If the horizon is on your mind, we at Atlas Obscura believe there's a way to get the most out of your far-away journeys. Travel is not just about escaping or seeing the sights by yourself in a vacuum. The most meaningful kind of trip involves interacting with others, breaking down barriers, and challenging our ideas of what we consider “normal.” To engage in true cultural exchanges, oftentimes it's better to leave the crowds and comforts of popular areas.

If you're looking to really experience different ways of life, we've created Where to Wander. This is our selection of 20 destinations for 2025 where we feel you'll have more opportunities to interact with locals, where your dollars can impact surrounding communities, and where you’ll find wonders far off the beaten path.

As you go into the upcoming year, remember that the world is big enough to hold many surprises, some in the process of being created. Sometimes it’s an odd shop that sparks an idea. Sometimes it’s an unexpected encounter that will lead to a deeper understanding. Sometimes it's the appreciation of a shared meal, a dish passed with genuine pleasure, that reminds us to celebrate our differences.

We’ve said it before: Travel is transformative not because it changes us, but because it makes connections that can change the world. We hope you find inspiration that’s global more than personal in these 20 destinations—and more to come in the year ahead.

soberscientistlife:

Read as many times as needed

jbhemlock:

mitchipedia:

Economics From the Top Down: Since Reagan, the US has been on a massive policy of redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich.

By returning this stolen money, the US housing crisis would evaporate. No, I’m not kidding. If the United States were to undo its experiment with rampant inequality and return the distribution of income to the levels found in 1970, the housing crisis would disappear.

via

This is the thing that a many people don’t seem to realize: The current economic situation - some might call it a kleptocracy - didn’t just happen. It was deliberately set up this way, over time.

There’s a housing crisis because we allow hedge funds to buy up homes and become landlords. If you own a pet and have lamented the rising cost of taking them to the vet, look and see if your local vet was bought out by a hedge fund.

The current state of the economy can be changed. We’re not talking about rewriting the laws of physics here. You don’t have to simply accept that things are the way they are.

Today's links

• Blue states should play "constitutional hardball": Scooping up medical professionals, teachers, doctors and anyone with a trans kid.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• This day in history: 2004, 2014, 2019, 2023
• 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.

Blue states should play "constitutional hardball" (permalink)

Nothing's more frustrating that watching the GOP smash norms and decency to advance policies that harm millions of Americas, unless it's that, plus Democratic officials stamping their feet and saying, "C'mon guys, play fair."

The GOP's game is called "constitutional hardball." Think: Mitch McConnell refusing to hold confirmation hearings on Obama's federal judiciary appointments, not never for Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat – then filling the Federal judiciary with the least-qualified, most FedSoc-addled lunatics in US history, all for lifetime appointments.

As bad as this is at the federal level, it's even worse at in the states, especially the Republican "trifecta" states where the GOP holds the governorship and the state house and senate, where shameless gerrymandering and legislative attacks on hard-won ballot measures are the order of the day. GOP-held state governments engage in rampant interstate aggression, targeting out-of-state abortion providers, publishers, and journalists.

This is a one-sided Cold Civil War, because state Dems, for the most part, are unwilling to play hardball in return (the closest they come is when, say, California sets strict emissions controls and manufacturers adopt them nationwide, rather than making special cars for the giant California market). Republicans engage in constitutional hardball and Dems refuse to fight back, a phenomenon called "asymmetrical constitutional hardball":

https://columbialawreview.org/content/asymmetric-constitutional-hardball/

Writing for The American Prospect, Arkadi Gerney and Sarah Knight make the case for symmetrical constitutional hardball:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-10-18-playing-hardball/

The pair argue first, that the best way to get Republican state houses to play fair is to credibly threaten them with retaliatory action. They cite the recent attempt at a last-minute change the way that Nebraska's Electoral College votes are apportioned, which would have given all of five the state's EC votes to Trump. Maine threatened to effect the same change to its Electoral College system, which would have given all four of its EC votes to Harris. Nebraska surrendered.

But there's also a second advantage to playing Constitutional Hardball: it makes blue states better. For example, Minnesota gives free college tuition to exceptional low/middle-income students. Neighboring North Dakota got tired of losing all its smartest kids Minnesota schools and created its own subsidy. As Gerney and Knight point out, Minnesota (and other blue states) still has a huge advantage when it comes to attracting top talent, because attending university in a state with legal abortion is vastly preferable (and safer) than doing a degree in a forced-birth state.

Red states are bent on making life horrible for some really great people. The hardworking, talented Haitian migrants caught in the Springfield pogroms that Trump incited would be a fine addition to any blue state town – anyone who's got the gumption to haul ass out of a failed state and make their all the way to Springfield is gonna be a fantastic neighbor, citizen and worker, just like my refugee grandparents and father, who endured a million times more hardship than their neighbors ever did, getting to Toronto, finding jobs, and starting their family.

Influxes of young, hardworking immigrants are especially good for rural towns with dwindling populations. No wonder rural towns with above-average net migration swung for Biden in 2020.

