Plutopia News Network

Roy Casagranda: Reviewing 2025

Roy Casagranda [https://www.sekhmetliminal.com/]returns to the Plutopia News Network to help the hosts process what Scoop calls the “cornucopia of crap” that was 2025, ranging from social media’s corrosive incentives to AI hype, rising economic pain, and the destabilizing effects of Trump-era foreign and domestic policy heading into the 2026 midterms. Casagranda argues the U.S. is drifting toward an “electoral monarchy,” with a hollowed-out Congress and a Supreme Court increasingly empowering a unitary, executive-order-driven presidency, while the panel connects this to broader institutional decay, public cynicism, and a sense that global leaders are making irrational, self-destructive choices reminiscent of darker historical periods. They debate whether social media is the primary driver or merely an accelerant that converts frustration into addictive “hour of hate” posting rather than real-world collective action like organizing, boycotts, and strikes, and they trade observations about AI’s usefulness as a tool versus its dangers as an unaccountable decision-maker, especially as “AI slop” contaminates law, education, and public knowledge. The conversation also touches on crypto, energy-hungry data centers, and governance contrasts, with Casagranda describing Dubai’s future-oriented planning and service efficiency as a stark counterpoint to U.S. dysfunction, before closing on skepticism that the Democratic Party alone can meaningfully “rein in” Trumpism and a worry that the same cycle of backlash, complacency, and renewed crisis could repeat. The definition of monarch is one person rules. It’s not necessarily that it’s hereditary. So what the United States has basically done is — Congress doesn’t function anymore, and the Supreme Court is handing the power over to the presidency, and the president is ruling through executive orders. And so at that point, that’s the definition of a monarchy. You could have it so that you elect the monarch every four years. But the Constitution James Madison wrote us was meant for Congress to be in charge, not Congress to be the rubber stamp for the president. And that’s where we are. We’re in a situation where we have devolved into a monarchy. Osama bin Laden’s in his grave laughing his head off… like, wow, I triggered U. S. idiocy to the point where Americans can’t get their heads out of 911. And here it is, 24 years later, and they voted for this maniac who’s destroying the empire. He did more damage to the United States than could have been imaginable. Well, the United States did all the damage Link to Roy Casagranda’s podcast [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2532863/contributors/118587-dr-roy-casagranda] VIDEO ON YOUTUBE: The post Roy Casagranda: Reviewing 2025 [https://plutopia.io/roy-casagranda-reviewing-2025/] first appeared on Plutopia News Network [https://plutopia.io].

Cory Doctorow: Enshittification

In this excerpt from the Plutopia News Network, Cory Doctorow discusses his book Enshittification [https://bookshop.org/a/52607/9780374619329] and the broader forces behind why digital platforms (and other industries) have “suddenly gotten worse.” He explains the term’s now-famous three-stage cycle: platforms lure users with quality, pivot to serving business customers at users’ expense, then squeeze both sides for maximum profit. Cory argues that this isn’t just greed, but the result of an “enshittogenic” policy environment shaped by weakened antitrust, captured regulators, and diminished worker power. Poop Emoji [https://plutopia.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/poop-emoji-300x300.png]https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/Cory Doctorow: > All of these policies that are antithetical to the interests of billionaires keep cropping up all over the world. And I think that’s best understood as an effect and not a cause, right? That there is a giant tailwind for smashing corporate power. And it has many manifestations: environmental law, opposition to genocide in Gaza, the anti-poverty campaigns, anti-corruption campaigns. Many other aspects of the fight about corporate power are all kind of reflecting, I think, this popular sentiment that, like the wind, is invisible and can only be understood by what it propels. And I think we’re all really angry with corporate power, we’re all fucking done with it. And there is this maxim out of finance, Stein’s Law: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein#Stein's_Law] that anything that can’t go on forever eventually stops. And I think that we’re reaching the stopping point for corporate corruption. LINKS * A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet: video of Cory’s December 28 talk. [https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet] * Pluralistic: Daily Links from Cory Doctorow [https://pluralistic.net/] * Cory Doctorow’s Craphound [https://craphound.com/] * Cory’s latest books [https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/18/self-licking-ice-cream-cone/#latest] * “Enshittification” in Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification] * Cory at EFF [https://www.eff.org/about/staff/cory-doctorow] VIDEO VERSION ON YOUTUBE: Photo copyright Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud (JUCO), www.jucophoto.com/, licensed via Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en] The post Cory Doctorow: Enshittification [https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/] first appeared on Plutopia News Network [https://plutopia.io].

