John Gruber of Daring Fireball, on Jonathan Rauch’s aforelinked essay in The Atlantic:

We call Benito Mussolini’s regime “fascist” because he coined the term. His political movement was literally named the Fascist Party. There was no debate whether Hitler and his regime were Nazis because that was their name. “Fascist” and “Nazi” weren’t slurs that were applied to them by their political or military opponents. That’s what they called themselves, and their names became universally recognized slurs because the actions and beliefs of the Fascists and Nazis were universally recognized as reprehensible and evil. And because they lost.

Our goal should not be to make fascist or Nazi apply to Trump’s movement, no matter how well those rhetorical gloves fit his short-fingered disgustingly bruised hands. Don’t call Trump “Hitler”. Instead, work until “Trump” becomes a new end state of Godwin’s Law.

The job won’t be done, this era of madness will not end, until we make the names they call themselves universally acknowledged slurs.

It’s already happening: MAGA is practically an epithet; Trumpism is shorthand for a nativist, grievance-fueled, anti-democratic movement; and the red MAGA hat is the moral equivalent of the white Klan hood. I have tremendous faith that the next generation will scornfully decry future autocratic, xenophobic, narcissistic, wannabe authoritarians as Trumpist.

Jonathan Rauch, writing for The Atlantic (gift link; Apple News+), on calling Donald Trump “fascist”:

Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree on its definition. Italy’s original version differed from Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from Japan’s.

But now:

When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.

Rauch hits every one of the fascism branches on his way to this realization: demolition of norms, glorification of violence, police-state tactics, undermining elections, attacks on news media, leader aggrandizement, alternative facts, and a dozen more.

I understand you’re supposed to be welcoming when someone finally comes around to seeing things your way, rather than sarcastically declaiming “No shit, Sherlock.”

So, welcome, Mr. Rauch. Those of us who’ve been calling Trump and his regime “fascist” for nearly ten years are glad you’re here.

The main gist of Thomas Zimmer’s essay in Democracy Americana (“The People Struggle Against Tyranny”) is a recap of the two recent broad daylight executions by DHS agents and the Trump regime’s brutal escalations that inexorably led us here. (Zimmer’s conjecture: “Cross-racial solidarity is something a white nationalist regime cannot tolerate. […] That the predominantly white population in Minnesota refuses to act like ‘real Americans’ – rejecting the Trumpist quest to purge the nation and instead choosing to act in solidarity with their non-white neighbors. To this regime, they are traitors.”)

It’s worth reading in its entirety, but Zimmer’s “What happens next?” was of particular interest to me after I mused on Mastodon:

What is holding back Trump from invoking the Insurrection Act?

We know he desperately wants to.

Military troops are already on standby.

We know he doesn’t care about the legality of doing so and would gladly defy court orders.

Why is he holding back?

Is it an impeachment threat? Are military leaders warning him not to do it?

The violence from DHS agents seems clearly intended to provoke a violent reaction. I believe Trump—or Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem—is hoping a DHS agent is killed by a protester, giving them the “justification” they seek to deploy the military to quell the “uprising.”

Waiting for a DHS agent to be killed implies Trump or people around him believe he’s not yet “justified” in invoking the act. That implies some restraint somewhere, or for some reason. A federal agent getting killed gives him an excuse, but why does he feel he needs one? He’s never needed excuses to break the law before.

Zimmer offers a theory:

So, if invoking the Insurrection Act is akin to waving a magic wand that makes Trump omnipotent and lets him install a dictatorship in an instant, why hasn’t he done it yet? The people who control the government are certainly not the most patient or a particularly prudent bunch. As a matter of practical reality, the idea that the minute Trump invokes the Insurrection Act all resistance is futile, Trump has won, Game Over is nonsense. That’s just regime propaganda. Perhaps the Trumpists, underneath all the bluster, know this too? Could it be that some in the administration are concerned that once they actually invoke the Insurrection Act, they can no longer use it as a constant threat? And if that doesn’t get their enemies to surrender, what do they have left?

That Trump (and others) may be concerned about the courts, impeachment, legitimacy, or post-invocation impotence is heartening, in the sense that there’s even a faint glimmer of recognition within the regime that Trump is, in fact, not a dictator.

(I also wonder if another reason for not yet invoking it is that “his generals” made it clear he can deploy the military, but they won’t do much other than stand around looking mean—and maybe hand out coffee and doughnuts.)

Zimmer, again:

The Trumpist strategy, to the extent there is one, is centered around an assertion of absolute power. They hope they can convince enough people and institutions that resistance is either illegitimate (because Trump is supposedly representing the “will of the people”) or futile. A crucial part of the struggle against encroaching authoritarianism is to reject rather than perpetuate such notions. Don’t lie down, don’t acquiesce. Make them earn it.

(Via Debbie Goldsmith.)

Because sometimes we just need to laugh through the tears. Via Paul Cantrell, who shared it with the wonderful advice to “please grieve and rage, yes, and also please give yourself permission to laugh.”

Heidi Li Feldman, legal scholar and progressive activist, a week ago, in the initial wake of the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE:

Historians will, I predict, deem the current situation in the United States the American Civil War II.

This is a civil war instigated by the federal government when it began sending unnecessary and militarized forces into American cities. I date the start to the weekend of October 4, 2025 when Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth secretly ordered U.S. military troops to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to aid and abet violence by federal agents against peaceful civilian populations. The militaristic federal invasion and occupation of Minneapolis is a continuation of this war.

A week later, as the world again witnessed agents of the American government brutally shoot and kill a second American citizen, Alex Pretti, in broad daylight—again captured on camera and again excused by the Trump regime with outrageous and transparent lies—a second civil war feels even more inevitable.

Only the Trump regime can pull this country back from the brink. They seemingly have no intention of doing so.

5 Calls:

We research issues, write scripts that clearly articulate a progressive position, figure out the most influential decision-makers, and collect phone numbers for their offices.

All you have to do is call.

The issues with the most calls nationwide for the last seven days are to Defund ICE and to Stop ICE’s Aggressive Attacks on Citizens.

Defunding and stopping ICE is now a literal life-or-death imperative. The House already passed an appropriations bill to continue DHS funding, so it’s up to the Senate to stop it. Call your Senators and ask them to block that bill, and to claw back the $75 billion slush fund previously appropriated for ICE. As long as ICE is allowed to prowl American streets, none of us are safe.

While you’re in the calling mood, consider making two more: the impeachment of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Donald Trump. They must be held accountable for the actions of the DHS and ICE offers under their command.

Today (January 23) is ICE Out of Minnesota’s Day of Truth & Freedom:

Minnesotans are coming together in moral reflection and action to stand together against the actions of the federal government against the state of Minnesota. The ICE “surge” that cost the life of Renee Nicole Good is violating the Constitutional and human rights of Americans and our neighbors. It is time to suspend the normal order of business to demand immediate cessation of ICE actions in MN, accountability for federal agents who have caused loss of life and abuse to Minnesota residents and call for Congress to immediately intervene.

Friday, January 23rd will be a statewide day of non-violent moral action, reflection: no work, no school, no shopping — only community, conscience, and collective action.

Their demands are imminently reasonable:

1. ICE must leave Minnesota now.
2. The officer who killed Renee Good must be held legally accountable.
3. No additional federal funding for ICE in the upcoming Congressional budget and ICE should be investigated for human and Constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors.
4. We call upon Minnesota and National Companies to become 4th Amendment businesses, cease economic relations with ICE and refuse ICE entry or using their property for staging grounds.

For anyone unable to participate but wanting to help, there’s Stand with Minnesota, a collection of vetted, on-the-ground resources:

This directory of places to donate to all comes from activists on the ground, plugged into the situation. Everything is vetted, with the exception of individual GoFundMes (not everyone is in our networks, and we don’t want to pick and choose who is worthy of help.)

If you don’t have resources to give, please amplify what you are hearing and seeing about Minnesota, across social media, but also to your networks, friends, and family offline. […]

Overwhelmed by the amount of listings here? Donate to the Immigrant Law Center of MN, who is providing assistance to hundreds of people with families detained by ICE, or the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund, a fund assembled by a coalition of Twin Cities Foundations committed to getting assistance out the door as quickly as possible.

Donated.

TikTok, in a press release late Thursday:

Today, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC has been established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025, now enabling more than 200 million Americans and 7.5 million businesses to continue to discover, create, and thrive as part of TikTok’s vibrant global community and experience. The majority American owned Joint Venture will operate under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurances for U.S. users.

TikTok’s legally mandated, questionably necessary, and long delayed divestiture from China’s ByteDance is complete. Finally?

Trump, naturally, is taking credit^[1] for “saving TikTok” (despite first trying to ban it during his first term).

(Note, too, the press release references the executive order Trump signed in September, but doesn’t mention the law passed by Congress and signed by Joe Biden. The release could have said “in compliance with U.S. legislation signed by President Biden…” but that would have vexed the Toddler-in-Chief.)

This change in ownership shifts control of TikTok’s all-important algorithm from the authoritarian government of China to the authoritarian government of America. From The New York Times coverage (gift link):

Several of the new investors have ties to Mr. Trump, raising concerns for some TikTok users that the app could start showing more content aligned with the president’s views or the positions of the U.S. government.

Larry Ellison, Oracle’s billionaire co-founder, has a close relationship with Mr. Trump and lobbied the president directly on behalf of the current bid by his son, David Ellison, to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. MGX has done business with the Trump family’s cryptocurrency firm, World Liberty Financial.

Anupam Chander, a law and technology professor at Georgetown University, said the TikTok deal allowed for “more theoretical room for one side’s views to get a greater airing.”

“My worry all along is that we may have traded fears of foreign propaganda for the reality of domestic propaganda,” he added.

Professor Chander is being diplomatic. This is a $14 billion entity with access to 200 million Americans, managed and controlled by several investors with close ties to the Trump regime, which will “retrain” the “content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data.”

After Elon Musk turned X/Twitter into a Nazi bar, it’d be more shocking if a Trump-influenced TikTok doesn’t swerve hard into MAGA propaganda.

