Slaughterhouse-Five, but instead of Billy Pilgrim, it's Billy Corgan
An always-free .pdf zine that I made just for poop emojis and giggles
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ok sure you probably have a favorite character, and you have a character you relate to, and a character you aspire to be like. whatever.
instead, in the notes, tell me about the character that makes you go "oh shit, that's me and i really wish it wasn't."
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The specific process by which Google enshittified its search
I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!
All digital businesses have the technical capacity to enshittify: the ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders:
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:
Which raises an important question: why do companies enshittify at a specific moment, after refraining from enshittifying before? After all, a company always has the potential to benefit by treating its business customers and end users worse, by giving them a worse deal. If you charge more for your product and pay your suppliers less, that leaves more money on the table for your investors.
Of course, it's not that simple. While cheating, price-gouging, and degrading your product can produce gains, these tactics also threaten losses. You might lose customers to a rival, or get punished by a regulator, or face mass resignations from your employees who really believe in your product.
Companies choose not to enshittify their products…until they choose to do so. One theory to explain this is that companies are engaged in a process of continuous assessment, gathering data about their competitive risks, their regulators' mettle, their employees' boldness. When these assessments indicate that the conditions are favorable to enshittification, the CEO walks over to the big "enshittification" lever on the wall and yanks it all the way to MAX.
Some companies have certainly done this – and paid the price. Think of Myspace or Yahoo: companies that made themselves worse by reducing quality and gouging on price (be it measured in dollars or attention – that is, ads) before sinking into obscure senescence. These companies made a bet that they could get richer while getting worse, and they were wrong, and they lost out.
But this model doesn't explain the Great Enshittening, in which all the tech companies are enshittifying at the same time. Maybe all these companies are subscribing to the same business newsletter (or, more likely, buying advice from the same management consultancy) (cough McKinsey cough) that is a kind of industry-wide starter pistol for enshittification.
I think it's something else. I think the main job of a CEO is to show up for work every morning and yank on the enshittification lever as hard as you can, in hopes that you can eke out some incremental gains in your company's cost-basis and/or income by shifting value away from your suppliers and customers to yourself.
We get good digital services when the enshittification lever doesn't budge – when it is constrained: by competition, by regulation, by interoperable mods and hacks that undo enshittification (like alternative clients and ad-blockers) and by workers who have bargaining power thanks to a tight labor market or a powerful union:
When Google ordered its staff to build a secret Chinese search engine that would censor search results and rat out dissidents to the Chinese secret police, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:
When Google tried to win a US government contract to build AI for drones used to target and murder civilians far from the battlefield, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:
What's happened since – what's behind all the tech companies enshittifying all at once – is that tech worker power has been smashed, especially at Google, where 12,000 workers were fired just months after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years. Likewise, competition has receded from tech bosses' worries, thanks to lax antitrust enforcement that saw most credible competitors merged into behemoths, or neutralized with predatory pricing schemes. Lax enforcement of other policies – privacy, labor and consumer protection – loosened up the enshittification lever even more. And the expansion of IP rights, which criminalize most kinds of reverse engineering and aftermarket modification, means that interoperability no longer applies friction to the enshittification lever.
Now that every tech boss has an enshittification lever that moves very freely, they can show up for work, yank the enshittification lever, and it goes all the way to MAX. When googlers protested the company's complicity in the genocide in Gaza, Google didn't kill the project – it mass-fired the workers:
thatwritererinoriordan reblogged
My copy of @drchucktingle's book Camp Damascus has arrived! (The publishers were kind enough to send me an advanced copy when I mentioned that I had ordered a copy but time was not kind to me as it was Finish Good Omens and Wrap Things Up Before the Strike world, and I had no personal reading time. So I'm really looking forward to settling down to read it.)
thatwritererinoriordan reblogged
it feels bad to have someone say ‘we will not accommodate your unique way in our space’. that is what the texas library association did to chuck
the thing is, WE have the power to create our own spaces. sometimes that space is SO SMALL, just one cubic foot inside of a pink mask, and sometimes that space is a whole ballroom full of buckaroos cheering and laughing and proving that LOVE IS REAL
thank you to true buckaroos MARK OSHIRO and TJ KLUNE for creating that space with me last night. thank you to NOWHERE BOOKSHOP and BONHAM EXCHANGE and JENNY LAWSON for hosting, and thank you to NIGHTFIRE for going along with this wild idea when chuck said ‘hey if the dang TXLA does not want unique buckaroos inside their convention, then lets have our own across town’
every day there are strong forces pushing back against love, but when we trot together we can make spaces where love thrives
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Happy 82nd, Barbra Streisand.
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Lavinia Dickinson (sister of Emily) with cat. Her smile is radiant! 💗 1896. Source.
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Shirley MacLaine and Billy Wilder during the making of Irma la Douce (1963).
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They shut me up in Prose – As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet – Because they liked me “still” –
Still! Could themself have peeped – And seen my Brain – go round – They might as wise have lodged a Bird For Treason – in the Pound –
Himself has but to will And easy as a Star Look down opon Captivity – And laugh – No more have I –
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They shut me up in Prose – (445)
Emily Dickinson 1830–1886
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Graphic - Patricia Watwood (B.1971)
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#'do i dare to eat a peach? find out on my subscribers-only livestream at midnight greenwich mean time babes! 😌😌🍑 ( @chainofclovers )
#internet things
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Shirley MacLaine - ‘Woman Times Seven’ - 1967
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2022 marks the centenary of one of the defining poems of the 20th century, The Waste Land. TS Eliot’s groundbreaking work first exploded into the world on 15 October 1922 and has continued to resonate with successive generations.
For decades, Eliot actively discouraged biographical interpretations of his work, developing an ‘impersonal theory’ of poetry in which the private life of a poet was deemed irrelevant. Instead, numerous scholars have been guided by Eliot’s own seven pages of footnotes to the poem.
But in 2020, there were dramatic new revelations that demonstrated how, behind Eliot’s mask, there was a much more personal story to be found within The Waste Land – which can now at last be explored
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Happy 80th, Tony Visconti.
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Everyday Poetry - "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T. S. Eliot
[Vila Real - Portugal - 27.02.2024]
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