Irrelevance personified

[theblogginggoth]

By Czeck writer Karel Čapek, inventor of the term ‘robot’ as well!

[nadiacreek]

This is one of my husband’s favorite short stories. He quotes it from memory. I’m pretty sure he can recite the entire thing from memory.

[elodieunderglass]

This is a tremendously impactful short story and every time I see it, it serves as an excellent reboot button for my state of mind.

[depsidase]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI”

My next book, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, will be out in about a month – and (once again) Amazon's monopoly audiobook platform refuses to carry it, and so (once again) I'm pre-selling the audio, ebook and print edition in a Kickstarter campaign that proves that DRM-free isn't just the right way to reach an audience, it's also the best way to reach them:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai

Reverse Centaur is a book about the realpolitik and the political economy of AI, written by a tech critic (me!) who is sick to the back teeth of hearing about AI. Central to the book's thesis:

The AI bubble is exceptionally bad and dangerous:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/07/dump-the-pumpers/#alpo-eaters-anonymous

The AI bubble is part of a lineage of pump-and-dump swindles created by monopolists who are desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow even after they've saturated their markets:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/06/privacy-last/#exceptionally-american

In service to that stock swindle, AI companies have cooked up all kinds of ways to "juke the stats" to paint a false picture of AI adoption:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpis-off/#principal-agentic-ai-problem

AI is a normal technology, and in the absence of the bubble, we'd call this collection of technically interesting, sometimes useful tools "plug-ins":

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/19/now-we-are-six/#stock-buyback

A chatbot can't do your job, but an AI salesman can absolutely convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a chatbot that can't do your job:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/18/asbestos-in-the-walls/#government-by-spicy-autocomplete

Despite the fact that the AI can't do your job, there are many ways that AI can be used to erode your wages and working conditions:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/#veena-dubal

The workers who say that their jobs are worse and the things they produce are much worse as a result of AI are correct; but the workers who say their work is much better thanks to AI are also correct. This only seems like a riddle until you understand that the most important fact about any technology (including AI) isn't what it does, but who it does it for and who it does it to:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/11/vulgar-thatcherism/#there-is-an-alternative

When a boss fires a worker and gives their jobs to an AI, it usually means that they don't care if that job is done well, which is why customer service jobs are being handed over to AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/06/unmerchantable-substitute-goods/#customer-disservice

Bosses also love firing coders and replacing them with AI – first, because bosses are really angry about the decades when tech workers were in short supply and bosses had to pretend to like them, and second, because if you're selling AI as a way to replace workers, what better way to convince a potential customer than to fire the workers your own company depends upon? (All that said, the coders who are excited about their new AI coding tools have a point – when a worker is in charge of their work and thus when and how they use a tool, we should defer to their own experience):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/05/ex-princes-of-labor/#hyper-criti-hype

Artists are also a favorite target of AI bosses, which is weird, because the wages of creative workers add up to a total that rounds to zero when compared with the unimaginably large sums AI companies will have to take in if they are to pay back the trillions they've spent to date (let alone the trillions more they're proposing to spend in the near term). All of this raises a foundational question: can AI "art" ever be good? (Spoiler: probably not):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/25/communicative-intent/#diluted

Media companies say they have the answer to the AI art question: they'll create (or assert) a copyright that lets them control AI training. This is an incredibly transparent ruse: media companies are artists' class enemies, and if we get a new right to control AI training, our bosses will demand that we sign it away to them as part of their non-negotiable, one-sided standard contracts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/18/rights-without-power/#careful-what-you-wish-for

For creative workers, the answer to these new would-be tech bosses isn't asserting a new right that will be expropriated by the old media bosses who've been ripping us off forever. Our salvation lies in leaning into the US Copyright Office's interpretation that holds that AI-generated works can't be copyrighted, because copyright is only for human creations. That means that the only way our bosses can get a copyright over the things they want to sell is to pay us to make them:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/03/its-a-trap-2/#inheres-at-the-moment-of-fixation

