Pluralistic: The FTC has Big Pharma's number (23 Nov 2023)


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Pluralistic: What Americans want (18 Oct 2023)


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  • What Americans want: Term limits for Congress, pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Electoral College, get money out of politics.
  • Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
  • This day in history: 2003, 2013, 2018, 2022
  • Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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Pluralistic: One of America's most corporate-crime-friendly bankruptcy judges forced to recuse himself (16 Oct 2023)


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Pluralistic: How the kleptocrats and oligarchs hunt civil society groups to the ends of the Earth (24 August 2023)


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The Shitty Tech Adoption Curve Has a Business Model

It is difficult to get a public procurement officer to understand something, when a vendor’s salary depends on his not understanding it.

A jail cell, seen through the bars. Bundles of US $100 bills are piled up on the floor of the cell.
Flying Logos/CC BY-SA 4.0 (modified)

In the “Shitty Technology Adoption Curve,” oppressive technologies are first imposed on people who don’t get to complain — prisoners, migrants, children, mental patients, benefits recipients — in order to normalize these tools and sand down their rough edges. Once the technology has been rendered a little more acceptable, it crawls up the privilege gradient, bit by bit, until even the most socially powerful among us are using it.

In other words: 20 years ago, if you ate dinner under a CCTV’s unblinking eye, you were probably dining in a supermax prison. Today, you’re likely just someone who bought some luxury surveillance, like a “home automation” system from Google, Apple, Amazon or Facebook.

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Pluralistic: Ireland's privacy regulator is a gamekeeper-turned-poacher (15 May 2023)


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Pluralistic: Clarence Thomas and the generosity of a far-right dark-money billionaire (06 Apr 2023)


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Pluralistic: SVB's investors will get $2b in public bailout money (18 Mar 2023)


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Pluralistic: Turbotax is blitzing Congress for the right to tax YOU (20 Feb 2023)


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Pluralistic: Here are just two of the corporate giveaways hidden in the rushed, must-pass, end-of-year budget bill (22 Dec 2022)


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