Ben Werdmuller

A delay

I failed to publish a Fairness Friday post today. In my defense, I've been preparing for my mother's memorial, which is tomorrow. I'll likely post on Sunday. For now, I hope that you have a lovely weekend, full of good things, and urge you

My dead dad’s journal: How I finally met a man I knew for my entire life

"It was a window into the mind of a loving father. It was a look into the fraught thought process of a deeply analytical man. A religious man who knew he was sinning. An addict who was self-aware, and still couldn’t pull himself out from the abyss. It

Chelsea Manning Is Back, And Hacking Again, Only This Time For A Bitcoin-Based Privacy Startup

"Halpin asked Manning to look for security weaknesses in his new privacy project, which eventually became Nym, a Neuchâtel, Switzerland-based crypto startup. Halprin founded Nym in 2018 to send data anonymously around the Internet using the same blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin. To date, Nym has raised some $8.5

The Secret Bias Hidden in Mortgage-Approval Algorithms

“We found that lenders gave fewer loans to Black applicants than White applicants even when their incomes were high—$100,000 a year or more—and had the same debt ratios. In fact, high-earning Black applicants with less debt were rejected more often than high-earning White applicants who have more

Parents Are Not Okay

“School is only just starting and already kids are being quarantined in mind-boggling numbers: 20,000 across the state of Mississippi, 10,000 in a single district in Tampa, Florida. They’re getting sick too, with hospitalizations of kids under 17 across the country up at least 22 percent in

What I Learned While Eavesdropping on the Taliban

"When people ask me what I did in Afghanistan, I tell them that I hung out in planes and listened to the Taliban. My job was to provide “threat warning” to allied forces, and so I spent most of my time trying to discern the Taliban’s plans. Before

On TikTok, misogyny and white supremacy slip through ‘enforcement gap’

"News investigations have nevertheless revealed that TikTok is used by Islamic State militants and to promote neo-Nazism. While the platform has started releasing transparency reports with details about the content it has removed for violating its guidelines, it is not yet part of a consortium of tech giants such

Evolution is now accepted by a majority of Americans

“The level of public acceptance of evolution in the United States is now solidly above the halfway mark, according to a new study based on a series of national public opinion surveys conducted over the last 35 years.” That number is 54%, which is absolutely pathetic. [Link]

‘Bloody’ overtaken as the UK’s most popular swear word, study suggests

I've been self-censoring since I got to the US - people swear much less often here - but I'm being less diligent over time. [Link]

11 assertions about blockchain

1. Proof-of-work is a disaster. There’s no way to couch it; arguments about it providing economic incentives for renewable energy are cognitive dissonance at best. Proof-of-work blockchains have the environmental footprint of a small country. Bitcoin could raise global temperatures by two degrees over the next decade all on

Feds Deliberately Targeted Black Lives Matter Protesters, A Report Says

"Movement leaders and experts said the prosecution of protesters over the past year continues a century-long practice by the federal government, rooted in structural racism, to suppress Black social movements via the use of surveillance tactics and other mechanisms." [Link]

Rain falls at Greenland ice summit for first time on record

“That meltwater is streaming into the ocean, causing sea levels to rise. Already, melting from Greenland's ice sheet --the world's second-largest after Antarctica's -- has caused around 25% of global sea level rise seen over the last few decades, scientists estimate. That share is