Many of the seemingly urgent AI questions that people won't shut up about are distractions, because they assume that AI will lastingly infiltrate every part of our society. In reality, the AI companies are losing unimaginable amounts and have no path to profitability:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/30/accounting-gaffs/#artificial-income

The only jobs that AI can do better than humans are jobs that shouldn't exist, like figuring out how to maximize undetectable wage-theft:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

AI is also really good at figuring out how to do individualized price-gouging, another thing that shouldn't exist:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/21/cod-marxism/#wannamaker-slain

Despite AI's manifest unsuitability to do jobs that should exist, bosses keep firing people and replacing them with chatbots that do their jobs very badly. This allows bosses to indulge their solipsistic fantasy of a world without people, in which customers, workers and suppliers are statistical artifacts and bosses are unitary geniuses who simply imagine a product or service and then it is delivered, without any ego-shattering confrontations with people who know how to do things:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-wheel/#billionaire-solipsism

This is catastrophic, and not just for the parties involved today. The AI bubble will pop, and when it does, the chatbots that do these jobs (badly) will be switched off. Meanwhile, the workers those chatbots replaced will have retrained, retired, or become "discouraged." No one will be around to do those (necessary) jobs. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our civilization and our descendants will be digging it out for generations:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence

The real existential AI threat isn't that we'll accidentally teach the word-guessing program so many words that it awakens and becomes a vengeful god. The real risk is that when the bubble bursts we'll indulge the ruling class's reflex to austerity, and that this will continue the decades of mass economic traumatization that makes people into easy marks for fascists:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/12/always-great/#our-nhs

But when the AI bubble pops, that won't be the end of AI – it will be the end of the bubble. When the AI bubble pops, we'll have mountains of GPUs at fire-sale prices, skilled workers liberated from the imperative to help their bosses promote their stock swindle, and open source models that will yield tremendous dividends to anyone who sets out to optimize them:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/16/post-ai-ai/#productive-residue

As you can see from the links above, I developed The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI in the same way that I developed Enshittification: in public, through a series of essays, which I periodically synthesized into major, widely shared speeches:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington

Making my working notes public is a hugely effective way of producing and refining critical work, and it's been my method for 25 years now:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

It's a method that's let me produce a string of international bestsellers, published by some of the largest publishers in the world. Nevertheless, Amazon refuses to carry my audiobooks:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

That's because I have an iron-clad requirement that my work be sold in open formats, without the "digital rights management" that blocks you from moving the books you bought on Amazon to someone else's apps. Digital rights management (DRM) enjoys bizarre legal protections so that it's a felony for me to give you the tools you need to move the books I wrote out of an Amazon app and into a competitor's app:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/14/sole-and-despotic/#world-turned-upside-down

What's more, these outrageous legal rights extend around the world, because the US Trade Representative spent decades bullying America's trading partners into passing laws that criminalize the act of fixing the defects in America's tech exports, which is why farmers can't fix their John Deere tractors, hospitals can't fix their Medtronic ventilators, and no one can sell you an app that stops Apple and Google from spying on your phone:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

Amazon's Audible controls 90% (!) of the audiobook market, and they will not sell any book unless they can permanently lock it to their platform. That means that every time a writer sells you an audiobook on Audible, they create a "switching cost" that stops you from leaving Audible for a competitor. Not only is this fundamentally unjust, it's also terrible for creators: if our audiences can't leave Amazon, then we can't leave Amazon either, which means Amazon can (and does!) steal millions of dollars from writers without losing our business:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

Which is where these Kickstarter campaigns come in. Whenever I sell a new book to a publisher, I arrange to make my own independent audiobook for it, which I sell everywhere except the platforms that have mandatory DRM: Audible, Apple and Audiobooks.com. There are some very good DRM-free audiobook stores, notably Libro.fm and Downpour.com (Google Play also sells audiobooks without DRM). But most people have never heard of these, so it wasn't until I started pre-selling my audiobooks on Kickstarter that I was able to make my stubborn refusal to sell out to Audible into a paying proposition. My agent tells me that if I'd sold out to Audible, I'd have paid off my mortgage and I'd be able to give my kid a full ride through a fancy US college. I don't make that kind of money from these Kickstarters, but they do very well nevertheless, and they're a critical part of my family's finances.

