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This is civic tech: “I help people make their own internet. And I also de-mystify technology in a way that allows people to teach it in a more community-oriented way.” That’s Diane Nucera, the director of the Detroit Community Technology Project, on the work of a community internet organizer, talking to Slate’s Jacob Brogan.
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Noe Jacomet talks to Thiago Rondon of AppCivico about Brazil’s developing civic tech scene.
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CityGrows founders Catherine Geanuracos and Luke Fretwell are working on outlining some proposed values for govtech.
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On the heels of a successful gathering of digital innovators in Uganda, Pius Enywaru argues that the civic tech ecosystem of East Africa is ripe for growth.
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Remember Brigade, the $9 million start-up funded in 2014 by Sean Parker that was going to create a “social network for civics”? It’s lost some core staff, but it’s still plugging along. Here’s CEO Matt Mahan with an update, complete with some big news about changes in their core product. They’ve taken out the debate element (most users are more interested in finding like-minded allies than arguing with others), and are adding a petition tool (instead of a singular focus on voting).
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Need a checklist on the most effective strategies for reducing global warming? Check out this comprehensive analysis of the top 100 solutions from author Paul Hawken and a team of researchers. The number one solution, writes environmental journalist David Roberts: a combination of educating girls and family planning (which together slow down population growth enormously). Refrigerant management, to get HFCs out of the atmosphere, is his other big game-changer.
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Miranda Neubauer profiles the winners of this year’s NYC Big Apps competition for City and State.
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Attend: The New York Community Technology Skillshare, hosted by Aspiration, is today and tomorrow at Judson Church in NYC.
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Party for a good cause: Kefir, a “feminist libra tech coop that provides autonomous digital infrastructure to social movements in Latin America” is having a fundraiser July 15 in Brooklyn.
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Apply: Today is the deadline for applications for Civic Hall’s new Organizers-in-Residence program.
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Trump watch: On Saturday, the President’s son Donald Trump Jr. first denied that a 2016 meeting he had with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer, reported by the New York Times, had anything to do with the lawyer offering damaging information on then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Then, after five other sources told the Times otherwise, Trump Jr. issued a new statement admitting that the lawyer had offered information on Clinton but claimed that her statements were “vague, ambiguous and made no sense” and was not “meaningful.” As the Times’ Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman noted, “The accounts of the meeting,” which was also attended by Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, “represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.”
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Election law expert Rick Hasen blogs that the meeting may have been a violation of the law against soliciting foreign nationals for anything of value to a political campaign.
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Here is Vice President Mike Pence insisting, on Face the Nation in January, that no Trump campaign members had any contact with the Russians.
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Half a day after President Trump tweeted that he and Russian President Putin “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..[sic],” he backtracked and tweeted that “The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn’t mean I think it can happen. It can’t…”
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TalkingPointsMemo’s Josh Marshall notes that Trump’s turnaround on that “Cyber Security unit” took place after the Times’ story on his son’s meeting with the Russians came out.
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Yes, WikiLeaks did propose that Julian Assange be put in charge of that “impenetrable” unit.
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Opposition watch: The number of groups supporting the July 12 day of action to protect net neutrality keeps growing, and now includes Google and Facebook, as Fight for the Future reports.
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Apply: New Media Ventures is partnering with Netroots Nation for its New Tools Showcase. Winners get to give a 5-minute pitch of their voting, campaigning or world-changing tech solutions. Deadline to apply is July 14.
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Media matters: Facing declining ad revenues and losing more and more control of distribution of their content, a group of news organizations is seeking a limited antitrust exemption from Congress to allow them to negotiate collectively with Google and Facebook, Jim Rutenberg reports for The New York Times.
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A Google Home device heard a couple fighting in a residence where they were house-sitting in Tijeras, New Mexico, and when the man asked his girlfriend “Did you call the sheriffs?” it recognized that as a command to “call the sheriff” and called 911. Deputies arrived, removed the woman and her daughter to safety and eventually arrested the man for assault, Morgan Winsor reports for ABC News.
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The open internet is not good for talented writers with bipolar disorder. That’s what Freddie deBoer shares, courageously: “I really was not made for the digital era, or the digital era was not made for people like me. No one has ever needed the gatekeeping functions of editing and publication more than me, and I was born at precisely the time necessary to be among the first to avoid them. The sense not to share, the ability to police oneself, thinking about consequences, adhering to rules, having a sense of proportion — all of these things, necessary for a healthy online life, are precisely the kind that are so hard to practice in this state.”
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