Edwin Black, author of “IBM and the Holocaust,” writing at BESA Center in 2021:

The IBM alliance with the Third Reich was no rogue corporate operation run out of a basement. Day in and day out, it was Watson who personally micromanaged all aspects of the 12-year Nazi relationship. The relationship began just after January 30, 1933—the first moments of the Third Reich—and ended in the first week of May 1945, the last gasp of Hitler’s regime.

Thomas Watson Sr. was IBM’s CEO.

I don’t know what made me think of this today.

Katherine Bunt, Meridith McGraw, and Meghan Bobrowsky, reporting for the Wall Street Journal on this vomitous display of fealty by several “tech titans” (Apple News+ link):

President Trump on Thursday led leaders of the world’s biggest technology companies in a version of his cabinet meetings, in which each participant takes a turn thanking and praising him, this time for his efforts to promote investments in chip manufacturing and artificial intelligence.

“A version of his cabinet meetings” may be as close to snark as WSJ gets.

Among those abasing themselves at the dinner were Mark Zuckerberg (Meta/Facebook), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Sundar Pichai (Alphabet/Google), Arvind Krishna (IBM), and Tim Cook (Apple). Cook fawned:

I want to thank you for setting the tone such that we can make a major investment in the United States and have some key manufacturing here. I think it says a lot about your leadership and focus on innovation.

Was Apple unable to make major investments in the U.S. before Trump?

Then there’s this exchange between Trump and Alphabet (Google) CEO Sundar Pichai:

“You had a very good day yesterday,” Trump said. “Do you want to talk about that big day you had yesterday?”

“I’m glad it’s over,” Pichai said.

“Biden was the one who prosecuted that lawsuit,” Trump said. “You know that, right?”

First, yeah, I think the CEO of the company sued by the Department of Justice is aware of which administration prosecuted the lawsuit.

Second, it’s amusing that even Trump recognizes that Google basically walked away unscathed.

But last, as I wrote in a footnote on Wednesday, the case was indeed prosecuted—and won—under the Biden administration. Trump is so desperate to deflect blame and so afraid of confrontation that he won’t even acknowledge that it was his administration that initiated the case during the waning days of his first administration, despite his own Assistant Attorney General taking a huge victory lap to celebrate the DOJ victory and crediting Trump’s leadership and directive to “Make America Competitive Again” for the win.

I mentioned in passing that Howard Hesseman and Tim Reid picked much of their own music for WKRP in Cincinnati. That tidbit came from this great, short interview with Hugh Wilson, the creator of WKRP:

[…] in fact, we actually broke some records on WKRP. It was the first time they were heard. By then, I was letting Howard pick the old kind of rock and roll, Pink Floyd stuff, and Tim was picking the Commodores and all the kind of Black rhythm and blues and all. […] But they were really picking it, and some records were heard first on WKRP.

I’d love to know which songs were first played on the show. Alas, Wilson doesn’t say.

The main thrust of the interview though is the cost of having all that great music on the show. Wilson insisted on real records, not “soundalikes,” and it cost him in syndication:

There was a meeting, a music meeting, and the idea was that when they played records at WKRP, they’d be what’s called “soundalikes.” It would sound like the Beatles, but it wouldn’t be the Beatles. And I said, then we really can’t do this show. We really must stop right here. That’s not good, we got to play real records. So, that’s going to cost money and— no, we got to do that. And so we looked into it, and actually, I could buy what was called a “needle down” where maybe, maybe I could get 17 seconds of Pink Floyd for $3,000. And if I use, like, two pops like that, that’s six grand. My cast wasn’t making a lot of money. I wasn’t either at the time, you know. […] but I was able to get these real records on. And I think it made the show.

[…] and this became a huge financial problem years later, because the show was just going great guns in syndication. […] And then, the rights to the music had to be renewed, and that $3,000 needle down now, they wanted $103,000 for it. So that was the end of WKRP syndication. But I can’t say I would have done it any other way.

This is probably the reason WKRP in Cincinnati is not available on any streaming services (except for purchase on Apple TV), and why the DVD landscape is so sparse (there’s a single boxed set on Amazon for $99 from a random (well-rated, at least) seller, or available directly from Shoutfactory—who Wilson credits in this interview for making the DVD available with most of original music intact—for $64.)

