Last night we went to a township meeting. A family friend was being installed to office as a supervisor. In my mind’s eye, I was picturing a giant metropolis. Big marble stairs, doric columns, a lot of media in period inauthentic wardrobe. Big, ridiculous flash bulb cameras. It was, in fact, a small place. The township is the sort that has a part time police chief. Where the supervisor meetings are held has a grand table, long enough to seat five people tasked with the important duties of the community.
Sometimes the room hosts potlucks.
There were 40 people in the audience, and that just about filled the room. Six or seven people were holding up their phones to record the historic moments of their friends and loved ones being sworn in.
There stood a judge at the front of the room. She is married, I learned later, to one of the administrators. In her full regalia, she swore in five new people, three township supervisors, an auditor and a tax collector. She enunciated carefully. “UniTED,” and “FIdelity.”
Even the tax collector got a round of applause, which probably doesn’t happen again during his tenure.
With the positions filled, the supervisors held their regular meeting, a tight series of procedural votes to start the new year. Partnerships with other cities, the formal hiring of a few new police officers, a resolution or two. It took 21 minutes.
If you need a shot of democracy, go take part in your local government. That’s where the real and immediate work that impacts you and your community is conducted. They need you, your voice, your thoughts, your energy. (Plus it is sometimes unintentionally entertaining.)
The thing about this form of government is that it only works if the people take part.
Just to round out today’s post, before I get back to work. This isn’t a story — it is a list of photos and brief bios — but that is a dynamite headline. Finally got the framing right. Who’s who at X, the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter
Meanwhile, over in the UK … Government demands Musk’s X deals with ‘appalling’ Grok AI deepfakes:
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has called on Elon Musk’s X to urgently deal with its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok being used to create non-consensual sexualised images of women and girls.
The BBC has seen multiple examples on X of people asking the bot to digitally undress people to make them appear in bikinis without their consent, as well as putting them in sexual situations.
Kendall said the situation was “absolutely appalling”, adding “we cannot and will not allow the proliferation of these degrading images.”
In sports media news, NBC is set for Olympic spots.NBCU breaks Winter Olympic ad sales record with sellout:
Today, amid CES, NBCUniversal announced it had sold out of its Winter Olympics ad inventory, with a month still to go before the games. In the process, the company set a new Winter Olympics ad sales record, with the highest linear and digital revenue it’s ever recorded. Plus, the company scored a record number of advertisers. With the news, NBCU has sold out inventory for the Winter Olympics, the NBA All-Star Game, and the Super Bowl, which make up what the company calls its “Legendary February” programming.
[…]
Among other highlights, the Winter Olympics is adding more than 100 new advertisers for the upcoming Games. Of its total advertisers, 85% of brand partners are investing in Milan Cortina digitally, and advertiser adoption of Peacock’s ad innovations has grown 31% from Paris 2024 to Milan Cortina 2026, according to the company.
Plus, the company said nearly 60 advertisers are using unique marketing elements, up more than 174% from Beijing 2022.
That’s a lot of new advertisers. I wonder what we’re going to see. I wonder what they’ll say about us.
