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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Fediverse

The Social Web Foundation announces its membership in the World Wide Web Consortium

[Social Web Foundation] The Social Web Foundation has joined the W3C: "SWF joins CDT as one of the few civil society organizations that comprise the Consortium. SWF’s membership in the W3C underscores our commitment to promoting an open and federated social web, and our alignment with the W3C

11 Feb 2025

Fediverse

Tumblr to join the fediverse after WordPress migration completes

[Sarah Perez at TechCrunch] This was a very nice surprise to see: "Automattic confirmed to TechCrunch that when the migration is complete, every Tumblr user will be able to federate their blog via ActivityPub, just as every WordPress.com user can today." ActivityPub is the open protocol behind

11 Feb 2025

Releasing all my text under a Creative Commons license

From time to time, people ask me if they can use the content of my posts in another venue or another format. To make that possible, today I released all the text of all my posts under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. You’ll see that declaration

11 Feb 2025

Notable Links

A Few Eggs of Advice in These Trying Times

[Oneofthelibrarians at LibrarianShipwreck] Some advice about how to survive this era from LibrarianShipwreck, one of my most favorite blogs on the planet: "So, uh, it’s pretty bad out there! You are probably trying to figure out what the hell to do about it. Here are some words of

11 Feb 2025

Notable Links

The NSA's "Big Delete"

[Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby in Popular Information] The removal of banned terms on both internal and external government websites is going more stupidly than one might have expected: "One example included a job listing page for the Department of Homeland Security that removed language about maintaining an “inclusive

10 Feb 2025

If MSN comments reveal the soul of America, we're done

For a while now, I’ve been syndicating my posts to MSN. You can see Werd I/O’s profile over there. In some ways, this is my normiest network: whereas my Mastodon community is more technical, my Bluesky community is more political and my newsletter subscribers tend to be

10 Feb 2025

Notable Links

Judith Butler, philosopher: ‘If you sacrifice a minority like trans people, you are operating within a fascist logic’

[Iker Seisdedos interviewing Judith Butler in EL PAÍS English] Judith Butler is as on-point as ever: "Q. It wasn’t just Trumpism. Some Democratic voices say it’s time to move beyond the issue of trans rights in areas like sports, which affect very few people. A. You could

10 Feb 2025

Notable Links

USAID’s reproductive health spending has saved millions of lives. Now it’s gone.

[Jessica Kutz at The 19th] USAID's defunding will lead directly to women's deaths: "As of 2023, 67 percent of contraceptives supplied through USAID went to Africa, where some of the leading causes of death for girls and women are related to pregnancy and sexually transmitted

09 Feb 2025

Notable Links

Donald Trump’s Immigration Executive Orders: Tracking the Most Impactful Changes

[Mica Rosenberg, Perla Trevizo, and Zisiga Mukulu in ProPublica, co-published with The Texas Tribune] This is a beautifully-designed co-production between ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, illustrating the immigration policies that Donald Trump enacted on day one. These encompassed dozens of policies that were revived from his first term, as well

09 Feb 2025

Notable Links

Shattering the Overton Window

[Natalia Antelava in Coda Story] This is a useful framework for thinking about ongoing harm. "It was 2014, and I was standing in the ruins of Donetsk airport, when a Russian-backed rebel commander launched into what seemed like an oddly academic lecture. Between bursts of artillery fire, he explained

08 Feb 2025

Notable Links

From COBOL to chaos: Elon Musk, DOGE, and the Evil Housekeeper Problem

[Dan Hon in MIT Technology Review] The always-brilliant Dan Hon on DOGE: "We’re seeing in real time that there are no practical technical measures preventing someone from taking a spanner to the technology that keeps our government stable, that keeps society running every day—despite the very real

07 Feb 2025

Notable Links

'Reboot' Revealed: Elon Musk's CEO-Dictator Playbook

[Gil Duran in The Nerd Reich] Curtis Yarvin's influence is felt again: " In an essay on his paywalled Substack, he imagined a second Trump presidency in which Trump would enable a radical government transformation. The proposal will sound familiar to anyone who has watched Musk wreak havoc

07 Feb 2025
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Werd I/O explores the intersection of technology, democracy, and society. It's independently published by Ben Werdmuller, reader-supported, and always free to read.