Isaac Schorr at Mediaite:

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lashed out at NewsNation’s Libbey Dean on Wednesday while brazenly denying that President Donald Trump referred to Greenland as Iceland during his speech in Davos, Switzerland that morning.

Dean wrote on X/Twitter:

During his @wef remarks, President Trump appeared to mix up Greenland and Iceland around three times.

Leavitt responded:

No he didn’t, Libby [sic]. His written remarks referred to Greenland as a “piece of ice” because that’s what it is. You’re the only one mixing anything up here.

Two things.

First, of course there’s video of Trump saying “Iceland” multiple times during the speech—the entire thing was recorded and broadcast around the world. Snopes identified the two moments from the full speech (42:15 and 43:29) so you can listen for yourself. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”—George Orwell, 1984.

But second, note the neat rhetorical sleight of hand Leavitt pulls here: she refers to Trump’s written remarks, shifting the focus from what Trump said to what Trump was supposed to say. Of course his written remarks would include “Greenland”—that’s Trump’s obsession du jour. Dean didn’t mention written remarks. And, as the video shows, Trump does say “Iceland.” This trick allows Leavitt to (disingenuously) “correct” Dean, while leaving open her ability to later claim she wasn’t “lying” about Trump’s flub, because she wasn’t referring to his spoken words. Just a little misunderstanding… oopsies!

Whether taught or absorbed through proximity to skilled practitioners, Leavitt has perfected the art of dissembling.

The Wall Street Journal (gift link; Apple News+ link):

When President Trump arrived in the snow-covered Swiss Alps on Wednesday afternoon, European leaders were panicking that his efforts to acquire Greenland would trigger a trans-Atlantic conflagration. By the time the sun set, Trump had backed down.

The about-face followed days of back-channel conversations between Trump, his advisers and European leaders, including NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, according to people close to the talks. The Europeans, who stood united in their opposition to Trump acquiring Greenland, employed a mix of enticements, such as offers to boost Arctic security, and warnings, including about the dangers to the U.S. of a deeper rupture in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

After a meeting with Rutte on Wednesday, Trump called off promised tariffs on European nations, contending that he had “formed the framework of a future deal” with respect to the largest island in the world.

In other words, Trump caved, because Trump Always Chickens Out. I’m sure a massive market drop helped—Trump’s billionaire cronies couldn’t have liked that.

We can also add “framework of a future deal” to “concepts of a plan” and “two weeks” as phrases which succinctly illustrate Trump’s inability to solve real-world problems and offer actual solutions.

Maggie Harrison Dupré, Futurism:

The White House published an image on X in which the face of a protester had been altered using AI to depict her weeping during her arrest – instead of striking a stoic pose, as she actually looked during the event.

The woman in the image, civil rights attorney and organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong, was arrested this week after interrupting a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota.[…]

On Thursday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem published a photo on X of Levy Armstrong’s arrest. Levy Armstrong appears to be handcuffed as she was escorted through an office space by a federal agent. In this image, Levy Armstrong isn’t crying. She’s also wearing bright pink lipstick, and her mouth is closed.

Roughly 30 minutes later, things got decidedly more bizarre when the official White House X account also published an image on X purportedly depicting Levy Armstrong’s arrest. But in this version of the photo, Levy Armstrong is pictured sobbing, with visible tears streaming down her cheeks and her mouth open. Her pink lipstick, notably, is gone.

The White House post has a community note that the image was digitally altered, proving that even on the hell site, people still recognize bullshit.

White House spokesperson Kaelan Door defended the doctored photo, writing “The memes will continue.” A fake photograph presented as real on an official White House communications channel isn’t a meme. It’s propaganda.

Clayton Davis, Variety:

Ryan Coogler has officially rewritten Oscar history.

Coogler’s “Sinners” shattered the Academy Awards’ all-time nomination record Thursday, earning 16 nods and surpassing the previous mark of 14, held by three films. […]

The supernatural thriller received nominations for best picture; director; actor (Michael B. Jordan); supporting actress (Wunmi Mosaku); actor in a supporting role (Delroy Lindo); original screenplay; casting; production design; cinematography; costume design; film editing; makeup and hairstyling; sound; visual effects; original score; and original song for “I Lied to You.”

OK, fine, I’ll watch the damn movie.

By now you’ve likely seen the message Donald Trump sent the Prime Minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Støre—and if you haven’t, congratulations on avoiding this dumpster fire. There’s still time to turn away.

As reported in The New York Times (gift link) and seemingly everywhere else:

Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT

Most of the coverage treats the message “seriously,” by which I mean “worthy of consideration” rather than as the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind. Instead they parse, fact check, and contextualize it, giving his words greater weight and meaning than exists—or deserves. A few, like Anne Applebaum’s piece in The Atlantic (Apple News+ link), recognize the message as yet another sign of Trump’s cognitive break from reality and continuing inability to perform the role of president.

I can’t get over the immaturity of the writing.

It’s juvenile, muddled, bombastic, and utterly, utterly incoherent. Yes, it’s factually inaccurate (his knowledge is at the summarizing-the-CliffsNotes level), but worse is there’s no logic, no nuance, and absolutely no consideration of the real world.

It’s a dictated first draft, sent with the self-satisfied smugness of someone who spent his entire life pretending to be smart while surrounding himself with people who coddled him and sane-washed his words—and now refuses to let anyone edit his “brilliance.” It’s pure cosplay, an attempt to emulate how serious people communicate, but with insufficient intellectual heft and mastery of language to compose a persuasive, well-reasoned paragraph that goes beyond “I believe therefore I’m right.”

This message exposes many of Trump’s worst flaws: limited knowledge, incurious, self-delusional, transactional, self-centered. It reads like that of a man who never advanced—intellectually, socially, morally—beyond high school.

High schoolers would scoff at Trump’s simplistic, disjointed, egotistical writing—as should we all.

Morgan Gold, on why he draws comics (on Substack, sadly):

Comics have a peculiar magic: they can smuggle ideas and challenge injustice in ways that words alone cannot. […]

TikToks and tweets can be useful in political turmoil. Their strength isn’t depth. It’s speed and realism. A tweet can put a feeling into plain words and make it portable. Videos go further by creating a sense of being there. Sometimes it is carefully edited persuasion. Sometimes it’s raw footage to serve as evidence. Sometimes it is a parasocial lifeline, like a FaceTime with a friend. These media can witness, rally, soothe, or inflame. And much like a gas station burrito, they pass through you quickly. And then it’s on to more. Keep reacting. Keep scrolling.

Comics are different. They wait for you. They tell the story at the reader’s pace. Each panel is a bite-sized chunk of the story. Words and pictures conveying ideas and/or stories. Comics do a wonderful job of taking an abstraction—a policy, an injustice, a sinking feeling of dread—and give it a face. You can make it discussable. You can make it mockable. Going from panel to gutter and then panel again, you can look at the monster from a safe distance and acknowledge the reality of it without being ruled by the feeling.

Gold opens his essay with a comic (naturally) of ICE recruits learning how to terrorize, the first panel of which is “Today’s Lesson: How to turn a school drop-off into a war zone.” Rule number one: “Always create your own danger.”

Adam Bonica, last week:

Americans work longer hours, pay more out-of-pocket for college and childcare, lack parental leave, and enjoy less economic mobility. The share of income going to the top 1 percent is nearly double the OECD [the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] average. American CEOs earn, on average, 354 times as much as their workers. More workers are trapped in poverty-wage jobs. Collective bargaining covers fewer workers. And social protections are less generous for those who fall on hard times, with the government raising less in taxes and spending more on the military.

The economy is just the beginning.

We spend nearly twice as much on healthcare as other wealthy countries do. Yet life expectancy is well below average, infant and maternal mortality rates are alarmingly high, and more Americans remain uninsured.

This article came up over lunch with some friends as we lamented the greed of America’s billionaires, who would rather leave California than pay an additional 5% of their assets—an amount they’d hardly miss, from assets which in the last year have often risen by more than the tax they’d owe.

If billionaires were willing to settle for ever-so-slightly-less excessive wealth, the lives of non-billionaire Americans could be improved immensely.

Universal healthcare is not some utopian fantasy. It is Tuesday in Toronto. Affordable higher education is not an impossible dream. It is Wednesday in Berlin. Sensible gun regulation is not a violation of natural law. It is Thursday in London. Paid parental leave is not radical. It is Friday in Tallinn, and Monday in Tokyo, and every day in between.

There is another America inside this one, visible in the statistics of nations that made different choices. Call it Latent America: the nation that would exist if our democracy functioned to serve the public rather than protect the already powerful.

To see this, you need only compare outcomes in the US with its peers. The graphic below illustrates a simple thought experiment: What would happen if the United States simply matched the average performance of our 31 peer nations in the OECD? We don’t need to become a shining city on a hill to transform Americans’ lives. We just need to become average.

Bonica includes a set of charts that illustrate what becoming “average” looks like. For example:

• $19,000 more income, and $96,000 more wealth per household
• 26 million more people with health insurance, and $2.1 trillion less in annual healthcare spending
• 25 weeks of guaranteed paid new parental leave (up from zero leave)
• 5 million fewer children in poverty
• 10,000 fewer infant deaths, and a 76% drop in maternal deaths during childbirth
• 35,000 fewer gun deaths a year, and 99% fewer school shootings

There are so many more potential societal improvements, just from America achieving the average of its thirty-one wealthy democratic peers.

Bonica’s argument is inherently optimistic, seeing the comparisons to our peers and the moment we’re in—the shameless corruption, the dismantling of institutions, the dehumanization—not as pointing to an ending, but as “a set of solutions waiting to be implemented.”

Via Jason Kottke, who observes:

Imagine if the US took its exceptionalism seriously and tried to maximally improve the lives of its citizens & residents instead of generating, as Bonica puts it, “enormous prosperity while deliberately withholding it from those who need it most”.

I may not fully share Bonica’s optimism, but the alternative is to believe that America is simply incapable of achieving what so many of its peers already have. If Americans truly believe in American Exceptionalism, then we must all demand more of our politicians, our billionaires, and ourselves.