The Kickstarter is live for the next three weeks:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai

You can pre-order print copies of Reverse Centaur, as well as DRM-free ebooks and audiobooks (narrated by me!) for Reverse Centaur and Enshittification. Normally, I offer custom-signed copies of the print books, but Enshittification was so successful that I haven't stopped touring it and I'm in a new city every couple of days, so there's no way I can reliably get into a warehouse to sign the latest batch of orders. Instead, I'll be posting the contact details for every bookstore that's hosting me on my tours (US in June, UK in September) and you can order signed copies from them, which I'll personalize after my events there so they can ship them to you.

I've also decided to raise money for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), the nonprofit I've worked at for nearly 25 years. EFF is the oldest, best and most effective tech rights organization in the world, and its mission has only gotten more important over the years. EFF's outreach folks are offering a special membership package for backers of the Kickstarter, which includes an EFF hat and stickers, as well as an Enshittification pin and two Enshittification stickers:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/24/poop-emoji-plus-plus/#devin-washburn

The audiobook is fully recorded and finalized and you can listen to the first hour of it here:

https://archive.org/details/reverse-centaur-audio-sample

It came out great (as always!), thanks to the terrific direction of Gabrielle De Cuir of Skyboat Media and editing from Wryneck Studios' John Taylor Williams. Gabrielle's directed all my audiobooks since 2017, and John's been mastering my podcasts since 2006 (!!), so we constitute a very well-oiled machine.

Working out my ideas in public allows me to produce my Pluralistic newsletter, and with it, a large volume of free, high-quality work that's licensed under a generous Creative Commons license that lets anyone reproduce, translate, redistribute and even sell my articles. If you've enjoyed that work, I hope you'll consider backing the campaign! Selling books is how I pay the bills and keep the lights on, and as ever, this is the only way you can get a major publisher's ebooks and audiobooks with no DRM and no "terms of service." These are truly ebooks and audiobooks that you own. You can sell them, give them away, or lend them out – so long as you don't violate copyright law, we're all cool:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/14/who-it-does-it-for/#who-it-does-it-to

[spicymancer]

Lock Blocked with Monster Researcher Eclair

[jusjuiceboxbox]

Welcome to being an adult! Featuring such injury causing events as

- sneezed wrong

- turned your neck a little too fast

- slept weird

- took the trash out to the curb and stepped at a slightly different angle than usual

- breathed

- failed to breathe properly

- breathed in the wrong stuff. Allergy time

- looked too hard at something too far away

- knees

[suraht]

Just need to add one:

Slept perfectly normal, but something decided to just develop a sprain. Usually in the lower back or legs.

[starbiology]

he would not fucking say that!!!!

[laylamva]

They had jealousy issues ONCE and made up immediately after talking about it! At one point, Uncle Fester was worried they got along too well! And his attempts to make them argue all failed because they're too good to each other! They only had two fights throughout the show; one was the jealousy thing listed above, the other only lasted one night because the next morning Morticia spoke French and GOMEZ IMMEDIATELY DROPPED IT TO KISS HER ARM. the fuck is this guy

[suraht]

This guy is life goals. That's who he is.

[lesbianshepard]

Current twitter drama is Europeans confidently declaring that they don't need to drive or use overpriced public transport to get to the MetLife stadium for the World Cup; they will simply walk down the highway to get there. Girl it's New Jersey. They're gonna splatter you for fun.

