Notices by Ben Werdmuller (ben@werd.social), page 5

@mattl @evan Right now in some industries (looking at you, journalism) the social media stats are so bad that dropping any source of referrals is job-threatening. It's going to be up to top management at the very least to make a decision to move. Likely a CEO / Publisher-level choice.

The news cycle has moved on, but just as a reminder, they’re still bombing the shit out of Gaza and killing civilians in enormous numbers.

I quite like this, I think. Literary Hub is a Rotten Tomatoes for books: https://lithub.com/

"Barely six months into the job, the mayor of Athens’s top priority is simple: ensuring that the people of Greece’s capital – mainland Europe’s hottest metropolis – survive the summer. After a June that was the hottest on record, the city has already witnessed record-breaking temperatures and wildfires." #Climate https://werd.io/2024/its-about-survival-athens-mayor-focuses-on-getting-capital-through

"School choice advocates are intent on expanding the availability of vouchers to fund private education at the expense of public schools, but rural residents of these targeted states are putting up some of the strongest resistance." Good for them. #Education https://werd.io/2024/rural-republicans-pushing-back-against-school-voucher-expansions

What matters https://werd.io/2024/what-matters-1

STRAIGHT INTO MY VEINS

My employer just released a full, unedited interview with President Biden, so you can make your mind up about how he performs in an unscripted situation. It’s just a data point, but hopefully it helps. https://www.propublica.org/article/biden-interview-unedited-september-2023

There are a bunch of old-school Democrat advisors who need to be fired. Let them go off into the sunset. Hire the people who understand what media looks like today, stop using phone polls, and understand the cultural landscape you're actually in. You can't run an election like it's 2008. It's simply not.

Democrats: your goal must be to prevent a fascist theocracy, not defend the institutional status quo.

Uh, I would feel considerably better if Biden was performing better in this debate. This is terrifying.

The FTC on AI: "Don’t misrepresent what these services are or can do. Your therapy bots aren’t licensed psychologists, your AI girlfriends are neither girls nor friends, your griefbots have no soul, and your AI copilots are not gods." #AI https://werd.io/2024/succor-borne-every-minute

"The U.S. military launched a clandestine program amid the COVID crisis to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation. Health experts say the gambit was indefensible and put innocent lives at risk." #Health https://werd.io/2024/pentagon-ran-secret-anti-vax-campaign-to-incite-fear-of-china

"Our lives are consumed with the consumption of content, but we no longer know the truth when we see it. And when we don’t know how to weigh different truths, or to coordinate among different real-world experiences to look behind the veil, there is either cacophony or a single victor: a loudest voice that wins." #AI https://werd.io/2024/the-encyclopedia-project-or-how-to-know-in-the-age

I have a solution to the twin problems of public school funding and teacher pay the militarization of the police and police reform

I'm proud to announce TANKS FOR SCHOOLS

Does your school need a tank

How about a cadre of drones

Perchance a microwave weapon

All your school needs to do is register itself as a police department

Petty crimes will now be investigated by 8 year olds, but teachers will earn six figures (win-win)

Warrantless surveillance tech is educational too

Go bears

I live in a swing state today, and I’m pleased to be able to vote in this year’s election from that position.

I’ll tell you, though, that if a certain someone wins, living in the most liberal state possible will make a huge difference to me and my kid. Living under this kind of conservatism is untenable.

"Chamber of Progress, a tech industry coalition whose members include Amazon, Apple and Meta, is launching a campaign to defend the legality of using copyrighted works to train artificial intelligence systems." #AI https://werd.io/2024/ai-lobbying-group-launches-campaign-defending-tech

"An important step toward a more interoperable “fediverse” — the broader network of decentralized social media apps like Mastodon, Bluesky and others — has been achieved." Ryan's come to the rescue with Bridgy once again. #Fediverse https://werd.io/2024/bluesky-and-mastodon-users-can-now-talk-to-each-other

@Gargron @KevinMarks @davew As a legal principle I think that's right (although also not a lawyer). We may need a case to act as precedent in order to truly establish this beyond doubt.

@Gargron @KevinMarks @davew Thanks for expanding. I think understanding your position on this is really important. I definitely agree that DRM is not the objective; sitting in the US, I don't know that I trust the courts to get to the right place. There's a strong possibility that the EU will do better.