It’s a shame there’s little interest in a remastered—and musically complete—reissue of the show.

Jon Nelson had an idea:

What if you took EVERY DJ break ​Howard Hesseman ever made, as Dr. Johnny Fever (WKRP in Cincinnati), and just ...followed his lead?

Would it be possible to construct a 3 hour show, with Fever as host?

He followed it up with three more hours inspired by Tim Reid’s Venus Flytrap. The resulting “show” is a fantastic collection of classic cuts from (mostly) the 1970s.

I never paid attention to the music played on WKRP in Cincinnati when I watched it as a kid. It was mostly incidental—there to add verisimilitude to the fictional radio station or punctuate a joke—and was otherwise unremarkable to me. I wouldn’t have recognized most of the music back then, but virtually every one is a veritable classic today—and much of it was picked by Hesseman and Reid themselves in later seasons. (Imagine my shock at suddenly hearing what sounded like Daft Punk an hour into Venus’ set—it was actually Edwin Birdsong’s “Cola Bottle Baby,” which was sampled for “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”)

(Worth noting: not every song in this set is from WKRP. Nelson augments it—especially the Venus set—with his own selections (like “Cola Bottle Baby”) to match the spirit of the original music. I think he does a great job, but if you want to hear only the songs played on the show, there’s an Apple (and YouTube) playlist for that.)

(Via Dr. Fortyseven, by way of Dave Rahardja.)

Leah Nylen, Josh Sisco, and Davey Alba reporting for Bloomberg Law:

Alphabet Inc.’s Google will be required to share online search data with rivals while avoiding harsher penalties, including the forced sale of its Chrome business, a judge ruled in the biggest US antitrust case in almost three decades.

Tuesday’s ruling represents a blow to the government, falling far short of the most severe remedies sought by antitrust enforcers after the court found Google illegally monopolized the search market. Judge Amit Mehta said he will bar Google from entering into exclusive contracts for distribution but would still allow the search giant to pay its partners — a key win for Apple Inc., which has received roughly $20 billion a year for making Google search the default on iPhones.

This is probably the best outcome Google could have hoped for, considering the much more severe consequences they were facing. While they “have concerns” about the imposed limits, I doubt they’ll appeal—why expose themselves to potentially stiffer penalties? With this ruling, they’re largely status quo ante—they can still make billions of dollars by paying billions of dollars to remain the default search engine^[1] for Apple and others.

Despite that, I doubt the government will pursue this further. They got their antitrust ruling, if not all the remedies they sought. (Notably, Judge Mehta writes in his 230-page decision that the government “overreached in seeking forced divesture” of Chrome and Android.) Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater took a victory lap on X/Twitter, while writing that the DOJ is “weighing [their] options and thinking through whether the ordered relief goes far enough,”^[2] but I can’t see them risking a rollback, even with this very Trump friendly Supreme Court.^[3]

Apple is no doubt thrilled to maintain their $20 billion services revenue. I’ll bet the executives over at Mozilla are also popping champagne corks. The stock market was definitely pleased. Both Google and Apple were up substantially after the announcement—evidence of the insignificance of this ruling.

The headline for this New York Times piece by David W. Chen (“Crime Festers in Republican States While Their Troops Patrol Washington”) was sharper than I’ve come to expect from the newspaper. I anticipated a piece deeply critical of the administration’s obvious pretense that “high crime rates” in D.C. and other “blue cities” were a legitimate justification for deploying (or threatening to deploy) armed National Guard troops to them, when many “red cities” had equally high (or higher) crime rates. I contemplated a condemnation of the conspicuous fiction, and a call for the deployments to end.

But it’s the New York Times, so instead we got the same mealy-mouthed, what’s-good-for-the-goose bothsiderism they’ve been publishing for years:

When Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, dispatched his National Guard troops to Washington to support President Trump’s crackdown on crime, Democrats and other critics wondered why he didn’t keep them within state lines.

