Donald Trump, speaking to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday (C-SPAN):

The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now, hereinafter officially called super intelligence, changing the name, and that the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake, and it is not fake. It’s actually amazing, but we have to be careful. In fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports. From this point forward, all of United States documents, and hopefully the world’s will be changed to use the much more accurate term super, as opposed to artificial. So it’s super intelligence. In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence dash SI. SI. Let’s see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much better, and it’s much more accurate. Let’s see if I have any power. Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t. We’re gonna find out pretty soon.

The term “artificial intelligence” was coined in 1955, but tossing aside seventy years of history is nothing for someone who, in fits of pique, flouts hundreds of years of history by unilaterally renaming international bodies of water.

Trump may have been at his most self-aware there at the end, questioning whether he has any power to drive this inane rename beyond his own government’s documents.

Trump also claims that “The United States leads the world in super intelligence,” which is a completely true and accurate statement because no-one else in the world is calling it “super intelligence.” It’s easy to win a game no one else is competing in.

Which naturally makes me wonder: which of our brown-nosing AI wannabe-overlords will be the first to start referring to their product as “super intelligence”? My gut instinct is to pick the obsequious Mark Zuckerberg, but the sycophantic Elon Musk, smarmy Sam Altman, and zealously earnest Dario Amodei might each eagerly adopt it to further ingratiate themselves with the regime. (I’ll stick with my gut and pick Zuckerberg.)

A closing aside on the transcription of “dash”: In his speech, Trump said “super intelligence dash SI.” That’s what you see above, and is my transcription from listening to the video. Several other sites that report the speech (for example, The Verge, CNet, The Hill) insert a typographic dash (“—”) in place of his verbalized “dash.” This is sanewashing—cleaning up Trump’s spoken gaffes to make him sound like a competent, fluent speaker rather than a doddering old man reading a teleprompter like he’s Ron Burgundy… “Damn it, who typed a dash on the teleprompter? For the last time, anything you put on that teleprompter, Trump will read.”

Today is Day 2 of Negroni Week, created by Imbibe Magazine (and sponsored by Campari):

In 2013 Imbibe Magazine launched Negroni Week as a celebration of one of the world’s great cocktails and an effort to raise money for charitable causes around the world.

Since then, Negroni Week has grown from about 120 participating venues to thousands of venues around the world, and to date, the initiative has raised over $5 million for charitable organizations.

As it’s been for the past few years, this year’s charitable organization is Slow Food, which—

… envisions a world where everyone can enjoy food and beverage that is good for them, good for the people who produce it, and good for the planet.

I’ve been celebrating Negroni Week since at least 2015 (X/Twitter link). On Sunday, I kicked it off early—and quite coincidentally—with a Negroni history lesson and a tasting of nearly a dozen variations. More on that soon. Meanwhile, here are links to previous Negroni Week celebrations:

• 2015: Twitter 1, 2
• 2022: Twitter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
• 2024: JAG’s Workshop, Mastodon
• 2025: JAG’s Workshop, Mastodon 1, 2

The Negroni, as you may have surmised, is one of my favorite cocktails. Its classic form of equal parts gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth is delightful, of course, but what I truly love is that you can use the Negroni as a template for building a variety of drinks that (more or less) follow its equal parts base spirit, bitter, and aromatic modifier structure. Swap the gin for bourbon: my personal favorite, the Boulevardier. Sub out the sweet vermouth for pandan liqueur? A Southeast Asian-inspired Pandan Negroni. Aperol instead of Campari? The lighter, sweeter Contessa. The variations are endless.

Cheers to a good week and a good cause.

Baldur Bjarnason, writing at Out of the Software Crisis under the headline “The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con”:

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on an idea that I think explains the mechanism of this intelligence illusion.

I now believe that there is even less intelligence and reasoning in these LLMs than I thought before.

Many of the proposed use cases now look like borderline fraudulent pseudoscience to me.

He explains:

By using validation statements, such as sentences that use the Forer effect, the chatbot and the psychic both give the impression of being able to make extremely specific answers, but those answers are in fact statistically generic.

The psychic uses these statements to give the impression of being able to read minds and hear the secrets of the dead.

The chatbot gives the impression of an intelligence that is specifically engaging with you and your work, but that impression is nothing more than a statistical trick.

