Pluralistic: Critique and writing (23 Oct 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
That's where critiquing other writers' stories comes in. The process of reading and re-reading someone else's imperfect work and devoting real mental energy to figuring out what's not working in it and how to fix it is how you develop the creative instincts that allow you to automatically and unconsciously avoid pitfalls and make breakthroughs in your own work.
Is there something like this in Finland? I would love to go.
I'm talking about fiscal debt: the solar we didn't build, the carbon we emitted instead; the rail we didn't build, the wildly inefficient aviation we substituted; the walkable, livable, transit-oriented cities we didn't build, the car-choked disasters we built instead. Oligarchic opposition to universal healthcare left us sick, with un- or undertreated illnesses and missed opportunities for prevention that left us with overlapping, population-scale health crises. All of this is debt that must be repaid: we can't walk away from it through bankruptcy. We must build the transit, cities, and systems of care – the infrastructure – our species needs to carry on human civilization. We can't keep hitting snooze on this, lest we are finally awoken by seawater lapping at our pillows.
This on a day when I heard Bill Gates on the Decoder podcast talking about AI being the worst weapon we have ever created. And the world is gonna suck so bad.
Imagine what the internet would look like today if, in its early regulatory moments, our elected representatives had demanded privacy, rather than trying to ban it. Sure, some corporations would have spied on us anyway, and criminals would have done their best to compromise our privacy, but criminals and rogue firms wouldn't have been able to attract capital to engage in conduct that was likely to give rise to massive fines and criminal prosecutions for violating the privacy laws Congress never bothered to write for us.
The thought I had when reading this was the thought I had when comparing subscribing via RSS vs email. In the email subscription method, you know who the subscriber is. With RSS you don’t know anything.
Which is good in a way. But I as an author don’t have any information. It feels as if I am shouting into the void. Which is ok too. I need to be fine with it.
The point is that the article talked about encryption as a thing that makes the internet privacy positive.
Billionaires have to be solopsists, or at least, selective solipsists, who don't really believe in the humanity of the people who create their wealth and whom they wield their power over. This has always been clear, but the idea that we can replace our social connections with chatbots erases any doubt.
Billionaires just don't think we're real.