Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
Thoughts 1. My high school yearbook said that I was likely to become a journalist. Aside from a brief foray into film reviewing (one of the best gigs I’ve ever had), that didn’t happen. Instead, I was sucked into software development as a way to tell stories. 2.
"We have put a lot of thought into making this feature feel seamless and natural, so that our customers could adopt it on all kinds of map apps by adding one line of code. Let’s take a deep dive into why we did it, and how it works
"Their common concern was the increasing threat from the advancement of a ‘liberal’ agenda to traditional Christian religious and theological beliefs – including an unnerving fascination with race science." Lots to digest here. [Link]
“The Clangers were briefly drawn into this combative arena in a special one-off episode called Vote for Froglet, in which Postgate tried to persuade the planet’s residents of the virtues of the two-party system. After a snap election, with the Soup Dragon running on the “free soup
"The local health department of a rural southern Missouri county is halting its COVID-19 response efforts after Attorney General Eric Schmitt wrote agencies this week demanding they drop mitigation measures." It's like they're actively trying to kill people. [Link]
In the New York Times: Lina Wertmüller, who combined sexual warfare and leftist politics in the provocative, genre-defying films “The Seduction of Mimi,” “Swept Away” and “Seven Beauties,” which established her as one of the most original directors of the 1970s, died overnight at her home in Rome, the
ActivityPub is the protocol standard of the Fediverse: a set of interoperable, open source social networking platforms that notably includes Mastodon and Write.as. It’s the closest we have to a vibrant, distributed social networking ecosystem. Known has supported Indieweb standards since the beginning, but Fediverse has been notably
"Weeks after the 2020 election, a Chicago publicist for hip-hop artist Kanye West traveled to the suburban home of Ruby Freeman, a frightened Georgia election worker who was facing death threats after being falsely accused by former President Donald Trump of manipulating votes. [...] She said she was sent
My first startup produced a product called Elgg: an open source social networking platform. It’s very long in the tooth now, but it’s still being maintained by its community. When I graduated from university, I found that there weren’t many coding jobs in Edinburgh, so found myself
"Trump’s remarks reveal a direct line from the White House and the command center at the Willard. The conversations also show Trump’s thoughts appear to be in line with the motivations of the pro-Trump mob that carried out the Capitol attack and halted Biden’s certification,
Every Friday I highlight a new social justice organization, inspired by the VC Fred Wilson’s Funding Friday posts about crowdfunding projects. This week I donated to MADRE, an organization dedicated to working “with women leaders who protect and provide for communities facing war and disaster. Together, we build skills,
“Hatewatch identified and compiled over 600 cryptocurrency addresses associated with white supremacists and other prominent far-right extremists for this essay and then probed their transaction histories through blockchain analysis software. What we found is striking: White supremacists such as Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents, race pseudoscience pundit Stefan Molyneux,