It's Linkdump Saturday! This is the day on which I clear the giant backlog of links from the previous week that I haven't managed to post in my newsletter's "Hey look at this" sections. This is my 19th linkdump; here's the previous 18 dumps:
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Start with some fun and games. Liam is a high-schooler who created "Bad Plumbing," a Jenga-style boardgame using a variety of 3D printed shapes; it was a smash hit at his local game-jam, so now he's kickstarting it:
The shapes are delightfully Seussian, and there's an ingenious game dynamic that's not just "make the pile bigger." You can pre-order for $30, and for $100, you'll get a version with a custom-designed shape of your specification. I backed!
Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Correction, 7 June 2024: The initial version of this article erroneously described Jeffrey Roper as the founder of ATPCO. He benefited from ATPCO, but did not co-found it. The initial version of this article called ATPCO “an illegal airline price-fixing service”; while ATPCO provides information that the airlines use to set prices, it does not set prices itself, and while the DOJ investigated the company, they did not pursue a judgment declaring the service to be illegal.
This weekend (June 7–9), I'm in Amherst, New York to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity:
My latest nationally bestselling novel is "The Bezzle," an ice-cold revenge story of high-tech finance crime starring the forensic accountant Martin Hench:
My ebooks and audiobooks (from Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
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This weekend (June 7–9), I'm in Amherst, New York to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity: