Notices by Dan Gillmor (dangillmor@mastodon.social)

Louisiana governor wants to punish university prof who slammed Trump voters:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2024/11/27/landry-calls-lsu-punish-professor-alleged-speech?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=dca72b2828-DNU_2021_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-dca72b2828-238276834&mc_cid=dca72b2828

“Beware the official who comes calling for censorship under the banner of free speech.”

Did you know that Warren Buffett drives "sensible luxury sedans" to work?

https://apnews.com/article/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-philanthropy-donations-63c86afc5c84a487d21749983608ec57

In the next pandemic, you're on your own. This key Trump health appointee was one of the primary advocates of the "let everyone get infected" approach.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/us/politics/jay-bhattacharya-nih-trump.html

The college ranking scam helped bring down a university president (who probably deserved to be brought down for other reasons). https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/us/politics/rankings-university-of-florida-ben-sasse.html

Google doesn't just strip-mine value from the web. It's actively working to diminish the web's usefulness in the process.

See @caseynewton's latest: https://www.platformer.news/google-page-annotations-eu-dma-antitrust/?ref=platformer-newsletter

The barbarians who control Texas are killing women with their puritan laws. https://www.propublica.org/article/porsha-ngumezi-miscarriage-death-texas-abortion-ban?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=feature

Not having to bear the weight of a conscience relieves the burden of being someone like Nancy Mace... https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/25/politics/nancy-mace-transgender-rights-comments/index.html

I'm quite sure that starter packs are one key reason BlueSky is growing so fast. It's a genuine innovation in this space and Mastodon/fed need it yesterday.

Two writers I respect enormously -- @joshtpm and @pluralistic -- posted complementary pieces in recent days, on Democrats, democracy, and institutions.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-party-of-institutions-in-an-era-of-distrust/sharetoken/fdd3e27f-73f6-45dd-a706-ca111139f4ac

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/21/policy-based-evidence/#decisions-decisions

I added some thoughts in my latest newsletter (first item): https://cornerstone.ghost.io/essentials-november-23-24-2024/

"Even for an Israeli government that has declared its commitment to wrecking democratic institutions right from the moment it was established in December 2022, the legislative onslaught now underway is extraordinary. The Knesset session that began in late October has seen lawmakers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition unleash a methodical, multidirectional attack on Israel's institutions, in more explicit terms than ever."

https://archive.ph/Ub9GC

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.