All over America, families are despairing of their lives in red states. Whether you're worried that you or someone you love might need to terminate a pregnancy, or you're worried about gender-affirming care for you or a loved one, you can put your worries to rest in a blue state. Same goes for nurses and doctors who are worried they can't do medicine unless it accords with the imaginary dictates of Bronze Age prophets as claimed by pencil-neck Hitler wannabe Bible-thumper with a private jet and a face from Walmart. Fill the blue states with great schools, libraries and hospitals, and invite everyone who wants to do their job in a free country to come and work at 'em. Line every state border with abortion and mifepristone clinics, and set up billboards advertising the quality of life, the jobs, and the freedom in blue state America.

Every blue state public pension fund should ban investments in fossil fuels, and invest like crazy in renewables, especially in Texas, to hasten the bankrupting of the petro-kleptocracy that controls the state. Blue states should tack surcharges on goods imported from "right to work" states where unions are effectively banned, to compensate for the additional product testing needed to ensure that scab products are safe to use (ahem, Boeing).

Create joint occupational licensure rules across blue states: if you're certified as a teacher, nurse, hairdresser or auto-mechanic in New York, you should be able to carry that certification with you to Minnesota, California, or Maine. Create multi-state funding pools to build public housing. Offer med-school scholarships to the smartest red state kids, at universities where they'll learn evidence-based obstetrics rather than the Lysenokist nonsense taught at the Roy Moore College of Pediatrics and Obstetrics.

Dems have to get over their fear of "states' rights" and start playing state-level hardball. This doesn't mean escalating cruelty. Quite the contrary: every cruel measure enacted as red state red meat is a chance for blue states to extend a kindness, and capture even more of the best, brightest and kindest of the nation, creating a race to the top that Republicans can only win by abandoning their performative cruelty and corruption.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Organized Money https://www.organizedmoney.fm

• The FTC is finally making it easier to cancel your gym membership https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/16/24271649/ftc-click-to-cancel-subscriptions-final-rule

• EFF and IFPTE Local 20 Attain Labor Contract https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-and-ifpte-local-20-attain-labor-contract

This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago Interview with me on All About Symbian https://web.archive.org/web/20041209231331/http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/viewarticle.php?id=110

#20yrsago Weinberger: Photo-organizing infocalypse looms https://web.archive.org/web/20040715000000*/http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/photo.html

#10yrsago Comcast not welcome in Worcester, Mass thanks to bad customer service https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/its-a-terrible-company-comcast-not-welcome-in-city-council-says/

#10yrsago Justin Hall at XOXO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE6xyFyv7xk

#10yrsago Umbrella Revolution protesters retake the streets https://web.archive.org/web/20141020034358/http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/content/chaos-hong-kong-protest-camp-police-use-batons-pepper-spray-repel-surge-protesters

#10yrsago CTO of NSA is moonlighting for Keith Alexander’s blue-chip rent-a-cybercops https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/17/senior-nsa-official-moonlighting-private-cybersecurity-firm

#10yrsago If you don’t agree to the new Wii U EULA, Nintendo will kill-switch it https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/nintendo-updates-take-wii-u-hostage-until-you-agree-new-legal-terms

#10yrsago Canadian government threatens bird watchers for writing concerned letter about bee die-off https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/revenue-canada-targets-birdwatchers-for-political-activity-1.2799546

#5yrsago Design fiction, politicized: the wearable face projector https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PoudPCevN0

#5yrsago Cable is bullshit, and so is 5G: give me fiber or give me death! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g

#5yrsago Relatives and cronies of Cambodia’s dictator have bought “golden passports” from Cyprus and exfiltrated millions https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/cambodia-hunsen-wealth/

#5yrsago Berkeley city council unanimously votes to ban facial recognition technology https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/victory-berkeley-city-council-unanimously-votes-ban-face-recognition

#5yrsago Greta Grotesk: a font based on Greta Thunberg’s hand-lettered signs https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f6JdU9jG6J69mngi5-xYwbKXtCcnslJo/view

#5yrsago Leaks reveal how creepy, cultish monopolist Intuit lobbied Congress and the IRS to kill free tax-filing https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free#168905

#5yrsago 6 years after expose revealed docs taking millions from pharma companies, it’s only getting worse https://www.propublica.org/article/we-found-over-700-doctors-who-were-paid-more-than-a-million-dollars-by-drug-and-medical-device-companies#169337

#5yrsago Pacifica Radio ignores injunction, continues to play canned content on NYC’s WBAI https://gothamist.com/news/judge-rules-wbai-can-return-air-owners-refuse-comply

#5yrsago McSweeney’s: sure, Bernie is incredibly popular, but can he sway the “completely hateable assholes, who want what’s worst for everyone?” https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/bernies-policies-are-good-but-how-can-he-appeal-to-the-absolute-worst-people-ever

#5yrsago The first book collecting the new Nancy comic is incredibly, fantastically, impossibly great https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/17/the-first-book-collecting-the-new-nancy-comic-is-incredibly-fantastically-impossibly-great/

#1yrago Deb Chachra's "How Infrastructure Works" https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

