Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
"As parents, it’s worth remembering that the persistent ones usually get what they want. Look at the anti-maskers. They didn’t give up. They kept pushing until they got their way. We don’t need to be that aggressive, but I think a lot of us get
“The US-based and Elon Musk-funded Future of Life Institute, run by MIT professor and Swedish citizen Max Tegmark, offered a grant of $100,000 to right-wing extremists in Sweden, an Expo investigation reveals.” #Society [Link]
“Democrats have excoriated Republicans on social media for legislating over what women should be required to wear. Criticism of the rule change comes at a time when the treatment of women in Missouri has received national attention.” #Democracy [Link]
Back when I used to help run the Matter Ventures accelerator for media startups (which I really miss doing!), Pete Mortensen ran the program in San Francisco while I ran investments. (Over in New York, Josh Lucido and Roxann Stafford were our counterparts respectively.) I think it was Pete who
In a lot of ways best read as a kind of sermon on self-sovereignty, Rest is Resistance is a treatise on fighting back against grind culture and prioritizing your needs over the needs of the exploitative economic system you happen to live in. So many of these harmful ideas
The next The 19th Live event is happening on Thursday, Jan. 26. We'll hear from a group of experts about the state of reproductive rights on what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe v Wade. Speakers include: Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta: Chair, DOJ’s Reproductive
“Today, Medium is launching a Mastodon instance at me.dm to help our authors, publications and readers find a home in the fediverse. Mastodon is an emerging force for good in social media and we are excited to join this community.” Hell yeah. #Technology [Link]
“The toxicity of tweets sent by Trump followers relative to a representative sample of US Twitter users dropped by around 25% after the account deletion. Second, this effect is larger for pro-Trump tweets and Republican users. Third, Trump's suspension reduced the total number of tweets, suggesting a
“These semi-autonomous systems are playing the same sort of trick as ChatGPT: they offer a convincing but shallow impression of a competent driverless car without any broader context to fall back on.” #Technology [Link]
Colin Devroe on blogging: Oh man am I happy! People that hadn't written on their blog in a long time are blogging again. Websites that hadn't been updated in many years, some over a decade, are being spruced up and published to again. And popular news
“Alarmingly, in a focus group conducted by the Public Health Law Center in Chicago, nearly 100 percent of public housing participants said they have also turned on their gas stoves to stay warm on cold days, which is an added danger for residents.” #Health [Link]
“We urge The Apache® Software Foundation to take the necessary steps needed to express the ally-ship they promote so deeply on their website, to act in accordance with their own code of conduct, to “be careful in the words that [they] choose”, and change their name.” +1. #Technology [Link]