Commentary on links that caught my attention around the web.
Culture
[Mandy Brown] A good reminder here from Mandy Brown. "Among the people I’ve witnessed working through crises in their work and lives, the one pattern that comes up over and over again is making art. Art brings us back to ourselves, helps us root in our own agency
Media
[Nell Dhanesha at Nieman Journalism Lab] This was fun to watch unfold in real time: "The truck’s journey to that spot had begun a few days earlier, as an email with the subject line “guerilla marketing for sources” in the inbox of Ariana Tobin, editor of ProPublica’s
Culture
[Anthony Ha at TechCrunch] China Miéville, who is one of the great contemporary science fiction and fantasy authors, is right on the money about Silicon Valley's tendency to create the Torment Nexus. This is exactly why I think science fiction is so important, and why it has a
Notable Links
[Brian Krebs] Sobering roundup from Brian Krebs about how each of the five pillars of the First Amendment - speech, religion, the media, the right to assembly, and the right to petition the government and seek redress for wrongs - has been attacked during the first few months of the
Notable Links
[Lubna Kably in The Times of India] Worrying stuff being reported by the Times of India (and, at the time of writing, under-reported in the domestic US press). AI is being used to flag international students because of their social media activity, among other signals, who are now being sent
AI
[Allison Morrow at CNN] It's refreshing to see this kind of AI skepticism in a major outlet: "Apple, like every other big player in tech, is scrambling to find ways to inject AI into its products. Why? Well, it’s the future! What problems is it solving?
Notable Links
[Makena Kelly at WIRED] If you know anything about building software, you know that this is an absurd idea: "The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is starting to put together a team to migrate the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) computer systems entirely off one of its oldest
Notable Links
[Joshua Kaplan and Justin Elliott at ProPublica] I bet this practice is more common than anyone might think, and certainly isn't limited to China. As always, follow the money: "In December, [SpaceX investor] Kahlon testified that SpaceX prefers to avoid investors from China because it is a
Technology
[Sabhanaz Rashid Diya at Rest of World] Like the author, I read Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams' account of her time as a director for global public policy at Facebook during a period when the company transitioned from a largely-domestic social network to a worldwide powerhouse that ultimately enabled a
Notable Links
[Gaby Del Valle at The Verge] I appreciated this deep-dive on whether it's safe to travel through US borders with your phone. Journalists and anyone who's made overt political statements should take particular note. "The government maintains that it doesn’t need a warrant to
Technology
[Brandon Vigliarolo at The Register] In the wake of the French and German governments joining forces to build an alternative to Notion and Google Docs, the Dutch government has passed eight motions to avoid US software and move to a home-grown stack. ""With each IT service our government
Notable Links
[Ella Yurman in Teen Vogue] This interview with Musk's daughter Vivian Wilson is everything. "The Nazi salute sht was insane. Honey, we're going to call a fig a fig, and we're going to call a Nazi salute what it was. That sht was