A place to discuss Cory’s posts on his Pluralistic blog.
I’ll start with today’s. I agree with him. Fuck those guys.
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Just so everyone knows, Cory also has a discourse instance, Chinwag, that (Like the rest of Cory’s stuff) I host on my own infrastructure and collects as little data about you as possible. Was a fun challenge in fact getting that set up 
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Please say “hi” to him from (I ass u me) all of us here if the opportunity presents itself.
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Am subscribed to his newsletters.
Pluralistic has been and is alarmingly prescient.
He often breaks news that official news outfits (and I include Propublica and The Intercept and other independents) take days-weeks-months to publish.
Would recommend.
On my mentally stronger days, I can handle it.
On my harder days, I postpone reading them.
If ever Cory were to open a critical thinking skills academy, graduates would be a power to reckon with. He’s a rare bird indeed.
Thanks, Ken, for this work you do. Your support means a lot to us.
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I go there and browse the headline and the “hey look at this” link headlines once a day along with TOP and the wordle while I’m having my coffee, i.e. I keep up with his posts same as if he were still there. but I seldom actually read one, although the headlines themselves keep me abreast of what’s going on with his “beat” and are interesting in themselves.
I did read yesterday’s/still today’s. skimmed a lot. but yeah, Clinton fucked us pretty good.
good thread, @bluehenbear.
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I’ve met Cory on several occasions (a really friendly, outgoing guy) and heard him speak at events, and he is really good at synthesising random things and reasoning through on the spot; someone will ask “What do you think about this issue?” and he’ll say “I read the blah blah bill on the plane ride over, and here’s how this and this and this apply to that”. And he’s a great public speaker.
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Indeed! I pop over there now and again!
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Indeed. I recently heard him on the Volts podcast
And he was great. The host could just barely mention a topic and, whatever topic, Cory was erudite, informed, and usually even a little funny in his response, though the topic is so frustrating.
I’d love to meet him some day. You’re so lucky!
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He talks to an audience as if he’s having a conversation with one person; completely relaxed.
He was a fellow guest at a wedding of mutual friends (we’d met before several times), and I was attending with someone else who knew the happy couple, and when I came back from the bathroom, he’d sat down with her and was chatting away as if they’d known each other for years.
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Did he wear his cape?
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I shall!
I’ve been his sysadmin since 2002, which both makes me feel really old and really honoured to have been responsible for his entire online presence all that time. It’s also given me a very unique perspective on just how hard it is to set up trackerless, big-tech-less infrastructure at scale for things like email, websites, newsletters, and forums, not to mention keep the hackers at bay every time he attends Defcon 
He’s carved a very unique niche out for himself and probably done a talk for every company in the Fortune 500 with any sort of tech footprint by now. His work ethic and travel docket are both incredible to see.
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Thanks, much obliged!
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No, mostly just t-shirts, although he would have been more dressed up for the wedding.
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the single from that first album – “La Schmove,” featuring Phife from A Tribe Called Quest – is considered canon. you can play it in a hip hop club anywhere and it will carry the crowd. my buddy back then had a tape of that album – F.U. Don’t Take It Personal – and I remember Doctorow’s review being accurate: a good album and really funny.
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https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/18/ragbag/#reading-pornhub-for-the-articles
We’re heading into another four years of planet-incinerating, human-rights-destroying, immigrant-pogroming, mass-imprisoning misery. The incoming dictator has promised to throw all kinds of people in prison, so maybe we should learn a little about how America’s prolific, crowded, nightmare penitentiaries actually function.
Don’t be a dumb fuck!
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I work for a small (60-ish pax) Australian government agency that does transport policy. He’d written about the challenges of hardware integration compared with software translation using the Australian rail network as an example (our 19th century forebears couldn’t agree on a common gauge and we’re still paying for it). We’ve also doing work on the use of vehicle-generated data and reaching out to a lot of data use and privacy advocates to help inform our work, and one of them suggested Cory might be willing to speak at a regular all-staff forum.
He did! He was incredibly generous with his time (especially as the time difference for a video call meant it was pretty late for him), and warm and willing to answer questions. Everyone got a lot out of it and we can safely add “has influenced Australian government thinking” to his list of achievements.
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