The New York Times performed a second video analysis (gift link) of the killing of Renee Nicole Good, this time with video from the cellphone of Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot Good three (or four) times. The Department of Homeland Security released that video in an effort to exculpate Ross and prove he was “run over,” while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called for the New York Times to “update their reporting on the ICE Agent’s self defense.”

The Times complied, syncing this new video with the others they previously analyzed.

It didn’t help the agent at all.

Instead of proving Ross was run over, it showed that he:

• was a couple of feet in front of the car as it turned away from him;
• leaned forward on the car (apparently for balance) and was possibly being pushed backward by the car;
• managed to maintain a grip on his cellphone while he shot at Good.

It also records that his first instinct upon shooting a woman three (or four) times was to call her a “fucking bitch.”

This was their defense.

I’m struck by the monumental arrogance it takes to release this video and claim it vindicates Ross.

The cry from the White House and right-wing nut jobs was that Ross was “run over.” But his own video shows that he was never on top of or under the car. At best, he briefly lost his footing on the icy asphalt, used the car to brace himself, and was pushed a couple of feet as the car turned away from him. He regained his balance quickly enough to fire, one-handed, into a moving vehicle. And then exclaim “fucking bitch.”

Absolutely pathetic. Arrest and charge Jonathan Ross.

Jamelle Bouie last week, following the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross:

Abolish ICE. […]

ICE acts more like a Gestapo than it does any kind of legitimate law enforcement agency. […]

This year is obviously the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and for my vantage point, this looks like a Boston Massacre. This looks like the kind of event that can and should galvanize people against this administration, which wants to subject the entire American people to tyranny, to exploitation, to domination. This is an illegitimate president. ICE on our streets is an illegitimate presence. And let this be at the beginning of the end for ICE and for this White House.

Restrained, direct, unambiguous.

Abolish ICE.

Brent Molnar, in his Voice of Reason newsletter (Substack, alas):

If the United States follows through on the threat to invade Greenland, we need to be crystal clear about what happens the next morning. This is not a real estate transaction or a routine military exercise. It is the geopolitical equivalent of pulling the pin on a grenade in a crowded elevator. The moment American boots hit the ground in Nuuk to seize territory from a fellow NATO member, the world as we know it ends. The consequences will not be temporary sanctions or angry letters. They will be total, permanent, and devastating.

The fall of NATO, “the closure of every U.S. military base on the continent,” Europe dumping their dollar reserves (“sending the value of our currency into a death spiral”), U.S. companies expelled from European markets (“Trillions of dollars in market capitalization will be incinerated in minutes”), U.S. airlines banned from European airspace, the end of visa-free travel to (and legal protections in) Europe.

This is the end of trust, and it does not reset. You cannot invade a democratic ally and then say “my bad” four years later.

The biggest benefit of international cooperation isn’t the loud wars they prevent but the quiet stability they provide.

While skimming the media photos from Apple Creator Studio announcement, I was struck by the clean minimalism of Apple’s macOS “Pro” apps. They feel like the purest expression of macOS design: appropriately sized interface elements, a reasonable window corner radius, and blessedly little translucency. Controls and content fill the windows with nary a wasted pixel or blurry background in sight. The apps are focused on functionality and stripped of pretentiousness. They bring a sense of calm, orderliness, and clarity of purpose—we’re here to work. I don’t know if the Pro apps’ UI is a refinement of Liquid Glass or a renunciation of it, but it looks like what macOS should be. Even the iPad versions—including the newly released Pixelmator Pro, to a lesser extent—have a more restrained feel. If all macOS apps looked like they do in these perfectly curated marketing materials, I think many people, myself included, would be overjoyed.

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today unveiled Apple Creator Studio, a groundbreaking collection of powerful creative apps designed to put studio-grade power into the hands of everyone […]. Exciting new intelligent features and premium content build on familiar experiences of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform to make Apple Creator Studio an exciting subscription suite […].

Apple Creator Studio will be available on the App Store beginning Wednesday, January 28, for $12.99 per month or $129 per year, with a one-month free trial, and includes access to Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro on Mac and iPad; Motion, Compressor, and MainStage on Mac; and intelligent features and premium content for Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later Freeform for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. College students and educators can subscribe for $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage individually as a one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.

Apple could have easily justified $13 a month for Final Cut Pro or Pixelmator Pro alone. If you’re a content creator (or are hoping to become one), gaining access to six “Pro” apps for one price is a screaming good deal.

(Buying the suite of apps individually costs $650—five years of subscriptions—and doesn’t come with Pixelmator Pro for iPad, which is only available with a Creator Studio subscription.)

The “intelligent features and premium content” may be a useful value-add, but I doubt anyone who doesn’t need the Pro apps would subscribe just to gain access. I expect we’ll eventually see another subscription option soon that’s just the Apple Intelligence and premium content, so anyone buying individual apps or using the free iWork apps won’t feel left out. Why leave subscription revenue on the table, right? Apple has to pay for its reportedly $1 billion a year Google Gemini partnership somehow.

Creator Studio includes several AI features that are not available in the apps without a subscription (Warp tool in Pixelmator Pro, clean up slides in Keynote, Magic Fill in Numbers, for example). I’m betting several future Apple Intelligence features will be likewise locked behind a subscription (perhaps part of Apple One or iCloud+).

I have a gnawing unease about locking these features and content behind a subscription. If this bundle proves successful—and I have no reason to believe it won’t—the incentive to put new functionality behind a paywall may prove so tempting that Apple starts littering its apps (and, heaven forfend, operating systems) with “Premium”-tagged menu items, or we’ll see “Subscribe” windows thrown up every time a gated feature is selected. Empty Trash? Subscribe to macOS Tahoe Premium.

I hope I didn’t just type that into existence.

In addition to subscription creep—shifting functionality behind a paygate—I’m also deeply concerned about subscription permanence. On the Creator Studio product page is this FAQ:

What happens to projects and content I created if my subscription ends?

All the projects and content you create with an active subscription to Apple Creator Studio — including any images you generate or add from the Content Hub — remain licensed in the context of your original creation.

Projects in Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro remain on all your devices, and you can copy or share them to any other device. To open or edit a project, you need to be an active subscriber. Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform documents remain unchanged and can be edited; however, no new edits using paid features will be possible.

Emphasis most emphatically added.

Translation: Keep paying, or lose access to your work.

I can handle paying a subscription to access compelling functionality. What I can’t accept is a perpetual subscription just to maintain access to my own creations. This issue isn’t unique to Apple—hello, Microsoft 365—but Apple has never paygated my content before.

This feels momentous: for the first time, Apple now has a “pay us or else” model. For many people, that’s a deal breaker.

Wall Street will be thrilled.

People Magazine:

Scott Adams has died at the age of 68. Adams first published Dilbert, a comic strip that satirized life in white-collar offices, in 1989. The comic strip became ubiquitous in the 1990s. Dilbert was pulled from wide circulation, however, after Adams degraded Black people in a 2023 rant.

Adams was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2025.

I was an early Dilbert reader. The strip was a mainstay at work. One of the first two books I bought on Amazon.com (in 1998) was The Dilbert Principle (a gift for my mom). I read God’s Debris at the suggestion of a friend and found it compelling if confusing. At some point I bought a Dilbert mug.

Yes, I was a fan.

This, despite having long recognized Adams as a bigot. He claimed he was denied promotions because he was white, while “less-qualified” Black people were promoted above him, despite admitting he was woefully unqualified for the job—and white people were getting promoted, just not him.

But sometime in 2015, 2016, Adams went completely ’round the bend, with his “Donald Trump is a master persuader” BS, his full-throated endorsement of Trump, and a marked shift toward verbalizing his “anti-woke” ideology on his podcast and Twitter. Oh, and Dilbert stopped being funny. It got worse after Trump won the election, and came to a head in 2023 when he declared—during Black History Month!—that Black people were a “hate group.” I found myself semi-regularly antagonizing him (and his defenders) on Twitter—right up until he blocked me.

I haven’t been a fan in a long time.

Living with cancer is awful, and prostate cancer is one of its most devastating forms. So yes—fuck cancer. I take no great pleasure in Adams’ death from this terrible disease.

But I won’t be grieving for him.

See Also: The New York Times’s obituary.

When writing up the aforelinked joint statement, I kept getting proofreading errors that the “AI” in “Google’s Al technology” was incorrectly spelled.

Here it is, as seen on Google’s site:

You might already spot the problem.

Let’s change the font from that site’s Google Sans to something more distinctive, Apple Chancery:

Are you seeing it? Let me go one step further and use Copperplate, which uses small caps:

Yep, Apple is using “Google’s AL technology” instead of “Google’s AI technology.” I presume there’s a discount for buying a knockoff.

And don’t get me started on Google’s use of straight (“dumb”) quote marks.

Apple and Google, in a rare joint statement to CNBC and subsequently released by Google on its company news site and X/Twitter account:

Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology. These models will help power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri coming this year.

After careful evaluation, Apple determined that Google’s Al technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users. Apple Intelligence will continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, while maintaining Apple’s industry-leading privacy standards.

I have many questions, none of which are answered by this brief statement:

• How much money changes hands (and in which direction)?
• Does “based on” mean Apple will augment Google Gemini technology for its needs? Is it then a unique model?
• Will Gemini replace current Apple models in existing features? Will Image Playground, for example, see improvements in quality and style?
• Will OpenAI’s ChatGPT be replaced by Gemini as the “I can’t answer that” escalation, or will Siri simply use Gemini to answer questions directly?

I’m sure further details from Apple will be forthcoming, but for now, Google is carrying the load here: there’s nothing from Apple directly.

It’s worth noting that, as brief as the statement was, it explicitly calls out that Apple Intelligence will “continue to” run locally and on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute—not on Google’s servers. That alleviates a lot of privacy concerns.

This is undoubtedly a sound decision for Apple, both technically and financially, but it must be at least a little disappointing to some on the inside that they’re abandoning—at least publicly—years of internal AI efforts.

