The queer star of Hacks won her first Emmy after four nominations and used her speech to call attention to genocide.

The post ‘Go Birds, Fuck ICE, Free Palestine’: Hannah Einbinder Won an Emmy and Won the Emmys appeared first on Autostraddle.

ST. LOUIS — Lying on top of an operating room table with his chest exposed, Larry Black Jr. was moments away from having his organs harvested when a doctor ran breathlessly into the room.

“Get him off the table,” the doctor recalled telling the surgical team at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital as the team cleaned Black’s chest and abdomen. “This is my patient. Get him off the table.”

At first, no one recognized Zohny Zohny in his surgical mask. Then he told the surgical team he was the neurosurgeon assigned to Black’s case. Stunned by his orders, the team members pushed back, Zohny said, explaining that they had consent from the family to remove Black’s organs.  

“I don’t care if we have consent,” Zohny recalled telling them. “I haven’t spoken to the family, and I don’t agree with this. Get him off the table.”

Black, his 22-year-old patient, had arrived at the hospital after getting shot in the head on March 24, 2019. A week later, he was taken to surgery to have his organs removed for donation — even though his heart was beating and he hadn’t been declared brain-dead, Zohny said.

Black’s sister Molly Watts said the family had doubts after agreeing to donate Black’s organs but felt unheard until the 34-year-old doctor, in his first year as a neurosurgeon, intervened.

Today, Black, now 28, is a musician and the father of three children. He still needs regular physical therapy for lingering health issues from the gun injury. And Black said he is haunted by what he remembers from those days while he was lying in a medically induced coma.

“I heard my mama yelling,” he recalled. “Everybody was there yelling my name, crying, playing my favorite songs, sending prayers up.”

He said he had tried to show everyone in his hospital room that he heard them. He recalled knocking on the side of the bed, blinking his eyes, trying to show that he was fighting for his life.

Organ transplants save a growing number of lives in the U.S. every year, with more than 48,000 transplants performed in 2024, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, which oversees the nation’s transplant system. And thousands die awaiting donations that never come.

But organ donation has also faced ongoing criticism, including reports of patients showing alertness before planned organ harvesting. The results of a federal investigation into a Kentucky organ donation nonprofit, first disclosed by The New York Times in June, found that during a four-year period, medical providers had planned to harvest the organs of 73 patients despite signs of neurological activity. Those procedures ultimately didn’t take place, but federal officials vowed in July to overhaul the nation’s organ donation system.

“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.”

Even before this latest investigation, Black’s case showed Zohny that the organ donation system needed to improve. He was initially hesitant to talk to KFF Health News when contacted in July about Black. But Zohny said his patient’s story had stuck with him for years, highlighting that while organ donation must continue, little is understood about human consciousness. And determining when someone is dead is the critical but confusing question at play.

“There was no bad guy in this. It was a bad setup. There’s a problem in the system,” he said. “We need to look at the policies and make some adjustments to them to make sure that we’re doing organ donation for the right person at the right time in the right place, with the right specialists involved.”

LJ Punch, a former trauma surgeon who was not involved with the case but reviewed Black’s medical records for KFF Health News, questioned whether Black’s injury — from gunfire — possibly contributed to how he was treated. Young Black men like Larry Black are disproportionately victims of gun trauma in the United States, and research on such violence is scant. His experience exemplifies “the general neglect” of Black men’s bodies, Punch said.

“That’s what comes up for me,” Punch said. “Structurally, not individually. Not any one doctor, not any one nurse, not any one team. It’s a structural reality.”

The hospital declined to comment on the details of Black’s case. SSM Health’s Kim Henrichsen, president of Saint Louis University Hospital and St. Mary’s Hospital-St. Louis, said the hospital system approaches “all situations involving critical illness or end-of-life care with deep compassion and respect.”

Mid-America Transplant, the federally designated organ procurement organization serving the St. Louis region, does not comment on individual donor cases, according to Lindsey Speir, executive vice president for organ procurement. She did tell KFF Health News that her organization has walked away from cases when patients’ conditions change — though not as late as when they are in the operating room for harvesting.

“Let me be clear about that. It happens way before then,” she said. “It definitely happens multiple times a year where we get consent. The family has made the decision, we approach, we get consent, it’s all appropriate, and then a day or so later they improve and we’re like, ‘Whoa.’”

But Speir said the recent media stories about the nation’s donation system are prompting a lot of questions about a process that also does a lot of good.

“We’re losing public trust right now,” Speir said of the industry. “And we’re going to have to regain that.”

Blink twice for a chance at life

It was a Sunday afternoon when gunshots rang out in downtown St. Louis. Black had been on his way to his sister’s apartment.

“I didn’t know I was shot at first,” Black said, sitting in his living room six years later. “I literally ran like a block or two away.”

He collapsed moments later, he said, crawling to the back door of a woman’s home, where he asked for help. He said he asked the woman to give him two large towels, one covered in rubbing alcohol and another soaked with hydrogen peroxide. He wrapped those towels around the back of his head.

When his sister Macquel Payne found him, he was lying on the ground near the leasing office of her apartment complex, a crowd gathered around him.

Before an ambulance took him to the hospital, Black told his sister not to worry about him.

“I’m hearing Larry say, ‘I’m good, sis,’” Payne recalled. “‘I’m OK.’”

Black said he went in and out of consciousness on the way to the hospital and once he was there.

“I got to hitting my hand on the side of the ICU bed,” Black said. “They was like: ‘That’s just the reaction, the side effects of the medicine. Ask him some questions.’”

Payne said she asked her brother to blink twice if he could remember his first pet, a dog named “Little Black” that looked like the Chihuahua from the Taco Bell commercials.

Black said he remembers blinking twice. His sisters remember the same.

Payne asked him another question. This time she wanted to know whether her brother recognized their family. Black said he blinked twice when he saw his mom and sister standing nearby.  

Black said his sister then asked him “the main question” that everyone needed him to answer.

“She’s like, ‘If you want them to pull a plug, if you tired and you giving up, blink once,’” Black recalled. “‘If you still got some fight in you, blink more than once.’”

Black said he started blinking and hit the bed to let his family know that he was still with them.

The sisters said hospital staffers told them the movements were involuntary.

‘Not right now’

In a waiting room steps away from the hospital’s intensive care unit, a woman carrying brochures explained to Payne and the rest of the family that Black had identified himself as a possible organ donor on his ID.

The woman wanted to know whether the family wished to move forward with the process if Black died, Payne said.

“I remember my mom saying, ‘Not right now,’” Black’s sister recalled. “‘It’s kind of too soon.’”

Payne said the woman persisted.

“She was like, ‘Well, can I at least leave you some brochures or something?’” Payne recalled. “Then my mom got a little agitated because it felt like she was being, like, pushy.”

The family was already acquainted with the organ donation process. In 2007, Black’s teenage brother Miguel Payne drowned at a local lake. His organs were donated, Macquel Payne said, noting the family was told that his body parts and tissues helped multiple people.

“I believe in saving lives,” Payne said. “But don’t be pushy about it.”

Mid-America Transplant handles the organ transplant process for 84 counties in parts of Illinois, Arkansas, and Missouri, including St. Louis. Like the Kentucky organization, it is one of 55 federally designated nonprofits that facilitate organ donations throughout the country.

The nonprofit has never pressured a family into organ donation, Speir said. Registering to be an organ donor is legally binding, she said, but Mid-America has walked away from cases when families didn’t want to move forward.

She said her staff tries to dispel myths about organ donation and alleviate concerns. “We want to have the families leave with a positive experience,” Speir said.

Despite the family’s initial ambivalence, they ultimately consented to moving forward with donating Black’s organs. Watts said members of her brother’s care team had told the family that her brother was at “the end of the road.”

The family was told to prepare for Black’s “last walk of life,” Payne said. Also known as an honor or hero’s walk, the tradition honors the life of an organ donor before the harvesting process begins.

At the time, Payne said, she thought her brother still had a fighting chance. She asked the hospital staffers to take another look at him before he was wheeled down the hall.