Memphis, after all, has long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a murder rate about twice as high as the nation’s capital, according to F.B.I. statistics. Nashville has a higher rate of violent crime than Washington as well.

The same questions could be asked of other Republican governors like Greg Abbott in Texas, Mike DeWine in Ohio and Mike Kehoe in Missouri, since cities under their purview all have higher rates of violent crime than the nation’s capital. Yet no Republican governor has asked for federal intervention.

In pretending to question the “high crimes” rationale for deploying the National Guard to blue cities, and suggesting they should be equally welcome in high-crime red cities, the Times is normalizing the idea of armed military—which Chen dismissively calls “supplementary forces”—patrolling American streets.

This will have the far right salivating: Yes, you’re right, they’ll nod thoughtfully. We should deploy troops to other cities, in a totally nonpartisan way. Even the liberal New York Times thinks it’s a great idea.

I’m used to headlines inaccurately reflecting the stories they top, but usually it’s the headlines that are terrible. Here we get a strong headline and an awful article.

Instead of fighting creeping fascism, this framing from the Times enables it.

Tim Nudd, Ad Age:

Steve Hayden, the advertising copywriter who helped redefine the relationship between tech and culture through Apple’s legendary “1984” commercial and later rose to become vice chairman of Ogilvy, has died. He was 78. […]

Hayden, then a 36-year-old writer at Chiat/Day, conceived “1984” with art director Lee Clow. Directed by Ridley Scott, the Orwellian allegory introduced Apple’s Macintosh computer as a liberating force against conformity. The most famous ad ever made, “1984” aired just once nationally but became a cultural milestone, heralding both the age of the personal computer and a new era in brand storytelling.[…]

Hayden crafted the dictator’s speech based on quotes from Mussolini, Mao and Hitler […]

Hayden’s impact on Apple and the ad world is undeniable. RIP to an advertising legend.

(Via long-time Apple employee Chris Espinosa, who called Hayden “the best of the best.” He also shared Hayden’s 2019 Commencement speech at Interlochen Arts Academy, which Espinosa says “captures him, in all his love, humor, wit, and genius.”)

This is a must-read visual essay (subtitle: “How the Camera Was Used to Justify Black Racial Inferiority”) in Sacred Footsteps (“an online publication dedicated to spiritual & alternative travel, history & culture from a Muslim perspective”); it was one of the readings from Week 6 of Karen Attiah’s Resistance Summer School:

The myth of the ‘dark continent’, already well established in Europe by this point, was further cemented through photography, allowing existing stereotypes to be represented visually. If we look at a broad spectrum of colonial photographs produced in Africa (and this also applies to the Middle East and elsewhere), a visual vocabulary emerges.

Photography was used to emphasise the contrast between ‘light’ (civilised) and ‘dark’ (uncivilised). This ‘light’ was shown by contrasting skin colour and by emphasising power dynamics through dress and pose. […]

Meanwhile, at a sewing class in the Mission of the Daughters of Charity in the Belgian Congo (1910), the position of the white women, again dressed in white, with their hands placed on shoulders of those seated, emphasises their dominant status over the young women. Their manner is parental, infantilising those seated; the ‘white saviour’ trope captured on camera.

(The photo essay also references “lynching postcards” from the United States during the early 20th century, which were printed “for distribution, collection or kept as souvenirs.” These images show smiling men, women, and children who showed up to witness the murder of Black people the way you and I might enjoy an outdoor concert.)

The images, and the context behind them, are deeply disturbing, yet immediately recognizable for what they are:

The purpose of these images was, quite simply, to dehumanise Black people and proclaim the superiority of the white race.

Even today, photographs continue to shape a narrative of Black inferiority and white superiority. The images in the essay call to mind the stark disparity between photographs of Black suspects and white ones, and the often inadequate portraits of Black celebrities from photographers like Annie Leibovitz, including her portraits of Viola Davis and Lupita Nyong’o—both depicted nude, both evoking slave.

I was especially struck by Leibovitz’s 2022 photo of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson at the Lincoln Memorial, which completely de-centers Jackson while emphasizing Lincoln—she’s literally in the shadows, looking up at him. This was for a story about Jackson’s Supreme Court ascension, yet Lincoln hovered in the background.

