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Apple’s SillyBalls ⚙︎
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.)
George Carlin on Muhammad Ali and the Vietnam War ⚙︎
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.
Naming My Devices
In a Blaugust2025 post, Varun Barad writes on their eponymous site about device naming:
It is only in the past few years, after I read a post by someone on how they decide names for their devices, that the thought even occurred to me that those names for my devices don’t have to be so dry and meaningless. That I can treat naming my devices with some thought put into it, and name them based on some theme or the purpose that they will be serving.
Since then, the theme I have started with my devices is “celestial bodies/objects”. I try to name my devices based on some constellation.
I’ve been naming my devices for over 20 years. While celestial bodies, sci-fi, Greek mythology, and movie references are all excellent, evergreen options, I went a different route. Most of my devices are named after cities and beaches in the country I was born: Trinidad and Tobago.
When selecting names, I try to have some logical (or at least defensible) reason behind my choice. Broadly speaking, computers are named after cities, and iPads are named after beaches, with some exceptions:
- Port of Spain: The country’s capital. Everything revolves around it. This is my main computer, historically a desktop Mac (currently an older 5K Intel iMac). However, as I’ve moved to a “desktop laptop” lifestyle, this name will shortly shift to my M4 MacBook Pro 14".
- Scarborough: Previously the capital of Tobago, prior to the island’s unification with Trinidad. This is my secondary/travel computer, currently an M1 MacBook Air 13" (on which I’m writing this right now).
- Diego Martin: My extended family lived here; it was practically my second home. This was my main computer at work. The name, like me, is now retired.
- Curepe: This is my iPhone. I cannot for the life of me recall my reasoning behind this name, beyond it being another city where some of my family lived. It could just be because it’s short.
- Maracas: My favorite beach, home of big waves and bake and shark. It’s the name of my iPad Pro, my companion while lounging.
- Petit Valley: A small town adjacent to Diego Martin, I gave this name to my very petite Raspberry Pi.
- Piarco: A small town, but more relevant here, the name of the international airport, thus the name of my WiFi network—first christened when connectivity was provided by an Apple Airport base station.
Names remain stable even when replacing a device, so, for example, my current iPhone is Curepe16, and my current iPad is Maracas7. Other names I’ve used over the years include Arima, Belmont, Mayaro, and St. James.
My naming scheme inspired my wife to follow suit: Her MacBook Air is named “Harbin,” after her city of birth.
Not all my devices are named after Trinidad and Tobago cities and beaches, though. A handful of old devices are named much more prosaically, to more easily identify them; “iPad 1st gen 16GB” or “iPhone 6 Silver 16GB,” for example.
I rarely name my accessories. One exception: on a recent trip to Hawaii, I managed to forget my precious AirPods at home, a potentially devastating error while on vacation. Luckily, Costco had a sale on AirPods, so I picked up a pair on the trip. They ended up being a backup to my pair at home. I did not give them a city or beach name.
I called them SpAirPods.
‘A Family Unification Preference Would Preserve America’s European Character’ ⚙︎
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 Has a ‘List of Unarmed African Americans Killed by Law Enforcement Officers in the United States’ and It’s Exactly as Disturbing as You’d Expect ⚙︎
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.
‘The Last SS Guard’ ⚙︎
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.
Jen Pawol Becomes First Woman to Umpire Regular Season MLB Game ⚙︎
Brian Murphy, MLB News:
Jen Pawol will make history this weekend as the first woman to be an umpire in a regular-season MLB game
Pawol will ump three games during this weekend’s Marlins-Braves series in Atlanta, including both ends of Saturday’s doubleheader (she’ll be at first base in the opener and third base in the nightcap) as well as the series finale on Sunday, when she will be behind home plate.
Congratulations to Pawol for her achievement—and about damn time, MLB.
Pawol has certainly put in the hours:
[…] over 1,200 Minor League games across every affiliate level over the past 10 seasons […]
Pawol is one of only eight women umpiring in the Minors today. I hope she and a few more will soon become part of a regular MLB crew.
On Apple’s $100 Billion Investment and the Tim Cook Appeasement Trophy
Earlier this week, Apple announced “a new $100 billion commitment to America,” which included an “ambitious new American Manufacturing Program.” The additional investment is on top of their previously announced $500 billion commitment.
The Apple Newsroom press release included this:
“Today, we’re proud to increase our investments across the United States to $600 billion over four years and launch our new American Manufacturing Program,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “This includes new and expanded work with 10 companies across America. They produce components that are used in Apple products sold all over the world, and we’re grateful to the President for his support.”
The entirety of the nearly 1,500-word press release is about those last eight words: we’re grateful to the President for his support.
What “support” has the President provided, exactly? None that I’m aware of—we’ve seen only threats of tariffs and acts of retaliation. The press release is a sop to this notoriously transactional—and flattery-craving—president, a way of appeasing him and giving him what he most wants: attention for himself and his “deal making skills.”
Cook continued his relationship building (if you’re being charitable, ass-kissing if you’re not) by gifting Trump a shiny bauble: a disc of Kentucky-made glass, atop a 24-karat gold base from Utah, designed by a former U.S. Marine corporal who now works at Apple. The glass has the Apple logo cut out of it, and is inscribed with both Trump’s name and Cook’s signature.
The investment and bribe one-of-a-kind gift (no r) yielded some (entirely unexpected) results (transcript from Marcus Mendes at 9to5Mac):
“We’re going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors. But the good news for companies like Apple is if you’re building in the United States, or have committed to build, without question, committed to build in the United States, there will be no charge. Even though you’re building, and you’re not producing yet in terms of the big numbers of jobs and all of the things that you’re building, if you’re building, there will be no charge.
That in turn pleased the stock market, which pumped up Apple’s stock more than 13% since Wednesday.
The Apple community is torn by the gift (no r). Some suggest Cook’s always been an overt Trump supporter. Others insist Cook is playing Trump like a fiddle. Some have even questioned their entire Apple-user identity.
I don’t know Cook. I’ve only met him a handful of times when I worked at Apple. Once was in 2016, when I and a small cohort of Black Apple employees sat with him in the wake of the Alton Sterling and Philando Castile police shootings to express the community’s anxieties, and to ask him to be more vocal in his support for the company’s Black employees. I have two memories of that meeting. One, Cook clearly cared deeply about Civil Rights and social justice—his admiration for Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis was not just lip service. Two, he was taken aback at the suggestion that he wasn’t showing sufficient support. He’d tweeted after those shootings and believed that everyone, inside and outside Apple, would see it—and understand its meaning. He didn’t grasp that not everyone read his tweets, nor that oblique calls for justice aren’t the same as directly standing against racism. That meeting led, indirectly, to Speaking up on racism, in the wake of yet more police violence four years later.
I share that to say that nearly a decade after that meeting, I believe Tim Cook is more of a social progressive than not. I don’t believe he supports Donald Trump and his policies. I suspect most of those policies are anathema to Cook—and that people I respect would not be working for him if they weren’t.
I also recognize exactly how naïve that sounds.
Cook is a shrewd businessman. His primary objective is to ensure the continued success of Apple. He understands that a president who is easily mollified by overt acts of ring-kissing and knee-bending is also one who is easily manipulable. I choose to believe that Cook’s actions are those of a CEO protecting his company, its employees, and its customers, and—ultimately, yes—its profitability.
Cook is an operations guy. Crediting the President for a hundred-billion-dollar investment Apple was already going to make and bestowing a glass-and-gold trinket as thanks—while weathering some backlash and a temporary loss of personal dignity—is likely seen as simply one more operating cost of goods sold.
But soon or late, Trump will demand Cook and Apple compromise on one of their “North Stars.” Will it be privacy? DEI (what Apple calls “Inclusion and Diversity”)? Environmental initiatives? Because the nature of appeasement is once is never enough.
When that happens, all these “ego appeasements” (as one friend put it) will not matter—and Apple will have alienated anyone who might care enough to defend them.
OpenAI Introduces ChatGPT-5 ⚙︎
OpenAI, Thursday:
GPT‑5 is smarter across the board, providing more useful responses across math, science, finance, law, and more. It’s like having a team of experts on call for whatever you want to know.
The accompanying 75-minute introduction video includes several impressive demos, including several where GPT-5 wrote hundreds of lines of (apparently working!) code in just a few minutes.
(Sam Altman introduces the video, then—mercifully—steps off stage and leaves the presentation to his team. He continues to appear awkward and uncomfortable in front of an audience.)
This new model, they say, has “Expert intelligence for everyone.” It’s described as “safer and more accurate” and “less prone to hallucinations and pretending to know things.” This is especially important given their focus on health:
Our best model yet for health-related questions, providing more precise and reliable responses while acting as more of a proactive thought partner.
Health is apparently one of their most asked about topics. The video introduction included a segment where Altman interviewed a cancer survivor about her use of ChatGPT to help her understand her diagnosis. This is not an area for confabulations—that is, making shit up.
GPT-5 is already available to most customers. Curious what it had to say for itself, I prompted it, Tell me about GPT-5:
Alright, let’s cut the fluff—here’s the real deal on GPT‑5, dropped fresh on August 7, 2025.
The Rundown: What’s So Hot About GPT-5?
Unified, smart-as-hell system: No more awkward model selection. GPT‑5 auto-routes queries—whether you need quick answers or deep thinking, it decides. Say “think hard about this” and it kicks into high-reasoning mode.
Big gains everywhere:
- Writing, math, coding, health, visual perception—all of it cranks up performance across the board.
- Benchmarks: AIME 2025 math score hits 94.6%, SWE‑bench Verified coding at 74.9%, Aider Polyglot at 88%, multimodal understanding at 84.2%, and HealthBench Hard at 46.2%.
Coding wizardry: Smarter front‑end generation, debugging, and “vibe coding” that feels like magic from a design-infused AI.
Safer and sharper: Way fewer hallucinations, better at saying “I don’t know,” less goody‑two‑shoes yes‑man behavior, and real improvements in health advice.
Context monster: Huge token window—270k input, 128k output (visible + invisible reasoning) for the API, and around 256–400k in other variants. Multimodal: text + image in, text only out.
Pricing & variants:
- ChatGPT access: Free users get limited play; Plus gives more; Pro (~$200/month) brings unlimited and extended reasoning.
- API tiers: gpt‑5 (full), gpt‑5‑mini, and gpt‑5‑nano—pick your speed/cost combo.
Enterprise upgrades: Smarter Microsoft Copilot, better reasoning, deeper conversation tracking.
Bottom Line (Told Straight)
GPT-5 is basically a PhD-level AI roommate—sharp across the board, fast, and way more reliable than its predecessors. OpenAI clearly focused on being useful, not just flashy. It’s less “AI showing off” and more “AI that works for you.”
If you’re into writing clearer, reasoning deeper, coding smoother, or just want a smarter base-layer assistant—GPT-5 probably rules.
It includes links to recent stories from The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Financial Times.
GPT-5 is certainly not afraid to toot its own horn.
Cloudflare and Perplexity Battle Over ‘Stealth Crawling Behavior’ ⚙︎
We are observing stealth crawling behavior from Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine. Although Perplexity initially crawls from their declared user agent, when they are presented with a network block, they appear to obscure their crawling identity in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences. We see continued evidence that Perplexity is repeatedly modifying their user agent and changing their source ASNs to hide their crawling activity, as well as ignoring — or sometimes failing to even fetch — *robots.txt* files. […]
There are clear preferences that crawlers should be transparent, serve a clear purpose, perform a specific activity, and, most importantly, follow website directives and preferences. Based on Perplexity’s observed behavior, which is incompatible with those preferences, we have de-listed them as a verified bot and added heuristics to our managed rules that block this stealth crawling.
That’s a pretty damning accusation, and a harsh penalty. Perplexity, for its part, is crying foul:
Because Cloudflare has conveniently obfuscated their methodology and declined to answer questions helping our teams understand, we can only narrow this down to two possible explanations.Cloudflare needed a clever publicity moment and we–their own customer–happened to be a useful name to get them one.Cloudflare fundamentally misattributed 3–6M daily requests from BrowserBase’s automated browser service to Perplexity, a basic traffic analysis failure that’s particularly embarrassing for a company whose core business is understanding and categorizing web traffic.
Whichever explanation is the truth, the technical errors in Cloudflare’s analysis aren’t just embarrassing—they’re disqualifying. When you misattribute millions of requests, publish completely inaccurate technical diagrams, and demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern AI assistants work, you’ve forfeited any claim to expertise in this space.
This controversy reveals that Cloudflare’s systems are fundamentally inadequate for distinguishing between legitimate AI assistants and actual threats. If you can’t tell a helpful digital assistant from a malicious scraper, then you probably shouldn’t be making decisions about what constitutes legitimate web traffic.
I don’t know which multi-billion dollar behemoth is right. On the one hand, I don’t like how much control Cloudflare has over the internet. I’ve often been stymied by one of their “Checking if the site connection is secure” loops, and their “Content Independence Day” is an obvious—if unstated—cash grab. On the other hand, Perplexity has a multitude of issues—and they just signed up to power searches for Donald Trump’s “Truth” Social.
A pox on both their houses?
Aulia Masna: Apple and Perplexity Are a “Cultural Misalignment” ⚙︎
Every time someone floats the idea that Apple should acquire Perplexity to “supercharge” its AI efforts, I get whiplash, not just from the sheer strategic laziness of the suggestion, but from the deeper cultural misalignment it completely ignores. The very idea is a perplexing thought.
Perplexity isn’t some misunderstood innovator quietly building the future. It’s a company fundamentally unsure of what it is, what it stands for, or how to exist without parasitizing the open web. It’s been posing as a search engine, an AI-powered Q&A tool, a research assistant, and lately, some vague hybrid of all three, depending on who’s asking and what narrative sounds hottest that week. The only throughline is this: a constant need to justify its own existence, retrofitting its product pitch to whatever the industry is currently foaming at the mouth about.
Masna makes a compelling case not just against Perplexity itself, but argues Apple doesn’t need Perplexity:
Not for the tech — which is just a UX layer on top of open models and scraped data. Not for the team — which seems more interested in testing the boundaries of IP law than building products people trust. And definitely not for the culture — which is allergic to accountability and powered by vibes over values.
I found myself nodding in agreement throughout. The more I learn about (and use) Perplexity, the less I think they’re a good fit for Apple.
Now Anthropic, on the other hand.…
Blaugust
I was unaware of Blaugust until my friend and former colleague Scott jokingly mentioned it on Mastodon. In case you’re likewise unaware, Blaugust is a decade-old annual writing challenge, similar to NaNoWriMo, but instead of writing 50,000-word novels in November, you publish 31 blog posts in August:
The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. […]
Blaugust at its heart has always been about celebrating the creation of content on a regular schedule. The original challenge was to post 31 times during the month of August which is 31 days long. This can be posting every day or doubling up on some days to make the schedule a bit easier.
You may have caught the “shared community” in that first paragraph. Blaugust isn’t just about creating and publishing content on a regular basis. It’s also about being part of a community of bloggers:
Our hope is to create a nurturing environment where Veteran bloggers can help those just getting started and the cross-pollination of ideas can create something truly spectacular.
Since Blaugust is a “challenge,” there are, of course, “awards” for achieving milestones:
- Newbie Blogger Award – For signing up for Blaugust for the first time.
- Bronze Award – For writing at least 5 posts during August.
- Silver Award – At least 15 posts.
- Gold Award – At least 25 posts.
- Rainbow Diamond Award – Posted 31 times or more during August (“the original challenge”).
I can now claim the Newbie Blogger award, having officially signed up for the challenge, and the Bronze award, having already posted six times this month (this post makes seven)—meaning I’m almost halfway to Silver.
Gold and the coveted Rainbow Diamond awards are a stretch, but I have reason for hope: I’ve published 314 times since the start of the year, averaging more than one post a day, and I’m currently on a 203-day publishing streak—though some poorly timed travel will likely interrupt that. But I’m committed to publishing 24 more posts in 26 days.
Subscribe to follow my progress. Get each post by email, via RSS, or follow @jagsworkshop on Mastodon for notifications.
Interested in giving the challenge a shot? With three-ish weeks remaining in August, Bronze (at least) is eminently achievable, even if you’ve never blogged before. You can start blogging with WordPress, Medium, Tumblr, or Micro.blog. Not sure what to write? Try Blog Prompts for hundreds of ideas. Don’t forget to use the hashtag #blaugust2025!
You can share your progress with me: I’m on Mastodon and Bluesky. Let’s write!
Apple: The First 50 Years ⚙︎
David Pogue has a massive, 600-page tome forthcoming:
Deeply researched and lavishly illustrated in color, Apple: The First 50 Years includes new interviews with 150 key people who made the journey, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and many current designers, engineers, and executives. The book busts long-held myths; goes backstage for both the titanic successes (450 million iPods, 700 million iPads, 2.2 billion iPhones) and the instructive failures (Lisa, Apple III, MobileMe); and assesses the forces that challenge Apple’s dominance as it enters its second half century.
Coming March 2026. I’ve already placed my preorder (order yours through Bookshop or Amazon and I get a tiny kickback that supports the site).
Assuming it’s final, I find it a weird choice to use iPod controls on the cover. Is that the most iconic Apple image? Why not the original mouse? Or the arrow cursor? Or an iPhone silhouette? Personally, I’d have selected the original Macintosh icon, but I’m OG.
(Via Michael Tsai.)
John Gruber Doesn’t Like Substack ⚙︎
Gruber went on an anti-Substack tear over the weekend. It started Saturday with links to the whole Nazi notification thing and Substack’s “shaky” business model, and culminated that day with The Substack Branding and Faux Prestige Trap:
Less commented upon but just as bad is the branding trap. Substack is a damn good name. It looks good, it sounds good. It’s short and crisp and unique. But now they’ve gotten people to call publications on Substack not “blogs” or “newsletters” but “substacks”.
A friend, trying to be complimentary, once said to me, “Your Substack is neat and interesting, too.” I very nearly died inside. Don’t call it a Substack.
Gruber was back on Sunday with links on leaving Substack and Substack’s $100 million VC raise (provocatively titled “Substack Raised Another $100 Million, Which, I Bet, Is Already Being Flushed Down the Same Toilet as Their First $100 Million”), where he astutely notes:
If their business model were actually as simple as described, they’d already be profitable and wouldn’t have needed to raise another $100 million. They’ve already got a lot of subscribers. They’ve already got a stable of high-profile writers. They already keep 10 percent of what subscribers pay.[…]
What would validate Substack’s strategy is showing proof of actual profits and profitable growth. And if they had actual profits and profitable growth they wouldn’t have needed to raise another $100 million. […]
I firmly believe one could build a very nice business taking 10 percent of subscription revenue for a blogging/newsletter platform, if you could get as nice a roster of popular writers to build on the platform as Substack has. I do not think that’s a $1 billion business, though. And if it were, they should, at this point, be able to get there on their own, without additional funding. They should have achieved profitability lift-off long ago.
One might get the impression that Gruber isn’t a fan of Substack.
(Neither am I—Substack is X/Twitter for “intellectuals.” No one should use either.)
He then delivers his coup de grâce:
But what do I know, other than running a profitable independent website for the last 20 or so years?
Twenty years. Zero VC funding.
Burn.
Ghost 6 Announced, and $8.5M in Annual Revenue, Too ⚙︎
From Ghost Changelog (Ghost’s “product announcements & new features” site):
The next major version of Ghost has arrived, and our 6.0 release is packed full of more upgrades and improvements than you can shake a stick at.
The signature feature is integration with social networks (“discover, follow, like and reply to your posts across Bluesky, Flipboard, Threads, Mastodon, WordPress, Ghost”), plus a “native analytics suite” (just a couple of months after I ditched Google Analytics for Plausible), and—for those of us who self-host Ghost (hello!)—“a new official Docker Compose” environment (which should make it easier to deploy and manage).
I’ll be upgrading jagsworkshop.com to Ghost 6 once I’m able to fully test its features. Stay tuned for that.
Beyond the great new feature set though, what really caught my attention was their revenue:
When we announced Ghost 5.0 a few years ago, we were proud to share that Ghost’s revenue had hit $4M – while publisher earnings had surpassed $10M. It felt great to have such a clear sign that our goal to create a sustainable business model for independent creators was succeeding.
Today, Ghost’s annual revenue is over $8.5M while total publisher earnings on Ghost have now surpassed $100M.
Ghost is a not-for-profit organization. They have no venture capital investors to satisfy. They make money the way all good businesses should: by building a good product and charging a fair price for it. They do not, from what I can tell, promote Nazis.
Contrast this with its most well-known competitor, Substack, which is VC funded—it recently closed a $100 million round, valuing them at $1.1 billion—with an expected $45 million in annual revenue. And they definitely promote Nazis.
Substack pulls in 5.3x more revenue than Ghost ($45 million vs. $8.5 million) and is valued at $1.1 billion. So… congratulations to Ghost on their $200 million valuation!
(That’s how this works, right?)
The Tick Meat Lovers Fear is Spreading ⚙︎
A recent conversation with a friend reminded me that I’ve been meaning to link to this story from Oliver Milman at The Guardian:
Blood-sucking ticks that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite are exploding in number and spreading across the US, to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country and infect millions of people, experts have warned. […]
The ticks are known to be unusually aggressive and can provoke an allergy in bitten people whereby they cannot eat red meat without enduring a severe reaction, such as breaking out in hives and even the risk of heart attacks. The condition, known as alpha-gal syndrome, has proliferated from just a few dozen known cases in 2009 to as many as 450,000 now.
I first learned of alpha-gal syndrome in 2017 from a Wired article (archive), lamenting piteously to a few friends: Fuuuuuuuck mmmmeeeee…
An allergy to red meat would eliminate a significant portion of my (admittedly unhealthy) diet, from the obvious (burgers, steaks, sausage, ribs) to the less apparent (pork fried rice, lamb samosas, kao ga prow, dumplings). Even tacos become verboten. Tacos!
It’s a culinary death sentence!
So how far can alpha-gal spread? Cases have been found in Europe and Australia, although in low numbers, while in the US it’s assumed lone star ticks won’t be able to shift west of the Rocky mountains.
Whew. One more reason to live in California.
But other tick species might also be able to spread alpha-gal syndrome – a recent scientific paper found the western black legged tick and the black legged tick, also called the deer tick, could also cause the condition.
Shit.
Obviously I’m being flip here—alpha-gal syndrome is a serious allergic reaction which can lead to Anaphylaxis, a potentially fatal reaction that restricts breathing. Alpha-gal isn’t just found in “red meat,” but also in other mammal-derived food and non-food products: milk, lard, and bouillon, sure; but also in personal care and household products, and even in some medications and vaccines.
Beyond anaphylaxis, other symptoms include itchy skin, swelling, hives, wheezing, abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, heart palpitations, and low blood pressure.
There’s no cure, and treatment requires a strict elimination diet.
So once more, with feeling:
Shit.
Kamala Harris Interview on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ ⚙︎
Kamala Harris somehow manages to reflect both deep resignation and unbridled hope in her first significant post-election interview, on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Harris’ disappointment and disillusionment with the election—and the electorate—is palpable. Ostensibly on the show to pitch her new book, 107 Days, the interview felt akin to the first tentative steps of (very public) therapy, with moments of catharsis—brief, measured, but evident. I got the sense Harris is still emotionally raw from her experience—and understandably so. I think she has a lot to get off her chest, and this was her initial foray.
The moment that captured my attention came early in the interview. After Colbert asked if foregoing a run for governor of California is to “save herself for a different office,” she made it clear that “it’s more basic than that,” flatly stating:
I don’t want to go back in the system. I think it’s broken.
I—and the audience—gasped. It’s a stinging indictment. Even Colbert appeared taken aback, calling it “harrowing”—to which Harris quietly responds:
Well, but it’s also evident, isn’t it?
It’s quite evident to anyone paying even trivial attention—and not completely consumed by the MAGA cult.
Harris makes it clear her decision is not about giving up, that she’s “always gonna be part of the fight,” her goal being to “remind everyone who needs reminding right now of their power.”
The entire interview is terrific, including a moment toward the end when Harris acknowledges that, while she predicted much of what a Trump regime would bring, she could not predict “the capitulation” of “the guardians of our systems and our democracy.” Harris is unable to disguise her disgust for those supposed “guardians,” some of whom she calls “feckless.” Her anger is unmistakable.
Our civic discourse desperately needs more of Harris’ clear-eyed, righteous anger—and less apathetic acquiescence. I’m hopeful that her “listening tour” will spark other leaders to speak out. America needs a reckoning—and it can’t come quickly enough.
Figma Pops 250% in Market Debut—Adobe, Who? ⚙︎
Jordan Novet, CNBC:
Figma’s stock more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut on Thursday, a day after the design software company sold shares at $33 in its initial public offering.
Figma’s first trade at $85 valued the company at about $50 billion. The stock, trading under ticker symbol FIG, was halted after it soared past $112, before closing at $115.50 for a 250% gain. The company ended the day with a market cap of almost $68 billion.
I don’t often lust after company IPOs, but Figma is one I would have loved to get in on—not because I use Figma (I don’t), but because so many designers I know and respect love it.
Adobe’s plan to acquire Figma in 2022 for $20 billion fell through in the face of tough regulatory scrutiny. Figma got a $1 billion breakup fee that I’m sure softened the blow at the time, but today’s massive IPO no doubt makes up for any hard feelings.
Back to Novet at CNBC:
Figma boasts more than 13 million monthly users, two-thirds of whom are not designers. As of March 31, more than 1,000 clients were paying Figma upward of $100,000 annually, according to the prospectus. Google, Microsoft, Netflix and Uber are all customers.
Count Apple as a customer, too. Just a couple of weeks ago, they released an iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 design kit (or “UI Kit” in Apple parlance)—one of several design kits and icon templates created for Figma since iOS 17.
Oh… I didn’t get in on the IPO, of course—that’s reserved for the rich-and-well-connected crowd. And I have no plans to buy Figma at its post-pop price—way too rich for my blood. I’ll chill on the sidelines until the froth subsides.
(I’m Waiting for Go-down.)
Apple Reports Strong Q3 Despite Tariff Headwinds ⚙︎
Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2025 third quarter ended June 28, 2025. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $94.0 billion, up 10 percent year over year, and quarterly diluted earnings per share of $1.57, up 12 percent year over year.
Apple also reported “double-digit growth in iPhone, Mac and Services,” 12% EPS growth year over year, and “a new all-time high” installed base.
All in all, a strong quarter despite a significant impact from tariffs. During the earnings call, Tim Cook reported a small “pull forward of demand”—that is, purchases made sooner because of tariff concerns—but said it was only about one percentage point of the ten-point growth they saw. A bigger impact was the tariffs themselves. Cook said of this (as transcribed by 9to5Mac):
For the June quarter, we incurred approximately $800 million of tariff-related costs. For the September quarter, assuming the current global tariff rates, policies, and applications the balance of the quarter, and no new tariffs are added, we estimate the impact to add about $1.1 billion to our costs.
In addition to tariff uncertainty, Apple is also looking at a potential dent to its services revenue next quarter. Daniel Howley at Yahoo Finance:
The company could also have to deal with the impact of Google's antitrust lawsuit on the company's $20 billion per year agreement to use Google Search as the default option in the Safari browser and Siri.
Apple stock rose nearly 3% after hours before settling back under 2% as I publish.
See also: Jason Snell at Six Colors has his colorful charts up.
Wirecutter’s ‘Best Canned Cocktails’ ⚙︎
Antara Sinha, with a tough assignment at Wirecutter:
In our hunt for the best, we tasted 40 canned cocktails. Many just couldn’t hold up to the quality of a freshly made drink. But a few were balanced, complex, and convenient enough that we wouldn’t mind sipping on them in a variety of settings, from sunny beach days to, yes, swanky dinner parties. Here are the cans we couldn’t get enough of.
I’ve never tasted a canned cocktail worth trying again, but I haven’t tried any of these. “Best canned cocktails” is like “best frozen pizza”: a convenience option—acceptable in a pinch, probably better than nothing, and always a pale imitation of the real deal.
It’s Getting Harder to Pretend This Isn’t 1930s Germany
I recently saw two stories back-to-back that chillingly underscored where we are as a country—and where we’re headed.
The first was via Heidi Li Feldman, who shared this Will Bunch article from The Philadelphia Inquirer with the comment:
Important Will Bunch column on American concentration camps.
I don’t know about you, but “American concentration camps” lands like a jackhammer to the chest.
Bunch interviews Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps:
“I’m particularly concerned about where we are now, because we’re well into that five-year period in terms of we’re already doing sweeps, right?” Pitzer said. “We’ve already got masked guys. We’re already disappearing hundreds of people to … foreign countries, or to the Everglades, or now to Fort Bliss” — the El Paso, Texas, military base, which the Trump regime just awarded a $1.2 billion contract for a large new camp.
Bunch:
The most famous case study, in Nazi Germany, is also the source of many current misconceptions, since the “final solution” death camps, such as Auschwitz in Poland, where some of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust died in gas chambers, have often been what people think of. But the first well-known German concentration camp, Dachau, opened less than two months after Hitler took power in early 1933, and was used to detain — not slaughter — the Nazis’ political opponents.
“It was used in a kind of social engineering way,” Pitzer said of Hitler’s early camps. “There were a lot of homeless people, there were a lot of career criminals that they put in the camps to kind of dilute the percentage of political prisoners. So it would be more of a PR thing. People would support it more. You saw detention, particularly, of gay men.”
Immediately after seeing this article, a second crossed my social feeds—yet another executive order, written to sound benign, yet is anything but. Robert Davis at Raw Story explains it:
The order, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” directs multiple federal agencies to discontinue funding services such as Housing First, Safe Consumption Sites, and other harm reduction practices. It also directs states to detain people with serious mental illnesses regardless of “forensic bed capacity at appropriate local, State, and Federal jails or hospitals.”
The executive order asserts:
Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.
It also calls for the government to:
enforce, and where necessary, adopt, standards that address individuals who are a danger to themselves or others and suffer from serious mental illness or substance use disorder, or who are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves, through assisted outpatient treatment or by moving them into treatment centers or other appropriate facilities via civil commitment or other available means, to the maximum extent permitted by law[…]
And it seeks to encourage:
civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public[…]
This was via Denise Wheeler, who, in linking to the article, noted:
Hitler targeted people with mental or physical disabilities for murder in what the Nazis called the T-4, or “euthanasia” program.
Evan Urquhart of Assigned Media pulls it together:
As usual it’s too early to tell what this will look like in practice, but at a minimum they’re clearing the way for involuntary commitment for any homeless people authorities decide to target as well as at least some non-homeless people with mental illness.
At maximum this seems to open the door for authorities declaring people mentally ill and institutionalizing them on that basis.
It could lead to attempts to use this against protesters who haven’t done anything arrest-worthy, and perhaps eventually activists/dissidents/ideological opponents.
We’re constantly being told that America’s present is nothing like Germany’s past—so why does it look so damn familiar? It’s increasingly disingenuous, verging on intentional ignorance. These articles and commentary testify that “authoritarian America” is no longer an historical allusion or a speculative future: it’s our present.
Doug Glanville on ‘The Quiet Greatness of Ryne Sandberg’ ⚙︎
A lovely reminiscence from former Cubs outfielder Doug Glanville on how Ryne Sandberg’s “quiet confidence” during a minor league rehab stint subtly shaped his big league career:
But for me, I focused on something more personal. He was calm, intentional. He looked casual on the outside, but he cared. He was competitive, and he led by example, without having to say anything. No speeches, just a line or two of advice in private that carried more weight than a locker room address.
It gave me the freedom to challenge the labels I had been given, realizing that maybe those who assign labels are actually the lazy ones. Too impatient to take the time to really understand and get to know a player. Sure, it is important to listen and accept feedback, but I have always found it a stretch to accuse someone of not caring. Especially if the accusation is based solely on volume.
The following year, I made the 40-man MLB roster for spring training in Arizona. Fortunately, the Cubs put my locker next to Sandberg’s. I had a front-row seat to his routine. And long before I fully understood his work ethic, I took comfort in knowing you can be true to yourself and still add value to your team, and to your own performance.
Published a month ago, but made painfully poignant following Ryno’s passing.
Ryne Sandberg, Cubs’ Stellar Hall of Fame Second Baseman, Dies at 65 ⚙︎
Patrick Mooney, writing for The Athletic on Monday:
Ryne Sandberg, an iconic player for generations of Chicago Cubs fans and a distinguished member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, died Monday at the age of 65 from metastatic prostate cancer, the team announced. Sandberg passed away at his home, surrounded by his family, the Cubs shared.
Jay Cohen, AP:
Sandberg announced in January 2024 that he had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. He had chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and then said in August 2024 that he was cancer-free.
But he posted on Instagram on Dec. 10 that his cancer had returned and spread to other organs. He announced this month that he was still fighting, while “looking forward to making the most of every day with my loving family and friends.”
Absolutely Fuck Cancer.
Eli Ong, WGN, Chicago’s Very Own broadcast home of the Cubs:
In all, Sandberg played 15 seasons on the North Side and finished his career as a Cub in 1997. By the time he hung up his cleats, he had become a ten-time all-star, nine-time Gold Glove winner (all consecutively), a seven-time Silver Slugger, and the 1990 home run derby champion (the same season he led the NL in home runs).
Growing up in New York in the mid-’80s and early ’90s, I watched “Ryno” play a lot against my beloved Mets. He was one of the best-hitting, best-fielding second basemen of my youth—much to our great frustration.
He played the game hard, he played it right, and he played it with “respect,” as he called it in his wonderful Hall of Fame induction speech:
Everything I am today, everything I have today, everything I will ever be is because of the game of baseball. Not the game you see on TV or in movies—Baseball. The one we all know. The one we played with whiffle ball bats, pretending to be Yaz or Fisk or Rose, in dirt fields and in alleys. We all know that game. The game fit me because it was right, it was all about doing things right. If you played the game the right way, played the game for the team, good things would happen. That’s what I loved most about the game, how a ground out to second with a man on second and nobody out was a great thing. Respect.
[…]
I was taught you never, ever disrespect your opponent or your teammates or your organization or your manager and never, ever your uniform. Make a great play? Act like you’ve done it before. Get a big hit? Look for the third base coach and get ready to run the bases. Hit a home run? Put your head down, drop the bat, run around the bases, because the name on the front is a lot more important than the name on the back. That’s respect.
Today’s players could learn a lot about “respect” from Ryno.
My condolences to his family, friends, and fans.
Nerd Achievement Unlocked: My Name and Snarky Comment Read on ATP
I’ve been listening to ATP—Accidental Tech Podcast—for its entire decade-plus run. Self-described as “Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters,” the hosts (Marco Arment, Casey Liss, and John Siracusa) bring a thoughtful yet playful approach to their Apple and tech conversations. Every episode is a joy to listen to (even though they sometimes rile me up), and it’s one of a small handful of podcasts I (gladly) pay to support.
On episode 647: You Get One Exclamation Point, The Boys™ discuss various ways Apple might achieve cost savings on a rumored low-cost Apple laptop. Their ideas, presented draft-pick style, were mostly serious, focusing on components Apple might remove to reduce the price of this hypothetical new hardware.
After the show aired, I quipped on Mastodon:
One option not suggested by The Boys™ on the latest @atpfm for cost savings on the rumored “low-cost Apple laptop”:
Ads on the boot, login, and wake screens—and, for good measure—the screensaver 🤑
Coming Soon: “Apple MacBook (Fall 2025, with ads)”… with a $150 option to remove them 🤪
One enjoyable ATP bit is that each episode starts with Follow-up (copyright John Siracusa), where they expand, correct, or simply comment on previous topics. That often includes commentary from their listeners.
On episode 650: Whatever It Takes to Get the Laundry Folded, came this follow-up:
Alright, with regards to the low-cost Apple laptops, Jason Anthony Guy writes…
Nerd achievement unlocked! 🔓🎉 Imagine my shock in hearing this last week (the episode came out today, but I listened to the “bootleg,” released immediately after recording ends—it’s one of the perks of membership). I was utterly delighted. It’s the nerd equivalent of having your Letter to the Editor printed in the newspaper or your timestamp opening NPR Politics.
(Ask your parents, kids.)
One thing you may have noticed in my Mastodon post: I wrote “Apple MacBook (Fall 2025, with ads)”. Casey dutifully explains the joke (it’s an Amazon Kindle reference), but John and Marco humorously correct him that Kindle has “special offers,” not “ads”.
I apologized to Casey for botching the joke and forcing him to bear the brunt of Marco’s and John’s joshing for my humor fail.
But wait! Turns Out™, the Kindle purchase options are “Ad-supported” and “Without Lockscreen Ads.” No mention of “special offers”!
Vindication!
OK, well, partial vindication: the Kindle device management page (where you can remove lock screen ads), does call them “Special Offers”.
#CaseyWasRight to call them “ads” and deserves both partial credit and a tearful (and no doubt begrudging) apology from his doubting cohosts in the next follow-up.
‘Glass Is Not a Part of Our Evolutionary Environment’ ⚙︎
Ilia Werner (Design Lovers on YouTube) wonders:
What is it about [glass] that makes tech giants return to it again and again? […]
Glass is not a part of our evolutionary environment.
Werner answers:
We are drawn to glass because it masterfully combines a primal, sensory lure with a sophisticated cognitive tool, all wrapped in the perfect metaphor for our digital age.
A short, thought-provoking perspective on the seemingly cyclical nature of glass (and glassy) user interfaces—from Aqua to Windows Aero to iOS 7 (a surprising but valid inclusion), and now, Apple’s Liquid Glass.
Adam Aaronson Drank all 102 IBA Cocktails ⚙︎
The International Bartenders Association, or IBA, maintains a list of official cocktails, ones they deem to be “the most requested recipes” at bars all around the world. It’s the closest thing the bartending industry has to a canonical list of cocktails […]
As of 2025, there are 102 IBA official cocktails, and as of July 12, 2025, I’ve had every one of them.
The journey has taken me to some interesting places, and now that it’s done, I have a little story to tell for each cocktail. I’m not gonna tell you all 102 stories, but I do want to debrief the experience. Drinking all 102 cocktails turned out to be unexpectedly tricky, and for reasons you’ll soon understand, I might be one of the first people in the world to do it.
This is my kind of project, and I’m disappointed that I didn’t think to do it myself.
I’ve tossed back a mere 43 of the current 102 IBA cocktails, a disappointing showing for a self-described cocktail enthusiast. This, of course, must and will be corrected. Many of the cocktails I’m missing are variations on a theme, with ingredients I have or can easily procure. The rest will require dedication—though I’m unsure if I’ll be able to achieve a 100% completion any time soon, considering the challenges Aaronson describes for his “final boss” cocktail: the IBA Tiki, which requires a pair of Cuban rums unavailable—legally, anyway—in the U.S.
Aaronson catalogs each cocktail by name recognition (well-known, medium, obscure) and by ingredient availability (easy, medium, hard) to identify which ones you’re likely to find at any halfway decent cocktail bar, and which ones you’ll have to hunt for—a very handy cheat-sheet!
One takeaway from Aaronson’s exercise: I need to start keeping lists.
(Via Nick Heer at Pixel Envy.)
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.