“I’m like, ‘My brother’s in there tapping on the bed,’” Payne said. “They said, ‘That’s just his nerves.’ But I’m like, ‘No, something’s not right.’ It’s like he was too alert. He was letting us know: ‘Please don’t let them do this to me. I’m here. I can fight this.’ They were saying that’s what the medicine will do, it affects his nerves.”

After the family had agreed to move forward with the organ donation process, the two sisters said, an especially helpful member of Black’s medical team no longer treated them the same way. She became standoffish, they said.

“You could tell the dynamics had changed,” Watts said.

#RIPMyBrother

The family put on blue jumpers for the walk of life. “We just walked around the floor, and everybody was, like, acknowledging him,” Payne said. “We just thought this was the end.”

A friend Black went to high school with filmed part of the ritual. In a short clip, Black is seen being wheeled on a stretcher down a hallway in the hospital. His eyes are half-open. People are crying.

False rumors then started to swirl outside the hospital.

Brianna Floyd said she went into shock when she heard that her friend was dead. She knew that Black had been shot in the head. But a few days earlier, a local newspaper had reported that he was in stable condition.

Floyd checked Facebook to see whether the news of his death was true. Her timeline was flooded with farewell posts for Black, so she decided to write one, too.

“I Love You So Much Brother,” Floyd wrote. “#RIPMyBrother. Never Thought I Would Say That.”

Black’s father rushed to the hospital when he heard a rumor that his son was being wheeled to the morgue.

“‘He’s gone,’” Lawrence Black Sr. recalled being told. “‘He’s going to the freezer now.’”

Black Sr. said he refused to believe that his son was dead. The thought was devastating. He had already experienced that kind of loss to gun violence.

“You wake up and nothing’s the same,” Black Sr. said. “The spirit is lingering for about a week, and you can feel it, you know?”

Overwhelmed with emotion, he prayed for his son to live.

‘I can’t kill your son’

Zohny, the neurosurgeon, said he heard an announcement about a “hero’s walk” over a loudspeaker in the hospital. He wasn’t familiar with the term, so he asked about it. Medical residents in the hospital explained and told Zohny that the walk was possibly for his patient Larry Black.

“No, that can’t be my patient,” Zohny said he told them. “I didn’t agree.”

That’s when Zohny called the ICU to check on Black’s status. A person who answered the phone told him that Black was being wheeled to an operating room, he said.

“This is my first year,” Zohny said. “Your first year out as a neurosurgeon is the riskiest time for you. Any mistakes, anything small, basically derails your career. So the moment this happened, my legs went weak and I was very nervous because, at the end of the day, your job as a doctor is to be perfect.”

KFF Health News, Zohny, and Punch all reviewed the medical files given to Black from his hospitalization. It’s not clear from the records what led to that moment.

“In every case, the patient must be declared legally dead by the hospital’s medical team before organ procurement begins. This is not negotiable,” Mid-America Transplant’s CEO and president, Kevin Lee, wrote in an Aug. 21 blog post on the nonprofit’s website, responding to the news and federal comments about the investigation centered in Kentucky. “Mid-America Transplant strictly follows all laws, regulations, and hospital protocols throughout the process.”

He said in a statement to KFF Health News that a person can be pronounced dead in two ways. A person is legally dead if their heart stops beating and they stop breathing, which is when donation after cardiac death can occur. A person can also become an organ donor if their brain, including the brain stem, has irreversibly ceased functioning, which is when brain death donation can occur.

“Every hospital has their own process in declaring both types of death,” Speir said in a statement. “Mid-America Transplant ensures hospitals follow their policies.”

But Black didn’t fall into either category, Zohny said. And, he said, Black hadn’t had what is known as a brain death exam.

Zohny said he immediately informed his chairman about the situation, then started running to the operating room. Black’s family was waiting in the hallway, unaware of the drama happening behind a set of closed silver doors.

Then Zohny emerged, pulling Black’s family into an empty operating room that was nearby.

“I remember he told my mama, ‘I can’t kill your son,’” Payne recalled. “She said, ‘Excuse me?’”

Zohny put an image of Black’s brain on a screen. Then he circled the part of his brain that was damaged. He explained that Black’s gunshot wound was something that he could possibly recover from, though he might need therapy. He asked the family whether they were willing to give Black more time to heal from the injury, instead of withdrawing care.

