This story was reported with support from the MuckRock foundation. 

Less than 72 hours before Weber State University in Utah was scheduled to host a conference on censorship, presenters were told not to discuss identity politics, or be removed from the official program agenda. In an email to presenters selected to participate in the 27th Annual Unity Conference, titled “Redacted: Navigating the Complexities of Censorship,” then-Vice President of Student Access & Success Jessica Oyler told participants that it wasn’t a “real” academic conference; therefore, their statements and materials that “take a side” on legislation or policies wouldn’t be protected by academic freedom under a particular state law. 

Utah’s HB 261—the state law in question—is one of many enacted to discourage public colleges and schools from using Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) frameworks to inform admission and employment decisions, or risk losing future funding opportunities from the state. Dozens of similar laws have been implemented in states like Texas, Florida, Alabama, and Iowa in recent years. While these laws frequently make funding a central target, prohibitions on college classroom instruction are growing more frequent. 

Proponents of free speech, academic freedom, and civil rights have criticized these laws, arguing that they force the institutions that have financially benefitted from implementing DEI initiatives and scholarly contributions from researchers to make concessions that keep the university funded at the expense of its reputation. Case in point, Weber State’s censorship conference. 

404 Media has obtained documents via a Freedom of Information Act request that offer more insight into the university’s rationale, the presenters’ responses and what’s happened since.

Oyler tried to articulate to presenters that it wasn’t a “real” conference because it had been funded by the university’s student affairs division. Apparently, under Utah’s HB 261, this made the conference appear academically illegitimate, because under this law—and the university’s interpretation of it—academic freedom isn’t assured for students. Nor is it an assurance for university staff, or researchers, regardless of institutional affiliation, when programs aren’t funded through faculty affairs. 

Sarah Herrmann, an associate professor of psychological science at Weber State, says she was encouraged by conference organizers to submit a proposal to present at the conference research she’d conducted with one of her students into the effects of legislation like HB 261 student campus culture. Specifically, how the resulting effects of legislation—like the closure of campus cultural centers—would impact the student experience. Their proposal was accepted, with Herrmann’s student having planned to present their findings at the conference. Then, mere days before the conference, the student received a request from one of the event organizers to remove any mention of “DEI” both as an acronym and spelled out, which was quickly forwarded to Herrmann.

“You can imagine students who were part of the Women's Center or cultural centers seeing their minor canceled,” Herrmann told 404 Media. “It conveys a message about who belongs and who doesn't.”

Herrmann’s student was among the first to officially withdraw from the conference, as it signaled an institutional willingness to dissuade the development of student scholarship—a trend taking hold at institutions in states with these laws in effect. For instance, in April, the Texas Tech University System issued a memo barring all future graduate theses and dissertations on sexual orientation and gender identity once currently enrolled students satisfy pre-determined degree requirements for graduation. 

Coincidentally, Weber State is one of the institutions that has closed its campus cultural centers. It’s also one of the institutions that has “suspended” both its Queer Studies and Women’s & General Studies minor, which are both listed as “pending formal discontinuance” on the university’s web pages. university’s website. Rachel Badali, Weber State University’s public relations director told 404 Media in a statement that in order to comply with HB 265—yet another state law, the university came up with a “strategic reinvestment plan.” That plan resulted in the university eliminating more than 30 major, minor, certificate and emphasis programs. 

“A major point of this process was to align WSU’s offerings with workforce needs, and market analysis for the state didn’t show a demand for jobs in those areas,” Badali told 404 Media. “There was also limited student demand. Last year’s combined enrollment in queer studies and women and gender studies was less than 50 students, which was about 0.28% of degree-seeking students.”

Richard Price, a professor of political science and philosophy at Weber State who publicly withdrew from the conference’s keynote panel after receiving Oyler’s email, has been involved in a number of the campus’s initiatives aimed at improving access to LGBTQ+ scholarship over the years. I spoke with Price shortly after they’d held their last queer history course of the semester and for the foreseeable future. They told 404 Media these programs received very little funding from the state. 

“They were passion projects, closed to pacify legislators who don’t like seeing words like ‘queer,’” Price told 404 Media.

Price says morale among faculty is low, particularly for those in the social sciences and humanities, who also happen to belong to the identity groups being actively marginalized, claiming that earned media for scholarship isn’t being actively promoted by the campus. This is despite the individuals perceived to be at the helm of the censorship conference’s unraveling having left the institution for other opportunities. 

