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Ben Ellman

@heybellman.bsky.social

Radio Producer / Reporter for the likes of Engadget, NPR, Digiday, and maybe you! Probably sent you an invite to NYC Radio Club. I treat this site like a sassy LinkedIn™ for media people

881 Posts302 Follower377 Folgt
gwen howerton@kissphoria.bsky.social · 2w ago

I think that Dolly Parton was, for a lot of people, an ambassador of the "good" values people think of about the South: kindness, hospitality, can-do spirit, sharp and witty and down to earth. I think for a segment of people, too, she was theantithesis of a lot of noxious masculine country stuff.

Nitish Pahwa@nitishpahwa.com · 2w ago

I think the universal grieving comes in no small part from the fact she represented the best of what America could be, and that she never stopped chasing that ideal, artistically and socially

Joshua Rivera@jmrivera.bsky.social · 2w ago

dolly was the rare famous person who treated being famous as a means to an end, and that end was actually making the world better. few better uses of celebrity than shaming every other celeb who does less.

Ben Ellman@heybellman.bsky.social · 2w ago

Confession time: After Betty White, I thought about updating Zack Fox's monologue to "RIP Dolly Parton, she's not dead but for when she dies" to use in my social media bios since she was the next most widely beloved white woman in America. ...I didn't do it because I didn't want to jinx her. RIP

Chance the Lawyer@chancethelawyer.bsky.social · 2w ago

say what you will about the myriad valid concerns with current LLMs but I personally will never get over the fact that Aaron Swartz was prosecuted to his literal death for downloading JSTOR and then a decade later, they downloaded & ingested the entire world and our IP laws just went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ben Ellman@heybellman.bsky.social · 3w ago

I've been saying this for years: the United States would be genuinely better off with more public media. Prior to the CPB being defunded the US federal government spent something like a third of what the UK spends on the BBC and our population is 4.9x bigger

Naomi Kritzer@naomikritzer.bsky.social · 3w ago

One of the smartest ideas I've seen in the last few years is instead of trying to find "the Joe Rogan of the left," buy up the news sites of defunct papers and put some money into providing local news coverage in rural areas.

Mia Sato@miasato.bsky.social · 3w ago

I maintain that consumer AI products would have been received very differently if they were launched with promises like, "You can query this to sort through your inbox of 50,000 emails" rather than "What if artists starved in the streets? :)"

Ben Ellman@heybellman.bsky.social · 4w ago

Plotted out all the shows I'm seeing from late Summer into Fall and realized that I'm gonna end up seeing Die Spitz one night and then their spiritual grandpappies Sleep just a couple nights later