“In my opinion, no family would ever consent to organ donation unless they were given an impression that their family member had a very poor prognosis,” Zohny said. “I never had a conversation with the family about the prognosis, because it was too early to have that discussion.”

Zohny knew that he was taking a professional risk when he ran into the operating room.

“The worst-case scenario for me is that I lose my job,” he recalled thinking. “Worst-case scenario for him, he wrongfully loses his life.”

Later, Zohny said, a hospital worker who transported Black from the ICU to the operating room told Zohny that something had seemed off.

 “I remember him looking at me and saying, ‘I’m so glad you stopped that,’” Zohny recalled. “And I said, ‘Why?’ And he said: ‘I don’t know. His eyes were open the whole time, and I just felt like he was looking at me. His eyes didn’t move, but it felt like he was looking at me.’”

‘Back from the dead’

After Zohny’s intervention, Black was wheeled back to the ICU. Zohny said the medical team held back all medications that caused his sedation.

Black woke up two days later, Zohny said, and started speaking. Within a week, the neurosurgeon said, he was standing.

“I had to learn how to walk, how to spell, read,” Black said. “I had to learn my name again, my Social, birthday, everything.”

Zohny continued to care for Black during what remained of his 21 days in the hospital. During a follow-up appointment, he posed for a photo with Black and his older sister, Watts. Next to Zohny, Black is standing up, a brace on his leg.

“It’s a miracle that despite flawed policy we were able to save his life,” Zohny said. “It was an absolute miracle.”

Zohny, who was working as a fellow and assistant professor at the time, left Saint Louis University Hospital for another job later that year when his fellowship ended. He said Black’s story made him question what we know about consciousness.

He’s now working on a new method that quantifies consciousness. Zohny said it could possibly be used to help measure consciousness from brain signals, such as with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, a test that measures electrical activity in the brain. Zohny said his method still needs rigorous validation, so he recently started a medical research company called Zeta Analytica, separate from his work at the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, which he’ll begin in October.

“We don’t understand the brain to the level that we should, especially with all of the technology we have now,” Zohny said.

Today, Black is trying to move forward. He said he has seizures if the bullet fragments in his head move around too much. He said he easily overheats because of the injury.

He doesn’t blame his family for their decision. But he questions the organ transplantation process. “It’s like they choose people’s destiny for them just because they have an organ donor ribbon on their ID,” Black said. “And that’s not cool.”

To help him process everything that happened to him in 2019, he makes music under the name BeamNavyLooney. “I am back from the dead,” he recently wrote in a song about his experience.

Earlier this year, Black celebrated the birth of another son, who was sleeping peacefully at home as Black recounted his story.

“He doesn’t really cry,” Black said. “He just makes noises.”

Black sat with a firearm within reach. He said he keeps the gun close to protect his family. It’s still hard for him to sleep at night. Nightmares about what happened — both on the street and in the hospital — keep him awake.

He said he no longer wants to be on the organ donor registry.

This project was supported by a fellowship from the Association of Health Care Journalists, with funding from The Joyce Foundation.

The post A Surgical Team Was About To Harvest This Man’s Organs — Until His Doctor Intervened appeared first on Capital B News.

Feminism exposed the ubiquity of child abuse, rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence – and helped fight that culture

I was there. I kept the receipts. I remember how normalized the sexual exploitation of teenage girls and even tweens by adult men was, how it showed up in movies, in the tales of rock stars and “baby groupies”, in counterculture and mainstream culture, how normalized rape, exploitation, grooming, objectification, commodification was.

The last Woody Allen movie I ever saw was Manhattan, in which he cast himself as more or less himself, a dweeb in his mid-40s, dating a high school student played by Mariel Hemingway. She was my age, 17, and I was only too familiar with creeps, and the movie creeped me out, even though it was only long afterward that I read that she said he was at the time pressuring her to get sexually involved with him in real life.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology

Today's links

• Wallet voting: On the uses and abuses of consumerism.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Microsoft copyright crackdown against Russian dissidents; Corbyn wins Labour leadership; Bill Gates' monopolism; TiVo won't record DRM shows; HDCP leaks; Puking sink; Mr Gotcha v covid.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• 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.

