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  Refreshing to see on a room-service menu.

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  When it comes to terrible web practices, it takes a lot to shock me. I literally wrote the book on the subject. Last night, I encountered a piece of fuckery and I can't get it out of my head, because it's such a perfect storm of outrageous conduct and institutional decay. -- 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: https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/26/abando...

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  Well this is eleventy-million kinds of Fucked Up. LA Times (who once contracted with me as a freelance reviewer and whom I struggled to get paid by) asserts that *merely reading its website* constitutes a permanent waiver of your right to sue it under *any circumstances*. This means that freelancers like me who read the website would lose the right to sue the company if we got stiffed. #consenttheater #bindingarbitration #dickovers

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  This analyst's report from Apollo about AI uses the term "S&P 493" to refer to the "S&P 500 minus the Mag 7" - because if you take out the AI companies, the S&P 500 is tanking. https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-spark/no-signs-of-ai-payoff-outside-the-tech-sector

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  "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, 'What would I do if I were a horse?'" -Ely Devons -- 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: https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/07/hotels-california#the-eagles-were-optimists 1/

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  More than half of all internet users have installed an ad-blocker; Doc Searls calls it the largest consumer boycott in history. -- 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: https://pluralistic.net/2026/10/17/mercenary-spyware/#discover-tech 1/

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  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: Priceful; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/28/cost-of-everything/ #Pluralistic 1/

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  Digital rights activists have long railed at the use of the term "IP," criticizing it for being deceptively imprecise and also rhetorically dishonest. I get where these objections are coming from, but I think they're misguided. -- 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: https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/28/cost-of-everything/#value-of-nothing 1/

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  British friends: firstdirect have locked me out of my account because I use an open version of Android (Graphene), and, per the guy on the phone, "open source is not secure." Any suggestions for a UK bank that uses sensible security (e.g. authenticator app)?

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  I'm sure that working in social media - dealing with people as mass statistical abstractions - is a cognitohazard, the sort of thing that could make anyone a little solipsistic, convinced that everyone else is a kind of stimulus-responding automaton lacking the interiority that you yourself experience. - 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: https://plurali...

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  There's no (good) reason *not* to apply these legal frameworks to the crypto industry - but there are plenty of *bad* reasons not to. The most obvious reason not to apply those regulations is that you are on the same side as the pump-and-dumpers, money launderers and stock swindlers. The reason we struggle to regulate fintech is that *we just don't want to*. 7/

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  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: Digital sewer socialism; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/08/find-yourself-a-city/ #Pluralistic 1/

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  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: Zuckerberg's increasingly bizarre war on whistleblowers; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/27/zuckerstreisand/ #Pluralistic 1/

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  If you are on an escalator or moving walkway in an airport and you are standing on the left (or worse, in the middle), you are a bad person and you should feel bad about yourself. You are, by definition, in a place where many other people are in a giant fucking hurry. Come on. We live in a society, dickhead.

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  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: Gemini is better than search because Google enshittified search; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/29/arsonist-firefighters/ #Pluralistic 1/

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  "The values described in Claude’s constitution sound very nice, but that hardly matters; it’s dishonest to suggest that Claude is capable of moral reasoning, because it’s not." -Ted Chiang, No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious https://www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2026/06/no-artificial-intelligence-is-not-conscious/687378/

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  Well, this is cute. I looked up an #AirCanada flight in Firefox and then pasted the URL into a Chromium window where I was logged into my Aeroplan Super-Elite account. Air Canada added $300 to the flight price when I tried to load it from a logged-in browser. Hell of a customer loyalty perk! I bought the ticket in my non-logged-in window, then added my FF number to it.

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  The AI-generated "I'm a really nice person doing good things and I'm writing to you to ask for cash" emails are now coming at the rate of dozens per day.

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  "Email Interview" (n): A process by which a stranger commissions you to write several short essays on subjects of their choosing, for free, which then runs under their byline.

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  A maddening itch between your shoulder blades feels *so good* when you scratch it, and *even better* when someone else scratches it, and better still if that person hits the right spot because they love you and they've done this for you so often and attentively, they know *exactly* which spot to hit. -- 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: https://pluralis...

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  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: The Claude Delusion; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/21/sunsetting/ #Pluralistic 1/

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  Well, *fuck*. California AG Bonta just surrendered to the Trump-aligned Ellison billionaires who want to take over and destroy Warners, merging it with the chudded out husk they've made of Paramount, leaving these two useless assholes to control Warners, Paramount and Tiktok: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/paramount-settles-with-california-other-states-clearing-major-hurdle-warner-bros-2026-09-21/ - If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, he...

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  One of the less remarked-upon aspects of being an atheist is how it changes the way you see a sunset. If you believe in an omnipresent God, then sunsets are one of God's intentional creations, which means that the beautiful colors refracting through the darkling sky were *chosen* to produce the effect. - 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: https://plurali...

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  I'm going to come right out and say it: statistical extrapolation is *fine*. One of the most useful ways to understand the present and anticipate the future is to measure the things that happened in the past, find the correlations among them, and extrapolate likely future outcomes from those correlations. - If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read/share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://plurali...

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  Today's threads (a thread) Inside: Eternal Sloptember; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/06/sin-is-when/ #Pluralistic 1/

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  It's not just illustrators. I've heard this from *bookkeepers.* "Please tell me you got a chatbot to help you with the syntax for this Excel macro" is a genuinely *weird* thing to ask someone. By all means, concern yourself with whether the accounts are *correct*, but caring about *how the macros are written* is like caring about whether someone jots notes to themselves by tabbing to a new document window or by scribbling on a yellow pad by the keyboard. 5/

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  Amazon's warehouse and delivery workers are "reverse centaurs," monitored by a constellation of apps and cameras, and they are severely punished for falling behind in the cadence set by Amazon's software, and that robot timekeeper does not make allowances for pee breaks: https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/23/traveling-salesman-solution/ This isn't a secret, and Amazon's come in for a lot of flack over it. But Amazon's "solution" is to add *more* penalties f...

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  Of all the weird recurring motifs of the stories people tell me about the AI labor wars, the *weirdest* is when bosses demand to be reassured that their contractors and workers will *absolutely* use AI to get the job done. -- 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: https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/14/cult-taylorism/#ctrl-x-it-out 1/

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  Thus, competition enforcement was transformed: no longer was it an inquiry into the power that a company wielded or might amass through a merger. Rather, every competition question was a matter of solving an equation that would tell you whether the result would be "efficient": https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/03/jitters/#brittleness 6/

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  Once you understand the corporate culture of AI "hyperscalers" consists of cooking your brain by locking yourself in the bathroom, holding flashlights under your chins and saying "Aaaaaaaaaay Eyeeeeeee" until you wet yourself in terror, a lot of things snap into focus: https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/ayyyyyy-eyeeeee/ -- 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,...