Notices by Ben Werdmuller (ben@werd.social)

Hey, remember that Chicago apartment building raid where children were zip-tied together? Guess what: https://www.propublica.org/article/chicago-venezuela-immigration-ice-fbi-raids-no-criminal-charges

"Does the leadership at my company promote a xenophobic agenda and use the wealth I help them acquire to donate directly to bigoted causes and politicians I find despicable? Yeah, sure. Did I celebrate my last birthday at Drag Brunch? Also yes." https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-work-for-an-evil-company-but-outside-work-im-actually-a-really-good-person

"After reviewing coverage from the network and hours of social media videos that preceded Trump’s decision, ProPublica found that Fox’s portrayal of “Portland rioters” routinely instigating violence was misleading."

https://www.propublica.org/article/portland-protests-national-guard-fox-news-coverage?utm_source=ben&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hi-its-ben

The most racist people imaginable have a cunning plan to undermine the most popularly-elected NYC mayor since 1969. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/9/republicans-push-to-strip-zohran-mamdani-of-us-citizenship-is-it-possible

50 year mortgages seem insanely bad. Who doesn't want to pay a huge amount of additional interest and accumulate equity ridiculously slowly in exchange for a marginally lower monthly payment?

Caveat: I can see people doing this in high-growth markets like the SFBA - to flip houses. House prices: 📈

It's still so weird to me that the idea of universal healthcare is so political here. It's a given in so many other places, and I miss it. And people don't realize how good it is for innovation. You can take so many more risks when your health and well-being aren't tied to a salaried employer.

One of my underlying working models for non-profit news is that nobody is in competition with each other. We should all be co-operative. We should be open sourcing code, sharing wins and losses, and doing as much as possible to lift each other up - out in the open so newcomers can benefit too.

As well as being very sad, this is deeply worrying. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/conde-nast-teen-vogue-newsguild-1236417079/

"It’s no accident that US political operatives have been singling out Bluesky as a target for political control and retribution for months." But the result puts protocol developers and the users of their networks in opposition. #Technology https://werd.io/trump-administrations-arrival-on-bluesky-highlights-growing-pains-for-open-networks/

Hear me out, but maybe it's not superb that most of the internet is hosted on three very large providers?

New @ProPublica video: Russell Vought is piloting everything from Trump's layoffs and agency closings to his shutdown strategy. Who is he and where did he come from? https://www.propublica.org/article/video-who-is-russell-vought-trump-omb-shutdown

MEP Alexandra Geese argues that Europe needs its own infrastructure, social networks, and software. Rising US authoritarianism means the clock is ticking. #Technology https://werd.io/europe-cant-defend-democracy-on-us-servers/

We have never in human history had access to a shared reality. Ask Galileo. Or anyone from a marginalized group. It's like nostalgia for white picket fence Americana: it hides a lot of harm. What we should fear isn't disagreement, but regression and subjugation.

Last week I was delighted to give a keynote talk to open #FediForum, the conference about building the open social web. It's about the real threats we're facing, why open alternatives matter so much right now - and the questions we can ask ourselves to make our work really matter. https://werd.io/why-the-open-social-web-matters-now/

Today I learned that an interview with my great uncle is in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

"Reinald Leidelmeyer describes his experience as a member of the Dutch Resistance in the Hague; details of his arrest; his time in a slave labor camp; and actions that led to his release."

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn85997

"When a health insurer refuses to pay for your treatment, you may have the right to have the denial reviewed — and potentially overturned — by an independent provider. Here are six steps experts suggest to help you through the external appeal process." https://www.propublica.org/article/health-insurance-denial-external-review

My one niggle with my NewsBlur / Reeder setup is that unsubscribing is a nightmare. I'm fed up of hate-reading Marginal Revolution so I've unsubscribed, but it keeps popping up back into my feeds, unannounced and uninvited, with no sense of when it's outlived its welcome, like libertarianism itself.

If we're going to start allowing alive people to be on US currency: let's just set it up so that anyone can scan their face and order a batch of $1 coins with themselves on it. Maybe require minimum orders of 50 with extra fees. Embed something to easily detect counterfeit funds. Ka-ching.

If we're going to revive McCarthyist politics, we need to revive McCarthy-era resistance. This makes sense to me. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oct/01/jane-fonda-committee-first-amendment-trump

@Walrus There is alt text!