Wallet voting (permalink)

You cannot vote with your wallet. Or rather, you can, but you will lose that vote. Wallet-votes always go to the people with the thickest wallets, and statistically, that is not you.

Margaret Thatcher tried to get us to believe that "there is no such thing as society." She wanted everyday people to abandon the idea of having a shared destiny, to throw away any notion of solidarity as an answer to social problems. Despite the fact that Thatcher's own backers happily formed cartels and cabals, from the Mount Pellerin Society to the Heritage Foundation, Thatcher insisted that everyday people should fight their battles alone.

If you want higher wages, don't join a union – just go demand a higher wage from your boss. If you want lower rents, don't demand rent controls, just petition your landlord for a discount. If none of this stuff works (this stuff rarely works), then you are out of luck. "The market" exists to do "price discovery" and you've just discovered the price of your labor (less than you need to survive) and the cost of your home (more than you can afford). You voted with your wallet, and you lost. As Thatcher was fond of saying, "there is no alternative."

This has been our framework for change for the past 50 years. It's like we've had a collective lobotomy and have forgotten the way that actual change comes about. Change happens when solidaristic groups of everyday people – unions, political movements – directly confront politicians and power-brokers and demand change. Your boss won't equitably share the fruits of your labor unless they fear that all the workers on the jobsite will shut down the shop. Your politicians won't do the bidding of everyday people – who can't shower them in cash – unless they fear that they will have their offices blockaded, their homes picketed, and their seats primaried.

Rather than demanding this kind of change, we're supposed to vote with our wallets, making a fetish out of our personal consumption choices and scolding others as "lazy" or "cheap" if they don't quit Facebook or stop shopping at Walmart. This isn't just ineffective, it's counterproductive. Refusing to form solidaristic bonds with people suffering in the same way as you because they buy things you disapprove of means that you can't attain the solidarity needed to make the real change you're seeking.

Shopping harder is no way to save the planet or your neighbors. Individual actions do not provoke systemic change. For that, we need collective action. Join your local tenants' union, your local DSA chapter, your local Electronic Frontier Alliance group:

https://efa.eff.org/allies

And also! Make consumption choices that improve your life and the lives of people you love. Support your local bookstore, buy online from libro.fm and bookshop.org – not because this will break Amazon's monopoly power (for that we will need unionization, antitrust, and tax enforcement), but because when you shop at those stores, you make a difference to the lives of the people who operate those stores, who pay decent wages and don't maim their warehouse workers.

Go to your local family-owned grocer instead of the union-busting monopolist, because they're nice people, the food is good, and they pitch in to help their community, rather than draining its finances and lobbying for tax exemptions.

Buy from artists and creators you like online, join their crowdfunders and Patreons, get their music on Bandcamp – not because this will shatter the hegemony of the five giant publishers, four giant studios, three giant labels, two giant app companies and one giant ebook and audiobook store – but because it will help people whose art you love pay their rent and buy groceries.

Get off Facebook, Insta and Twitter and join Mastodon and/or Bluesky – not because you can disenshittify the internet by switching to federated social media, but because you, personally can have a less shitty time if you get away from the zuckermuskian rot economy.

Do all this stuff – to the extent you can. Support your local bookstore, but don't forego buying and reading books you love because the store is a two hour drive and you only get there once a month. Support your local grocer, but if they don't have the ingredients you need for the special dinner you're making for your friends or your picky kids, then go to Safeway or Whole Foods or Albertsons. Buy art from artists where you can, but if there's a movie you want to stream and the only way to get it is on Prime or Youtube, pay the $3.99. Get a Mastodon or Bluesky account, but if your friends or customers or audience won't move with you, then reach them where they are.

Above all, don't isolate yourself. As Zephyr Teachout writes in Break 'Em Up, when you miss the picket at the Amazon warehouse because you've been driving around for hours looking for an independent stationery story to buy markers and cardboard for a protest sign, Jeff Bezos wins.

