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June 6, 2024

Mostly Bits Newsletter - Issue #106

Tony's Pick

A team at Ghost is building ActivityPub support, and they are doing incredible technical communication about the project. I don’t often quote things in my weekly picks, but I think it’s warranted in this case. This is representative:

Last week we promised you earth-shattering innovation in the form of database persistence. Did we achieve that? We did not.

It honestly reads like Kyle is writing it. Maybe he’s moonlighting at Ghost?

Pug sitting on a chair to announce a joke protocol called "Activity Pug"
That pug is not activity-ing

Kyle's Pick

This week I learned about the Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders. Although the index is highly subjective, they do publish their methodology, along with global and regional analysis and documentation of specific abuses (journalists killed or detained).

Here’s the analysis for the United States, which has dropped 10 places in the index in the last year. I generally support their take on the change in economic context (news organizations are consolidating and laying off workers), but I am less convinced around the change in sociocultural context (the loss of trust is journalism is at times self-inflicted by major organizations, but the fragmentation of news is real).

Subset of color-coded map of press freedom in Europe and North Africa
Greenland’s one journalist is living the high life
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