“They don't want my research to come up easily in legislator searches,” Price added.

Price isn’t alone in making this claim. However, Weber State’s public relations arm disputes this characterization, with Badali noting that “[w]hen WSU employees are sharing their expertise or making headlines for their great work, it proves that students are learning from the very best in the field.

“That’s something the university continues to support and promote,” she added. 

But researchers from other colleges who submitted proposals to the conference weren’t immune from the university’s rigid interpretation of the state’s anti-DEI laws, either. Brianne Kramer, an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development at Southern Utah University and her colleague also received requests to edit their conference materials for references to “the New Right,” which are literally the first words in the title of a recently published article the presentation was based on.  

Kramer told 404 Media that she and her colleague, Sean P. Crossland of Utah Valley University were well aware that the university was asking them to censor themselves. However, the university’s request wasn’t their line in the sand. They didn’t expect to be censored during the event itself, and since neither of them are university affiliates, they didn’t have to fear reprisal. 

“You can censor my title or the language in my abstract, but unless you gag me or drag me out of the room, I’m going to say what I need to say,” Kramer told 404 Media.

Kramer notes that academic researchers do have to take calculated risks when considering what conferences to present at or attend. This pressure encourages researchers to self-censor, which can be more detrimental than government intervention in part because it becomes so hard to measure the full extent of the problem. Kramer also says that it weakens tenure protections. 

“Faculty may struggle to meet promotion and tenure requirements if they can’t publish or present certain types of scholarship,” she added. “This affects tenured and non-tenured faculty, limiting their ability to use their expertise. The consequences extend to students, who miss out on the full education they deserve when faculty self-censor in teaching, scholarship and service. Everyone loses in this scenario—not just faculty, but students and staff as well.”

Many of the initially scheduled presenters affected by Weber State’s rigid read of HB 261 welcomed efforts to reschedule the conference, led by the Wildcat Collective on two separate occasions—the second going better than the first, according to organizers, but never quite measuring up to what the conference was intended to be. Scholars like Kramer in Utah are also encouraged that SB 295 was signed into law in March of this year, amending HB 261 to broaden the scope ever so slightly. Kramer says that while it’s going to take time to return to anything close to the baseline, faculty researchers seem more inclined to mobilize in opposing restrictions to academic freedom in Utah and elsewhere, especially now that the consequences are out on full display. 

“You can’t be an activist without hope,” Kramer added. “You have to be hopeful that even if we don’t get to see the big change, that we’re going to see those incremental changes, hopefully, as we move forward.” 

Today's links

• Demand destruction vs fuel-superceding infrastructure: Will Trump hormuz us into the full Gretacene?
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Beck, Scientologist; Citizen journalism; Podcast-killing treaty; US x Kiwi copyright; Apple did a crime; DeCSS v civilian aviation; Navy x SF's queering; Micosoft v FLOSS; Sony-BMG needs a new DRM czar; Lossy copying sculpture; AI and the fatfinger economy.
• Upcoming appearances: Guelph, Barcelona, Berlin, Hay-on-Wye, London, NYC, Edinburgh.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Demand destruction vs fuel-superceding infrastructure (permalink)

No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose Hope in the Dark got me through the first Trump administration and whose A Paradise Built In Hell inspired my novel Walkaway:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/

In her latest, "Truth, Consequences, Climate, and Demand Destruction," Solnit is nothing short of inspirational – not because she downplays the horror and misery of Trump and his war of choice in Iran, but because she tells us what we stand to salvage from the wreckage:

https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/truth-consequences-climate-and-demand-destruction/

Solnit starts by explaining some of the (many, many) things that Trump doesn't understand. Principally, Trump doesn't understand the concept of "demand destruction," which is what happens when shortages prompt people to make durable, one-way changes in their behavior that permanently reduce the demand for fossil fuels.

High prices sometimes create demand destruction: for example, if a transient shortage in eggs pushes prices up, people might discover that they prefer tofu scrambles in the morning, so even when the price of eggs comes back down, they buy two dozen fewer eggs every month, forever.

Beyond high prices, shortages and rationing are far more likely to lead to demand destruction. In the 10 years following the 1970s oil crisis, US cars doubled in fuel efficiency, and the gas-guzzler didn't return until car manufacturers exploited the American "light truck" loophole to fill the streets with deadly SUVs:

https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/the-chicken-tax-and-other-ways-the-u-s-government-subsidizes-your-ford-f-150-444a5164c627

But to really max out on demand destruction, you need both rationing and a cheap, easily installed substitute, and that's what the Strait of Epstein crisis, along with solar and batteries, offers the world today. Solar is incredibly cheap, and getting cheaper every day. Batteries are also incredibly cheap, and they're getting cheaper too. For decades, fossil fuel apologists have insisted that we'll never stop setting old dead shit on fire because "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow," but thanks to battery deployment in China and California (and more places very soon), the sun shines all night long:

https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electricity-Review-2026.pdf?ref=meditationsinanemergency.com

In starting this stupid, unforgivable war, Trump has vastly accelerated the process of demand destruction. Rather than buying American oil, the whole world has undertaken a simultaneous, rapid, irreversible shift to electrical substitutes for fossil fuel applications, from induction tops to balcony solar to ebikes and EVs:

https://thepolycrisis.org/01-demand-destruction-us-oil-is-not-winning-the-iran-war/

As Solnit writes, Trump's stupid war follows on the heels of another unforgivable and cruel blunder: Putin's quagmire in Ukraine, which catapulted Europe into the Gretacene, with a wholesale, continent-wide shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power. Now, the rest of the world is following suit. In South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung is leading the charge to transition the country to renewables, framing fossil fuels as an existential geopolitical risk.

Trump's demand destruction accelerates Putin's demand destruction: China and India both increased their energy consumption in 2025 – but reduced their fossil fuel consumption over the same period. In 2025, coal accounted for less than a third of the world's energy for the first time in modern history. 2025 was the year that solar and wind overtook coal globally.

Meanwhile, Trump and his oil baron buddies keep trying to make fetch happen. On the campaign trail, Trump told the oil industry that if they slipped him a $1b bribe, he would give them anything they wanted, and he's kept his promise. Trump will let Big Oil drill anywhere they like, from sacred sites like New Mexico's Chaco Canyon to the Arctic. He'll even let them take all of Venezuela's oil. The problem is that banks can see the demand destruction writing on the wall, and they are conspicuously declining to loan the oil companies the money they'd need to get that oil.

Truly, Trump's a machine for creating stranded assets at scale. As Solnit writes, that's because Trump has no strategic foresight; strategy being "the ability to plan for things to arise that may counter your agenda, so you can continue to pursue your agenda." Trump's a bully, and he's accustomed to intimidating his adversaries into capitulating. That's why Trump keeps making moves without ever thinking about the countermove he might provoke. He can't metabolize the strategic maxim that "the enemy gets a vote."

This is the GOP's whole vibe these days: "how dare you do unto me as I have done unto you?" Solnit points to GOP outrage in response to Democratic gerrymandering in blue states, which Democrats undertook in direct, explicit response to shameless gerrymandering in Texas and other red states. Solnit says that the GOP has "confused having a lot of power with having all the power" and is perennially surprised when their attacks on Iran and Minneapolis evince a reaction from the people in Iran and Minneapolis.

This is the defective reasoning that caused Comrade Trump to hormuz the world into the full Gretacene. Whereas once the case for the energy transition was driven by activists who warned people about the future consequences of inaction, Trump has summoned up a new army of people who are worried about the present consequences of inaction: such as not being able to drive your car, use your gas stove, or fertilize your crops. Trump has summoned up another army of people, who are worried about the politics of oil, the fact that oil leads to wars and can be mobilized as a weapon when it is withheld from your country.

Activists couldn't deliver the energy transition on their own – but now there's a coalition that's driving rapid, irreversible change: activists concerned about the future of the planet, in coalition with economic actors concerned about the consequences of not being able to cook, heat your home, or keep the lights on; in coalition with national security hawks worried about the geopolitics of oil. That's Comrade Trump's three-part mobilization: human rights, finance, and national security, all insisting that the enemy gets a vote, and voting unanimously for a post-American world.

Last week marked the first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference, attended by representatives from 54 countries who sidestepped the US- and China-dominated UN to ratify the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative, whose 18 signatories include Colombia, a major oil producer.