Give your comrades grace. Don't call them scabs because they bought McDonald's for their kids after a long shift. Don't turn your nose up at them because they bought a shirt at Zara. Give yourself grace. The damage you do to the cause by flying home for Thanksgiving, using a plastic straw, or using proprietary software is immeasurably infinitesimal. And if you're connected to your family, well hydrated, and get your tech needs met, you will have more energy and resources to throw into the fight for systemic change.

Make individual choices that make your life better. Take collective action to make society better. Your individual hand-wringing about whether to buy organic produce or get a Frappuccino just makes you less effective. It's not a boycott. A boycott is planned, social and solidaristic. It's something lots of people do together. Boycotts work (which is why génocidaires hate the BDS movement). Scabbing isn't buying something from someone unethical. Scabbing is crossing a picket line or breaking a boycott.

Margaret Thatcher's crude trick – "there is no such thing as society" – fools fewer and fewer of us every day. Doing the right thing isn't a matter of personal orthodoxy – it's a matter of movement tactics. We won't cure enshittification by zealously pursuing an approved list of correct merchants and products – we'll do so by changing the policy landscape so that enshittifiers sink and disenshittifiers rise:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/31/unsatisfying-answers/#systemic-problems

If you think buying something different, or shopping somewhere else, will make your comrades' lives better, then sure, by all means, give them a helpful tip! But don't nag them for shopping wrong. The best reason to suggest a consumption choice is to improve the life of someone you care about.

And speaking of which: this is my last blog post before my Kickstarter to pre-sell the audiobook, ebook and hardcover of my next book, Enshittification, winds down. I don't have a Patreon, I don't paywall my work or sell ads. I support my family by selling books, and the Kickstarter is the way to buy the books that does me the most good – I get the most money per book this way, and it does more to help the books get on the bestseller lists:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/enshittification-the-drm-free-audiobook

So I'd love it if you'd consider backing the campaign. But also: don't worry about it if this isn't the easiest way for you to read my work. If you're short on cash, or you can't use Kickstarter, or you prefer the library, get the books some other way. That's fine. Your individual consumption choices can make a difference to me, personally; but the way we will change society is by joining and participating in a movement. I'd much rather live in a better world than live in this one with an extra $20 or $30 from your book purchases in my bank account.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• YIMBYs on the Cusp of Major Victory in California https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2025-09-13-yimbys-cusp-major-victory-california/

• Why You Should Spend Less Time with Your Kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whaesnYloMQ&t=10s

• Political Violence Is Wrong. Charlie Kirk Didn’t Think So https://jacobin.com/2025/09/kirk-posobiec-political-violence-far-right/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago TiVo won’t save certain shows or allow moving them https://memex.craphound.com/2005/09/13/tivo-wont-save-certain-shows-or-allow-moving-them/

#15yrsago HDCP master-key leaks, possible to make unrestricted Blu-Ray recorders https://www.engadget.com/2010-09-14-hdcp-master-key-supposedly-released-unlocks-hdtv-copy-protect.html

#15yrsago Kim Stanley Robinson on science, justice and science fiction https://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/science-justice-science-fiction-an-interview-with-kim-stanley-robinson/

#10yrsago 27-year-olds: don’t forget your D10K party!https://memex.craphound.com/2015/09/13/27-year-olds-dont-forget-your-d10k-party/

#10yrsago Empty Epson “professional” inkjet cartridges are still 20% fullhttps://petapixel.com/2015/09/11/this-is-how-much-ink-the-epson-9900-printer-wastes/

#10yrsago Chest-height puking toilet in a nightclub bathroom https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/3kq88k/in_a_local_club_they_have_this_awesome_toilet_for/

#10yrsago MIT and Boston U open legal clinic for innovative tech projects https://web.archive.org/web/20151005073023/https://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/the-story-behind-mit-and-boston-universitys-new-legal-clinic-for-student-innovation

#15yrsago Russian cops use excuse of pirated Microsoft products to raid dissidents, newspapers, and environmentalist groups https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/world/europe/12raids.html

#10yrsago My novel “Walkaway” will hit shelves in 2017 https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/book-deals/article/68042-book-deals-week-of-september-14-2015.html

#10yrsago NYPD cop who beat up tennis star James Blake has a long, violent rapsheet https://web.archive.org/web/20150913062523/https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/tackled-james-blake-sued-4-times-excessive-force-article-1.2356691