[lesbianshepard]

I think a lot of Europeans think that the stadium is in the middle of a city and surrounded by infrastructure, which is why they keep insisting that they can just walk from point A to point B. It's not! It's in the fucking Meadowlands!!!! You have multi lane highways and a literal toxic swamp and that's it!

[lesbianshepard]

"Well if there are a LOT of football fans they'll stop for us!"

There's a video online of a trucker who accidentally hits a flock of sheep in the middle of the highway at full speed and splatters them. Has to turn the windshield wipers on to wipe away the blood. This is what every Jersey driver yearns to do once they get on the turnpike.

[lesbianshepard]

girl help they're now demanding NJ build a bridge over the highway (???? from where???) or shut down the fucking I-95 (one of the busiest highways in the country that everyone commutes on) for their little soccer game.

[effervescible]

I live close enough to the Meadowlands to regularly curse the hubris of the American Dream mall and this is the funniest shit I have read in YEARS. A lot of the European twitter people seem to think we are DEFENDING the Meadowlands and the general layout of the area like we think it was good urban planning. Girl no! It is a shithole, we know it is a shithole! (Although the actual swamp is kinda pretty from the window of a train heading to Secaucus Junction.) We are not trying to express pride, we are trying to save your life!!!!

I MEAN. I know people talk a lot of shit about American arrogance and they're not wrong to do so, but look at this, my fucking god.

[great-tweets]

We just knew.

[awed-frog]

As a reminder, this is what she looks like:

[yougetsomekisses]

[larkiethings]

Also I hope everyone knows that Miette was fostered before she was adopted, and her foster mom loved that little kitten so much and always hoped she’d gone to a good home. this tweet got so popular that she recognized Miette and reached out to her current mom, and was able to share previously unseen baby pictures

[darthmelyanna]

You mean, she saw Miette was kicked like the football and did nothing to help put Mother in jail for a thousand years? I am appalled.

[tigerses]

her!!!

[madeofstarsandfairylights]

Baby Miette!!!

[ottermatopoeia]

Babe wake up new Miette lore just dropped

[devil-with-three-heads]

IT’S MIETTE!!!!

[eightfifteen]

Crazy how many people want characters in fiction to speak and act like they’ve had 20 hours of intensive therapy. Could NOT be me I want these bitches fucked up insane

[plutojester]

[doingthewritethings]

my friend briar and i lovingly call this one ‘therapy speak joker’ and it almost caused her to drop biological samples one time

[dizzyghoast]

i think the joker should start talking like this for real. no other character should do this only the joker. i want batman to have to deal with this

[teaboot]

Would you be comfortable with me sharing the story of how I got these scars

[fair-itself]

That would have been an incredible episode of Batman: The Animated Series, though. Joker gets out of Arkham, having convinced the psychs he's rehabilitated by speaking in fluent Therapy. Bats spends the entire episode losing his mind, because he KNOWS it's an act because NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT and Joker reacts with total calm and understanding when he finds Batman in his pantry at 2AM. "You're violating a boundary right now, but I realize this behavior is caused by a history of trauma. Can we talk about how your inability to trust negatively affects those around you?" Meanwhile steam is just coming out of Batman's ears

[seriousfic]

Are you in the right headspace to receive information on you potentially being overserious?

[suraht]

And it's already canon that the Joker is knowledgeable enough about psychology to be able to do this. All the pieces are already in place for the writers to run with something very close to this. Just imagine the Therapeutic Joker holding a quiet party at his house with a bunch of his former henchmen(also "reformed", at the least) that he gathered there telling them all to be quiet about it because they have to do the big heist tonight. And he knows that at least a few of them will let it slip and it will get back to the Batman eventually, and the Batman will show up to this party to try to stop whatever the Joker is up to. Standard stuff, except this is all just a plan to really lure in Batman so Joker can have him either stand there while they show him the "big heist" is really just a LAN session of Grand Theft Auto or D&D, or start up with all the therapy speak to try to annoy Batman about how he understands that their past is still coloring Batman's perception of who the Joker is, but Batman's refusal to accept change is a sure sign of many issues that should really be untangled through therapy, and he invites Batman to join them at these weekly group therapy sessions he's been attending because they have some past shared traumas to work through.

Of course, this is all a front. Everyone knows that, especially Batman, but the Joker is more than willing to let this go as long as it takes for Batman to at least start to believe the Joker has been reformed a little and then pull that rug right out from under everyone, because he knows the look on Batman's face when he just reverts back to form after that glimmer of hope he finally changed would be something he'd take a picture of and have turned into a wall-sized portrait to hang in his den. The best art does take time and suffering, after all.

I'm also aware that this is not a new idea. Even the Timmverse cartoons had Lex Luthor pretend to be reformed to make Superman look bad for constantly doubting him. But somewhere along the the line of thinking about this, I got the "good art takes time and suffering" line stuck in my head and thought of the angsty Batman picture hanging on the Joker's wall while he explains to someone how he got it and uses that line to explain why he went to all the effort.

[doyoulikethis-videogame-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you like this Video Game Song? #2917

I like it and I've definitely heard it before

I like it and it sounds familiar

I like it and this is my first time hearing it

I don't feel strongly about it or have a complex opinion

I don't like it and I've definitely heard it before

I don't like it and it sounds familiar

I don't like it and this is my first time hearing it

Voting ended onApr 30

[doyoulikethis-videogame-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you like this Video Game Song? #2918

I like it and I've definitely heard it before

I like it and it sounds familiar

I like it and this is my first time hearing it

I don't feel strongly about it or have a complex opinion

I don't like it and I've definitely heard it before

I don't like it and it sounds familiar

I don't like it and this is my first time hearing it

Voting ended onApr 30

[doyoulikethis-videogame-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you like this Video Game Song? #2903

I like it and I've definitely heard it before

I like it and it sounds familiar

I like it and this is my first time hearing it

I don't feel strongly about it or have a complex opinion

I don't like it and I've definitely heard it before

I don't like it and it sounds familiar

I don't like it and this is my first time hearing it

Voting ended onApr 27

[doyoulikethis-videogame-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you like this Video Game Song? #2895

I like it and I've definitely heard it before

I like it and it sounds familiar

I like it and this is my first time hearing it

I don't feel strongly about it or have a complex opinion

I don't like it and I've definitely heard it before

I don't like it and it sounds familiar

I don't like it and this is my first time hearing it

Voting ended onApr 25

[doyoulikethis-videogame-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you like this Video Game Song? #2899

I like it and I've definitely heard it before

I like it and it sounds familiar

I like it and this is my first time hearing it

I don't feel strongly about it or have a complex opinion

I don't like it and I've definitely heard it before

I don't like it and it sounds familiar

I don't like it and this is my first time hearing it

Voting ended onApr 26

[doyoulikethis-videogame-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you like this Video Game Song? #2558

I like it and I've definitely heard it before

I like it and it sounds familiar

I like it and this is my first time hearing it

I don't feel strongly about it or have a complex opinion

I don't like it and I've definitely heard it before

I don't like it and it sounds familiar

I don't like it and this is my first time hearing it

Voting ended onFeb 17

[doyoulikethis-videogame-song]

Do you like this Video Game Song? #2542

I like it and I've definitely heard it before

I like it and it sounds familiar

I like it and this is my first time hearing it

I don't feel strongly about it or have a complex opinion

I don't like it and I've definitely heard it before

I don't like it and it sounds familiar

I don't like it and this is my first time hearing it

Voting ended onFeb 14

[doyoulikethis-videogame-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you like this Video Game Song? #2531

I like it and I've definitely heard it before

I like it and it sounds familiar

I like it and this is my first time hearing it

I don't feel strongly about it or have a complex opinion

I don't like it and I've definitely heard it before

I don't like it and it sounds familiar

I don't like it and this is my first time hearing it

Voting ended onFeb 12