Sue Valentine

Fellowship opportunity for journalists — berthafoundation.org/story/bertha...

Among the lost positives consigned to the dusty corners of the dictionary is ‘reck’, meaning ‘care’, ‘heed’, and ‘consideration’. Which means we can be reckful instead of reckless (and feckful, gormful, ruthful, ept, kempt, couth, consolate, and many more).

Wired is dropping paywalls for FOIA-based reporting. Others should follow As the administration does its best to hide public records from the public, Wired magazine is stepping up to help stem the secrecy

They're called public records for a reason. Starting today, WIRED will *stop paywalling* articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, becoming the first publication to partner with @freedom.press to offer this for our new coverage.

Deadliest year on record for journalists; 70% killed by Israel - Committee to Protect Journalists Journalist killings reached unprecedented toll in 2024  Freelancers account for one in three killings worldwide New York, February 12, 2025 — A record number of journalists were killed worldwide in 20...

And especially dangerous for freelancers who account for 1 in 3 of journalists killed.
cpj.org/2025/02/dead...

Loved ‘Broken English’.

How else could chatbots be made more appealing? The popularity of r1’s chain of thought suggests that they should communicate more about their process, and in particular offer the user guidance on how to refine their queries when they don’t get the answer they’re looking for. Just telling users how a chatbot understood their question seems to build an outsized amount of trust. I also think there’s something appealing about r1’s humility — in conveying its own lack of certainty, it sounds less like the authoritative robots we have come to expect and more like Star Wars’ C-3PO. That’s somewhat counterintuitive — I don’t know many people who think the final form of superintelligence is a bumbling droid — and yet too often we forget how alien and unapproachable these systems remain to all but the most devoted AI nerds.

DeepSeek took off in part because, in a first, it offered a reasoning model that explains to you what it's doing. Its success shows how little AI product teams have done so far to make their products appealing to normal people: www.platformer.news/deepseek-des...

Ladies and gentlemen… @jessicatarlov.bsky.social, my co-host on the @ragingmoderates.bsky.social podcast. 💥💥💥

The Right Takes Aim at Wikipedia Disputes around edits are nothing new, but the rise of partisanship has added fuel to the fire.

The Right Takes Aim at Wikipedia: Disputes around edits are nothing new, but the rise of partisanship has added fuel to the fire. By Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen of @towcenter.bsky.social www.cjr.org/the_media_to...

Ai2 says its new AI model beats one of DeepSeek's best | TechCrunch Move over, DeepSeek. Seattle-based nonprofit AI lab Ai2 has released a benchmark-topping model called Tulu3-405B.

"On Thursday, Ai2, a nonprofit AI research institute based in Seattle, released a model that it claims outperforms DeepSeek V3, one of Chinese AI company DeepSeek’s leading systems.

Moreover, unlike GPT-4o (and even DeepSeek V3), Tulu 3 405B is open source."

techcrunch.com/2025/01/30/a...

The press lobby is going feral—ignore it Given the pressures of 24-hour news, lobby journalists cannot plausibly understand policy detail. Their skillset is to nose around and cause trouble

The way news reporting has changed over the past decades has been deeply unhelpful to good governance. Specialist journalists have been slashed. Everything is covered by the ‘lobby’—which is going feral, writes @samfr.bsky.social.
www.prospectmagazine...

Exclusive | Meta to Pay $25 Million to Settle 2021 Trump Lawsuit The president had sued the social-media company after his accounts were suspended following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Meta paid Donald Trump $25m … for suspending his social media accounts. The same company that has stripped all news links from its Canadian website to avoid paying journalists for reporting ….. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

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Call for Proposals: Strengthening independent public interest journalism in Europe - Civitates Open call to support independent public-interest media outlets in Europe.

Public interest journalism in Europe - grants applications are open. civitates-eu.org/funding-oppo...

In a minefield of glitchy AI search and social media, Wikipedia has suddenly become the most reliable place on the internet | CNN Business Over the past two decades, the free-to-use online encyclopedia has carried on with its mission, expanding its global community of volunteer editors, known as Wikipedians, and ultimately resisting the ...

www.cnn.com/2025/01/14/b...