#10yrsago Jeremy Corbyn wins Labour leadership contest and vows 'fightback' https://memex.craphound.com/2015/09/12/uk-labour-party-elects-its-first-left-wing-leader-in-more-than-20-years/

#5yrsago Bill Gates's monopolistic mask-off moment https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/12/whats-a-murder/#miros-tilde-1

#5yrsago Mr Gotcha v covid https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/13/theory-of-change/#mr-gotcha

#5yrsago How to buy doubt https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/13/theory-of-change/#surkov-koch

#5yrsago How the Attack Surface audiobook can reform Audible https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/13/theory-of-change/#avalanche

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Ithaca: Enshittification at Autumn Leaves Books, Sept 13
  https://www.autumnleavesithaca.com/event-details/enshittification-why-everything-got-worse-and-what-to-do-about-it

• Ithaca: Radicalized Q&A (Cornell), Sept 16
  https://events.cornell.edu/event/radicalized-qa-with-author-cory-doctorow

• Ithaca: Communication Power, Policy, and Practice (Cornell), Sept 18
  https://events.cornell.edu/event/policy-provocations-a-conversation-about-communication-power-policy-and-practice

• Ithaca: A Reverse-Centaur's Guide to Being a Better AI Critic (Cornell), Sept 18
  https://events.cornell.edu/event/2025-nordlander-lecture-in-science-public-policy

• NYC: Enshittification and Renewal (Cornell Tech), Sept 19
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/enshittification-and-renewal-a-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1563948454929

• NYC: Brooklyn Book Fair, Sept 21
  https://brooklynbookfestival.org/event/big-techs-big-heist-cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-adam-becker/

• DC: Enshittification with Rohit Chopra (Politics and Prose), Oct 8
  https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825

• NYC: Enshittification with Lina Khan (Brooklyn Public Library), Oct 9
  https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/cory-doctorow-discusses-central-library-dweck-20251009-0700pm

• New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

• Chicago: Enshittification with Anand Giridharadas (Chicago Humanities), Oct 15
  https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2025/10-15-2025-kara-swisher-and-cory-doctorow-on-enshittification/

• San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20
  https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25

• Seattle: Enshittification and the Rot Economy, with Ed Zitron (Clarion West), Oct 22
  https://www.clarionwest.org/event/2025-deep-dives-cory-doctorow/

• Madrid: Conferencia EUROPEA 4D (Virtual), Oct 28
  https://4d.cat/es/conferencia/

• Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Nerd Harder! (This Week in Tech)
  https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1047

• Techtonic with Mark Hurst
  https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/155658

• Cory Doctorow DESTROYS Enshittification (QAA Podcast)
  https://soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/cory-doctorow-destroys-enshitification-e338

Latest books (permalink)

• "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 (the-bezzle.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)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

• "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/

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

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

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

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

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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ISSN: 3066-764X

Ask any project manager—well, ask me—what my favorite film genre is, and I will say that it's a heist. What else combines the thrill of tense make-or-break situations with carefully-detailed process mapping? I love it when a plan comes together! Ocean's Eleven (2001) is perhaps the best modern example of a classic heist movie. The heist movie formula is simple: a diverse group of experts unite for a common cause (stealing something). They carry out their work using skills they've honed through years of experience. They prepare for unexpected issues that may arise day-of and adapt their plans to fit. There's a mastermind making sure everything is on time and in the right place. A heist is more or less a project plan with 1 or 2 more twists and double-crosses (if you're lucky).

Heist movies build tension with stakes that ratchet up throughout. There are no repeat attempts or do-overs once the plan has started. Thieves, pickpockets, forgers, and con artists have a job to do and must be at the top of their game. Masterminds often come back for "one more score," giving finality to their career or even their lives. They face impossible odds and almost always come out on top.

