"Not the odds, but the stakes."

That's my shortand for the organizing principle we most need from journalists covering the 2024 election. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for our democracy. Not the odds, but the stakes.

Today the New York Times published an example of stakes reporting:

"Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government...."

[Gift link] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html?unlocked_article_code=xIs5r1zxAGDN77xg08Q6JavrMvRWiHM1qkcSOpZuSM1w3HhnuTEvnoDYE8wxn8-T7BDriP-s9Gg0ju8GI4YLZbUZiMPR7q-Lv4m3WQcUnACBLKks9mdNNoYvIqVyaoBle2ia-SVbVu7FOCVqPz6UZqNpq6sMh5ENSeofvlR0Gf54_6vKhTlltjsnziTYJr1VSxV7HEYWidqMbZGbe9q7hRdIuxrTwv0dGVo1JcTwioLTq8koLvh5XayNTbD6UX_sJF1DIrE6MsB1Jp_H-r4ZtAqL-0hwruzhprU_9aLnsdEUgIw-T1tWEARDQY2VvJLc6ZjCoPA2WncaHE_rMnk&smid=url-share

#journalism #uspol #science

It's not just Elon. The hyper-wealthy are showing us that too much money is bad for people's mental health and reality-comprehension.

For their own good, we need to tax them until they are merely rich.

https://www.salon.com/2023/07/17/billionaires-arent-doing-great--for-their-mental-health-time-to-drastically-raise-their/

While there are some big names in the technology world that are worried about a potential existential threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI), Matt Wood, VP of product at AWS, is not one of them.

“What we’ve got here is a mathematical parlor trick, which is capable of presenting, generating and synthesizing information in ways which will help humans make better decisions and to be able to operate more efficiently,” said Wood.

https://venturebeat.com/ai/aws-exec-downplays-existential-threat-of-ai-calls-it-a-mathematical-parlor-trick/

Technically We Write

Find your passion and write about it. Don Watkins shares his experience as a technical writer about Linux and open source software.

https://technicallywewrite.com/2023/06/15/donwatkins

Bitwarden Moves into Passwordless Security: https://thenewstack.io/bitwarden-moves-into-passwordless-security/ by @sjvn

Bitwarden wants to help you move your applications and websites beyond passwords to serious #security.

The Linux Foundation's Dent project (led by Amazon) is continuing to move forward extending the 'edge' of open source networking.

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/how-dent-brings-open-source-innovation-to-networking-infrastructure/2023/05/

"(W)hat we are witnessing is the wealthiest companies in history (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon …) unilaterally seizing the sum total of human knowledge that exists in digital, scrapable form and walling it off inside proprietary products, many of which will take direct aim at the humans whose lifetime of labor trained the machines without giving permission or consent."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/08/ai-machines-hallucinating-naomi-klein