‘Fadi is fighting for his life’: Israel blocks evacuation of cameraman shot in Gaza Fadi al-Wahidi’s condition is deteriorating, say hospital staff, who do not have medication needed to treat him

Deeply troubled by this news. Last year was the deadliest on record for journalists in Palestine, and this year is already starting no better. Safe passage must be guaranteed for Fadi al-Wahidi, and journalists in #Gaza must be protected:
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

When Evgenia Kara-Murza's husband, @vkaramurza.bsky.social, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in #Russia, she campaigned tirelessly for his release, which came in August 2024. Read our interview with Kara-Murza, winner of Index's 2024 Free Expression Award: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Why Meta fact-checking cuts highlights vital role of public media - Public Media Alliance Cuts to Meta fact-checking in favour of community notes is deeply concerning and highlights the need to better support public media.

'Legacy media' still shoulder huge financial & regulatory burden of meeting journalistic standards while tech oligarchs totally abandon their duty of care to the public. Platform recklessness also makes support for independent public media even more urgent www.publicmediaalliance.org/meta-fact-ch...

Meta never cared about factchecking. What it wants is friction-free oligarchy The company’s plan to end its factchecking program is about appeasing Trump. That signals the making of a mafia state

This by @bostonjoan.bsky.social is excellent www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Let’s hope so.

Critical context & corrections. Thank you @rosatkins.bsky.social

😂

Another employee noted in an internal post how reactive the company had become, dramatically changing policies and positions based on one relatively close election. "It's a bit crazy, just thinking that if the election result was different — none of this would happen? Does it mean we were doing things that we did not believe in? Are we going to have such big changes every time power shifts?" Responded another employee: "Apparently the current direction of the wind is the way we 'lean in.'"

NEW: Meta just killed its diversity, equity and inclusion program. Employees aren't buying the company's argument that it's the result of a 'shifting legal landscape.' What they're saying inside the company ➡️ www.platformer.news/meta-kills-d...

The Internet Archive is in danger More than 900 billion webpages are preserved on The Wayback Machine, a history of humanity online. Now, copyright lawsuits could wipe it out.

Internet Archive's founder, @brewster.kahle.org, spoke with @wbur.org's Megna Chakrabarti about the lawsuits against the Internet Archive, the importance of archiving the web, and the "constantly renewed mythological goal" of the Library of Alexandria.

🎧 Listen now: www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025...

No! So sorry. Wishing you a speedy recovery. Enjoy the ambassadorial escort! :)

Leaked Meta Rules: Users Are Free to Post “Mexican Immigrants Are Trash!” or “Trans People Are Immoral” Facebook now allows attacks on immigrants and trans people, and posts like “Mexican immigrants are trash!” and “I’m a proud racist.”

Training materials obtained by @theintercept.com include specific examples of permitted hate speech that “demonstrate that Meta’s policy changes are political in nature and not intended to simply allow more freedom of expression,” EFF’s @jillian.bsky.social said.

January 9, 2025 Family members, friends, and political leaders gathered today at the Washington National Cathedral to honor the life of former president Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29 at age 100.

January 9, 2025

This was a joy; do have a listen on iPlayer. I could chat with @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social for days.

Photos of Muhammad Ali, 1968 / The unknown photographer / The Grateful Dead, 1967

Who captured these historic 1960s San Francisco snapshots? 📷 Abandoned for years in a storage unit, these unseen photos are finally seeing the light of day, but the photographer's identity remains a mystery. Can you help solve it? 🕵️‍♀️

Join the search: blog.archive.org/2025/01/10/e...

A Beginner’s Guide to Seeing More With Satellite Imagery Multispectral satellite images can reveal useful information about the world, such as mining activity and changes in vegetation.

Satellite Imagery is used extensively in open-source investigative research, in this guide tech-fellow Agnes Cameron explains how some satellite images reveal more than the eye can see. www.bellingcat.com/resources/20...

Did you know that the most popular sport of the Nigerian elite is polo (the kind with horses) - and there's no bigger international showcase than the Port Harcourt tournament being held this weekend?

www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/20...