Author Charles Kunken did a deep-dive on heist films that I really appreciated. He analyzed dozens of movies to note what makes one of these films so special. Why do we/I like them so much? Kunken describes three traits that make up a good heist movie. He also wrote a detailed breakdown on the 16 conventions found in most heist movies. It's worth reading! I won't go into them here. Kunken says the genre's three defining traits are:

1. Individualism. Outsiders commit heists. Their intense study of the rules of the game means they know where to break them. They stand up to the systems and norms around them. The best heists rob from the people who deserve to be robbed, or when there’s no harm done. Stealing is bad, but is it as bad if we steal from a bad person? What if it's a faceless entity that will get all that money back anyway?
2. Cleverness and Patience. Our thieves spend years learning and building up their skills. There's rich history, a career of success and failure, behind every professional thief. It takes planning and effort to study a mark, create disguises and ruses, and strike at just the right time. Buddy characters in some films may reminisce about past heists that went sideways. They've been doing it so long, and are so good at it, that they know they can get through anything.
3. Art. There's no creativity behind going into a bank with guns blazing. Heist movies often have an intricate set of plans that must happen in perfect sequence to go well. Before I can get to the vault door, our electrical expert has to shut down the lasers. My hacker friend has to forge me an ID and upload new credentials to the face scanner. And the money? Who even cares about the money? We'd set it on fire if it meant we got a little more time to play our games.

Heist movies showcase the main characters' ingenuity by emphasizing the above. These aren't petty criminals looking for an easy score. They know what they want and they know just how to get it.

this isn’t really about heist movies, is it?

Heist movies make it very easy to root for the "criminals." Unlike movies or TV shows where cops are the main characters, in heists the criminals don't get caught. These films remind us that everyone wants a good life. Why do only some people deserve it? Maybe heist movies are more than project management done with style. What if they were a blueprint for something bigger?

Think about the villains in our own world. We all have one or more people that we root against. They work at every level of our government. They try to ruin the lives of everyday trans people. They cheer on the deaths of Palestinians. They lead the companies who design products that cause anxiety and other problems.

We have politicians and government officials tearing apart families and kidnapping our neighbors off the streets. They're occupying our cities. They're carrying out extrajudicial killings. They invest in global calamities. They profit off our pain while they live extravagant lifestyles. Why do they get to have untroubled lives at the expense of everyone else?

I get more out of heist movies than the pleasure of seeing a plan well-executed. I see underdogs working tirelessly against an unfair system. I see people who started from nothing trying to carve out a piece for themselves. I would love to see more heist movies where the ill-gotten goods go back to the communities the villains robbed in the first place. But I still think they all have something to teach us:

1. Commit to breaking the system. We don't live in a good system. People seem to have nostalgia or sentimentality for the institutions around us. The longing for a "different" government is especially loud now. But the institutions some people want back have fallen apart after years of neglect. The systems of our past killed thousands, if not millions, of Black and Indigenous people. Thousands of people seem to be falling into a kind of chatGPT psychosis. Institutions of old are easy to subvert and twist into something even worse. I'd rather amplify new systems and new ways of living. The ones we have are causing (and have caused) us so much harm. Extracting myself from them may or may not hasten their downfall, but I do feel better without them.
2. Be patient and stay clever. I'm honing my skills and picking up new ones. I'm trying to unlearn the patterns and habits of old. Nobody's cracking that kind of safe anymore! We've all moved on to the challenges of today. I'm building communities of care. I'm taking part in tangible practices that give me hope.
3. The work is the payoff. Resistance is not easy. Think about why swimming against the current is such a timeless metaphor. When salmon swim upstream to spawn, they're risking everything for the future. Many of them await exhaustion and death on the rocks or in a predator's belly. Resistance will never be as easy as it should be. Still, we must try.

let's get to work

Heists succeed because everyone is different and everyone is doing their part. We all have roles to play. We all have heists that our talents and teamwork alone can pull off. What's yours?

Certainly the dead tend to be thought of more fondly than they were in life. Still, it's quite disorienting to watch American institutions obediently line up to display the utmost solemnity for a bigot, whose career achievements were pushing for hatred and violence toward those he saw as inferior to him.

Charlie Kirk, 31, was fatally shot at an event Wednesday at Utah Valley University. At the moment of his killing, which was captured on multiple videos, he was about to debate a student about mass shootings in the United States. Authorities announced on Friday that they had apprehended a suspect, although the motive is still unclear.