#1yrago What Americans want https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/18/the-people-no/#tell-ya-what-i-want-what-i-really-really-want

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• SOSS Fusion (Atlanta), Oct 22
  https://sossfusion2024.sched.com/speaker/cory_doctorow.1qm5qfgn

• Eagle Eye Books (Decatur), Oct 23
  https://eagleeyebooks.com/event/2024-10-23/cory-doctorow

• TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10
  https://tusconscificon.com/

• International Cooperative Alliance (New Delhi), Nov 24
  https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme

• ISSA-LA Holiday Celebration keynote (Los Angeles), Dec 18
  https://issala.org/event/issa-la-december-18-dinner-meeting/

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Speciale intervista a Cory Doctorow (Digitalia)
  https://digitalia.fm/744/

• Was There Ever An Old, Good Internet? (David Graeber Institute)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6Jlxx5TboE

• Go Fact Yourself
  https://maximumfun.org/episodes/go-fact-yourself/ep-158-aida-rodriguez-cory-doctorow/

Latest books (permalink)

• 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). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "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). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "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. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "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

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books (permalink)

• Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Today's progress: 768 words (66349 words total).

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Spill, part one (a Little Brother story) https://craphound.com/littlebrother/2024/10/06/spill-part-one-a-little-brother-story/

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.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

How to get Pluralistic:

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Pluralistic.net

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https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

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https://doctorow.medium.com/

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https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

nameless-sdk:

plotholes-and-spellingerrors:

mostlysignssomeportents:

ALT

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I’ll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

No matter how hard we all wish it were otherwise, the sad fact is that there aren’t really individual solutions to systemic problems. For example: your personal diligence in recycling will have no meaningful impact on the climate emergency.

I get it. People write to me all the time, they say, “What can I change about my life to fight enshittification, or, at the very least, to reduce the amount of enshittification that I, personally, experience?”

It’s frustrating, but my general answer is, “Join a movement. Get involved with a union, with EFF, with the FSF. Tell your Congressional candidate to defend Lina Khan from billionaire Dem donors who want her fired. Do something systemic.”

There’s very little you can do as a consumer. You’re not going to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. Now that Amazon has destroyed most of the brick-and-mortar and digital stores out of business, boycotting Amazon often just means doing without. The collective action problem of leaving Twitter or Facebook is so insurmountable that you end up stuck there, with a bunch of people you love and rely on, who all love each other, all hate the platform, but can’t agree on a day and time to leave or a destination to leave for and so end up stuck there.

I’ve been experiencing some challenging stuff in my personal life lately and yesterday, I just found myself unable to deal with my usual podcast fare so I tuned into the videos from the very last XOXO, in search of uplifting fare:

https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest

I found it. Talks by Dan Olson, Cabel Sasser, Ed Yong and many others, especially Molly White:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaeVVAvk-c

Molly’s talk was so, so good, but when I got to her call to action, I found myself pulling a bit of a face:

But the platforms do not exist without the people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The platforms have installed themselves in a position of power, but they are also vulnerable…

Are the platforms really that vulnerable? The collective action problem is so hard, the switching costs are so high – maybe the fact that “there’s a lot more of us than there are of them” is a bug, not a feature. The more of us there are, the thornier our collective action problem and the higher the switching costs, after all.

And then I had a realization: the conduit through which I experience Molly’s excellent work is totally enshittification-proof, and the more I use it, the easier it is for everyone to be less enshittified.

This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power.

It’s RSS.

RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, “Really Simple Syndication”) is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public “feeds.” For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired’s RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they’re published. Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired’s feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read. Wired doesn’t even get to know that you’re monitoring its feed.

Keep reading

You can get RSS feeds for the Fedex, UPS and USPS parcels you’re awaiting, too.

Your local politician’s website probably has an RSS feed. Ditto your state and national reps. There’s an RSS feed for each federal agency (the FCC has a great blog!).

OH WHAT?!?

@draconicrose:

#I’ve personally been using inoreader#RSS is king for keeping up with webcomics

I’m sunk-cost-fallacied into IR right now, but between constantly raising costs while reducing limits, and actively enshittifying their features (“monitored feeds,” and now starred/saved articles sorting)… Improved interface my [bleep].

Most alternatives seem to be worse, of course. Which they’re probably relying on.

Float like a lead zeppelin, sting like the police:

I wouldn’t do Aaron Rupar’s job for a million dollars. OK I would, but I wouldn’t do it for a half million. Unless the fringes were really good.

Steve the hurricane guy:

Magical realism novel, set in a world where TVs lose power when the wind stops blowing. Where people drive hydrogen cell cars which explode like the Hindenburg in every accident, incinerating beautiful women within. Where electric boats too heavy to float are designed, manufactured, and purchased with no one noticing. When they sink, the sharks attack, forcing a decision crisis. Hurricanes are nuked, million acre forests are raked, and C-130s drop 17 tons of water on ancient burning cathedrals. Governments fund everything from tariffs so high that nobody buys any imports.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. (Every person who lived through this 30 years from now).

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