See also: Contessa Kellogg-Winters’s article in The Grio (“What can be learned from America’s history of racist images and ads”), which references Leibovitz’s infamous LeBron James/Gisele Bündchen Vogue cover, and a deeply disturbing 2017 Dove ad showing a Black woman turning herself white.

Anthony Moser:

But I am more than a critic: I am a hater. I am not here to make a careful comprehensive argument, because people have already done that. If you’re pushing slop or eating it, you wouldn’t read it anyway. You’d ask a bot for a summary and forget what it told you, then proceed with your day, unchanged by words you did not read and ideas you did not consider.

I am here to be rude, because this is a rude technology, and it deserves a rude response.

He concludes:

I became a hater by doing precisely those things AI cannot do: reading and understanding human language; thinking and reasoning about ideas; considering the meaning of my words and their context; loving people, making art, living in my body with its flaws and feelings and life. AI cannot be a hater, because AI does not feel, or know, or care. Only humans can be haters. I celebrate my humanity.

I agree with Moser’s premise, his conclusion, and I certainly can’t argue with his facts—yet I cannot bring myself to be an AI hater. You might as well ask me to hate on computers because they eliminate jobs, ease copyright infringement, enable surveillance, facilitate scams, exacerbate inequality, and destroy the environment. We’ve strived to reduce the harm of computers over time. We’ll see it happen with AI, too.

Erika Edwards and Berkeley Lovelace Jr., for NBC News:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leadership was in stunning disarray Wednesday evening after the Trump administration fired the agency’s director hours after she refused to resign under pressure.

The director, Susan Monarez, said she was resisting being ousted by the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for political reasons after about a month in office.

In linking up the story last night on the FDA’s updated COVID vaccine eligibility rules, I completely missed that the administration was also in the midst of firing the head of the CDC. According to White House spokesperson Kush Desai, Monarez “is not aligned with the President’s agenda.”

Top CDC officials resigned in protest:

At least four top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) submitted their resignations Wednesday, saying the recent changes and leadership at their agency are preventing them from fulfilling their duties as public health authorities.

RFK Jr. is an absolute disaster, and should himself be fired. But that won’t happen, because this entire regime is an absolute shit-show.

Carly Severn, KQED, on Wednesday:

The FDA approved updated COVID-19 shots on Wednesday, but limited their use for many Americans, recommending them only for people 65 and older or those younger with a health condition that puts them at higher risk.

The FDA also removed one of the two vaccines available for young children.

Christina Jewett and Jacey Fortin, The New York Times, also on Wednesday:

People seeking the shots will soon face another hurdle. An influential advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must vote to recommend them.

Reuters, in June:

U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. named eight members to serve on a key panel of vaccine advisers on Wednesday, including several who have advocated against vaccines, after abruptly firing all 17 members of the independent committee of experts.

They will sit on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which advises the agency on who should get the shots after they are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The New York Times, again:

A decision by the C.D.C.’s panel is expected within a month, and it could greatly influence access to the shots at drugstore sites, which have become the most convenient places to get them. Laws in a number of states, including California, Pennsylvania, Florida and Massachusetts, require that pharmacy staff are only permitted to administer vaccines recommended by the C.D.C., said Richard Hughes IV, a lawyer who represents vaccine makers.

Tom Latchem at The Daily Beast on Monday (via Ken “PopeHat” White, who deadpanned “Government by drunk Thanksgiving uncle”):

The Trump administration will move to pull the COVID vaccine off the U.S. market “within months,” one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s closest associates has told the Daily Beast.

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has repeatedly claimed in the face of scientific consensus that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus, told the Daily Beast that Kennedy’s stance is shared by “influential” members of President Donald Trump’s family. Like Kennedy himself, no Trumps hold any scientific qualifications.

One way to “pull the COVID vaccine” would be to make it virtually impossible for the average American to get it.

Again from the Times:

This would mark the first fall/winter season that Covid shots were not widely recommended to most people and children, pitting federal health officials in the Trump administration against several national medical groups that oppose the restrictions.