Bjarnason lays out the six steps of “The Psychic’s Con,” which a supposed psychic will use to con (or “cold read”) their marks, and then matches them with how LLMs are pulling the same trick. It’s a fascinating piece that describes how both psychics and LLMs rely on human psychology to perform their “magic.” From Step 6 of “The LLMentalist Effect”:

6. The marks become cheerleaders

The most enthusiastic believers in an imminent AI revolution are starting to sound very similar to long-time believers in psychics and mind-reading.

They come up with increasingly convoluted ideas and models to explain why the impossible is possible. They become more and more dismissive of fields of science and research that challenge their world view. Their own statements become tinged with awe and dread.

And they keep evangelising. This is real!

Often followed by: This is dangerous!

This seems especially relevant as leading AI chatbot providers call for a slowdown amid fears that AI will destroy humanity.

Oh, did I mention Bjarnason published this in July 2023?

(Via Timothy Perfitt.)

Duane Kuiper, in a statement released on the San Francisco Giants X/Twitter account:

I was recently diagnosed with throat cancer and began treatment last week with my doctors at Stanford Medicine. This cancer is unrelated to the one I experienced five years ago, and I’m optimistic that it will be successfully treated. I’II miss the broadcasts tomorrow and Wednesday as I continue treatment, but I’m looking forward to returning Tuesday and this weekend to celebrate my partner, Mike Krukow, and his remarkable career as he calls his final game before retirement. I’m incredibly grateful for the care I’m receiving and for the tremendous support, from my family, the Giants organization, my broadcast partners and so many others.

Awful news. Throat cancer for a broadcaster is especially cruel. Truly, fuck cancer.

I hope Kuip recovers and is able to grace us with his wonderful voice during the 2027 season and beyond.

I love Susan Kare’s calm demeanor and obvious enthusiasm as she demonstrates what she calls her “baby.” (Timestamped link to 15:26; scroll back a bit to 12:51 to see the full segment, including product manager Jerry Manock describing the basic ergonomic design of Macintosh.)

Don’t forget to feed the lizards.

Apple today released Xcode 27.1 beta, which enables iPhone Duo development, along with Figma and Sketch design kits for iPhone Duo.

Developers, get cracking!

Tyler Stalman compares the new camera against the iPhone 15 Pro, because he’s heard “that the average upgrade cycle for iPhone Pro […] is about three years.” I imagine that’s true for the general iPhone Pro customer, but I’d bet that the people buying an iPhone Pro for the camera—and thus watching Stalman’s review (hi!)—upgrade more often.

Links’ video review (in Mandarin with English subtitles) is very human—polished, but less “produced,” for lack of a better descriptor. Links is a talented travel photographer, and that perspective comes through in his review. Several stunning photos and many comparisons between iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro provide a great feel for the hardware and software improvements in the new camera system.

Jaron Schneider’s written review at PetaPixel—and especially the companion video featuring Schneider, Jordan Drake, and Jason Vong—provides more of the technical details professional (or at least professionally minded) photographers crave. The wealth of example photos, and comparisons between iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro, are especially valuable.

Stunning images and video, as always, by travel photographer Austin Mann, captured this year at Dunton River Camp in southwest Colorado. What I love about Mann’s review is that it captures the feel of the iPhone 18 Pro cameras, not just their technical specs.

Rick Porter, The Hollywood Reporter:

Apple TV had its best ever showing at the Emmy Awards on Monday, topping its previous high mark … from a year ago.

For the first time since it launched in 2019, Apple TV led all outlets at the Emmys with 28 awards (Apple, the parent company, also won for best commercial). A record-setting haul for first-year comedy Widow’s Bay accounted for half of the streamer’s total. The horror-comedy won 14 total awards, breaking the prior record of 13 for a comedy — also set last year by another Apple series, The Studio.

Widow’s Bay won six Emmys during Monday’s telecast, including best comedy series, to go with eight Creative Arts honors. Another first-year show, Pluribus, won six total awards, including drama lead actress (Rhea Seehorn) and best writing for a drama (Vince Gilligan). Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Palm Royale, Slow Horses and Mr. Scorsese accounted for Apple TV’s remaining eight Emmys.

Apple’s closest competitors? HBO, with 21 wins, and Netflix, with 16. Apple TV has truly become “prestige TV.”

I’ll have to give Widow’s Bay a go, despite it being a “horror-comedy.”

See Also: The complete list of winners on the Emmys site.

Jay Willis, writing at Balls and Strikes on the stridently “unhinged” dissent from Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Clarence Thomas) in USPS v. California:

Alito and Thomas could not let this conclusion go unanswered. Alito began his opinion by recasting the rule not as an attempt by Trump to regulate elections per se, but as a coincidentally election-adjacent exercise of the Postal Service’s “broad authority to regulate the mail,” which is, for technical reasons I won’t bore you with here, ostensibly harder to challenge in court. Strangely, the facts that the rule is titled “Ballot Mail for Federal Elections,” and applies to the activities of state “chief election officials,” and says that its primary purpose is protecting the “integrity of federal elections,” and does not implicate any class of mail other than mail-in ballots do not appear anywhere in Alito’s trenchant analysis.

Somehow, the second chunk of Alito’s dissent is even less serious. First, he asserted that the injunction would cause the Trump administration to suffer “irreparable harm” because leaving it in place would “deal a serious setback to the Executive’s goals.” As Alito has done with unsettling frequency over the last several years, he also claimed that the government has a “strong interest” in enforcing the rule in order to “better detect election fraud.”

These claims are equal parts nonsensical and detached from reality.

Justice Alito wrote 2,000 words to basically say “nuh-uh.”

Richard L. Hansen, Slate:

There are two ways of looking at the Supreme Court’s three-sentence ruling in USPS v. California Monday evening, which put an end to Donald Trump’s attempt to disenfranchise millions of elderly, disabled, military, rural, Native American, and other voters in the 2026 midterm elections who depend upon vote by mail to cast a ballot. The first is to lament that the government pushed this case to its limits—going not once, not twice, but three times to the high court—and that two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, were willing to simply ignore mass disenfranchisement and side with Trump’s bogus voter-fraud crusade. The second is to note that the court’s conservatives and liberals came to the brink, saw that ruling the other way risked serious election subversion, and said no. For the time being, let’s celebrate that the center of the court did hold, even as dangers remain ahead in both 2026 and 2028.

I suppose we should be grateful the Supreme Court performed the absolute bare minimum of its duty to the Constitution, but I’m betting this ruling merely delays the disenfranchisement until a less inopportune time.

Justice delos Santos, Mercury News:

The 1985 San Francisco Giants will not have company.

With a 10–3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday night at Busch Stadium, the Giants won their 63rd game under rookie manager Tony Vitello, guaranteeing that they will not lose 100 games in a single season for the second time in franchise history. San Francisco, at 63–89, had far greater expectations, but given all that’s gone wrong, the Giants can take some minor solace in avoiding the wrong type of history.

Nick San Miguel at Around the Foghorn calls avoiding triple digit losses “borderline miraculous.” I was afraid I’d jinxed things when I mentioned the ignominious milestone on Friday, after which they lost four in a row. The team’s next goal: do better than the 2017 Giants, which went 64–98.

Just two more wins.

Wiley Hodges, writing (on Substack, alas) about Apple’s new, always-listening “Audio Intelligence” features available on Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4:

Audio Intelligence appears to me to be the first case of a always-on feature with some of the qualities of surveillance we’ve seen in other products—an enduring record, an uncertainty on the part of others in the room about what’s happening—that also takes care to minimize the privacy harms that seem to be essentially intrinsic to such products. By doing their homework and showing us the receipts, Apple has taken fears of audio recording or even detailed after-the-fact transcripts off the table. But what they’ve left there is a set of questions about social and even legal norms and expectations. They’ve also created a potential problem for Apple Watch users in the form of a newfound suspicion that every word is being recorded unseen. It isn’t true, but it’s difficult to shrink the whole of Apple’s extensive privacy protections surrounding these features into a pithy soundbite.

Hodges is a former Apple Product Manager, so he understands Apple marketing and motivations better than most. He acknowledges the many ways Apple is feverishly working to avoid its own “Glasshole” moment. It’s clear the product marketing and privacy teams have put a lot of thought into avoiding even a whiff of impropriety. But, to quote Nick Heer, “good luck explaining that to anyone around you after you read back an exact transcript of what they just said.”

I missed this essay when it was published in The New Yorker on the day Gloria Steinem died:

Whatever the name, words that stand for equality are demonized by those who benefit from inequality. Opposition will always come from people whose power rests on the group they were born into—whether that is sex, race, class, or ethnicity—rather than on what they do as individuals. This persists because they believe in hierarchy and they fear what might happen if they have no built-in advantage. And this is sad because they may never find out who they really are, and what they would really want to do in life.

