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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Louisiana parents fight to keep their children out of violent Angola prison

“Parents and legal advocates in Louisiana — chief among them Black mothers — say a plan to temporarily transfer incarcerated youth to an adult facility once known as “America’s bloodiest prison” will traumatize the children and limit their access to education and rehabilitation opportunities.”  #Society [Link]

21 Oct 2022

TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned To Use TikTok To Monitor The Physical Location Of Specific American Citizens

“But the material reviewed by Forbes indicates that ByteDance's Internal Audit team was planning to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any of these other purposes.”  #Technology [Link]

21 Oct 2022

Don’t Count on White Women to Save Abortion Access

“White women as a voting bloc have proven, time and again, to prioritize racial privilege over gender solidarity.”  #Democracy [Link]

20 Oct 2022

Introducing Democracy's Library

“Over the next decade, the Internet Archive is committing to work with libraries, universities, and agencies everywhere to bring the government’s historical information online. It is inviting citizens, libraries, colleges, companies, and the Wikipedians of the world to unlock good information and weave it back into the Internet.” Yay!

20 Oct 2022

Introducing the Overflow Offline project

“Many coders would say they rely on Stack Overflow to get work done, but Hicklin’s situation is different. She had no access to the internet while incarcerated.” Great initiative.  #Technology [Link]

20 Oct 2022

News in America: Public Good or Private Enterprise?

“Most Americans believe news organizations prioritize their own business needs – over serving the public interest: More than three in four say news organizations are first and foremost motivated by their own financial interests, while just 12% of Americans say news outlets act as civic institutions first.”  #Media [Link]

20 Oct 2022

Afghan couple accuse US Marine of abducting their baby

“This is a story about how one U.S. Marine became fiercely determined to bring home an Afghan war orphan, and praised it as an act of Christian faith to save her. Letters, emails and documents submitted in federal filings show that he used his status in the U.S.

20 Oct 2022

Hair Straighteners May Pose a Small Risk for Uterine Cancer, Study Finds

“For women in the study who had never used hair straighteners, the risk of developing uterine cancer by the age of 70 was 1.64 percent, the research found, while the rate for frequent users of straighteners was more than doubled at 4.05 percent.”  #Health [Link]

19 Oct 2022

When your salary requires you not understand the labor movement

“In most people’s interactions with a workplace, the company takes too much and gives too little. The only recourse for labor is to form structures of counter-power to try and balance the equation.”  #Business [Link]

19 Oct 2022

How We Uncovered Disparities in Internet Deals

“Recent research from activists and academics has pointed out a digital divide for high-speed internet between the parts of major American cities where ISPs have upgraded the infrastructure (often rich and predominantly White) and the frequently poorer, predominantly communities of color where they have not made upgrades.”  #Technology [Link]

19 Oct 2022

The Future of the Workforce - live in Austin

We’re hosting a conversation about the future of the workforce, in-person in Austin, Texas, and streaming online everywhere. It’s free to register and attend. Here’s more about the event: From the Great Resignation to the Great Reshuffle, our working lives have transformed during the pandemic — especially in

19 Oct 2022

s13e10: Dying Slowly, and then All At Once; Scrollytelling

This is so sad. And honestly, given I post many links a day, kind of scary.  #Technology [Link]

19 Oct 2022
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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Writing at the intersection of technology, journalism, and community.

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Ben Werdmuller explores the intersection of technology, democracy, and society. Always independently published, reader-supported, and free to read.