It’s a stark and public admission that those efforts were woefully insufficient, and quite the shift from Apple’s usual “Not Invented Here” syndrome.

U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), in a letter to Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai:

We write to ask that you enforce your app stores’ terms of service against X Corp’s (hereafter, “X”) X and Grok apps for their mass generation of nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children. X’s generation of these harmful and likely illegal depictions of women and children has shown complete disregard for your stores’ distribution terms. Apple and Google must remove these apps from the app stores until X’s policy violations are addressed.

It’s gratifying to see three Senators (all Democrats, it’s worth noting) pressing for action. That it’s only three Senators is pitiful.

Turning a blind eye to X’s egregious behavior would make a mockery of your moderation practices. Indeed, not taking action would undermine your claims in public and in court that your app stores offer a safer user experience than letting users download apps directly to their phones. This principle has been core to your advocacy against legislative reforms to increase app store competition and your defenses to claims that your app stores abuse their market power through their payment systems.

Both Apple and Google have also recently demonstrated the ability to move quickly to moderate apps from the app stores. For example, under explicit pressure, and perhaps threats, from the Department of Homeland Security, your companies quickly removed apps that allowed users to lawfully report immigration enforcement activities, like ICEBlock and Red Dot. Unlike Grok’s sickening content generation, these apps were not creating or hosting harmful or illegal content, and yet, based entirely on the Administration’s claims that they posed a risk to immigration enforcers, you removed them from your stores.

The continued availability of X and Grok from the App Store and Google Play leads me to believe Cook and Pichai are more afraid of incurring the wrath of Elon Musk—and, by extension, Donald Trump—than they are of knowingly, if unwillingly, distributing apps that create, host, and display “nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children.”

Keeping X and Grok after removing ICEBlock undermines Apple’s and Google’s assertions that they apply their guidelines without fear or favor, and weakens their argument that the app review process makes customers safer. If customers can download apps containing harmful and illegal content but can’t download apps that keep them safe, what’s the point of a singular app store or a “rigorous” review process? Either Apple and Google pull X and Grok from their stores or they admit the guidelines are merely convenient fabrications for exerting control.

Norbert Heger identifies why resizing windows in macOS 26 Tahoe is so frustratingly difficult: thanks to the comically large window corner radius, the area to grab is mostly off the edge of the window:

Living on this planet for quite a few decades, I have learned that it rarely works to grab things if you don’t actually touch them.

macOS Tahoe flips this expectation on its head.

The accompanying gif of him grabbing a plate captures the experience perfectly.

Heidi Li Feldman suggests one small “something” we can all do while we hope regulators ban Elon Musk’s CSAM-sharing X/Twitter:

If you have a moment, file a complaint against X with the Apple App Store.

This is a terrific idea. It signals support from Apple’s customers to take action against Musk’s creepy AI tools and offers a fig leaf to justify pulling the apps from the App Store.

Here’s how to file a report (it took me less than two minutes to file reports against both X and Grok. You can only report apps you’ve downloaded, but both are free and you don’t need to launch them):

1. Visit the Report a Problem page for X (Twitter).
2. Select Report offensive, illegal, or abusive content.
3. Select an appropriate option under Tell us more….
4. Provide the necessary details. Restraint is better than bombast. (Feldman’s example—“X is using its AI bot to generate child pornography on demand.”—is appropriately succinct and direct.)
5. Repeat for Grok.

Creating and displaying sexualized images of children and non-consenting adults in X and Grok is a clear violation of Apple’s guidelines, in particular:

1.1 Objectionable Content

Apps should not include content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy.

And:

1.2 User-Generated Content

To prevent abuse, apps with user-generated content or social networking services must include:

• A method for filtering objectionable material from being posted to the app […]

(It’s also a more valid application of 1.1 than using it to justify pulling ICEBlock.)

While I harbor few illusions that reporting the apps will lead to Apple actually yanking X or Grok, if enough people lodge complaints, perhaps Apple can muster a meaningful enough threat of removal to spook Musk into addressing the issue. There is precedent: in 2018, Apple pulled Tumblr and Telegram for hosting or sharing child pornography within their apps.

I’m not prepared to accept bets on this happening, though. Apple is quite reticent to threaten big apps with eviction, plus Musk is already suing them on frivolous antitrust grounds. Apple may see pulling his apps as needlessly handing him ammunition—though it may well blow up in his face if he’s obligated to argue that Apple must host apps that create and display child pornography.

Paris Marx on the aforelinked Grok shitshow:

Let’s be honest with ourselves: if a broadcaster or newspaper had started publishing thousands of non-consensual, sexually explicit images of women or — even worse — of children, politicians and regulators would be out for blood. It would be a front-page, ongoing scandal and the organization responsible would be quickly brought to heel because it would be so outrageous.

But when Elon Musk and his chatbot Grok do it, there’s somehow little more than crickets. Politicians are alarmed and say something needs to be done, but can’t quite say what that something is. Regulators say they’re investigating, as thousands more women and children are victimized while the richest man in the world continues treating the whole situation like a big game — or simulation.