Paul Robbins: Resilience

Austin environmental activist Paul Robbins [https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-robbins-8755922a/] joins the Plutopia News Network to discuss the 2025–26 edition of the Austin Environmental Directory, [https://environmentaldirectory.info/] framed around “resilience” in the wake of Winter Storm Uri [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_13%E2%80%9317,_2021_North_American_winter_storm] and recurring disasters, and packed with practical guidance on low-cost outage survival, home-scale energy and water conservation, and local food security. Paul describes the obsessive labor behind producing the first hard-copy edition since COVID, updating years of web-published reporting, editing hundreds of graphics, and synthesizing material “not reported anywhere else.” The hosts dig into systemic failures that made Uri so devastating, including inequality (wealthy residents can buy resilience, most can’t). The conversation expands to looming stresses from AI/data centers and cryptocurrency on the Texas grid, debates over dispatchable clean energy and storage beyond intermittent wind/solar (including emerging battery chemistries and geothermal “fracking for heat”), and the accelerating water crisis: groundwater competition, costly aquifer-storage schemes, and the limits of desalination and atmospheric water capture. Ultimately, Paul argues that government won’t act boldly without public pressure, urging collective local activism to demand better planning, R&D investment, conservation, and regional food production, and he closes by sharing where listeners can find the Directory in Austin. Paul Robbins: > The Directory has a chapter in it on low-cost solutions that will get you through a power outage. So, in terms of survival, that might help a bit. TI’ve written in other past directories, and this is on my website still, about alternative energy and clean energy that can be used in buildings, water conservation that can be used In homes. There’s all manner of things that can be done on an individual level. Cover of the Austin Environmental Directory [https://plutopia.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/austinenvironmental-289x300.jpg]https://environmentaldirectory.info/ The post Paul Robbins: Resilience [https://plutopia.io/paul-robbins-resilience/] first appeared on Plutopia News Network [https://plutopia.io].

Deborah Hyde: Skeptical Inquiry into the Supernatural

Deborah Hyde [https://deborahhyde.com] joins the Plutopia News Network podcast to explore why sane, rational people can sincerely report supernatural experiences — ghosts, werewolves, UFOs — without those experiences necessarily reflecting reality. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, social influence (including “mass sociogenic” phenomena), history, and folklore, she argues that anecdotes matter as human testimony but have limits as evidence because they aren’t controlled data. The conversation ranges from the many cultural uses of werewolf stories (allegory, scapegoating, witch-trial paranoia, even sympathetic tales) to Satan as a monotheistic “accounting device” for evil, and to modern belief systems like flat earth and anti-vax thinking as expressions of agency, fear, and distrust of expertise. Hyde emphasizes respectful skepticism — honoring people’s experiences while questioning interpretations — and notes how popular media reshapes folklore, why skeptics must be comfortable with ambiguity, and how studying “unreal” creatures still reveals real truths about human nature. Deborah Hyde: > We do accept that human beings have lots of very strange experiences, and let’s dig into why the experiences may not represent reality, why perfectly sane people can have these experiences. And you can have independent neurological explanations, psychological explanations. Social explanations are a huge one. There are so many examples throughout history of mass sociogenic conditions where people go through dancing manias or something like that. Social influences on people really do make a difference to their perceptions and to their behaviour. That’s the whole point of it just being somebody’s experience, because you’re not dealing with data, you’re not dealing with controlled experiments or anything like that, you are dealing with anecdotes. And anecdotal evidence doesn’t mean nothing, but there is a limit to what it means. LINKS * The Skeptic [https://www.skeptic.org.uk/] * X.com: @jourdemayne [https://x.com/jourdemayne] * Bluesky: @deborahhyde.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/deborahhyde.bsky.social] * Instagram: @deborahhydefolklore [https://www.instagram.com/deborahhydefolklore/] * YouTube: @ deborahhydefolklore [https://www.youtube.com/@deborahhydefolklore] Photo by Karl Withakay. Creative Commons license: CC BY-SA 4.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0] The post Deborah Hyde: Skeptical Inquiry into the Supernatural [https://plutopia.io/deborah-hyde-skeptical-inquiry-into-the-supernatural/] first appeared on Plutopia News Network [https://plutopia.io].

Johannes Grenzfurthner: Hacking at Leaves

Austrian filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist Johannes Grenzfurthner joins the Plutopia podcast to discuss his two new films: Hacking at Leaves, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_at_Leaves] an experimental documentary sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic and rooted in the struggles of Navajo communities, U.S. healthcare failures, and hacker-led mutual aid; and Solvent, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvent_(film)] a found-footage horror film shot on his grandparents’ farm in Austria that explores buried Nazi histories and intergenerational silence. In a wide-ranging conversation, Grenzfurthner reflects on the creative processes behind both films, his collaborations with actors like John Gries, Austria’s unresolved relationship with its fascist past, and the parallels he sees between the rise of authoritarianism in Europe and the United States. The discussion expands into capitalism, technology, healthcare, political polarization, and cultural memory, revealing how Grenzfurthner uses film to probe both personal and systemic hauntings—and why he believes confronting roots, not just symptoms, is essential to understanding contemporary crises. Johannes Grenzfurthner: > For people who have not seen it yet, it (Solvent) is a found footage film. So it’s a point of view. So you see it from the perspective of the main character, the expat who gets hired to look for some old historic Nazi documents in an old farmhouse. There is a character played by myself who plays the grandson of that old Nazi character, who died a couple of years, or disappeared a couple of years, before the action in the film takes place. They hire a couple of historians, kind of like a salvage operator who specialized in tracking lost, hidden goods and stuff like that. They they go through the the remnants, they go through this decrepit farmhouse, trying to find the Nazi box with all the documents that the Nazi collected back in the days during the Second World War in a Polish concentration camp — and they discover more than the documents. They actually never discover the documents, but they discover more, it’s pretty much like a Nazi demon story, and I turned my own grandfather into the Nazi demon. LINKS: * Hacking at Leaves on the Internet Archive [https://archive.org/details/hacking_at_leaves_release_version] * Where to watch Solvent [https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/solvent] The post Johannes Grenzfurthner: Hacking at Leaves [https://plutopia.io/johannes-grenzfurthner-hacking-at-leaves/] first appeared on Plutopia News Network [https://plutopia.io].