The world is moving on, and Trump continues to insist that he can roll back history to some imaginary era of a Great America. Every time this fails, he doubles down on his failures and sets the stage for more failure to come. Take Trump's decision to have the US blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Not only is this a powerful force for demand destruction – but, as Trita Parsi writes, it's also poison for Trump's own electoral fortunes in America:

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-iran-blockade/

Trump won in 2024 by campaigning to improve Americans' cost of living. This is a powerful campaign strategy, and it's not limited to fascists, as Zohran Mamdani can attest. But for this to work, you actually have to reduce the cost of living once you take office, otherwise you will be hated and rejected and hampered in everything you do. The problem (for Trump – but not for Mamdani!) is that America's high cost of living is driven by corporate profiteering, and the only way to fix it is to make the rich poorer so as to make the poor richer:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/24/mamdani-thought/#public-excellence

If Trump had chosen to bullshit his way through the Iranian blockade of the strait, allowing the Iranians to collect a $2m toll per tanker (payable in Chinese renminbi!), well, oil would have gone up in price some, but the coming runaway inflation on food and fuel would have been substantially blunted. Instead, he decided to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" by adding a US blockade, which means that prices in the US are going to skyrocket, making his base furious and driving turnout for Democrats, along with support for more renewables, even among blood-red Republican rural Texas ranchers, who have had enough of "DEI for fossil fuels":

https://austinfreepress.org/renewables-are-now-the-costco-of-energy-production-bill-mckibben-says/

The renewables transition is now a self-licking ice-cream cone, a flywheel that only spins faster and faster. As Solnit writes, this is true notwithstanding the concerns by some climate advocates about the materials needed for the transition. Sure, there will be some extraction involved in mass electrification, and if that's done badly, it will involve stealing and destroying more land from poor and indigenous people. But we don't have to do it badly!

Meanwhile, not transitioning to renewables absolutely requires an endless cycle of incredibly destructive and genocidal extraction. Remember, fossil fuels are fuels, while renewables are infrastructure. Fuels need to be dug up and destroyed every year for so long as we insist on setting old dead shit on fire to survive. We dig up a lot of fossil fuels. The world consumes seventeen times more fossil fuels in a year than we will require to electrify the planet forever:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/06/with-great-power/#comes-great-responsibility

The infrastructure of renewables – panels, batteries, transmission lines – requires materials that are often scarce and whose processing involves extremely harmful and polluting processes. But those materials are all recyclable: we don't recycle them today because we haven't prioritized doing so, not because it it technologically beyond our reach. In 2024, America saw its first all-solar powered solar panel recycling factory, which reclaimed 99% of the materials in a panel that was 20% efficient, and then used those materials to make two panels that were each 40% efficient:

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/solarcycle-to-recycle-10-million-solar-panels-yearly

Trump shut that plant down, which means that other countries will get to recycle America's superannuated panels into modern, efficient ones and sell them back to America. America may have blocked any climate reparations for the poor world, but thanks to Comrade Trump, America's still going to end up paying them, in the form of windfall profits for countries whose cleantech economy is racing ahead of America's.

Unlike a fossil fuel economy, a cleantech sector does not require that your country have access to some difficult to find, unevenly distributed reservoir of old dead shit or even rare minerals. Not only is lithium far more common than once believed, it's also being phased out for use in batteries and replaced by sodium, the world's sixth-most abundant element:

https://cen.acs.org/energy/energy-storage-/Sodium-ion-batteries-Should-believe/103/web/2025/11

Lithium is set to join cobalt, a notorious conflict mineral, in the cleantech revolution's rear-view mirror as a transitional material used in early, primitive batteries and no longer required.

A post-carbon future is a post-petrostate future is a post-American future. It will run on solar and wind and batteries, which can be brought online cheaply and quickly, every time demand-destruction surges, using materials that are widely distributed around the world. It won't be a nuclear future, and not just because nuclear materials are (like oil) concentrated according to accidents of geography, nor merely because fissiles are geopolitically catastrophic (like oil). Nuclear plants take at least a decade to bring online, which means that they will always arrive ten years after some future Comrade Trump-type kicks off another orgy of demand destruction, and by the time we turn them on, the world will have already bought, improved and recycled two generations of batteries and panels.

