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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Notable Links

Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos

[Andy Kroll at ProPublica and Nick Surgey at Documented] "Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda for a right-wing presidential administration, has lost its director and faced scathing criticism from both Democratic groups and former President Donald Trump. But Project 2025’s plan to train an army of

10 Aug 2024

Notable Links

50 years after Nixon’s resignation, some eerie parallels with Trump and the Egypt story

[Dan Kennedy at Media Nation] "Four years ago, Boston lawyer and journalist James Barron wrote that the Watergate break-in may well have been an attempt to steal documents from Democratic Party headquarters showing that Nixon had taken $549,000 from the Greek government in order to help finance his

09 Aug 2024

No, the news is not information junk food

Every so often, a post goes around in tech circles about how news is bad and we shouldn’t pay attention to it. I think that’s ludicrous. Today’s was a post from 2022 called The News is Information Junk Food. I think it’s a bad argument that

08 Aug 2024

Media

When split newsrooms work, and when they falter

[Bill Grueskin in Columbia Journalism Review] "What’s most important is that a disruptive start-up not be placed at the mercy of the old organization—which might see the upstart as a competitive threat and attempt to have it shut down or cause it to fail." "[...] Newsroom

07 Aug 2024

Fediverse

"Mastodon for Harris" is a Success Story for Fediverse Activism

[Sean Tilley at We Distribute] "Following President Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 election, Democratic supporters have gained a massive influx of energy and support all over the Web. Hours after the president made his announcement, Heidi Li Feldman, a law professor emeritus at Georgetown University, launched an

07 Aug 2024

Crypto

BitClout Wasn’t So Decentralized

[Matt Levine at Bloomberg] "Here’s a thing. It costs $1. If you buy one, the next one will cost $2. If someone buys it, the next one will cost $4. Et cetera. The price of the thing always goes up, leaving every buyer (except the most recent one)

07 Aug 2024

It's not partisanship when democracy is at stake

This moment isn’t about partisanship, because the discussions we’re having aren’t about tax policy or the intricacies of how we interact overseas. In 2024, one candidate’s supporters are waving flags that read “mass deportations now”, while the candidate is telling them they’ll never need to

06 Aug 2024

A re-introduction for Blaugust

So, the Blaugust festival of blogging is a thing. Who knew? For anyone arriving here for the very first time Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place each August which focuses on blogging primarily and has started to include other forms of serialized content over the last several years.

05 Aug 2024

Technology

Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist’ in US antitrust case

[Lauren Feiner at The Verge] "A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets. “After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has

05 Aug 2024

Fediverse

The significance of Bluesky and decentralized social media

[Joel Gascoigne] "The larger social networks provide a level of distribution that's worth tapping into, but I strongly encourage investing a portion of your energy into networks where you will be able to maintain ownership long-term." Buffer CEO Joel Gascoigne talks about how the rise of

05 Aug 2024

Notable Links

Kamala Harris Can Be the Pro-Innovation President Silicon Valley Needs

[Reid Hoffman in the New York Times] "As Vice President Harris defines her vision for how best to lead the United States in this moment in time, she has an opportunity to take the torch passed to her by President Biden in an explicitly pro-innovation direction. Instead of governing

04 Aug 2024

Rebasing to reality

Somehow, I need to deal with my sadness. Do we all? It’s like it sits just under the surface, ready to spring up. Is every adult like this? I think it must be more common than anyone talks about. It’s not even that the world is getting harder,

04 Aug 2024
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Werd I/O explores the intersection of technology, democracy, and society. It's independently published by Ben Werdmuller, reader-supported, and always free to read.