Governments must ban X, argues Marx:

Regulators and politicians in some countries have been responding to what’s happening on X. The European Union, United Kingdom, France, and Australia are all investigating the matter, with some even saying what X is enabling is illegal. Indian officials gave X a 72-hour deadline to act on the illegal material, while some Brazilian politicians are calling for the platform to be banned once again. But let’s be real: the responses of regulators to a child porn-producing chatbot on the social media platform owned by the richest man in the world are not nearly strong or quick enough.

Creating a chatbot that victimizes thousands of women on command and generates child pornography should be a red line — and not one you can come back from. Elon Musk and anyone at X or xAI directly working on that functionality should be criminally held to account for the consequences of their actions. But many countries will not have jurisdiction for those crimes. Instead, they should take the obvious move of banning X before the harm it causes their citizens escalates even further.

One place Musk won’t have to worry about a ban is the United States—not while his pedophilia-adjacent buddy is in charge.

Jason Koebler, writing for 404 Media earlier this week (free account required):

Over the last week, users of X realized that they could use Grok to “put a bikini on her,” “take her clothes off,” and otherwise sexualize images that people uploaded to the site. This went roughly how you would expect: Users have been derobing celebrities, politicians, and random people—mostly women—for the last week. This has included underage girls, on a platform that has notoriously gutted its content moderation team and gotten rid of nearly all rules.

The only actions Musk has taken to put an end to this are to issue a weak stop, don’t “threat” and to limit Grok’s image generation and editing to paid subscribers—in other words, monetize the vile behavior. (His investors don’t seem to care, either, investing $20 billion—a ghastly sum of money—into xAI mere days after news of this abuse broke.)

Samantha Cole wrote an extensive follow-up piece for 404 Media (“Grok’s AI Sexual Abuse Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere”):

This is the culmination of years and years of rampant abuse on the platform. Reporting from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the organization platforms report to when they find instances of child sexual abuse material which then reports to the relevant authorities, shows that Twitter, and eventually X, has been one of the leading hosts of CSAM every year for the last seven years. In 2019, the platform reported 45,726 instances of abuse to NCMEC’s Cyber Tipline. In 2020, it was 65,062. In 2024, it was 686,176. These numbers should be considered with the caveat that platforms voluntarily report to NCMEC, and more reports can also mean stronger moderation systems that catch more CSAM when it appears. But the scale of the problem is still apparent. Jack Dorsey’s Twitter was a moderation clown show much of the time. But moderation on Elon Musk’s X, especially against abusive imagery, is a total failure.

Musk’s failure of moderation is what makes his threat (“Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content”) not just meaningless, but disingenuous.

One brief observation from watching the New York Times frame-by-frame analysis of the murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross (as identified by the Star Tribune):

Ross already had his hand on his gun as Good’s car backed up to leave. Ross shoots Good three times: once through the windshield at an angle, then he reaches through the open driver-side window and fires twice more at Good from point-blank range.

The Star Tribune reports:

“he acted according to his training,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told the Minnesota Star Tribune in an email, noting that this specific agent was selected for ICE’s Special Response Team, is an expert marksman and “has been serving his country his entire life.”

Identifying the man who shot a woman in the head at point-blank range as “an expert marksman” is especially callous and sadistic.

On June 17, Ross was participating in an arrest of Roberto Carlos Munoz-Guatemala, a Mexican citizen, in Bloomington last year. Munoz-Guatemala had previously been convicted of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct and had been put on a detainer by immigration officials. Munoz-Guatemala ignored the agents’ commands, including to fully roll down his car window, so Ross broke open his rear window and reached inside to unlock the door.

Ross was dragged by the car and required “20 stitches for a deep cut in his right arm and another 13 stitches in his left hand.” JD Vance suggests that justifies the killing:

“That very ICE officer nearly had his life ended … six months ago,” Vance said, referring to the earlier car-dragging incident.

“You think maybe he’s a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him?”

If he’s still “sensitive” about being “rammed,” he (1) shouldn’t be standing in front of vehicles, and (2) is unfit for duty and shouldn’t have been in the field.

After killing Good, Ross re-holsters his gun as he watches the vehicle spin out of control and crash, then slowly walks toward it. Ross appears calm the entire time—including as he casually asks his colleagues to “call 9–1–1”.

These are not the actions of a man who panicked or feared for his life. They’re the actions of a man who made a deliberate choice to fire his weapon—three times—into a moving vehicle.

Arrest and charge Ross now.

John Gruber, linking to the New York Times’ frame-by-frame analysis of the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by a mask-wearing ICE agent:

This ICE agent murdered Renee Good, in broad daylight, in front of many witnesses and multiple cameras. Trust the evidence of your eyes and ears.

As a general rule I try to refrain from both watching videos that show people being killed (I find them akin to snuff films) and commenting on breaking news of this nature (there are often too many unknown unknowns).

I made an exception and watched the video, and Gruber is right about two things: this is a murder in broad daylight, and the woman who recorded it, Caitlin Callenson, is an unflinching, steel-spined hero.