Ben Werdmuller
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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Reconsidering my car

I have an electric car. All in, between car payments and insurance, but exclusive of the money it costs to actually charge it, I spend around $800-850 a month. That’s a ton of money! For all that cash, I must do a lot of driving, right? Absolutely not. I

11 Sep 2024

Obviously I'm voting for Harris

It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that I plan to vote for Kamala Harris. Just consider the alternative: who he is, what he stands for, what the world might look like if he gains another four-year term. Last night’s debate performance may have sealed the deal for many

11 Sep 2024

Culture

How Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris and Walz is a masterpiece of persuasive prose: a songwriter’s practical lesson in written advocacy

[David Allen Green at The Law and Policy Blog] "In essence: this endorsement is a masterpiece of practical written advocacy, and many law schools would do well to put it before their students." This is a fascinating breakdown of Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris: not

11 Sep 2024

Media

Big tech is painting itself as journalism’s savior. We should tread carefully.

[Mathias Felipe de Lima Santos at NiemanLab] "To survive, journalism must continue to embrace technology. But doing so should never cost newsrooms their independence. News organizations should prioritise building direct relationships with their audience to reduce reliance on third-party platforms. They should also stay informed about evolving regulations, and

10 Sep 2024

Technology

Going open-source as a VC-backed company

[Lucas da Costa at Briefer] "Some people call our strategy "open-core" and that's technically right. Still, I'd rather say that we have two pieces of software: one that is open-source and another that is not. I think that's more honest because

10 Sep 2024

Business

One Thing You Wish People Better Understood About Venture Capital

[Hunter Walk] "I asked some investor friends to share, as the title suggests, one thing they wished people better understood about venture capital. There were no ground rules other than to specify that ‘people’ could be founders, politicians, LPs, etc and that it would be default attributed but anonymous

10 Sep 2024

Technology

Faster Filing With Tree View: A Step Forward for Large Writing Projects

[iA] "In a text editor, chapters are files. Organizing your files is work, but in a large text body it’s essential work. Your book or thesis will grow from it and get stronger as you clarify the structure. With iA Writer 7.2, structuring large writing projects has

09 Sep 2024

A conversation with myself about immigration

What is your ideal place to live? I grew up in Oxford, England, which has radically colored my view of what a home can look like. It’s hardly a city at all — one girlfriend derisively called it “a village” — but sits close enough to London that you can get

08 Sep 2024

Media

The 19th wanted to ‘normalize’ women in power. In 2024, it’s dreaming bigger.

[Elahe Izadi at The Washington Post] I adore The 19th. It's making big moves, and that's good news for everyone. "What [Emily] Ramshaw and fellow co-founder Amanda Zamora started in January 2020 — a newsroom with just one reporter and no website — has grown into a

05 Sep 2024

Threads is trading trust for growth

Yesterday the Internet Archive lost its appeal in the digital lending case it’s been fighting for the last few years. In March 2020, the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, launched a program called the National Emergency Library, or NEL. Library closures caused by the pandemic had left students,

05 Sep 2024

Startups

Founder Mode

[Paul Graham] "In effect there are two different ways to run a company: founder mode and manager mode. Till now most people even in Silicon Valley have implicitly assumed that scaling a startup meant switching to manager mode. But we can infer the existence of another mode from the

01 Sep 2024

Fediverse

I like the way you like it like that

[Ghost] "It's a simple thing, but it's kind of a big deal. With this milestone, Ghost is for the first time exceeding the functionality of a basic RSS reader. This is 2-way interaction. You publish, and your readers can respond." This is a big

01 Sep 2024
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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.