How many people will see their lives destroyed—or will die—because they weren’t “eligible” for a COVID vaccine? Kennedy and Trump will have blood on their hands.

Ken White, AKA Popehat, in a Bluesky thread on Monday’s executive order:

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the First Amendment protects flag burning from prosecutions aimed at its offensiveness or its tendency to profane a national symbol. That’s a generation old.

Now the FedSoc mids in the Administration have a Bright Idea: what if we prosecuted flag burning not as flag burning but on theory that it falls under the “fighting words” or incitement exceptions?

Except this is not, in fact, a particularly good idea.The “fighting words” exception is defunct. It hasn’t been used by the Supreme Court to justify a speech restriction in living memory and it was specifically rejected as a basis to uphold flag burning laws.[…]

“Incitement” is dumb too. Incitement means speech INTENDED and LIKELY TO cause IMMINENT lawless action. That means “go beat up this guy.” It does NOT mean “hey I have an unpopular opinion.” Courts have not upheld “incitement” as a “heckler’s veto” […]

It’s easy to say why. Saying “you can prosecute flag burning as incitement because it makes people really mad” allows you to say “you can’t criticize Israel/denounce Trump/preach Islam/say reality TV suck because it makes people so mad.” It limits speech to what thug trash will tolerate.

He calls it a “performative decision, which is calculated to appeal to vapid totalitarian twats” and I couldn’t possibly improve on that description.

Cracker Barrel, in a statement on X/Twitter (via Josh Marcus at The Independent):

We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel. We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our “Old Timer” will remain.

At Cracker Barrel, it’s always been – and always will be – about serving up delicious food, warm welcomes, and the kind of country hospitality that feels like family. As a proud American institution, our 70,000 hardworking employees look forward to welcoming you to our table soon.

I’m not surprised Cracker Barrel retreated from its rebrand in the face of a right-wing MAGA backlash. Down-home Southern hospitality is their brand, and the “anti-woke” activists who executed this contrived “controversy” really hate losing their white-coded imagery that buttresses their sense of superiority, from Uncle Ben to Aunt Jemima, and now, Uncle Herschel. They have excitedly embraced cracker—a derogatory term for poor, rural, white Southerners—because they are desperate for a return to a world where whiteness was an explicit advantage (rather than the implicit one we’ve lived with for the past 60 years), even when poor.

This manufactured furor brought to mind the first time I can recall hearing “cracker” used to describe a person. It was from my boss at my first IT job in New York, in the early ’90s. He was probably in his late 30s or early 40s, white, and proudly declared to me one day that he was a cracker. I don’t recall how it came up, but it sounded vaguely racist, and immediately brought to mind visions of slave foremen on horseback whipping the backs of Black men in a field. That it turned out to be a self-deprecating slur somehow didn’t make it better.

That’s the image I’ve always associated with Cracker Barrel, and I’ve never felt comfortable visiting their restaurants. Imagine expressing nostalgia for a “Peckerwood” restaurant or “Golliwog” café.

I commend Cracker Barrel for even attempting to rewrite its past, doomed though it was.

Apple announced the event on its website, on X/Twitter, and via invitations to the press—surprisingly, I didn’t get one: September 9 at 10 a.m. Pacific. Expect the iPhone 17 family, at least—including a rumored “thin” iPhone, which many have dubbed iPhone 17 Air—and likely the Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3, Apple TV, and AirPods Pro 3.

A neat Easter egg: the glowing Apple logo on the site is interactive, with lava-like blobs trailing your cursor. The logo is described in the accessibility text thusly:

The Apple logo radiates with a blue gradient and is cast in thermal colors that merge from cool blue to yellow to hot red and from the top of the Apple stem all the way to the bottom of the Apple logo

Infrared camera on the next iPhone, anyone?

A reminder from The West Wing. Seems apropos in light of today’s ludicrous executive order.

Donald Trump signed an executive order today that purports to prosecute anyone who burns the American flag, except, of course, that burning the American flag is a constitutionally protected act of free speech—and has been for decades.

