Notices by Dan Gillmor (dangillmor@mastodon.social)

Netanyahu and his extremist government have escalated their attack on Israeli democracy and civil liberties. https://archive.ph/Ub9GC

Just what Trump wants to do here...

Rumors of Google canceling development of its tablet are hardly surprising -- the company had never demonstrated any kind of serious commitment to the genre.

Remember, this is a company that had BY FAR the best of breed small tablet in the early 2010s and then just let it fizzle away.

This is as awful as it sounds. The House -- with a few Democrats in favor -- just voted to let Trump regime declare any nonprofit (e.g. university, civil-rights org, news startup, hospital and more) a terrorism supporter. No evidence required, but the penalty for the accusation is loss of nonprofit status. A financial death penalty.

School allows a pro-Palestinian protest? Nonprofit status gone. Watch for Planned Parenthood and ProPublica to be on the chopping block.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/hr9495-nonprofit-killer-bill-passes-house-trump-palestine-protest/

A reminder that it's all corruption, all the time in Trump world -- and has been for his entire career.

Case in point, from 8 years ago but highly relevant today: the next attorney general's totally corrupt deal with the boss in his phony "university" scam.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/the-trump-foundation-pam-bondi-scandal/

It may be mostly their own fault that so many people didn't know what Trump was planning to do, or how corrupt he and his people are.

But they were deliberately misinformed by the Murdoch family's Fox "News" and its right-wing media collaborators.

And they were deliberately ill-informed by traditional journalism, which so thoroughly normalized Trump-style extremism and refused to take a stand for democracy.

Fox et al are simply evil.

The New York Times et al? Complicit.

Anil Dash: "We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons."

He's talking about the odious financiers of fascist-friendly Substack.

https://www.anildash.com/2024/11/19/dont-call-it-a-substack/

If you wouldn't call your blog your WordPress, don't call your newsletter your Substack. Stop doing PR for terrible people.

Before I deleted my Twitter account, I used @cyd to 1) archive my tweets/messages and then 2) delete everything.

I was using a beta version but it worked well.

Thank you to @micahflee for his great work on this super-useful tool.

Associated Press in full extremism normalization mode:

"Attorneys for Amazon and Elon Musk’s SpaceX argued in a federal appeals court Monday that the National Labor Relations Board’s structure is unconstitutional, advancing a legal fight that may last into the Trump administration where Musk is expected to oversee bureaucratic cost-cutting."

https://apnews.com/article/amazon-nlrb-unconstitutional-spacex-elon-musk-ab42977117d883e97110a7bf8e8b257f

Hate to say it, because BlueSky had (still has) promise:

There is no reason to believe that its owners/investors -- now prominently including right-wing cryptocurrency bros -- will resist the opportunity to meddle and/or cash in, especially now that there's been such a surge in the user base.

And when/if they do, a genuinely open and decentralized alternative to Big Network (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) will still be -- with the current exception of the fediverse -- a mirage.

The Republican brand is abusing women and well more than half of white women voted for the abuser-in-chief.

Topics in the latest edition of my "Cornerstone of democracy" newsletter include:

-- Valuable advice, I and II
-- Ultimate loser this year: a livable climate
-- Anti-science brings down an editor
-- Please help protect vital work and free speech

I curate to save you time. Please subscribe (it's free), and let other folks know about it.

https://cornerstone.ghost.io/essentials-november-18-2024/

Disney's quisling behavior gets more blatant. https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/15/24297438/moon-girl-and-devil-dinosaur-the-gatekeeper

"Using your power to silence your opposition sounds pretty fascist to me. Will the next editor of Scientific American have the guts to challenge Trump and his minions? Will anyone?"

https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/scientific-american-loses-its-bold-leader

Journalists remaining active on Twitter are actively supporting one of the most evil and dangerous people in the world.

But hey, clicks and all that...

https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/17/24298669/musk-trump-endorsement-x-boosting-republican-posts-july-algorithm-change

Scientific American's editor -- who believes in, you know, science -- told some truth about the condition of America and the looming dark ages of the Trump regime. She used language that was inappropriate, and apologized. That should have been the end of it.

She "resigned" soon afterward.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/scientific-american-editor-chief-leaves-anti-trump-comments-rcna180400

@laurahelmuth's tenure at SciAm was honorable and important. She deserved better, but of course so do we all.

The barbarians who control the Texas government are going to murder a man who didn't commit a crime.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq6lvd6pr0eo

"...Kennedy, Jr.; Gaetz; Musk; Ramaswamy; Hegseth; Gabbard...combine narcissism, incompetence, corruption, sexual incontinence, personal vulnerability, dangerous convictions, and foreign influence as no group before them has done. These proposed appointments look like a decapitation strike: destroying the American government from the top, leaving the body politic to rot, and the rest of us to suffer."

Wishful thinking and silence are assent.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/decapitation-strike

One journalist -- @molly0xfff -- did the reporting this year on the cryptocurrency industry's successful purchase of politicians who will deregulate the most corrupt crowd since the 2000s real-estate and banking crew stole countless billions from average folks and nearly killed the global economy.

They may succeed this time with the latter.

You should follow Molly White and subscribe to (and support) her work.

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-70/

The Onion's purchase of Alex Jones' beyond-disgusting InfoWars is a ray of sunshine today. And this pitch-perfect piece from the Onion's (fake) parent company's (fake) CEO should make you laugh out loud.

It won't bring back those murdered children, nor end the eternal pain their libeled parents endure.

And it will never make Alex Jones anything but what he is: a vile man with a malignant soul.

https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/

Remember the $3 billion "private equity fund" Kushner got from Saudis et al? (You may not because Big Journalism mostly forgot about what may be the biggest bribe in history.)

@juddlegum hasn't forgotten, and he sees it for what it is:

https://popular.info/p/jared-kushners-3-billion-conflict