(Image: Stefan Müller (climate stuff), CC BY 2.0)

Hey look at this (permalink)

• A Long and Probably Boring Process Post https://dreamcafe.com/2026/05/01/a-long-and-probably-boring-process-post/

• The Supreme Court is Corrupt. This is What We Can Do About It. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRzS61buXkQ

• NHS Goes To War Against Open Source https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/

• An open letter asking NHS England to keep its code open https://keepthingsopen.com/

• Top 20 Fiction to Inspire Climate Action https://thebookslist.com/20-fiction-books-to-inspire-climate-action/

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Beck dumps Winona and becomes a Scientologist https://web.archive.org/web/20010502151355/http://www.suntimes.com/output/zwecker/zp30.html

#25yrsago Fuck San Francisco https://craphound.com/fucksf.html

#25yrsago Desktop Linux rant https://web.archive.org/web/20021204051712/http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3297/1/

#25yrsago History of ASCAP and BMI https://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/royalty-politics.html

#25yrsago AUSA: If we let you decrypt DVDs, airplanes will start falling out of the sky https://web.archive.org/web/20010504221956/https://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,43485,00.html

#25yrsago Microsoft shits on open source https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/03/business/technology-microsoft-is-set-to-be-top-foe-of-free-code.html

#20yrsago Dan Gillmor explains “citizen journalism” https://web.archive.org/web/20060512043722/https://sf.backfence.com/bayarea/showPost.cfm?myComm=BA&bid=2271

#20yrsago UN plans a treaty to kill podcasts https://web.archive.org/web/20060512141428/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004619.php

#20yrsago Sen Stevens tries to sneak the Broadcast Flag into law https://web.archive.org/web/20060505054724/http://ipaction.org/blog/2006/05/breaking-news-broadcast-flag-is-back.html

#20yrago How the US Navy queered San Francisco https://web.archive.org/web/20060504024636/http://ask.yahoo.com/20060502.html

#20yrago Help wanted: new DRM czar for Sony-BMG https://web.archive.org/web/20060512063724/http://www.paidcontent.org/sonybmg-director-new-technology-content-protection-nyc

#20yrsago Rich Americans as sick as poor Brits https://web.archive.org/web/20060516225807/http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9098&feedId=online-news_rss20

#15yrsago Sculpture embodies lossy copying using much-copied house-key https://web.archive.org/web/20110316215804/http://www.danielbejar.com/Visual_Topography_of_a_Generation_Gap.html

#15yrsago Piracy and poor countries: Big Content wants to have its cake and eat it too https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/may/03/why-poor-countries-lead-world-piracy

#15yrsago Brust’s Tiassa: versatile fantasy in three modes https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/02/brusts-tiassa-versatile-fantasy-in-three-modes/

#15yrsago Why New Zealand was dumb to let the USA write its copyright laws https://web.archive.org/web/20110601173727/http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/7615

#15yrsago Canadian neocon Tories take a slim majority in election, pro-Internet New Democrats form the opposition https://web.archive.org/web/20110503041720/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/new-political-era-begins-as-tories-win-majority-ndp-grabs-opposition/article2006635/

#15yrsago Will technology make us freer, and if so, how? https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-techno-optimism/

#15yrsago Wikileaks: America will foot the bill for record company enforcement in NZ if NZ will let America write its laws
https://web.archive.org/web/20110502135002/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5769/125/

#15yrsago Horology considered hazardous: the “German Time Bomb” clock with its deadly mainspring https://web.archive.org/web/20110516102538/https://www.anniversaryclocks.org/aci/haller-gtb.pdf

#5yrsago Political economy vs inflation https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/01/mayday/#inflationary-political-economy

#1yrago Apple faces criminal sanctions for defying App Store antitrust order https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup

#1yrago AI and the fatfinger economy https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpis-off/#principal-agentic-ai-problem

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Guelph: Musagetes Lecture, May 8
  https://riverrun.ca/whats-on/guelph-lecture-on-being-2026/

• Barcelona: Internet no tiene que ser un vertedero (Global Digital Rights Forum), May 13
  https://encuentroderechosdigitales.com/en/speakers/

• Virtual: How to Disenshittify the Internet with Wendy Liu (EFF), May 14
  https://www.eff.org/event/effecting-change-enshittification

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

• NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
  https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

• Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
  https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

• When Do Platforms Stop Innovating and Start Extracting? (InnovEU)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccDR0YaMt8

• Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
  https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612

• The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
  https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P

• Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "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.

