📚 Finished reading: Enshittification by Cory Doctorow, which is a continuation of his blog posts and essays on the word he coined. I was worried that this would be a pointless pad-job, like what David Graber did for his similarly scatological Bullshit Jobs. But no, the topic is deep and Doctorow’s book explores those depths with competency and good humor.

What I most appreciate is that the solutions aren’t of the end-user “use paper straws” type. The point is not to boycott Amazon, leave all social media, move to a Kaczynski-style cottage; rather it is to put pressure on local, state and federal lawmakers to do their jobs and prevent the country’s slide to full-on technofeudalism. This is another delightful term, popularized by Yanis Varoufakis who himself has direct experience working for a feudal lord, Valve. Yes, there is a book and yes, I it is now on the ever-growing pile. Although, I still plan on canceling our household’s Prime subscription and redirecting the money to EFF.

Note that Doctorow describes himself as leftist and calls people “comrade”, a term at which I tend to recoil. He also sings praises to the EU legislature, of which I am profoundly sceptical. Still. We can agree that Big Tech is too big and that their bosses are too cozy with the government, and that between European Union’s incompetence and the American increasingly corporatized state only one has a straight path to totalitarianism, the final destination of end-stage enshittification.