This executive order, like most Trump pronouncements, is meant to rouse his MAGA base while providing cover for harassment. The order doesn’t actually criminalize flag burning. Instead it directs the prosecution of anyone who is deemed to be “causing harm” by burning (or, more broadly, “desecrating”) the flag. The order specifically calls out “crimes against property and the peace” as well as those who are “aiding and abetting others to violate” the law. It also directs government agencies to “deny, prohibit, terminate, or revoke visas, residence permits, naturalization proceedings, and other immigration benefits, or seek removal from the United States.”

I expect “the flag” to be extended to mean any representations of the flag—on uniforms, plus pictures, lapel pins, hats, and T-shirts—and “desecration” to mean “was in any way sullied or dirtied.” A photo of a burning flag on your social media account will be considered a desecration.

Therefore, I expect this order to be used against protesters cheering on a flag burner, future sandwich slingers who splatter anyone wearing a flag pin, and demonstrators carrying the American flag who are careless enough to get tear gas sprayed on it.

In other words, it’s one more excuse for the Trump regime to go after their perceived enemies—especially anyone not born here or with Not Okay skin tones.

I anticipate the “Prosecuting Mean Words Said About Donald Trump” executive order to land any day now.

Another Strong Songs recommendation from this season: A couple of friends recently introduced their eight- and ten-year-old kids to the “Mah na mah na” song from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show (which the kids insisted I sing along to with them all afternoon—twist my arm, why don’tcha?), so I shared this episode of Strong Songs with them, which dissects “Mah na mah na” (along with “Rainbow Connection,” the Sesame Street theme, and “Pinball Number Count”). I had no idea “Mah na mah na” was a real and established song and not just a bunch of nonsense syllables sung by an orange-haired beatnik Muppet.

(Also available in Overcast and Apple Podcasts.)

Amanda Schuster, Food & Wine:

The Martini emoji was the first of its kind for a reason: It’s the most recognizable cocktail in history. When a bartender pours someone else’s order of a chilled, clear liquid into a conical glass and bestows it with an olive or citrus twist, there’s no question about what that drink is.

The Martini was my first cocktail infatuation. I made, I dunno, hundreds? of them since 2007. I experimented with everything: the gin, the amount of vermouth, the length of the stir. I even tried shaking it, if you can imagine. (One thing I rarely did—except under duress—was use vodka. I have standards.)

Now, there’s a dedicated cocktail convention:

The Martini Expo will be held in New York City at Industry City in Brooklyn on September 12th and 13th. Starting with a Martini dinner, the event continues with a day and evening of activities (pace yourselves)—including seminars, lunch, book signings, more food, and a Martini mixer. Attendees will have the chance to drink in the Martini’s full arc of history while legendary personalities in the drinks space and bartenders from some of New York City’s top bars (and beyond) stir and shake things up.

I’m disappointed I won’t be able to make this. I’ll drown my sorrows in a Martini.

A poignant five-minute video showing people living with Parkinson’s disease—and the hand tremors that accompany it—using their iPhone to record beautiful, stable memories using Action mode. Action mode isn’t an “accessibility feature”; it wasn’t designed specifically to help Parkinson’s patients. It’s marketed as helping to “capture smooth hand-held videos even when you’re moving around a lot—when jogging or hiking, for example”. But it demonstrates how thoughtful design benefits everyone. This is Apple at its finest. If you’re not even a little emotional at the end, you’re not wired right. I found the video especially affecting: only yesterday my mom underwent a skin biopsy to check for Parkinson’s (and Bradykinesia). We’ll know the results in a month.

Kirk Hamilton wraps up another terrific season of one of my favorite podcasts with an in-depth musical analysis of the Bill Withers classic, “Lean on Me” (Overcast, Apple Podcasts). Hamilton also uses it as an opportunity to deconstruct several more Withers classics, reminding me just how much of his music is a part of my musical firmament (“Ain’t No Sunshine”, “Lovely Day”, “Just the Two of Us”, and “Use Me”, for starters).

Two thoughts while listening:

• “Use Me” has one of the filthiest funk clavinets ever laid down. I mean, it’s just nasty!
• I can’t help but think of Jonathan Bynoe’s “Bill Withers recording ‘Lovely Day’” skit whenever this song comes on. (Withers set a record by holding that “Daaaaay” note for 18 seconds.)

Tripp Mickle, reporting for The New York Times on serious allegations against Jay Blahnik (gift link):

But along the way, Mr. Blahnik created a toxic work environment, said nine current and former employees who worked with or for Mr. Blahnik and spoke about personnel issues on the condition of anonymity. They said Mr. Blahnik, 57, who leads a roughly 100-person division as vice president for fitness technologies, could be verbally abusive, manipulative and inappropriate. His behavior contributed to decisions by more than 10 workers to seek extended mental health or medical leaves of absence since 2022, about 10 percent of the team, these people said.

Blahnik hasn’t commented, and Apple says it never happened:

In a legal filing, Apple denied that there had been “harassment, discrimination, retaliation or any other harm.”

The accusations against Blahnik include sexually inappropriate behavior—toward both male and female employees—including this peculiar account:

On another occasion, Mr. Blahnik said in front of several employees that the wife of a Fitness+ manager must have had an affair with another man because the manager’s son had a different hair color, Ms. Mofidi and three other former employees said. Mr. Blahnik used a vulgar word in making the remark, they said.

Some people think they’re being chummy when they’re actually being indecorous. Assuming he used the reported language, I’d wager Blahnik thinks it was locker-room talk. At the very least, he appears to have a seriously misplaced sense of propriety.

Also, does Blahnik not know how hair color works?

Mike Brock, in his Notes on a Circus, speaks for so many of us who’ve been told we’re “overreacting” to Donald Trump’s rapid decent into fascism:

Remember who told you this was hysteria.

They told you that those of us warning about fascism were being hysterical. Now the President has seized control of the capital’s police force, deployed military units against citizens, and announced forced relocations of undesirables—and these same voices are explaining why it’s not really that bad, why it’s technically legal, why we should wait and see how it plays out.

The “hysteria” was prophecy. The “alarmism” was accuracy. The “derangement” was simply seeing clearly what was coming while others chose comfortable blindness.

Cassandra’s life was miserable as she foretold truths that would not be believed. Those likewise cursed with seeing the future with seeming certainty get no pleasure from being right. It’s emotionally draining to be constantly running around, axe and burning torch in hand, in defense of our democracy, only to be stopped by Americans unaware that their country is rapidly disintegrating right before their eyes. No amount of “I told you so” will make being right about the downfall of our democracy satisfying.

Will Daly, at Dev Nonsense, on the Apple sample project SillyBalls:

In case you never had the pleasure of running this program, allow me to describe the experience. A window appears, titled “Bob Land.” Then, a ball, randomly colored and labeled “Bob,” is drawn. And another, and another, filling the window with chaotic abandon.

Bob Johnson, the author of the original SillyBalls, left Apple in 2001, the year I joined.

The sequel to SillyBalls, Son of Silly Balls, is one of the earliest sample projects I recall reviewing (the ReadMe and related metadata, not the code!).

That we know SillyBalls was written by Johnson (and who updated it over time) is a clear indication the project was created before Steve Jobs returned to Apple. One of his early commandments after his return was that the names of engineers would be scrubbed from public content; partly to dissuade employee poaching, but also to instill a sense of “One Apple”—the idea that the collective “we” created products at Apple, not the individual. By the time I joined DTS in 2001, this mindset was firmly ingrained, especially in Developer Relations, and no names (or even initials) would ever again appear in sample projects.

(Sometimes, though you can still see hints of the author shine through. In Son of Silly Balls, the use of “localisation” and “Share and Enjoy” points clearly to my illustrious erstwhile DTS colleague, Quinn.)

Amusingly, Son of Silly Balls isn’t the only familial connection to earlier sample projects. There’s also Son of Grab, Son of MungGrab and Bride of Mung.

Do these names make any sense out of context? Nope. Several years later, this realization would lead to a correction of sorts, resulting in verbosely descriptive sample project names. For example PhotoToss: CSS Transforms, Transitions, and Web Fonts and, more recently, Sharing texture data between the Model I/O framework and the vImage library.

In service of improved clarity, we lost a bit of whimsy.

(Via my friend and former colleague Tyler Stone.)

Not many people were pro-Ali following his anti-war protests, but here's Carlin supporting him unreservedly—while delivering pointed jabs at America’s nation-building woes. This was from the Ed Sullivan Show in 1971. Carlin was always on the right side of history then, and remains so today. That his routines remain relevant now—with minor updates to countries and people—is both a testament to his abilities as an astute political observer, and a stinging critique of our shameful lack of progress as a country. Pick any number of Carlin’s clips, and it’s a good bet you’ll find relevancy to today’s politics. One of our great misfortunes as a society is that we aren’t able to hear Carlin mercilessly skewer this particular political moment and regime. I imagine he’d have a field day with Trump, Musk, and the rest of them.

Tom Gjelten, writing for NPR in 2015 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Immigration and Nationality Act (the 60th anniversary of which is just two months away):

During the debate over the bill, however, conservatives said it was entirely appropriate to select immigrants on the basis of their national origin. The United States, they argued, was fundamentally an Anglo-Saxon European nation and should stay that way.

Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) said he objected to the idea of giving people from Ethiopia the same right to immigrate to the United States as people from England, France, Germany, or Holland. “With all due respect to Ethiopia,” Ervin said, “I don’t know of any contributions that Ethiopia has made to the making of America.”

Ohio Representative Michael Feighan, another Democrat, also objected to the Act, and offered a remedy:

Rather than giving preference to those immigrants whose skills were “especially advantageous” to the United States, Feighan insisted on prioritizing those immigrants who already had relatives in the United States, with a new preference category for adult brothers and sisters of naturalized U.S. citizens.

In justifying the change, Feighan told his conservative allies that a family unification preference would favor those nationalities already represented in the U.S. population, meaning Europeans. Among the conservative groups persuaded by Feighan’s argument was the American Legion, which came out in support of the immigration reform after originally opposing it.

In an article praising Feighan’s legislative prowess, two Legion representatives said he had “devised a naturally operating national-origin system.” A family unification preference, they argued, would preserve America’s European character.

“Nobody is quite so apt to be of the same national origins of our present citizens as are members of their immediate families,” they wrote. […]

But the scheme backfired.

I came across this article today while preparing for Karen Attiah’s latest Resistance Summer School session.

Built on a racist premise, the “unintended consequences” of the Immigration and Nationality Act brought to America an unprecedented number of brown-skinned immigrants—including my mom, and by extension, me. Republicans (and “conservative” Democrats) have been striving to reverse this legislative “mistake” ever since.

I have little doubt the passage of this bill, and the resulting surge of non-white Americans, is a central facet of the far right’s Great Replacement Theory, this president’s hateful anti-immigration rhetoric, and Monday’s unprecedented takeover of the D.C. police and National Guard deployment.

America’s been fighting its base anti-immigration sentiment since its inception, and we now have a president enthusiastic to magnify, not minimize, our country’s worst tendencies.

Wikipedia:

This is a list of African Americans reportedly killed while unarmed by non-military law enforcement officers in the United States. Events are listed whether they took place in the line of duty or not, and regardless of reason or method. The listing documents the occurrence of a death, making no implications regarding wrongdoing or justification on the part of the person killed or officer involved.

The first entry is Henry Truman, from 1870.

This long form article from Johannes Böhme in Die Zeit was not what I expected, yet I remained captivated to the very end. You’ll want to set aside some time to read and sit with this one:

On August 7, 2023, a 176-page indictment arrived at the courthouse. It accused Gregor Formanek of being an accessory to murder in 3,322 cases. As a member of the SS, he had served as a guard in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from July 1943 to February 1945.

He was 19 years old when he became a guard in Sachsenhausen. Which is why prosecutors were seeking to try the elderly man in the chamber for juvenile delinquents.

In all likelihood, this would be the last opportunity to bring a perpetrator of the Holocaust to justice. Formanek’s case will probably mark the end of the almost eight-decades-long process of coming to terms with the Holocaust in German courtrooms, a journey that began with the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

Formanek was indicted for his war crimes at the age of 99.

Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, and the rest of this administration should pay close attention.