Jonathan Vanian at CNBC, confirming a Bloomberg report:

Meta plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, about 8,000 employees, as it continues ramping up investments in artificial intelligence.

The cuts will begin May 20, and the company is scrapping plans to hire people for 6,000 open roles, according to a Thursday memo to employees. […]

Meta’s latest round of cuts follows several smaller job reductions that the company said was necessary to improve efficiency while focusing its efforts on generative AI, where it’s lagged OpenAI, Google and Anthropic.

Affected employees get “16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks for every year of employment.” For a recent hire—someone who may have only recently upended their life to work at Meta—that’s about four months to find a new job before their lease is up for renewal. Someone with five years at the company, who has established roots, perhaps with a kid just entering first grade, gets six months to restabilize their life. A Meta veteran of 18 years—I’m guessing there are very few of those—will have a year to determine if they still have a viable career in technology. If they’re under 50, they have a shot. If they’re not, well, good luck, I hope you’ve invested well.

All of this upheaval because Mark Zuckerberg chases technological fantasies with the attention span of a gerbil.

I have every confidence that he’ll be as successful with his AI machinations as he was with virtual reality.

Good news for the remaining employees, though: as a reward, they’ll be surveilled to train Meta’s AI, reports Katie Paul and Jeff Horwitz at Reuters, presumably so Meta can eventually lay them off, too:

Meta is installing new tracking software on U.S.-based employees’ computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its artificial intelligence models, part of a broad initiative to build AI agents that can perform work tasks autonomously, the company told staffers in internal memos seen by Reuters.

The tool, called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), will run on work-related apps and websites and will also take occasional snapshots of the content on employees’ screens, according to one of the memos, posted by a staff AI research scientist on Tuesday in a channel for the company’s model-building Meta SuperIntelligence Labs team.

The purpose, according to the memo, was to improve the company’s AI models in areas where they struggle to replicate how humans interact with computers, like choosing from dropdown menus and using keyboard shortcuts.

Perhaps the thousands of people losing their jobs are the lucky ones.

Why spy on only U.S.-based employees?

In some countries, such as Italy, using electronic monitoring to track employee productivity is explicitly illegal, while in Germany, courts have held that employers can deploy keystroke logging only in exceptional circumstances, such as suspicion of a serious criminal offense.

Additionally, [York University law professor Valerio] De Stefano said, the practice would likely be considered a violation of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation.

As annoying as those GDPR-inspired cookie banners are, I’d welcome the privacy safeguards that law enables.

Many of the lucky American employees reacted negatively, with the top-rated comment on their internal chat system, according to Charles Rollet at Business Insider, being “This makes me super uncomfortable. How do we opt out?”

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth responded in the thread that “there is no option to opt out of this on your work provided laptop.” This comment received a mix of crying, shocked, and angry-face emojis.

Meta’s entire business is predicated on tracking vast amounts of data about its users—sometimes surreptitiously—so it’s perplexing that any employee would react negatively when Meta decides to collect vast amounts of data about them. Or to put it more blithely:

“I never thought leopards would surveil me,” sobs woman working for the Leopards Surveilling People Company.

Chad Blair writing for Honolulu Civil Beat, earlier this month:

Few decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court have had a greater impact on the nation’s political landscape than the 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The 5–4 decision allowed corporations and other outside groups including labor unions to spend unlimited money on elections. […]

But what if the states took the initiative to limit the impact of Citizens United by passing their own laws to change the way corporations are defined?

That is the purpose of Senate Bill 2471, which would emphasize that corporations are “artificial persons” created by state law and granted powers and privileges by it — something SB 2471 points out is already part of Hawaiʻi’s constitution.

The bill would make clear that the powers of corporations do not include spending money or contributing “anything of value” to influence elections or ballot measures, as the bill’s language explains.

Corporations exist because states define the rules of their existence. In theory, that should mean corporations have only the rights granted to them by the states—and states therefore can redefine, or eliminate, those rights.

While the law targets the “dark money” unleashed by Citizens United, should it pass and survive the inevitable legal challenges (which I hope it does, as corporations do not have the right to vote and therefore should not wield such tremendous power over our elections), a similarly innovative approach could be used to redefine all manner of corporate “personhood” issues—including making their top officers legally and morally responsible for corporate malfeasance.

Hawaiʻi is the first state to attempt this novel maneuver, but it’s not the only one considering it:

[…] legislation based on this framework has now been introduced in 13 states besides Hawaiʻi: Arizona, California, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

That’s a surprisingly bipartisan bloc potentially uniting against Citizens United.

M. Gessen, in a New York Times Opinion piece last week (gift link):

For the first time in France, and possibly for the first time ever, anywhere, an entire corporation had been put on trial and found criminally liable for enabling terrorism.

The corporate defendant was “one of the world’s largest cement manufacturers, Lafarge,” and the men on trial were Bruno Lafont, the 69-year-old former chief executive, and Christian Herrault, the 75-year-old former deputy head of operations.

The court had concluded that between 2013 and 2014, the cement maker paid about $6.5 million to the Islamic State and other terrorist groups in Syria, to facilitate the company’s operations there. Lafarge — now owned by the Swiss conglomerate Holcim — will have to pay about $1.3 million in fines for the crime of financing terrorism and $5.3 million for violating international sanctions. In another case, Lafarge is facing charges of complicity in crimes against humanity. If that case goes to trial and Lafarge is again found guilty, a new chapter in the prosecution of war crimes may begin.

The fines are, of course, a mere “cost of doing business” for the company. The conviction of the two executives, who will be serving six and five years, respectively, is a game-changer.

I find it absurd that the American legal system has deemed that corporations are people, with all of the attendant rights, but few of the responsibilities or consequences. A “natural person” can be prosecuted, fined, and jailed—even executed in some especially regressive jurisdictions. A corporation faces only prosecution and fines, and corporate officers, not even that.

My hope is that the U.S. will someday follow in France’s footsteps. The first U.S.-based executive to be convicted for the illegal acts of their company will send reverberations across Wall Street and, perhaps, usher in a new day of corporate responsibility.

I’ve long thought Wile E. Coyote should sue ACME for all the failed products he’s bought from them, so it’s great to see he’s getting his long-delayed day in court in the long-delayed Coyote vs. Acme. I’m getting big Who Framed Roger Rabbit? vibes from the mix of live action and animation. Lots of laughs in the trailer (Daffy Duck: “Ac-me? Ac-you!”), but I chortled the most at the meta-dig at Warner Bros. as being a “wholly owned subsidiary of ACME Corporation,” which is “releasing this film for accounting purposes only” (see also this 15-second teaser). The movie’s Wikipedia entry provides context if you aren’t up on the real-world corporate shenanigans that led us here.

The Washington Post Editorial Board on Tuesday (archived), following Virginia’s passage of its mid-decade (and now judicially blocked) redistricting amendment:

Virginia plunges America deeper into the gerrymandering abyss

The redistricting scheme was always a power grab by Democrats. Voters went along with it.

The Washington Post Editorial Board, last August (archived), following Texas’ passage of its mid-decade redistricting map:

The Texas gerrymander freakout

What’s happening in the Lone Star State is not a threat to democracy.

Virginia’s gerrymandering comes after Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah all implemented Republican-friendly gerrymandered maps, but sure, blame Virginia for the “power grab” that’s plunging us into the “gerrymandering abyss.”

The Washington Post Editorial Board has become a fetid corpse, rotting under Jeff Bezos. I would find it farcical if it wasn’t so pathetic.

No gift links because I no longer subscribe to The Washington Post.

Bryce P. Tetraeder, CEO, Global Tetrahedron, with an update to its plans for the odious Alex Jones’ InfoWars:

Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds. The InfoWars of old was only the prototype for the hell I know we can build together: A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery, their minds fully disintegrating on contact. […]

The InfoWars of tomorrow will converge into a swirling vortex of content about content, talent acquiring talent, rings of concentric media mergers processing all human artistry into one endlessly digestible slurry. This will be a dank, sunless place, one where panic and capital feed on each other like twins in the womb of a hulking, unknowable monster—a monster known by many names, but which I like to call modern-day America.

So, no real changes.

See Also: Coverage from AP News, The New York Times.

Anil Dash, perhaps the most unexpected authority on Prince, catalogues his many writings about the legendary artist on this, the tenth anniversary of Price’s passing. It’s “a chance to explore some aspect of [Prince’s] artistry or legacy that you haven’t yet had a chance to discover”.

In the two Newsroom photos of John Ternus in Apple’s announcement of his accession to CEO, he’s seen wearing a Black Unity Braided Solo Loop, part of Apple’s Special Edition Unity Connection. From the marketing page for the band:

Inspired by the power of connection, this striking band uses an advanced braiding technique to unite multiple yarns in a Pan‑African color palette of red, green, and black — creating a vibrant and tactile dimensionality. […]

Three bands, one community. The Black Unity Collection continues to support organizations dedicated to advancing racial equity and justice. […]

The band was designed by Black creatives and allies at Apple.

I’m sure Ternus rotates his watchbands regularly, so I don’t want to read too much into his selection, but I want to believe he either wears this band regularly or chose to wear it for these photos.

The Black Unity band is a deeply meaningful artifact for Apple’s Black community. I recall an October 2017 meeting between Apple’s Black employee association and its then-executive sponsor, Lisa Jackson, where we explored creating a “Truth” watchband to celebrate Black history and culture. Three years later—after I’d stepped down as co-chair, to be clear—Apple announced its first Black Unity Collection band, with the words “Truth. Power. Solidarity.” laser-engraved onto the fastening pin. It was a significant achievement for the many people who worked tirelessly to bring the long-gestating project to life, and a symbol of Apple’s commitment to inclusion and diversity.

Ternus led that Product Design team.

Whether Ternus is wearing the latest iteration by choice or by chance, I’m taking it as a sign that he’ll continue that commitment.

Apple Newsroom, in a stunner for its timing, if not it’s matter-of-factness:

Apple announced that Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors and John Ternus, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple’s next chief executive officer effective on September 1, 2026. The transition, which was approved unanimously by the Board of Directors, follows a thoughtful, long-term succession planning process

Cook will continue in his role as CEO through the summer as he works closely with Ternus on a smooth transition. As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.

Cook also posted a “Community Letter from Tim”:

This is not goodbye. But at this moment of transition, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you. Not on behalf of the company, this time, though there is a wellspring of gratitude for you that overflows inside our walls. But simply on behalf of me. Tim.

Separately, Apple also announced that “Johny Srouji named Apple’s Chief Hardware Officer”:

Apple today announced that, effective immediately, Apple executive Johny Srouji will become chief hardware officer. Srouji, who most recently served as senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, will assume an expanded role leading Hardware Engineering, which John Ternus most recently oversaw, as well as the hardware technologies organization.

My only question: will Cook or Ternus open WWDC26?

Each winter, Harbin, in northeast China, hosts the International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, featuring enormous buildings and sculptures constructed from blocks of ice carved from the nearby river. A fascinating 36-minute video details the stunning amount of logistics, creativity, and ingenuity that goes into building this ephemeral megacity (it exists for a mere two months).

(I once visited the Harbin ice festival in 2012 with my wife and friends. I remember being awed by the beauty and astounded by the scale—massive, though not yet the world’s largest ice and snow festival that it is today. I also recall it was bloody cold. I mean brutal.)

Todd Spangler, Variety:

In a prayer delivered by [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth during a Pentagon worship service on Wednesday, he read a fake Bible verse from Tarantino’s 1994 “Pulp Fiction.” It was the altered version of Ezekiel 25:17 that is righteously delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s character in the movie just before he shoots a man to death. […]

What Hegseth read was nearly word-for-word the line delivered by Jules Winnfield, Jackson’s hitman in “Pulp Fiction” […]

Timestamped video, via Defense Now.

Later, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell attempted to clarify:

Secretary Hegseth on Wednesday shared a custom prayer, referenced as the CSAR prayer, used by the brave warfighters of Sandy-1 who led the daylight rescue mission of Dude 44 Alpha out of Iran, which was obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction. However, both the CSAR prayer and the dialogue in Pulp Fiction were reflections of the verse Ezekiel 25:17, as Secretary Hegseth clearly said in his remarks at the prayer service. Anyone saying the Secretary misquoted Ezekiel 25:17 is peddling fake news and ignorant of reality.

First, yes, I recognize the utter inanity of the Secretary of Defense quoting Bible verses—real or otherwise—at a military “prayer service.”

Second, Hegseth absolutely misquoted Ezekiel 25:17, and I’m not sure he knows he did so.

Hegseth said the prayer was “delivered from the lead mission planner of Sandy-1,” the rescue mission that located and extracted the Air Force members who were shot down over Iran. He says, with a slight chuckle—as the audience chuckles along—that he thinks it “is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17.”

What I think happened: The Sandy-1 planner obviously and deliberately appropriated the Pulp Fiction quote and altered it to fit their mission. They then shared it with Hegseth, expecting him to appreciate the artful alterations to the well-known speech. Hegseth, apparently devoid of any culture, didn’t recognize it as a Pulp Fiction reference, and presumed it to be a lightly revised version of the actual Ezekiel 25:17.

Had his spokesperson simply left his statement as the “custom prayer … was obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction,” and added “which Secretary Hegseth delivered with a chuckle,” then, despite Hegseth’s earnest delivery, there’d be plausible deniability, and this would have been simply one more example of Hegseth’s use of inappropriately violent imagery. But since no one in this administration can be wrong (and not just “not wrong,” but “arguably right”), the statement had to include a positive spin on Hegseth’s flub.

A heads-up for Whiskey Pete: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.… smelled like… victory” is not the heroic quote you think it is.

I missed David Price’s Macworld piece from earlier this month, where he counted down Apple’s 50 “most important people who made it all possible.”

I must have been number 51.

The top four are who you’d likely expect, and I’m thrilled to see Lisa Jackson on the list (No. 24), but you’re unlikely to recognize a third of the names, and there are some questionable inclusions and rankings here. Al Gore (No. 49) and Dieter Rams (No. 22)? Really? And Phil Schiller (No. 40) and Jeff Williams (No. 35) should be way higher, top 20 at least. And it’s a damn shame that Tony Fadell is (deservedly) on the list (No. 5), but the just-retired and equally-important-to-iPod (and Apple) Stan Ng isn’t.

Stan Ng, on LinkedIn:

After 31 years at Apple, today was my last day. I think I got in everything I wanted to do on my last day before retiring […]

His bucket list included eating “from the last station I had never eaten from at Caffe Macs”—the pizza station, a favorite of many an Apple employee—and watching the “sunrise at Apple Park while listening to my original iPod.”

(Coincidentally, I recently found my 2nd- and 5th-generation iPod nano. Alas, unlike Stan’s iPod, whose original battery “still held up for several hours,” my batteries die immediately.)

Stan was the original product marketing manager for iPod, before taking on iPhone, Apple Watch, Health, Home, and AirPods. I never had the pleasure of working with him in a direct capacity, but our teams collaborated often. He is, as one former colleague put it, “legendary.” My congratulations to Stan on a stellar career. I wish him the best of luck after Apple.

Anthropic is requiring a “valid government-issued photo ID” for some users, a new support document reveals:

We are rolling out identity verification for a few use cases, and you might see a verification prompt when accessing certain capabilities, as part of our routine platform integrity checks, or other safety and compliance measures. […]

We selected Persona Identities as our verification partner based on the strength of their technology, privacy controls, and security safeguards. Follow the steps below to complete your identity verification process.

Persona is funded by Peter Thiel, who co-founded Palantir, which supports ICE raids and detentions.

Via Implicator.ai, where Harkaram Grewal notes:

The change lands less than two months after Claude drew a surge of users from OpenAI’s ChatGPT during Anthropic’s public fight with the Pentagon over mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.

Anthropic claims:

This applies to a small number of cases where we see activity that indicates potentially fraudulent or abusive behavior, which is against our usage policy.

An identity verification prompt would be a hard pass for me, and I’m guessing many others. This is a surefire way to kill Claude. What is Anthropic thinking?

Anthropic introduces Claude Opus 4.7:

Opus 4.7 is a notable improvement on Opus 4.6 in advanced software engineering, with particular gains on the most difficult tasks. Users report being able to hand off their hardest coding work—the kind that previously needed close supervision—to Opus 4.7 with confidence. Opus 4.7 handles complex, long-running tasks with rigor and consistency, pays precise attention to instructions, and devises ways to verify its own outputs before reporting back.

The model also has substantially better vision: it can see images in greater resolution. It’s more tasteful and creative when completing professional tasks, producing higher-quality interfaces, slides, and docs. And—although it is less broadly capable than our most powerful model, Claude Mythos Preview—it shows better results than Opus 4.6 across a range of benchmarks […]

The forbidden Mythos model is included in the comparison table, a not-so-subtle reminder of how great Mythos supposedly is—access to which is limited to Project Glasswing partners.

John Sharp, reporting for AL.com on the case of Renea Gamble:

A Fairhope municipal judge on Wednesday acquitted an Oct. 18 “No Kings” protester who was arrested for wearing a giant inflatable penis costume, a case that has drawn national attention, laughter and debate over First Amendment rights.

That this even made it to trial is its own absurdity. The trial only lasted about two hours, though the judge seemed reluctant to rule in Gamble’s favor.

Fairhope city attorney Marcus McDowell said he did not believe the arrest involved any First Amendment violation.

“There is no constitutional right to wear a total erect penis on the side of the road,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

No word if a semi-erect or flaccid penis is constitutionally protected.

Allbirds, the once-darling shoemaker beloved by tech bros (and my wife), with an announcement that’s not satire:

Allbirds, Inc. (Nasdaq: BIRD) (the “Company”) today announced the execution of a definitive agreement with an institutional investor for a $50 million convertible financing facility (the “Facility”). The Facility, which is expected to close during the second quarter of 2026, will enable the Company to pivot its business to AI compute infrastructure, with a long-term vision to become a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-native cloud solutions provider. In connection with this pivot, the Company anticipates changing its name to “NewBird AI.”

Missed opportunity to go with “AIIBirds.”

Allbirds was worth $4 billion a few years back, and a couple of weeks ago sold its brand and assets for a mere $39 million to American Exchange Group. Instead of selling shoes to tech bros, they’ll sell AI cloud compute to… tech bros.

My wife broke the news of the AI pivot this morning, as she owns several pairs of Allbirds shoes and an equal number of shares—an investment that’s lost 99% of its value. Well, 98% now, I suppose. Bryce Elder, reporting in the Financial Times (email-gated):

The announcement was enough to establish Allbirds as a meme stock. At pixel time, the shares are up 774 per cent at $21.76, to give the soon-to-be shell a market cap of slightly more than $184.5mn.

We’d suggest running away as quickly as possible, if anyone can suggest a suitable brand of footwear for the task.

One person waggishly observed:

Ya know, Berkshire Hathaway was a textile company before it pivoted to insurance, and things worked out great for them.

I’ll eat my wife’s Allbirds if NewBird AI exists in two years.

See Also: Techmeme’s coverage.

Oliver Knight, CoinDesk:

A fake version of Ledger Live distributed via Apple’s App Store has been linked to at least $9.5 million in crypto theft, with victims now coming forward describing devastating losses, including entire retirement funds wiped out “in an instant.” […]

The phishing campaign, active between April 7 and April 13, impacted more than 50 suspected victims across Bitcoin, Ethereum-compatible networks, Tron, Solana and XRP. […]

Apple removed the fake Ledger Live app from the App Store, but questions remain about how it passed review and how long it was available.

This was the Mac App Store. It’s a team I’m extraordinarily familiar with and have tremendous affection for. I still have many friends working in App Review and I’m excruciatingly aware of their workload and the pressure to review and approve apps quickly.

Kudos to Apple for acting quickly to pull the app, but c’mon y’all. Shame on you—the individual reviewers, the managers, all the way up—for approving this app. What’s especially frustrating is the app was approved not once, but several times over the course of a week.

Any app that touches the financial system in any capacity should receive extraordinary vetting during the app review process—including by subject matter experts—and should never receive approval without positive confirmation that the app is legitimate. Is it more work? Absolutely, but it’s the right tradeoff for such an important category, and the alternative—as here—is so much worse.

As a reviewer, you should always ask yourself “Am I OK with my loved ones using this app?” If not, flag it. I’d rather read about the real Ledger app taking weeks to get approved than about fake apps scamming people out of their savings.

Zack Whittaker, TechCrunch:

Adobe has patched a vulnerability in its flagship document-reading apps, Acrobat DC, Reader DC and Acrobat 2024, that hackers have been actively exploiting for at least four months.

The vulnerability, officially tracked as CVE-2026–34621, allows hackers to remotely plant malware on a person’s device by tricking them into opening a maliciously crafted PDF file on their Windows device or macOS computer. The exploit targets a vulnerability in some versions of the Adobe Reader software.

It is not yet known how many people have been affected by this hacking campaign. In a note on its website, Adobe said it was aware that the bug is being exploited in the wild, known as a zero-day, indicating that hackers have been using it to break into people’s computers before Adobe could fix it.

I can’t recall the last time I used Adobe’s PDF reader apps, as I open 99% of PDFs using Apple Preview, Files or QuickLook, and most of the rest in Safari.

Alexander Burns, writing for Politico:

The defeat of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, should deliver a sharp jolt to one of America’s two major political parties.

Oddly, it’s not the Republicans, deeply invested though they were in Orbán as a fellow traveler. […]

[…] the sharpest message from Budapest should be for the Democrats, strange as that may sound.

This bad-for-Democrats headline is very New York Times. Politico changed the headline shortly after publication to “Orbán's Defeat Shows What Trump's Opponents Keep Doing Wrong” (screenshot of original above—some telltale evidence of which remains visible in the URL: hungary-election-orban-defeat-message-democrats). That’s a (slightly) better match for the article (700 words flagellating Democrats for the party’s “command-and-control mindset” and “reverence for norms over original thinking and big ideas” and exhorting them to find “insurgents” in this “age of convulsion.”)

Ashifa Kassam and Flora Garamvolgyi, reporting for The Guardian:

Hungary’s opposition Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, has won the election, bringing an end to Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on power, in a result that is likely to rattle the White House and reshape the country’s relationship with the EU.

Less than three hours after polls closed on Sunday, Orbán conceded defeat after what he described as a “painful but unambiguous” election result.

Donald Trump: They say / Viktor Orbán is conceding and stepping away / Is that true? / I wasn’t aware that is something a person could do.

The Portraits of Another Life YouTube channel has a lovely profile of Disney Imagineer Ray Kinman, who created several of the beautiful wood carvings for Disneyland attractions (including Indiana Jones Adventure Outpost and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh). Three wonderful quotes that resonated:

I learn to do what I do by making mistakes, just by screwing it up—well that didn’t work—and trying something else. Embrace the mistakes. […] I think we’re kind of trained in school and in life to get the right answers and get rewarded for those and penalized for mistakes, but mistakes are where that really great learning and growth comes.

And:

Talent, I believe, is mostly a myth, because I hear that a lot—oh you’re so talented—and it’s not really true. Your greatest asset isn’t your good looks, it’s not education, it’s not who you know, it’s none of those things. The greatest asset you have is your persistence, and it’s the one thing that you’re fully in control of. When you see someone who really excels at something, it’s persistence and staying with it and repetition over a long period of time. That’s what you’re looking at.

And:

My definition of an artist is someone who creates.

Taken together, they form a terrific precept for creativity of any sort: Do the work, make mistakes, learn, repeat. Great advice whether you’re whittling wood, writing words, painting pictures, or crafting code.

If you were a fan of the original eight-season run of Scrubs (you heard me), you will find much to like in the revival series. The headline characters are just who they should be, with welcome (and sometimes unexpected) growth (“The Todd really likes to go deep… with consent five.”). It feels like catching up with long-lost friends, and much of the new cast is wonderful (Amanda Morrow and Layla Mohammadi in particular). Episode 8 (of nine) brings a trademark Scrubs “Oh, you thought this was a sitcom?” moment that’s incredibly emotional for long-time fans. The biggest issue, such as it is, is one from which all reboots seem to suffer: a misplaced eagerness to introduce new characters as quirky as the original cast (I’m looking at you, nurses Dubois and Raymond!). Still, it’s a blast to reconnect with these characters and I hope the revival gets a second season.

A brief rant directed specifically at the clueless marketing executives at Hulu/ABC, but relevant to all streaming services broadly

In writing this up, I naturally wanted to provide a relevant link for anyone inspired to watch the show. Alas, I was unable to do so, as there was no direct link on either the ABC or Hulu websites to the latest season of the show (ideally with a description and complete list of episodes).

My only option was to link to the original series on Hulu, which does not mention a “Season 10,” and instead hides the revival behind a “Scrubs (2026)” link, which contains no episode information, is paywalled, and, astonishingly, contains the wrong pitch (“Start watching Scrubs (2001) / 9 seasons available (182 episodes)”). Anyone interested in season 10 is going to shrug and walk away, convinced the season is not yet available.

ABC is even worse, showing only four episodes of Season 1, with a tantalizing “Show All” button that reveals… four more episodes. Clicking on the prominent “Watch Scrubs on Hulu” link takes you to a different Hulu page, which includes only those eight episodes of Season 1, with no way to get to the complete series—nor to the revival. Pathetic.

The obvious goal (to me and most readers of this site) of a TV show’s landing page is to convince people to sign up for the streaming service so they can watch the show, but if no one can learn about the show—watch clips, see episode descriptions, watch a trailer—why would they commit to paying money to watch it?

ABC, Hulu: Call me; I’ll help you fix this. I’ll accept payment in free streaming for life.

Kevin Powell, at Newsweek, reflects on Afrika Bambaataa’s death and legacy:

But, alas, here I am, dazed and confused by the sad and tragic fall of Afrika Bambaataa, a preeminent pioneer of hip-hop.[…]

But as my wife always says, two things can be true at the same time. There is no hip-hop as we know it without ambassadors like Afrika Bambaataa […]

But the other vicious reality is that a long line of people in the circle and community of Afrika Bambaataa knew something, and no one ever said anything, tried to stop it, help him, help the alleged victims. The vicious reality is there is a long line of people, mostly males, in sports, in entertainment, lurking in our neighborhoods, who have been accused of very ugly things: rape, domestic violence, sex with underaged people, marrying underaged people, grooming, kidnapping, even murder, and heads are casually turned toward indifference. Too often, the victims get blamed again and again.

Michael Saponara, Billboard:

Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa (born Lance Taylor) has died at age 68. According to TMZ, which first reported the news, the “Planet Rock” artist died Thursday (April 9) from complications due to cancer.

Truly, Fuck Cancer.

Carly Thomas, The Hollywood Reporter:

Bambaataa became one of the leading artists to blend electronic sounds inspired by Kraftwerk within the hip-hop genre. His breakthrough song “Planet Rock,” released in 1982 with Soulsonic Force, helped put him on the map and was a seminal record in defining electro-funk.

Planet Rock is my earliest American musical memory.

Tom Tapp, Deadline:

In 2016, Bambaataa was faced with multiple allegations of child sexual abuse and trafficking from young men in the Bronx. At the time, he reportedly denied the accusations, saying they “are baseless and are a cowardly attempt to tarnish my reputation and legacy in hip-hop at this time.”

He was not criminally charged, but lost a civil case by default in 2025 that was brought by an accuser after he failed to appear in court.

I was, regretfully, unaware of these accusations.

Kurtis Blow, early rapper and Executive Director of The Hip-Hop Alliance, on Instagram (via Variety):

Today, we acknowledge the transition of a foundational architect of Hip Hop culture, Afrika Bambaataa. As the founder of the Universal Zulu Nation, Afrika Bambaataa helped shape the early identity of Hip Hop as a global movement rooted in peace, unity, love, and having fun. His vision transformed the Bronx into the birthplace of a culture that now reaches every corner of the world. Through his music, leadership, and influence, he contributed to the foundation of Hip Hop’s core principles, inspiring generations of MCs, DJs, breakers, and cultural leaders. His imprint on Hip Hop history is undeniable and will forever remain part of the culture’s origin story. At the same time, we recognize that his legacy is complex and has been the subject of serious conversations within our community. As an organization committed to truth, accountability, and the preservation of Hip Hop culture, we believe it is important to hold space for all voices while continuing to uplift what empowers and protects the people.

Afrika Bambaataa’s undeniable influence is forever marred by these disturbing abuse accusations. A disquieting coda to a pioneering life.

Kenyatta Thomas, on the EFF blog:

After almost twenty years on the platform, EFF is logging off of X. This isn’t a decision we made lightly, but it might be overdue. The math hasn’t worked out for a while now.

Their reason for leaving is reduced reach: their posts aren’t getting the same number of impressions they used to. I’m happy to see them leave the shithole, and any reason to do so is commendable, but it would have been nice if the reason was to avoid being in a Nazi bar, rather than fewer people are hanging out with us at the Nazi bar.

Mike Masnick at Techdirt shreds The New York Times’ breathless puffpiece on telehealth startup Medvi:

It’s a hell of a story. The problem is that almost none of it holds up to even the most basic scrutiny, and the fact that the New York Times — the New York Times — fell for it (or worse, didn’t care) is an embarrassment. As much as I’ve made fun of the NYT for its bad reporting over the years, this is (by far) the worst I’ve seen. They didn’t just misunderstand something, or try to push a misleading narrative, they got fully played on a bullshit story that any competent reporter or editor should have realized from the jump. This one stinks from top to bottom.

AI, misleading valuations, fake doctors, class-action lawsuits, an FDA investigation, and false weight-loss claims. It appears the writer, Erin Griffith, and Times editors and fact-checkers did zero actual reporting for this story.

The real issue now is what the New York Times plans to do about this. A standard correction noting a few missing details won’t cut it. The entire premise of the article — that this company represents the exciting realization of AI’s business potential — is nonsense. Every element of the narrative is tainted: the growth story is built on deceptive marketing, the product claims are contradicted by the FDA and the manufacturers of the actual drugs, the “$1.8 billion” figure is a projection with no valuation to back it up, and the company is currently facing legal action on multiple fronts. The entire article should be retracted.

A week later and the Times has yet to issue a correction or retraction.

Another fantastic visualization from the folks behind the previously linked Pixar Cry Chart. Especially impressive: “The Collection”—“Every model. Every spec. Click any two to compare.”

One glaring error: In both “The Moments That Mattered” and “The Collection” sections, the current OS is listed as “iOS 19.” There was (and is) no iOS 19: in 2025, Apple aligned OS numbering, jumping from iOS 18 to iOS 26.

Andrew Day, writing at The American Conservative, contemplates one conclusion to Donald Trump’s Easter threat (and presumably today’s followup):

Maybe these statements were just bluster, maybe not. Regardless, if Tehran doesn’t budge, Trump will feel pressure to follow through and turn Iran into an apocalyptic hellscape before tomorrow morning.

Trump might even be tempted to accomplish this monstrous objective with the use of nuclear weapons. Amid muddled messaging from the White House, one of the most consistent themes has been the declared intention to “obliterate” Iran—and nuclear weapons offer the surest way to do that.

Yes, I’m actually linking to a site called “The American Conservative.” Wars make for strange bedfellows.

The president of the United States threatens genocide (original):

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!

Posted on “Truth” Social at 5:06 am, because the president of the United States has nothing better to do at that hour.

JD Vance followed up later (in a press conference with Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán):

We have tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use. Trump can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don’t change their course.

The White House found it necessary to deny that was a threat to use nuclear weapons.

I won’t purport to know which mechanism the president of the United States plans to use to kill millions of people, but it seems to me the method matters less than the act itself.

There is absolutely nothing—I mean zilch—in this extensive profile of Sam Altman (and OpenAI), by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz in The New Yorker, that paints Altman in a good light. The profile is based on “more than a hundred people with firsthand knowledge of how Altman conducts business: current and former OpenAI employees and board members; guests and staffers at Altman’s various houses; his colleagues and competitors; his friends and enemies and several people who, given the mercenary culture of Silicon Valley, have been both.”

(I suspect this 17,0000-word story is effectively the pitch for a tell-all book on the history of OpenAI and Altman.)

A couple of choice quotes:

As the technology became increasingly powerful, we learned, about a dozen of OpenAI’s top engineers held a series of secret meetings to discuss whether OpenAI’s founders, including Brockman and Altman, could be trusted. At one, an employee was reminded of a sketch by the British comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, in which a Nazi soldier on the Eastern Front, in a moment of clarity, asks, “Are we the baddies?”

And:

The senior executive at Microsoft said, of Altman, “I think there’s a small but real chance he’s eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer.”

I don’t know about you, but being compared, unfavorably, to Nazis, Madoff, and Bankman-Fried is pretty fucking damning.

This may be one of the finest applications of Betteridge’s law of headlines. It's an absolute must-read.

Howard Yu, writing at Inc. on the culture of BYD, China’s largest EV maker, as set by its founder and CEO, Wang Chuanfu:

When defective cells appeared, Wang asked: “Have you found the root cause?” If yes: “Can you reproduce it?” Then the demand: “Make one hundred cells with exactly the same defect. If you can reproduce the failure one hundred times, identically, then and only then have you understood the mechanism.”

That practice, reproducing failure on purpose until the physics revealed itself, became the bedrock of BYD’s entire operation.

Most companies operationalize their successes. How many operationalize their failures? I can’t help but recognize some Apple DNA in BYD.

BYD did not decide one morning to build the fastest car on Earth. First, it built phone batteries. Then E-bike packs. Bus systems. Delivery vans. Passenger cars. Hypercars. Each rung taught something the previous rung could not. There was no quantum leap. Only the next rung.

And Wang’s deepest insight had nothing to do with batteries. It was about knowledge. If you cannot reproduce a defect one hundred times, identically, you do not understand the mechanism. Do not settle for a plausible explanation. Demand a reproducible one. The difference between the two is the difference between an organization that keeps making the same mistake and one that never makes the same mistake twice.

On a trip last year to Mexico City, BYD cars and dealerships were everywhere. The company has about a 70% market share in Mexico. Globally, it’s almost 20%—and zero percent of that is in the U.S.

The high quality and low pricing of BYD vehicles put U.S. and European cars to shame. If they were to ever come to our shores, the American EV market would just shrivel up. Good thing the Trump and Biden administrations put the kibosh on that.