithm https://qz.com/1375820/california-just-replaced-cash-bail-with-algorithms

#5yrsago Bruce Sterling’s VR, Objective Reality, lets you live life as an inert, resentful appliance https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2018/08/automata-farm-objective-reality/

#5yrsago Trump wants to kill the International Criminal Court to protect US war criminals from prosecution for Afghan crimes https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/10/trump-administration-to-take-tough-stance-against-the-hagues-icc.html

#5yrsago Big Tech is losing the public’s trust in just the same way that Big Finance has https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/technology/internet-industry-hearings.html

#5yrsago Court nukes Ontario’s Trumpian government bid to gut Toronto city council https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/judge-ruling-city-council-bill-election-1.4816664

#5yrsago Not in our name: Why European creators must oppose the EU’s proposal to limit linking and censor the internet https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/10/not-in-our-name-why-european-creators-must-oppose-the-eus-proposal-to-limit-linking-and-censor-the-internet/

#5yrsago 12 year olds write a book on making afterschool mischief https://drive.google.com/file/d/16Fd0VmGBT_D34WEorIsopcqbFPVWe845/view

#5yrsago California Farm Bureau sells out farmers, hands John Deere a monopoly over tractor repair https://www.vice.com/en/article/kz5qgw/california-farm-bureau-john-deere-tractor-hacking-right-to-repair

#5yrsago 2018’s Blue Wave needs to take down Trump, and the right-wing establishment of the Democratic Party https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/10/trump-neoliberal-democratic-party-america

#5yrsago History’s solutions to runaway inequality: warfare, revolution, state collapse and plague https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/10/can-inequality-only-be-fixed-by-war-revolution-or-plague

#5yrsago The EU’s copyright plans will let anyone mass-censor the internet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/how-eus-copyright-filters-will-make-it-trivial-anyone-censor-internet

#5yrsago Wanting It Badly Is Not Enough: Real Problems For Creators Deserve Real Solutions https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/wanting-it-badly-not-enough-real-problems-creators-deserve-real-solutions

#5yrsago Woman World: the hilarious man-free apocalypse we’ve all been waiting for https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/11/woman-world-the-hilarious-man-free-apocalypse-weve-all-been-waiting-for/

#5yrsago What developers need to do to save the internet from the EU’s looming copyright disaster https://github.blog/2018-09-10-how-developers-can-defend-open-source-from-the-eu-copyright-proposal/

#1yrago American healthcare did a fuckery: A trillion prices can't be wrong https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/10/big-data/#malicious-compliance

#1yrago The White House has a plan for Big Tech: Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Biden all agree https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/10/big-data/#230-quagmire

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024
Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION
Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (audiobook outtake) https://craphound.com/news/2023/08/01/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation-audiobook-outtake/
Upcoming appearances:

"The Internet Con" launch, Another Story Bookshop (Toronto), Sept 12
https://anotherstory.ca/events/29283
EFF Awards (San Francisco), Sept 14
https://www.eff.org/awards/effawards/2023
DIG Festival (Modena, Italy), Sept 22
https://dig-awards.org/en/dig-festival-2023-first-speakers-announced/
Launch for "The Internet Con" and Brian Merchant's "Blood in the Machine," Chevalier's Books (LA), Sept 27
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-internet-con-by-cory-doctorow-blood-in-the-machine-by-brian-merchant-tickets-696349940417
An Evening with VE Schwab (Boise), Oct 2
https://www.thecabinidaho.org/all-events/ve-schwab
Wired Nextfest (Milano), Oct 7-8
https://eventi.wired.it/nextfest23-milano
26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing keynote (Minneapolis), Oct 16
https://cscw.acm.org/2023/index.php/keynotes/
Seizing the Means of Computation (Edinburgh Futures Institute), Oct 25
https://efi.ed.ac.uk/event/seizing-the-means-of-computation-with-cory-doctorow/

Recent appearances:

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World: Naomi Klein in conversation with Cory Doctorow
https://www.youtube.com/live/jIoAh-jxb2k?si=d4bp1oHRt-6gjQ71
An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw It Into Reverse (Defcon 31)
https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2031/DEF%20CON%2031%20video%20and%20slides/DEF%20CON%2031%20-%20An%20Audacious%20Plan%20to%20Halt%20the%20Internet%27s%20Enshittification%20-%20Cory%20Doctorow.mp4
Life Doesn’t Have to Zuck (Bungacast)
https://bungacast.podbean.com/e/362-life-doesn-t-have-to-zuck-ft-cory-doctorow/

Latest books:

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. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
"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
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023
The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024

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/

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