• "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

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

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ISSN: 3066-764X

Hello everyone.

For almost the past decade, I’ve spent my professional and creative energies following and criticizing lunatic right-wing media, which has been an amazing journey of discovery. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about myself, and about the stories that people tell that are designed to fuel incitement and media attention. It was a joy and a critical part of my growing up, but the only constant in life is change, and that project couldn’t last forever.

It is my sincere conviction that misinformation and the lies that bigots tell to facilitate their bigotry cannot be ignored, and my approach to that problem has always been to keep some level of optimism in mind. When discussing a problem, it is central for me to believe that a solution for that problem is possible. To complain about a problem that you don’t think there’s a solution for makes as much sense as spending your time yelling about how humans can’t fly; no amount of talk is going to change that, so you should spend your time building a rocket pack or trying to hack genetics.

I still believe that solutions to misinformation and bigot content exist, and that optimism isn’t gone, but the podcast that I spent the last nine years making was no longer an avenue where that optimism could survive.

As that comes to an end, I was faced with the decision of what to do next. I could try to move on and start a new show about misinformation, but the fact that things were changing gave me a chance to reflect on whether or not that was good for anyone.

I don’t regret the last nine years of work, and I’m proud of a lot of what we accomplished, but ultimately I have said just about all I have to say about misinformation and the deceptive methods propagandists use. Any attempt to make a new podcast that centered around that would run the risk of being trapped in redundancy, and not offer anything new to the understanding that the public can have about these subjects.

I intend to continue pursuing a certain amount of academic coverage of this topic, and my plan still involves finding ways to make sure the things I’ve learned on the way are put to good use, but personally I feel the need to create something that is not centered around discussing hateful liars lying.

This project is the next step, and one that I hope people will enjoy. I’ve discovered in the last couple years of my life that I have a passion for travel, and a very peculiar type of travel. Going to a resort or luxurious locale doesn’t appeal to me, and I don’t really feel a strong urge to find all the cool spots where the locals all hang out like all the haunts and dive bars I’ve spent so much time in.

I want to see some of the amazing things that exist out there, that are also possibly a bit stupid.

We’re not talking strictly about roadside attractions, tourist traps, or that big cross just off the highway. We’re not talking strictly about historically significant landmarks. We’re not talking strictly about places that are haunted or might have magical properties. The places I want to visit and experience may include stuff that could fall into any of those categories, but what’s most important is that these places mean something.

I am currently working on the first episodes of this podcast, and part of me being able to keep finding places that mean something relies on people telling me about places that mean something, which I hope listeners like you will be willing to help with. You can suggest a location for me on the contact page on this site, and if everything goes according to plan, I may end up heading to the place you want to show me.

I recognize that this is a big shift, and a lot of people who have enjoyed the content I’ve produced for the last nine years might not be interested in following along into a new project, and that is totally fair. I can’t thank you enough for enjoying what we’ve made.

“…many houses valued in the $3 million-to-$5 million range on Vancouver’s west side, and in West Vancouver, are selling for less than they did more than 10 years ago.” – excerpt from the article by Vaughn Palmer

Examples from the article:

A mansion in the 2500-block of West 36th Avenue in Vancouver sold for $4.4 million in 2013. This year, it sold for less [than] $4.3 million.

An older dwelling on a large lot in the 2200-block of West 44th Avenue in Vancouver sold for $4.5 million in 2016. It sold for significantly less last month, at $3.1 million.

A view house in the 2100-block of Westhill Place in West Vancouver was bought for $2.8 million in 2015. It just sold for $2.5 million.

Keep in mind that, over those same 10 years, compound inflation has increased prices of consumer goods in Canada by about 28-30% (and inversely weakened our dollar buying power). Thus to break even in real terms that $4.5 million 2016 purchase on West 44th Ave should have sold for $5.8 million in 2026. Instead, it sold for $3.1 million. Thus in real terms, the 2016 buyer has lost 47% of their ‘investment’. And that does not include transfer and any mortgage carrying costs. The reconciliation with fundamentals is going to be brutal, in all segments of the market. – vreaa

Michael Kalus posted a photo: