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MAGA’s ‘Hero Frame Collapse’ ⚙︎
Trump’s MAGA movement now faces a profound cognitive crisis. Their leader has violated the central promise of their political identity—the promise to reveal hidden truths and expose child sex abusers. But the conspiratorial frame he taught them makes it impossible to simply accept this as ordinary political disappointment.
Instead, they must choose between two equally destabilizing options: abandon the conspiratorial thinking that has become central to their identity, or turn that conspiratorial thinking against Trump himself.
[…]
This is why fighting conspiracy theories with facts doesn’t work. Facts are interpreted through frames, and frames shape how facts are understood. When someone is thinking conspiratorially, contradictory evidence just becomes proof of how deep the conspiracy goes.
Another take on the slow implosion of the MAGA world view. It’s delightful watching MAGAts contort themselves in their support for—or opposition to—releasing the Epstein files.
Border Agents Detain U.S. Citizen at George Bush Intercontinental Airport ⚙︎
U.S. citizen Wilmer Chavarria, traveling on a U.S. passport, was detained at a U.S. port of entry for… no apparent reason. From Lola Duffort at Vermont Public:
What followed, according to Chavarria, who has been a U.S. citizen since 2018, was “nothing short of surreal and the definition of psychological terror.” The educator said he was separated from his husband, Cyrus Dudgeon, and interrogated by multiple agents over the course of four to five hours.
Chavarria said he was asked whether his marriage was real, whether he was really a school superintendent, and questioned about everything he had done while out of the country. And again and again, he said agents demanded that he hand over the passwords to his phone and district-issued laptop.
There’s no explanation of why Chavarria was stopped at the border, nor why they demanded access to his devices. Coincidentally, I’m sure, he’s a gay man from a Central American country.
Chavarria said he’s had students of color ask him in the past whether they should be worried when they cross the border into the United States. In the case of U.S. citizens, he’s always assured them they had “nothing to worry about.”
“Clearly, this is a change for me in my understanding, and now I’m no longer giving that advice,” he said. “From my own experience, I know that they should be worried.”
The article includes this important reminder:
A U.S. citizen cannot be denied entry into the United States because they refuse to give customs officials the passwords to their devices. But that can prolong an individual’s interrogation, and officials can then seize those devices and hold on to them long after someone has left the airport.
Border agents can keep your phone and try intimidating you, but they can’t force you to unlock it—and they can’t prevent you from entering the country. Again, if you’re an American citizen, you do not need to unlock your device just because you were asked to. You can just say no (Nancy would be proud).
Back in April, the AARP wrote 6 Things You Can Do to Secure Your Phone as You Reenter the Country After Traveling. What world are we living in that the AARP is warning its audience of the dangers of traveling to the U.S.?
Grandpa, tell me again about the “sanctity of citizenship”?
The Customs and Border Patrol offered Chavarria one final insult:
For years, Chavarria has been a member of CBP’s Global Entry program, which allows frequent travelers that undergo a special background check expedited clearance at ports of entry. As he was boarding a flight back to Vermont, he received an email notifying him that his permission to be in Global Entry had been revoked.
The reason? He did “not meet program eligibility requirements.”
Pettiness as policy. Slow. Fucking. Clap.
’Death Rattle of a Cult’ ⚙︎
Thom Hartmann, at The Hartmann Report:
To begin: if you want everything around the Epstein furor to make sense, all you have to understand is that Donald Trump has been leading a cult.
Like Jim Jones did. Like Charles Manson did. Like Rajneesh did here in Oregon. Unlike Manson, but more like Rajneesh and Jim Jones, however, Trump’s cult is fairly large and preexisted his appearance on the scene. And that’s part of his problem.
It’s large enough to have in it three kinds of people.
The three being “true believers,” “facilitators,” and “the true believers who have suddenly seen a crack in reality.” Of these “former true believers” Hartmann writes:
Once they saw the light through that crack — saw the real world — they realized that they were being lied to.
When a cult is on the verge of collapse, these kinds of people become more and more numerous as more and more people begin to wake up from the cult leader’s trance.
At that point, they turn on the cult leader the way a spurned lover turns on the previous object of their affection. They become angry and vengeful. They demand answers. They want to know how they got sucked in and why: “Who did this to me? And to whose benefit?”
This is how Donald Trump’s world is disintegrating right now, and the danger is that, like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and Rajaneesh, he may destroy a lot of lives when he goes down.
With Trump’s grip on his cult (and his reality) slipping away, the people who puppeted him into power—Rupert Murdoch’s Fox “News” especially—may be looking to cut him loose before he takes them down with him. Given Trump’s incredibly ill-advised $10 billion lawsuit against the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, that moment may be sooner than we think.
Jon Stewart to CBS and Others ‘Bending the Knee’: Go Fuck Yourself ⚙︎
From Monday’s The Daily Show: Trump’s Epstein doodle defense, Stephen Colbert’s cancellation, and a rousing, gospel-inspired, f-bomb-laden musical number.
Do not watch if there are sensitive ears nearby.
Apple Makes Continuing Play for Subscription Revenue with Introduction of AppleCare One ⚙︎
Apple today unveiled AppleCare One, a new way for customers to cover multiple Apple products with one simple plan. For just $19.99 per month, customers can protect up to three products in one plan, with the option to add more at any time for $5.99 per month for each device. With AppleCare One, customers receive one-stop service and support from Apple experts across all of the Apple products in their plan for simple, affordable peace of mind. Starting tomorrow, customers in the U.S. can sign up for AppleCare One directly on their iPhone, iPad, or Mac, or by visiting their nearest Apple Store.
Launching Thursday. At $20–$32 a month ($240–$384 annualized, but there’s no annual pricing), this is a solid deal for the set of Apple customers who both buy AppleCare and have multiple high-priced devices.
(The AppleCare page is already updated with AppleCare One details for each product. I love that the AppleCare One tile updates to show the selected product in combination with two other devices. I appreciate these little details.)
Not all customers benefit from AppleCare One. The cost of AppleCare+ for an iPhone 16e, iPad mini, and Mac mini (all minimally specced) is $17 a month ($10, $3.50, $3.50) or $170 a year ($100, $35, $35).
However, if you own a pair of Apple headphones—from the least expensive AirPods 4 ($15 a month) up—AppleCare One becomes a great deal.
But the absolute screaming deal is for Apple Vision Pro owners: AppleCare+ for this $3,500 device starts at $25 a month ($250 a year). If you have a pair of AirPods or an Apple Vision Pro (or both!) AppleCare One becomes a no-brainer decision.
I use my iPhone caseless. When I’m asked why, my answer is “AppleCare is my case.”
I don’t get AppleCare+ on all my devices, just the ones most likely to be damaged or which cost a fortune to repair. I’m currently paying for five devices—iPhone, MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, AirPods Pro, and Apple Vision Pro—making AppleCare One a clear win.
Apple has consistently looked to Services to boost its bottom line (to the tune of $100 billion annually). Services revenue set all-time highs in both the first and second quarters this year, with double-digit growth in that second quarter, and the upcoming earnings report is likely to tell a similar story. AppleCare One will no doubt drive further growth.
I suspect both customers and Wall Street will cheer this new offering.
Apple Opens Online Store in Saudi Arabia, Plans ‘Iconic’ Retail Location ⚙︎
Apple today announced the expansion of Apple Retail into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the launch of the Apple Store online and Apple Store app, introducing support directly from Apple in Arabic for the very first time. The arrival of the online store marks a new era for customers in Saudi Arabia, who will be able to shop Apple’s full range of products with exceptional service delivered by Apple’s talented, dedicated team members.
And:
Apple announced its plans to begin opening the first of several flagship Apple Store locations in Saudi Arabia starting in 2026. As part of this expansion, Apple is in the initial stages of planning an iconic retail store coming to Diriyah, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
This is the fruition of Apple’s Saudi Arabia retail expansion plans announced in December. Before today, Saudi Arabian customers relied on Apple Authorized Resellers and Service Providers—no direct Apple sales or support. Quite remarkable for a country of nearly thirty-five million people.
Apple also announced support for “Buy Now Pay Later” service Tamara, Saudi Arabia’s first fintech unicorn.
Apple customers have apparently been missing out on quite a lot until now: Apple Store Online brings Personal Setup and shopping support, the Apple Trade In program, AppleCare+, the Apple Education Store, Mac configure-to-order options, personalized Apple Watch case and band combinations, and engraving in Arabic and English on products that support engraving. I think this warrants a well-earned أخيراً! (finally!).
‘Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning’ ⚙︎
This Slate piece from 2013 is especially relevant in light of the tragic drowning death of Malcolm-Jamal Warner.
If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that’s all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew know what to look for whenever people enter the water. […]
Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely seen in real life.
The Instinctive Drowning Response—so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind.
There are several signs of the Instinctive Drowning Response—that someone is drowning—including:
- An inability to call out for help. (“Breathing must be fulfilled before speech occurs.”)
- Their mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. (They “are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help.”)
- An inability to wave for help. (“Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface… so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.”)
- An inability to control their arms (that is, voluntary movements like “waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment”).
- “Their bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick.” (They “can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.”)
There are several other details to watch for—details that could save a loved one. I urge you to take a few minutes to read the Slate article and educate yourself. As it notes:
Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them, “Are you all right?” If they can answer at all—they probably are. If they return a blank stare, you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents—children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.
Be safe.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner Dies at 54 ⚙︎
Associated Press reports this terrible news:
Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who as teenage son Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” was central to a cultural phenomenon that helped define the 1980s, died at age 54 in an accidental drowning in Costa Rica, authorities there said Monday.
I’m gutted. And such a harrowing way to go.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Theo Huxtable was like the brother I never got a chance to meet but always knew what he was up to. Almost exactly one year younger than me, Warner’s Theo and I grew up together, two Black male Brooklynites navigating our teenage and young adult years. I often saw myself reflected in Theo—our overconfidence undercut by our awkwardness, intelligence tempered by academic anxiety, even our mutual slovenliness—everything about Warner’s Theo felt familiar, relatable, and real—albeit a more heightened, absurd, and infinitely funnier reality.
Kevin Fallon at The Daily Beast:
Theo was a conduit for the modern teenager in the ’80s and ’90s: a sense of entitlement and arrogance permeating the usual haplessness that accompany coming of age. That it rang so true—hilarious, endearing, and often profound—is because of the performance of Malcolm-Jamal Warner.
Watching scenes of Warner from The Cosby Show—as difficult as it was given what we know of its namesake—reminded me of just how incredibly talented he was, with boundless energy, impeccable timing, and irresistible charm.
A truly tragic loss.
See also: The New York Times obituary and The Rolling Stone tribute to Warner’s most memorable moment on the show.
John Gruber on His Process of Writing at Daring Fireball ⚙︎
From Myke Hurley’s “State of the Workflow” series on the Cortex podcast (Overcast, Apple Podcasts):
Myke interviews John Gruber of Daring Fireball. They take a deep-dive into how John’s writing takes shape – from capturing ideas and drafting articles to the meticulous editing behind his influential work.
This was a fantastic interview. Gruber started writing at Daring Fireball in 2002, about a year after I started at Apple, and I’ve been reading him since day 1. He’s very prolific and very influential within the Apple community. I’ve always been curious about his writing process, which allows him to churn out piece after interesting piece—but especially so now, early in my second year of public writing as I find my voice, a rhythm, and an audience.
It was revelatory to hear that several of my challenges, from procrastination to word obsession, mirror his own. I was especially chuffed to learn that our writing processes are similar. Asked “Do you agonize over word choice?”, Gruber answers:
I have always, I mean, literally since childhood, always tried to write my final draft right off the bat. Especially the longer the article, the more editing I do for myself. But I can’t bring myself to write other than thinking that I’m just going to start typing with the first word and get to the final word and just hit publish.
Like, the canonical ideal for me would be to not even proofread and just write what I think it’s going to be and hit return. So I, at every step, every single word of the way, am trying to pick the right word. And so yes, I obsess over word choice.
This is almost exactly how I write—and have for as long as I can recall. My goal (rarely achieved): Write straight through, as perfectly as possible, and publish. Start with a thesis—often just an emotional reaction—and write until I’ve exhausted the idea I’m pursuing, agonizing over each word, sentence, and paragraph as I go. Allow the act of writing to determine what needs to be written—How can I know what I think until I see what I say? I’ve rarely had success using outlines or bullet points to write, because the words I want to write I can only find by writing them. Bits and bobs become full sentences, which turn into complete paragraphs, and suddenly I’m not outlining, I’m writing. As Gruber says:
Don’t prepare to do the thing, just do it. I just need to sit down and start writing. And anything that feels like I’m working on the article, if I’m working on the article at all, I might as well just start writing it.
Keith Olbermann: My Experience With Stephen Colbert Is 100% Negative ⚙︎
Olbermann (again) shares his distaste for Colbert, this time in response to Paramount’s cancellation of Colbert’s The Late Show. Consider it a counterpoint of sorts. His critique starts at about the 15:53 mark. (Also available on Overcast and Apple Podcasts.)
Stephen Colbert is not an honest broker. He is not a sincere guy. He is not worthy of your trust, and the more I reflect on it, the more I think there was something to the old conservative theory about the Comedy Central show, that he was not some liberal pretending to be a stupid conservative, a really dumb Bill O’Reilly, who kept stepping on rakes, that he was a conservative, pretending to be a stupid conservative, so he could surreptitiously counter liberal narratives in a liberal space, and counter, more importantly, things like reality, and facts, and Democrats.
He details his early experiences with Colbert and rails against Colbert’s treatment of David Letterman’s staff after taking over the late-night slot.
It’s clearly personal. I wonder what Colbert thinks of Olbermann?
John Gruber on CBS’s Cancellation of ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ ⚙︎
John Gruber, at Daring Fireball (under the biblical title “Curse Not the King”):
In the way that fish take water for granted, Americans take true freedom of speech and freedom of the press for granted. It’s the culture we were born into, the air we breathe. And to my mind, the fiercest and most effective form of criticism — especially political — is mockery. Mark Twain, America’s first great (and perhaps still greatest) humorist, said, “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”
No one in Russian media mocks Vladimir Putin, lest they find themselves falling out one of Russia’s easily-fallen-out-of windows. No one in Chinese media mocks Xi Jinping. Back in 2017 the CCP went as far as to censor images of Winnie the Pooh, because Xi resembles Pooh so clearly, and people naturally find that amusing. Trump, clearly, has authoritarian instincts and desires, but US media — print, web, podcasts, YouTube, social, and TV — has been replete with unrelenting mockery aimed at him. There’s no better example of that than late night talk shows: Colbert on CBS, Jimmy Kimmel on ABC, Seth Meyers on NBC, Jon Stewart and his fellow hosts on The Daily Show at Comedy Central, John Oliver and Bill Maher on HBO. Vociferous, unrelenting critics of Trump, all of them. (And it works both ways: Greg Gutfield’s Gutfield! is a ratings success at 10:00pm for Fox News.)
That’s been one of the canaries I’ve been monitoring in the Trump 2.0 drift-into-authoritarianism coal mine. So long as Trump is getting skewered by comedians on major TV channels nightly, in some sense, we’re doing OK.
But while our Constitution and cultural fabric protect our media from government interference, there’s no such protection from ownership interference.
Solid piece—well researched, with terrific framing. Gruber really captures much of my shock, anger, and frustration when I learned of Colbert’s cancellation.
While I stopped watching late-night shows years ago, Colbert’s was the one show whose clips I’d catch semi-regularly. He was funny, nerdy, and we were (seemingly) politically aligned.
I could (if I squint really hard) understand Paramount firing Colbert if they were unhappy with his performance—or his politics—but to also end The Late Show is astonishingly short-sighted, and screams of pretext, a desire from Paramount to punish (silence) Colbert, while providing (in-)sufficient cover for doing so: “We’re not getting rid of Colbert; we’re exiting the late-night business!” It reeks of political animus disguised as an economic choice.
Thirty years of history, evaporated, just like that.
More on ChatGPT agent ⚙︎
ChatGPT can now do work for you using its own computer, handling complex tasks from start to finish.
You can now ask ChatGPT to handle requests like “look at my calendar and brief me on upcoming client meetings based on recent news,” “plan and buy ingredients to make Japanese breakfast for four,” and “analyze three competitors and create a slide deck.” ChatGPT will intelligently navigate websites, filter results, prompt you to log in securely when needed, run code, conduct analysis, and even deliver editable slideshows and spreadsheets that summarize its findings.
At the core of this new capability is a unified agentic system. It brings together three strengths of earlier breakthroughs: Operator’s ability to interact with websites, deep research’s skill in synthesizing information, and ChatGPT’s intelligence and conversational fluency.
ChatGPT carries out these tasks using its own virtual computer, fluidly shifting between reasoning and action to handle complex workflows from start to finish, all based on your instructions.
The site showcases several compelling video demos (but not, alas, the all-MLB-ballparks example from the intro video).
ChatGPT agent is available to Pro, Plus, and Team users (though it hasn’t shown up on my Plus account yet due to high Pro demand).
TechRadar’s Review of Donkey Kong Bananza ⚙︎
Dashiell Wood reviews Donkey Kong Bananza for TechRadar (“Donkey Kong Bananza is a must-have Nintendo Switch 2 game and worthy Super Mario Odyssey successor”):
Donkey Kong Bananza is a brilliant showcase of the power of the Nintendo Switch 2, thanks to its crisp visuals and showstopping destruction, and the hundreds of collectibles will provide tens of hours of entertainment even after the credits roll for those willing to put the time in.
It’s a worthy Super Mario Odyssey successor in almost every regard, and if Nintendo can keep this level of quality up with future Nintendo Switch 2 releases, it’s clear that the console will have a long and successful run just like its predecessor.
The “verdict”:
Donkey Kong Bananza is the greatest Nintendo Switch 2 title to date, delivering an incredible destruction system that showcases the power of the new system. It’s visually impressive and, while the story isn’t anything to write home about, benefits from charming and expressive voice acting and animations. Throw in a seemingly endless stream of collectibles and secrets, and you have a meaty adventure that’s a delight to explore.
See also Scott Stein’s review for CNet, which describes the game as “Mario and Zelda Smashed Together,” calling it “the best reason to buy a Switch 2 yet.”
I’m doubly excited.
Nintendo Switch 2
I’m surprised to find I’ve only mentioned the Nintendo Switch 2 in relation to the Trump Tariffs that delayed preorders and threatened to raise its price.
I tried, rather half-heartedly, to buy a Switch 2 at launch. It would have been nice to have, but I wasn’t about to wake up early to get one: we have the original Switch and don’t play it very often (anymore). I’d just wait until supply caught up with demand, and buy then, whether that was a month or a year later.
While browsing Amazon this week, I noticed the Switch 2 was “available by invitation.”
I had no idea what that meant, but I clicked on Request invite anyway. I figured it would be a few months before I got a chance to order. An email confirmed my chances of being selected were slim:
We process requests and send invites to qualified customers regularly, while supplies last. If invited to purchase, you’ll receive an email with a link that’s valid for 22 hours.
If you aren’t selected during this round of invites, your request is still eligible to be selected in future rounds so you don’t need to submit another request for the next 3 months. Since supplies are limited, we won’t be able to grant all requests.
What, I wondered, is a “qualified customer”? Regardless, I promptly forgot about it.
Five days later:
Congrats, you’re invited!
You can now buy the Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World Bundle. You have 22 hours from the time this email was sent to complete this purchase.
Apparently I’m a “qualified customer.”
So, an hour and a half later:
Ordered: “Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario…” and 2 more items
(While I was at it, I also ordered a Pro Controller and Donkey Kong Bananza.)
Supply, meet demand.
The console should arrive in the next couple of weeks. No doubt we’ll play it intensely for a few months, then it’ll sit unused until the Nintendo Switch 3 comes out.
I’m excited!
OpenAI Introduces ChatGPT Agent, Demonstrates it Planning Visits to All 30 MLB Ballparks
I don’t usually watch ChatGPT feature release videos because I find the just-sitting-around-a-table-chatting vibe a bit cringe, but I ended up watching Introduction to ChatGPT agent out of curiosity more than anything else.
As an agent, it does what you’d expect: accomplishing a task by running a virtual computer that controls multiple tools (text and web browsers, a terminal for running code). It looks capable enough (the primary example was planning a wedding trip; at one point, the agent realized it needed to understand “what does ‘black tie optional’ mean?” to figure out what type of suits to suggest), but what sparked this mention was the mini-demo at the end.
This demo starts at 22:44, where the presenters ask ChatGPT to build a plan to visit all 30 Major League Baseball parks in one summer. The agent pulls schedules, prioritizes day games, identifies the optimal routes between parks, and even highlights the best food in each park. It compiles a spreadsheet with all the information and generates a map.
I was gobsmacked. For the results, sure, but mainly for the topic itself. I’ve long aspired to visit all 30 MLB parks in a summer. I even bought and parked a domain name forever ago—BigLeagueRoadTrip.com—to document my progress.
That was 2016. The realities of work kept the idea for such an excursion firmly in the realm of pure imagination, but I recently started again considering what such a trip might look like—and again balked at the logistical nightmare it would be.
Now, a huge chunk of the work could be delegated to agentic software—accomplishing tasks that would take hours or days if done manually, but that can now be completed in seconds or minutes by software.
I felt like this demo existed specifically to convince me to use ChatGPT agent. If it was a micro-targeted drop-in, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Which might mean a legitimate shot at a Big League Road Trip in 2026.
Nvidia Now Worth $4 Trillion, Just One Year After Hitting $3 Trillion ⚙︎
It’s been a week since Nvidia topped, then closed above the $4 trillion market cap mark, and I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around “a graphics card company” becoming the first to achieve this milestone. Some analysts are already anticipating a $5 trillion market cap.
When Nvidia hit $3 trillion—just a year ago!—I linked to a story detailing their near-collapse in 1995. I remain awed by their resilience, but also skeptical of the AI frothiness that’s driving their valuation.
Tripp Mickle, in his New York Times coverage, notes:
Nvidia’s rise is reminiscent of dot-com era titans like Cisco and Juniper Networks, which built the equipment that ran communications networks for the internet. Cisco’s shares increased more than a thousandfold between its initial public offering in 1990 and 2000, when it briefly became the world’s most valuable company.
What Mickle doesn’t say is that Cisco, valued at more than $550 billion at the height of the dotcom era, is worth only $270 billion today.
Nor does he mention that Juniper Networks was at the time valued at over $40 billion, with a share price over $244. It was acquired earlier this month by Hewlett Packard for $14 billion, or $39.95 a share.
I’m not predicting a similar trajectory for Nvidia—that would be foolhardy—but this unprecedented rise from $1 trillion to $4 trillion in two years gives me pause.
Of course, I also didn’t buy Nvidia at $45 like I was told to, so perhaps don’t come to me for stock advice.
No doubt I’ll be writing a “$5 trillion valuation” piece within the year.
The Apple Style Guide Game Show
I thoroughly enjoyed this fun, silly Snazzy Labs video:
Apple is famous for its pedantic product naming and lingo, but did you know it’s all kept in a lesser-known 243-page rulebook? In this ultimate tech collaboration, @LinusTechTips, @mkbhd, @ScottTheWoz, and Quinn from @snazzy compete to test their knowledge of Apple’s hidden terminology and naming conventions. @upgraderelay host, Myke Hurley, challenges us with real questions and scenarios based on Apple’s internal style guide to see who really knows the company’s most bizarre rules. Do you know Apple’s lingo better than some of YouTube’s biggest tech creators? Play along and find out if you can beat us at our own game!
I went into this game expecting a perfect score. After all, I worked in Apple’s Product Marketing organization (in Developer Relations), where adherence to the Apple Style Guide was practically a requirement.
I’m also building a JAG’s Workshop Style Guide, modeled after the Apple Style Guide, to ensure editorial consistency on this site—and especially to resolve conflicts that arise with the Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook, and Oxford Style Manual.
So I was crushed by my actual showing: a mere 150 points out of a possible 210—enough to top the eventual winning score of 130 points, but still quite embarrassing.
My former colleagues must be appalled.
I got three questions wrong, and missed a couple in the final “two errors” round.
I distinctly recall Apple preferring portable computer and notebook computer, over concerns that “laptops” got very hot and could burn you. The October 2022 edition of the Apple Style Guide (available as late as January 2024) had these three entries:
notebook computer The preferred generic term for Apple portable computers. It’s OK to use notebook alone occasionally if the meaning is clear. You can also use portable computer, but when you refer to a specific model (such as MacBook Air or MacBook Pro), itʼs best to use the model name.
portable computer An alternative to notebook computer. Avoid using portable as a noun, except in informal contexts. The terms notebook computer and notebook are generally preferred for Apple portable computers.
laptop computer Avoid in favor of notebook computer, which is preferred, or portable computer.
This was the case until a March 2024 update, when notebook, notebook computer, and portable computer were all deprecated in favor of laptop.
The question about accessing Apple Pay on iPhone threw me, because Apple unexpectedly distinguishes between pressing a button once or more than once:
Use press to mean pressing the side button once; use double-click or triple-click to mean pressing it more than once.
This was true for devices with a Home button, but was expanded in March 2024 to include all buttons you can press more than once.
Lastly, I was confident the display on the front of Apple Vision Pro was called EyeSight, but that’s just the name of the technology. The physical part of the device is just called the front display.
Round 3’s “two errors in the sentence” was especially challenging because I usually wanted to make more than just two fixes.
I was disappointed I missed tap instead of tap on, and turn instead of rotate, but it was the final question I found especially problematic. The incorrect sentence:
The Mac Studios are powerful, with M2 Ultras chips inside.
Clearly pluralizing Mac Studios and M2 Ultras is wrong: it should be Mac Studio (singular) or Mac Studio computers (or devices as the “official” answer suggested); and M2 Ultra (singular) or M2 Ultra chips(plural):
The Mac Studio computers are powerful, with M2 Ultra chips inside.
But I’d also drop the definite article, stick with the singular, and reference the chip differently:
Mac Studio is powerful, with the M2 Ultra chip inside.
And I’d go even further:
Mac Studio with the M2 Ultra chip is powerful.
If this is causing your mind to warp, imagine what it’s done to those of us who wrote (or write!) this way for a living.
San Diego Performing Arts Groups Combine Improv and Activism for ‘Know Your Rights’ Workshops ⚙︎
KPBS Midday Edition in San Diego featured two local theatre groups—Uprise Theatre and Voces Unidas/Voices United—using improv to educate their community about their rights in the face of ICE raids. (Listen in Overcast or Apple Podcasts.)
Annie Rios, Uprise Theatre:
Uprise Theatre is a nonprofit organization here. It is rooted and run out of southeast San Diego in particular. We use art and activist lawyering to disrupt systems of oppression and reclaim power with the people. And that’s a really fancy way of saying that we use a lot of different creative and artistic techniques to educate and empower folks about their constitutional legal rights, especially as it pertains to law enforcement.
Guillermo Mendez, Voces Unidas/Voices United:
What we do is people’s theatre in action. […] Our job in theater is to put it on stage. The tears, the sweat, the blood, the death, the laughter, all the things that go on in the working class community, all our struggles—put it on the stage. But in this also, how we can figure out how to use theater, improvisation and teaching and working with the community, how to address this particular moment, how to address this fascism that’s in our community.
The conversation was deeply inspiring and it got me thinking of different ways I could use my theatre and improv background to get involved with a similar effort. A wonderful use of the performing arts to empower communities.
(Via Ronzilla.)
In Yet Another Government Handout, Musk’s xAI Lands $200 Million Government Contract for Anti-Semitic Grok AI ⚙︎
Lauren Feiner, The Verge:
A week after Elon Musk’s Grok dubbed itself “MechaHitler” and spewed antisemitic stereotypes, the US government has announced a new contract granting the chatbot’s creator, xAI, up to $200 million to modernize the Defense Department.
I guess Elon and Donald made up.
The contract announcement from the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) is light on details, but says the deals will help the DoD “develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas.” Alongside the contract award, xAI announced “Grok for Government,” which it says will supply “frontier AI products” to the US. In addition to the DoD contract, xAI says other federal agencies will now be able to purchase its tools via the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule. The company plans to work on new products for government customers, like custom models focused on national security, applications for healthcare and science use cases, and models accessible in classified environments.
Me, using ChatGPT earlier today:
ChatGPT 🤖: In AP style, dammit (with an “e”) is considered the standard spelling when used in print.
🤦🏽♂️: I’m sorry?
🤖: Yes—you read that right. In AP style, the standard spelling is “dammit” (with an e), not “damnit.”
🤦🏽♂️: Where is there an “e” in “dammit”?
🤖: There is no actual “e” in dammit. I wasn’t saying there’s an “e” in the word itself—I was contrasting the two spellings (dammit vs. damnit)… The word is spelled dammit. No “e” beyond the one in dam.
Yeah, the government’s gonna be just fine under AI control.
Trump Supporters Are Making It Very Difficult for Me to Enjoy Delicious Schadenfreude
It’s abhorrent that the current regime is making Americans fearful that they may be snatched from their homes or detained at the border—and possibly dispatched to a concentration camp in another country, or worse, Florida.
I understand I must be consistent in my denunciation of ICE and their arbitrary, usually racist raids and detentions—no one should be worried they won’t be able to return home to their family and friends, be they citizen, legal resident, or undocumented.
But damn it, every time a member of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party has their face eaten by a leopard, I savor—however briefly and against my better angels—that bittersweet schadenfreude:
Chris Landry is a legal U.S. resident and has lived in the Granite State since he was 3 years old. He has a partner, five children and a job in manufacturing.
He was stopped Sunday at the border in Houlton, Maine, while returning from a family vacation. […]
Three hours later, the 46-year-old was told he couldn’t come home, despite having a green card and being a legal U.S. resident. […]
As a Canadian citizen, he couldn’t vote for president, but he supported Donald Trump. […]
“I was definitely all for ‘Make America Great Again,’ and having a strong, unified country, and a bright future for my five American children, but now I feel a little differently,” he said. “I’ve been torn from my family. My life has been disregarded completely.”
If Arpineh Masihi could vote, she would have cast her ballot for Donald Trump. She’s a devout supporter of the US president – even now that she’s locked up as an illegal immigrant.
“He’s doing the right thing because lots of these people don’t deserve to be here,” Arpineh told the BBC over the phone from the Adelanto immigrant detention centre in California’s Mojave Desert.
“I will support him until the day I die. He’s making America great again.”
I’m not about to let this regime turn me into someone who delights in the suffering of others just because they voted against their own best interests.
But please do allow a momentary smirk.
‘Trump’s Failing Ability to Command Attention’ ⚙︎
Marcy Wheeler at Empty Wheel offers a terrific teardown of Trump’s “Truth” Social attack on Rosie O’Donnell, the media’s inability (or unwillingness) to identify the reason for it, and what his later Epstein follow-up says about Trump’s slipping “super power”:
Rosie O’Donnell made a powerful moral critique of Trump, and as that critique was bearing out, he responded to it by asserting to have power over her, power he doesn’t have. And rather than focusing on or even mentioning that moral critique — or even continuing to focus on the many ways the Trump Administration did exacerbate the flood — those who disseminated his tweet gaped in horror at his spectacular display of power, without identifying it as an attempt to avoid being held accountable.
[…]
Trump’s ability to command and direct attention — his ability to rupture context and redirect attention to his own claims of authority — is his super power. It is how he has attained and remained in government; it is how he has beat back scandals that would have doomed others.
And that super power has been failing him as his DOJ and FBI reversed course on past fevered promises to disclose everything about the Epstein scandal.
That’s what, I have tried to argue, has always been missing from reporting on this exchange: how badly Trump flubbed a role, suppressing coverage by bullying a journalist, that is second nature to him.
The illogic of Trump’s long post about the Epstein Files—they don’t exist, are a hoax created by Democrats to hurt him, which they haven’t released, and he doesn’t want to be seen—has turned the MAGA world on its head.
I want to say, this will be fun to watch, but Trump’s approach to bad news is to take drastic, destabilizing actions as a means to distract. That he’s losing some of his ability to do that in this instance is great, but I’m worried about what bomb he’ll drop next—literally or figuratively.
Google’s New ‘Manage Subscriptions’ Rolls Out Early (To Me, at Least) ⚙︎
Andrew Liszewski at The Verge, earlier this week:
Google is introducing a new Gmail feature for those feeling overwhelmed by an onslaught of subscription emails in their inboxes. The Manage subscriptions view shows a list of emails delivered through active subscriptions, automatically sorted with the most frequent senders at the top, next to individual one-click links that will unsubscribe you from their mailing lists.
You can find the new feature by clicking the navigation bar in the top left corner of your Gmail inbox and selecting Manage subscriptions from the menu that appears. If you don’t see it yet, it’s being introduced on the web version of Gmail starting today, the Android mobile app starting on July 14th, and the iOS app starting on July 21st, but it could take a couple of weeks for it to show up for all users. It will be available for all personal Google accounts, Google Workspace customers, and Workspace Individual Subscribers in “select countries.”
Color me surprised to find this feature already available to me on iOS a week and a half earlier than expected (Gmail version 6.0.250622). This is a regular Gmail account, nothing special about it as far as I know (except maybe it’s been around a while).
Tap on “Manage subscriptions” to see a list of your subscriptions, then tap one to unsubscribe.
This is especially welcome on this particular Gmail account, as it’s my “bulk email” account, so it has a lot of subscriptions.
The feature works exactly as described, but more useful than the unsubscribing itself is seeing just how many marketing emails I get from businesses I no longer use. (Sorry Atoms.)
Rosie O’Donnell Torches Donald Trump After His Unhinged Threat to Revoke Her Citizenship ⚙︎
Alexandra Marquez and Lindsey Pipia, reporting on the crazy for NBC News:
President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to take away comedian Rosie O’Donnell’s U.S. citizenship, something that he cannot legally do, reigniting a decadeslong feud between the pair.
“Cannot legally do” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
Trump’s insane threat was announced where he issues all of his official proclamations: “Truth” Social:
Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
- The President of the United States doesn’t have the power to strip anyone of their citizenship.
- Shouldn’t such a threat be impeachable?
- Rosie O’Donnell gave a masterclass in how to respond to Trump. Just chef’s kiss perfection.
The media is treating Trump’s outburst as something worthy of debate—as though there’s a legitimate question of whether or not the President of the United States of America can just decide to revoke an American’s citizenship—rather than with outright ridicule, and a reminder that these diatribes are meant to distract from a very bad news cycle.
O’Donnell, however, understood her assignment and clapped back, hard—not once:
the president of the usa has always hated the fact that i see him for who he is - a criminal con man sexual abusing liar out to harm our nation to serve himself - this is why i moved to ireland - he is a dangerous old soulless man with dementia who lacks empathy compassion and basic humanity- i stand in direct opposition all he represents- so do millions of others - u gonna deport all who stand against ur evil tendencies - ur a bad joke who cant form a coherent sentence #nevertrump
… but twice:
hey donald –
you’re rattled again? 18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours.
you call me a threat to humanity –but I’m everything you fear:a loud womana queer womana mother who tells the truthan american who got out of the country b4 u set it ablaze
you build walls –I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still exists
you crave loyalty –I teach my children to question power
you sell fear on golf courses –I make art about surviving trauma
you lie, you steal, you degrade –I nurture, I create, I persist
you are everything that is wrong with america –and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it
you want to revoke my citizenship?go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan
i’m not yours to silencei never was
🇮🇪 rosie
—with her second Instagram post featuring a photo of Trump with his arm around Jeffrey Epstein.
I’m pretty sure Trump is now a blubbering mess in a corner of the White House.
I mean, more than usual.
Alan Dye’s 2023 ‘Design Matters with Debbie Millman’ Interview ⚙︎
The first half of Debbie Millman’s July 2023 interview with Alan Dye—Apple’s VP of Human Interface Design—is a gauzy look back at his career, before pivoting in the second half to his time at Apple. It reminded me that Dye started, not in user interface design, but in the world of glossy print, packaging, and brand marketing. He was initially hired onto Apple’s Marcom (Marketing Communications) team to work on iPod and iTunes marketing.
Liquid Glass is, as much as anything else, a branding exercise: it exists—at least in part—to differentiate Apple devices in print, web, and video marketing.
The back half (around the 30-minute mark) focuses more on Dye’s career at Apple, leading up to the introduction of Apple Vision Pro in June 2023.
I was struck by this question:
Debbie Millman: You also started to expand your capabilities beyond branding and advertising. You created films, a cool paper line. You published little art books made by the individual designers in the studio that you then sold in the stores. And for those, you said that there were no boundaries, no brief and no restraints. So it gave the designers a chance to be challenged. Was that a terrifying experience? A designer with no rules?
I was hoping for an answer that acknowledged that there are always rules (of form, materials, engineering, time, etc.) even when none were stated. Instead, Dye gives a non-answer answer that sort of alludes to that but lacks real substance:
Well, rules are helpful, but I think everyone had their own set of passions. Everyone deeply understood kind of the ethos of Kate Spade and of Jack Spade and the kind of sense of humor and the irreverence. So I think because we were careful about who was in the studio, everybody contributed all these amazing ideas.
I got the sense Dye has a disdain for “rules,” relying instead on intuition and brand awareness.
The first version of Liquid Glass was a usability mess. Beautiful on a website and in videos, but not great in the real world. My understanding is that Dye (like Jony Ive before him) doesn’t have an “editor” to rein him in. He may well be operating without boundaries again. I wonder if that changes under Tim Cook—or gets worse?
(To be fair, beta 3 significantly improved legibility, at the expense of the flashier, glassier version showcased at WWDC.)
Later in the interview, Millman asks, “What does human interface design actually mean?”
So human interface design at Apple is really, our team is responsible for designing how everyone interacts with our products, the experience of using an Apple product. And so we could call it interaction design. We like human interface because that’s really what it’s all about, is how people interact with Apple products. So of course, a big part of that is how our products look and how they feel, and maybe what’s on the screen. But again, we don’t think about it at that level first. In other words, of course we care about how things look, how the interface looks, but we really are mostly focused on what our products do, first and foremost, how they work. And so the most amazing part about what it is that we do is that we not only define how a product works, but also what a product is and what it ought to do. And that’s a really privileged position to be in.
I understand he’s riffing on Steve Jobs’ quote that design is “not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works” (he touches on it a few moments earlier), and that, as designers, they look at the whole widget. But “and maybe what’s on the screen” is a hell of a thing to hear from the head of Apple’s user interface team.
Millman later asks about Dye’s involvement with the 2023 iOS 7 redesign, and what the “jump in disciplines and skills” (from graphic design to human interface design) was like:
When Jony and I took over design more holistically beyond just industrial design, but also software design, he had a really clear vision for where he wanted to take the software design, and that was to move away from the sort of more glossy 3D look and feel to something much more, I would say minimal. And so I had a great relationship with Jony. It was a very ambitious project to redesign an entire operating system in short order. So I came over and joined what was an exceptional team that was already off and running on this. Yeah, I was very lucky to be part of an amazing team.
And it was very much trial by fire because along the way, while I think I was bringing my point of view and my craft and my kind of graphic design skills to this amazing team, I was also very quickly learning about interaction design, how applications are designed, how we think about user experience at Apple. In a lot of ways, it was trial by fire, and I still had my day job […]
I was still doing the Marcom work for iPhone and the rest of it, but it was a really special time. And how lucky are we as designers that we get to learn, right?
And for me, this is a really steep learning curve, but it was an amazing time, and I learned a lot from that team.
Even though I was on the inside at the time, I wasn’t disclosed on the redesign. I remember hearing about Dye’s move over to the UI team, and the concerns expressed by several coworkers that a “marketing guy” was designing the UI. When I first saw iOS 7, I remember thinking it looked like a magazine print design.
Turns out I was right.
Main link is to the podcast’s home at PRX. It’s also available in Overcast (my podcast player of choice) and Apple Podcasts.
Quotes are from PRINT Magazine’s transcript. They haven’t been edited except to spell Jony Ive’s name correctly.
ICE ‘Has Never Been So Miserable’ ⚙︎
Nick Miroff profiles ICE agents and officers for The Atlantic (Apple News+ link):
Officers and agents have spent much of the past five months clocking weekends and waking up at 4 a.m. for predawn raids. Their top leaders have been ousted or demoted, and their supervisors—themselves under threat of being fired—are pressuring them to make more and more arrests to meet quotas set by the Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Having insisted for years that capturing criminals is its priority, ICE is now shelving major criminal investigations to prioritize civil immigration arrests, grabbing asylum seekers at their courthouse hearings, handcuffing mothers as their U.S.-citizen children cry, chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots. As angry onlookers attempt to shame ICE officers with obscenities, and activists try to dox them, officers are retreating further behind masks and tactical gear.
“It’s miserable,” one career ICE official told me. He called the job “mission impossible.”
Oh sure, ICE is miserable… but could we make them even more miserable?
The headline implies poor morale because of the evil these agents are doing, but it’s as much about them feeling underpaid and unappreciated while they commit evil. Most of these folks seem otherwise fine being the baddies.
A common theme of my conversations was dissatisfaction with the White House’s focus on achieving 1 million deportations annually, a goal that many ICE employees view as logistically unrealistic and physically exhausting. The agency has never done more than a quarter of that number in a single year. But ICE’s top officials are so scared of being fired—the White House has staged two purges already—that they don’t push back, another official told me.
Today’s version of “I was just following orders” is “I was just making a living.”
I also enjoyed this little dig at Kristi Noem:
While tagging along on a predawn operation early this year, Noem posted live updates on social media, blowing the team’s cover for the rest of the day.
This administration is filled with some of the dumbest people on Earth.
Nerd Self-Sniping
Sometimes unexpected bugs pop up at the worst time. Last night, I was preparing for bed and reviewing one of my pieces from March (Some Thoughts on WWDC25). When I reached the bottom, I saw this, and my heart skipped a beat.
Those three gears, acting as a section divider, are supposed to be centered on the page, like so:
Oh no! My site’s broken! What the heck is going on here? That CSS code was written months ago, and had been working just fine. What changed? A quick check confirmed it wasn’t the code. I was using my iPad Pro 12" running iPadOS 26 beta 2, though, and on iOS 18, macOS 14 (Sonoma) and macOS 15 (Sequoia), everything was fine. Ah! A bug in a beta. Hardly surprising, so I wrote up a quick test case and submitted a bug report.
hr::before {text-align: center;} doesn't center, for my Apple friends.A few tests later, and I confirmed it was also happening on iPad and iOS 26 beta 3—but not on macOS 26 beta 2 or 3. It also fails in Chrome on macOS. Curious.
The code is dead simple and, admittedly, on the verge of hacky. This is the gist of it:
hr::before {
content: "* * *";
text-align: center;
}
This adds the pseudo-element before to the <hr> selector. The browser displays the content where the <hr> would go, and text-align: center, well, centers the content in the container. In theory, anyway.
(There’s a bit more to it to hide the normal horizontal line, change the font, and set the size, but those aren’t relevant here.)
As simple as this code was, the fix was even easier: add display: block, and everything works in all my tests.
Great, right? Bug filed, problem solved. I’d write it up for the site—a short post, with a wry observation about hacky solutions and unanticipated beta bugs, a link to the test case and the bug report, and Bob’s-yer-uncle.
Yeah, no.
I wanted to show the bug in action. Here’s what happens without display: block; here’s what happens with it. If you were on a system that behaved this way, you could see the before and after, interactively.
No, I don’t know why, I just did, OK? Be cool.
Anyway. Sometime around midnight I fired up my coding buddy and had it spit out a few lines of throwaway code. It gave some jibber-jabber about not using JavaScript because Ghost sanitized user-submitted HTML to prevent XSS and layout-breaking scripts blah blah blah.
(Ghost handles in-post JavaScript just fine.)
I assumed a five minute fix, and the basic solution was; but it was ugly and didn’t properly integrate with how code blocks look on this site, so I kept pushing. So, down the rabbit hole we went, iterating (and cursing) for four-plus hours, crafting a completely overblown set of HTML and CSS, until, at the very butt-crack of dawn, we finally had something that worked—and looked—as I wanted.
Which I then completely threw out this afternoon after asking my smarter coding buddy to help, and it did a much, much better job in much less time. (And used JavaScript.)
All so I can give you this. Behold!
hr::before {
content: "* * *";
text-align: center;
font-size: 1.5rem;
display: block;
}
Notice the beauty of a toggle instead of a checkbox! How display: block hides or shows as the toggle is activated! How (on affected devices…) the three asterisks are either centered or left-aligned to match the state of the toggle and code! How that code is syntax-color-coded! Pure CSS, HTML, and JavaScript magic!
Over four hours and a hundred lines of code (!) to demonstrate a trivial effect for a minor, rather inconsequential bug that could have been done in 30? Yeah, seems like a pretty colossal waste of time.
So when’s the next nerd snipe?
Buy Stuff, Save Money, and Make Me Rich on Amazon Prime Day
Every year we buy an absurd amount of stuff from Amazon—from techie gear to household items (including for my mom, who lives 2,500 miles away). I also keep a wishlist of items I’m considering, but don’t need immediately, for when they inevitably go on sale, like during this week’s Amazon Prime Day sale.
John Gruber at Daring Fireball makes an explicit call for buying from his Amazon affiliates link, and I figured, if Gruber can do it, why can’t I? So, if you’d like to support this site, click any of the Amazon links on this page and if you buy anything, I get a small percentage of your purchase price, at no extra cost to you. Buy that thing you’ve been eyeing, and we both get rewarded. Or, check out these recommendations, including some of my recent or favorite gear.
Apple
- Much of Apple’s gear is discounted for Prime Day. My top recommendation for a laptop—the 13” M4 MacBook Air—starts at $850 (usually $1,000) for the 16 GB memory/256 GB storage configuration. The 16 GB/512 GB step-up is $1,050 (usually $1,199), and the best available option on Amazon (24 GB/512 GB) is $1,250 (usually $1,400).
- Since the iPadOS 26 beta came out, I’ve been happily using my 13” iPad Pro connected to an Apple Studio Display—it’s terrific. But, I’m tempted to replace it with an A17 Pro-powered iPad mini. I love the idea of amazing portability transforming into a full desktop computing experience, and $380 for the 128 GB model (usually $500) is about as good a deal as I’ve seen. (The iPad Pro isn’t a Prime Day sale, but at $1,185, it’s still less than Apple’s $1,300.)
- My favorite Apple accessory, the AirPods Pro 2, are $149 (usually $250). That’s nearly $38 cheaper than Apple’s own employee discount. I almost always have a pair of these in my ears. The AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) ($119, usually $179) or without ANC ($89, usually $129) are also screaming good deals (and also less than Apple employee pricing).
Travel
- I’ve previously mentioned my love of Anker, and I travel with many of their products, several of which are on sale for Prime Day, including:
- My favorite 3-in-1 travel charger for $63 (usually $90). Charges an iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch via a single cable.
- A 5,000 mAh Magsafe-compatible charger for $26 (usually $40). We have three, and one is always with me when I’m out for more than a few hours.
- A 24,000 mAh powerbank with 140W fast charging for $77 (usually $110).
- A compact power strip/charging station ($40, usually $50).
- Many, many of their cables.
- I usually pack this GL.iNet portable router. It neatly routes (ahem) around those backwards hotels that insist on limiting the number of devices you can connect to their WiFi. $74 (usually $87).
- I keep these tiny, magnetic charging nubs plugged into any device that isn’t USB-A or USB-C (vanishingly few, thank goodness) and charge them with a single cable. ($13, usually $16). I also use a few of these around the house for devices that need occasional charging, like our Withings bathroom scale ($89, usually $130).
Home
- Airversa air purifier for $74 (usually $87). We run these throughout the house. They’re unobtrusive, quiet, and—the best part—controlled by Apple HomeKit, so I can say Siri, set the dining room air purifier to high. When my wife’s mom was suffering from indoor allergies, this was the purifier we bought for her. It helped tremendously.
- These LED motion sensor lights are in our closets, and are handy when we lose power—which we do regularly. $24 a pair (usually $28). We have six deployed or ready to go at all times.
- This long dressing stick with shoe horn has made it easier for my mom to get dressed ($8, usually $10). Eventually, we all need a wee bit of help.
Stuff
- Elgato Prompter is down to $190 (from its average price of $280). I would have loved having this when I had six video calls a day. It also makes a great second screen.
- Samsung 256 GB USB-C flash drive is $22 (usually $35) and is now in my cart. It turns out all my thumb drives are USB-A.
- This well-regarded HOTO Cordless Rechargeable Electric Screwdriver ($29, usually $50) is also sitting in my cart.
To take advantage of most of these deals you need to be an Amazon Prime subscriber. I’ve been a subscriber for as long as I can remember; the two-day (sometimes same-day) shipping alone is worth it, and Prime Video is the only place I can watch my favorite long-con show, Hustle.
I’ve also been a member of the Amazon Associates program for years (as part of my now-defunct personal blog and my long-dormant-but-working-on-it CostPerGig (consider that an alpha-level soft launch—more on this soon), and now JAG’s Workshop. In his piece, Gruber says that when he posts affiliate links, “they sometimes work out to a nice windfall.” I’ve probably made $100, total, in the fifteen or so years I’ve been an affiliate. (Of course, Gruber has about a billionty more readers than I do. Rounding.)
I sometimes include affiliate links to products I mention in my articles, but I’ve never done a pure affiliate link post before. There are many ways you can show your support for me and this site (including becoming a paid member—when you’re a shill, you’re a shill all the way), but the easiest way for the next couple of days is to click on one of those Amazon links and buy a little something for yourself or a loved one. Anything and everything helps.
(Don’t worry; if this goes well, I have no intention of writing about products just to link to them. I may, however, aggregate links on a “mentioned on JAG’s Workshop” page; let me know what you think about that.)
Linda Yaccarino Steps Down as X/Twitter CEO
A translation of Linda Yaccarino’s resignation announcement on—where else?—X/Twitter:
After two incredible years, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of 𝕏.
I’m as surprised as you are it took so long, but you wouldn’t believe the money. So. Much. Money.
When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.
I’ve done none of those things.
I’m incredibly proud of the X team - the historic business turn around we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable.
We evaporated millions in advertising dollars, destroyed the trust of users around the globe, and transformed into the world’s worst Nazi bar. I helped crash a global platform into the ground. Historic, indeed!
We started with the critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users—especially children,
Then we said, screw it. They can fend for themselves, those grubby bastards.
and to restore advertiser confidence.
Which we squandered by becoming the world’s worst Nazi bar and then suing any advertisers who balked at paying us money. See above.
This team has worked relentlessly from groundbreaking innovations like Community Notes, and, soon, X Money to bringing the most iconic voices and content to the platform. Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with @xai.
xAI—the home of Grok, which we programmed to be virulently anti-Semitic and got so bad we had to delete stuff.
X is truly a digital town square for all voices and the world’s most powerful culture signal.
White, racist, Nazi-spewing voices—and those who enjoy being around them—and the signal is “I’m an utter douche.”
We couldn’t have achieved that without the support of our users,
Most of whom are—at best—Nazi-sympathizers.
business partners,
Again, several of which we’ve sued, some of whom we’ve not paid.
and the most innovative team in the world.
I’ll be cheering you all on as you continue to change the world.
As always, I’ll see you on 𝕏
Because Bluesky is too leftist, Threads Zucks, “Truth” Social is X with fewer standards, and I can’t figure out Mastodon.
I'm sure the timing was purely coincidental.
More coverage from Axios; Politico; and Nick Heer at Pixel Envy, who muses:
On the other hand, if Yaccarino was regularly at odds with the owner of X, I am looking forward to the inevitable tell-all book.
I’m guessing millions will exchange hands to avoid such a book.
Jeff Williams to Retire as Apple’s COO Later This Year
Apple Newsroom, yesterday:
Apple today announced Jeff Williams will transition his role as chief operating officer later this month to Sabih Khan, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, as part of a long-planned succession. Williams will continue reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook and overseeing Apple’s world-class design team and Apple Watch alongside the company’s Health initiatives. Apple’s design team will then transition to reporting directly to Cook after Williams retires late in the year.
Williams was for years considered Apple’s CEO-in-waiting. I suppose there’s only so much waiting a man can do.
Khan is a 30-year Apple veteran. Thirty years at Apple may seem like an eternity, but time travels more quickly there than anywhere I know. As COO, is he now Cook’s “CEO hot spare”?
While unexpected in timing, these transitions are long-planned, and were probably put in place shortly after Khan was promoted to SVP of Operations in 2019.
The actually surprising news is that the Design team, headed by Alan Dye and which reported to Williams, will now report directly to Cook—not to Khan or—more logically in my mind—to software chief Craig Federighi. Reporting to Cook is a hell of an elevation for Dye, a designer whose work is often regarded with disdain within the Apple developer community.
I presume this reporting structure is temporary, a stopgap until they find something—someone—better. Cook has enough problems on his plate. I can’t imagine him caring enough about design to push back on bad or poorly implemented ideas—not that Williams did.
(A little birdie informed me that after Jony Ive left, Dye refused to report to Federighi—who apparently has strong opinions on UI design—which is how Williams ended up with the group. I’m curious if reporting to Cook is an extension of that refusal.)
I do wonder if this makes it less likely Tim Cook will be stepping down as CEO in the near-term. Apple usually only does one or two of these big executive transitions a year—and Phil Schiller may be eyeing the exit. Other than Williams (and now Khan) there was no obvious candidate for CEO on Apple’s leadership team. John Ternus (SVP Hardware Engineering) has been floated, and now seems like the most likely long-term candidate.
Watch for him to take on greater responsibilities in the next year.
Kottke: ‘There’s No Undo Button For Our Fallen Democracy’ ⚙︎
Jason Kottke posted this piece at his eponymous site before the Fourth of July weekend. I’m glad I didn’t read it then—I would have come away with scant hope. Reading it was like an elbow to the solar plexus. He starts by quoting Tressie McMillan Cottom on Bluesky:
I’m going to be very honest and clear.
I am fully preparing myself to die under this new American regime. That’s not to say that it’s the end of the world. It isn’t. But I am almost 50 years old. It will take so long to do anything with this mess that this is the new normal for me.
I do hope a lot of you run. I hope you vote, sure. Maybe do a general strike or rent strike. All great!
But I spent the last week reading things and this is not, for ME, an electoral fix. So now I will spend time reflecting on how to integrate this normal into my understanding of the future.
Most of this will be personal. Some of it will be public — how we move in the world.
Right now, I know that I need to make a decision on my risk sensitivity. How much can I take? I also need to meditate HARD on accepting the randomness of that risk. No amount of strategy can protect me.
Those are things I am thinking about.
Kottke:
Cottom nails how I’ve been feeling for the past few months […]. America’s democratic collapse has been coming for years, always just over the horizon. But when everything that happened during Trump’s first three months in office happened and (here’s the important part) shockingly little was done by the few groups (Congress, the Supreme Court, the Democratic Party, American corporations & other large institutions, media companies) who had the power to counter it, I knew it was over. And over in a way that is irreversible, for a good long while at least.
Both Cottom and Kottke sum up my gnawing and palpable fears. In conversations with friends, we all keep nodding toward hopefulness, anticipating a Blue Sweep in the midterms and a rout in 2028—we’re all, as Kottke puts it:
Trying not to fall prey to doomerism and subsequently spreading it to others.
But when I’m honest with myself… I think about what it might look like to leave America. I worry about my transgender and immigrant friends being rounded up, or worse. I can’t confidently say we’ll have free and fair elections in 2026—much less a presidential election. And so much more.
It’s unlikely my mom—soon to be 79 and in less-than-ideal health—or any of her generation will survive to see the demise of this regime. At almost 56, I’m not sure if I will either. Optimism feels like a luxury I can’t quite afford.
The issues we’re dealing with aren’t the result of just one man or one party. There are too many “everyday people” supporting this regime’s policies for new leaders to make meaningful change. That no doubt disappoints the many who wish for a quickening of the actuarial tables brought on by one too many cheeseburgers. (I’d much rather see a trial and conviction.) The thing is, our country’s woes are well beyond any one man, and one man’s demise won’t pull us back from the brink. Toppling Trump and his regime is merely a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, to return this country to health.
This fascistic turn is something we will be battling for a long while, no matter who’s in power. This is, as Anil Dash wrote, “a rest-of-my-life fight.”
Fortunately, Bruce S. in Kottke’s comments provides some of that scarce optimism:
The new regime has not yet consolidated its power on the federal level, let alone among all 50 state governments. Plenty of states are still run by Democratic trifectas and our federal system still gives those state governments real power. […] there’s still a chance to start a liberal counter-revolution. […]
FDR saved our Republic from fascism; it can be done again.
Spotify’s Billionaire CEO Invests in AI Military War Tech ⚙︎
Alex Blair, for News.com.au:
Spotify’s billionaire CEO Daniel Ek is under heavy fire from artists and industry advocates after announcing a €600 million (A$1.07 bn AUD) investment into Helsing, a military tech start-up developing AI tech for war.
Helsing, now valued at around €12 billion (A$19.5bn), builds AI-driven drones, submarines and aircraft and claims to “develop and deploy these technologies” to “protect fragile democracies”.
Ek’s investment, made via his firm Prima Materia, saw him aggressively double down on an earlier €100 million (A$162 million) pledge in 2021.
He now chairs the company.
Via Dave Rahardja, who notes on Mastodon:
Spotify spent $250M of your subscription dollars to invite Joe Rogan to spew his disinformation on their platform.
They’re still trying to embrace and extinguish Podcasts.
They’re developing in-house, AI-generated “music” so users will play them (royalty-free) instead of music created by humans (who demand royalty).
And now, he’s using his wealth, created by your subscriptions, to fund tech that will use AI to literally murder humans in war.
Stop funding him. Quit Spotify now.
I’ve never been a Spotify user—between signing Joe Rogan, their fake-artist, better than payola schemes, and their anti-Apple crusade, any shot at that went out the door long ago. This alone would be a solid reason to never support them, though.
If you’re looking to leave Spotify, there are alternatives.
The responses to Rahardja’s post, though are absolutely wild, with one person—seemingly unironically—saying:
It’s actually one of the reasons why I subscribed to Spotify premium again. That “ai war” thing is a great defence tool and is what might save me and my family from a Russian invasion.
And other implying that the only two options are developing AI war machines or “have humans be sent to fight on the frontlines instead.”
As I said: absolutely wild.
Thom Hartmann: Alligator Alcatraz Isn’t Just a Prison. It’s a Mirror ⚙︎
Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report:
Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop dancing around the language, around the morality, and around the history.
What’s being built in the Florida Everglades, for example — what they’re calling “Alligator Alcatraz” — is not just another immigration facility. It’s a political prison engineered not merely to detain, but to humiliate, dehumanize, and broadcast terror.
It’s America’s first open-air symbol that our democracy is not just dying: it is being dissected publicly, cruelly, and with calculation.
A concentration camp built in eight days, in a state where over 30,000 people are experiencing homelessness.
Hartmann calls for us to engage through lawsuits; journalistic documentation of all that happens; direct action via peaceful protests, civil disobedience, and national mobilization; accurate language (it’s not a “detention center,” it’s a “political prison” or “migrant concentration camp”); and remembering and sharing history—in particular about Dachau and how it started:
Not with mass extermination, but with silence. With a single camp, surrounded by a fence, where people were put “for their own protection.”
He reminds us:
Dachau didn’t just hold communists. Over time, it expanded to include denaturalized Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma, and anyone who opposed Nazi policy. It became a national crucible of cruelty. It normalized the idea that “certain people do not deserve legal protections.” […]
Today, DeSantis is using FEMA funds intended for hurricane victims to build migrant cages. Tomorrow, it could be protesters. Journalists. Teachers. You.
It’s heartbreaking to witness the creation of another American concentration camp. I hope to witness its destruction—and history’s final judgment upon its perpetrators.
Paramount and Donald Trump Settle Lawsuit for $16 million ⚙︎
Jon Brodkin, writing for Ars Technica (“Paramount accused of bribery as it settles Trump lawsuit for $16 million”):
CBS owner Paramount has reached a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump over his claim that 60 Minutes deceptively manipulated a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Trump’s lawsuit has been widely described as frivolous, but Paramount seemed motivated to settle because its pending $8.4 billion merger with Skydance needed regulatory approval from the Trump administration.
In a statement provided to Ars today, Paramount said it “has reached an agreement in principle to resolve the lawsuit filed by President Trump and Representative [Ronny] Jackson in the Northern District of Texas and a threatened defamation action concerning a separate 60 Minutes report.”
CBS News, reporting on its own demise as a trusted news source:
Under the agreement, $16 million will be allocated to Mr. Trump’s future presidential library and the plaintiffs’ fees and costs. Neither Mr. Trump nor his co-plantiff, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, will be directly paid as part of the settlement.
The settlement did not include an apology.
One thing Donald Trump is unquestionably good at is convincing others to pay him large sums of money to influence his behavior or to avoid harm he’s promised or implied.