Mike Scarcella, Reuters:

Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI said on Monday they have resolved their claims against Apple, in a lawsuit that ​alleged the iPhone maker conspired with OpenAI to unlawfully monopolize markets for smartphones ‌and generative AI chatbots.

In a court filing, X and SpaceXAI, a division of SpaceX, moved to dismiss the claims in a lawsuit they brought against Apple and OpenAI last year. The filing did not explain the reasons ​for dismissal or say whether a settlement had been reached.

It never made sense for Musk to sue Apple for partnering with OpenAI instead of xAI any more than it would make sense for Starbucks to sue me for choosing Blue Bottle Coffee. It’s as logical as threatening to sue advertisers for not spending money with you. Oh, right.

II’m curious what Musk secured from Apple that led to this dismissal. Access to sensitive information? A promise to feature Grok? A future integration? Or did his lawyers finally point out that claiming Apple “makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store” was severely undermined by him posting about Grok hitting #1 on the App Store?

See Also: Techmeme coverage.

XCancel:

Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice. We can’t share more details.

No details on that “new development.”

Nitter, the software behind XCancel, is again archived and read-only on GitHub (as of September 10, 2026) and the web server at nitter.net is not accepting requests.

So much for the law and logic of fair use prevailing.

Litterbox remains a great option if you, individually, want to avoid X, but XCancel was valuable to me to avoid linking to X at all. (Litterbox is also limited to viewing a single post, while XCancel allowed for reading entire threads.)

I hope XCancel and Nitter return, but I fear a final nail has been hammered.

David French, in an Opinion piece for The New York Times, dissects the complicated Missouri redistricting efforts and resulting lawsuits, from which “America just barely averted the first constitutional cris is of this year’s midterm election” (gift link):

I wanted to walk through this situation in detail because it’s indicative of exactly how MAGA attempts to fix elections. It uses the complexity of the law (and public ignorance of the law) to obscure the utter brazenness of its defiance. […]

Missouri Republicans crossed the line, right before they jumped back. [Missouri secretary of state, Denny] Hoskins engaged in gross legal gamesmanship by rejecting the referendum petition on specious grounds the very day of the primary election. He then tried to use that legal gamesmanship to justify using the new maps. […]

Legal gamesmanship is one thing. Outright defiance is another. It raised the nightmare scenario. What do we do when a state government defies a court, and the court has no independent means of enforcing its decision?

And consider this: All of that gamesmanship and all of that defiance was over one House district, and it occurred weeks before the election, without any overt pressure from Trump to break the law.

In other words, prepare yourself.

Lex Friedman on his new (annoyingly good) site, Lex on Tech:

Streaks are evil. They’re evil because they work. I do Duolingo every damn day so that I don’t lose my streak, and there are times I absolutely don’t want to do Duolingo. I hate that I’m doing it as I do it, I hate that the streak conceit is having its desired psychological effect upon me, and yet there I sit, practicing more French.

I currently have a 607-day publishing streak here on JAG’s Workshop and a 596-day Duolingo streak (including one 550-day “friend streak”). The publishing streak is legitimate; the Duolingo streak has been extended with “streak freezes” multiple times and is anything but legitimate. I am quite conscious of both, and I’m both dreading and eagerly anticipating the day they end.

Except…

Friedman references a paper published by Jackie Silverman and Alixandra Barasch:

Silverman and Barasch found that a broken streak is demotivating out of proportion to what was actually missed. Skip one day and you’ve failed twice: once at the behavior, and once at the streak. People are so attached to streaks that they’ll complain to companies when a bug wipes one out and lobby to get it restored.

I lost a 560-day Wordle streak in 2023 because of an unexpected loss of internet and power. I was so devastated, I’ve played exactly once since then.

Great. Now I’m just dreading the end of my streaks.

A. Bartlett Giamatti, on baseball:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

This is how Bart Giamatti opened his classic baseball essay, “The Green Fields of the Mind,” first published in the November 1977 issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine and Journal. It's a beautifully written piece that I was reminded of today during the Giants pregame show.

The Giants have had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad season. Going into tonight’s game, they sit on 62 wins, one seemingly elusive win away from avoiding the mortifying humiliation of a 100-loss season, an outcome which has occurred just once in the franchise’s 144-year history, in 1985.

Tonight’s game against the San Diego Padres is being broadcast nationally as part of Apple’s Friday Night Baseball, and one of only four games being broadcast in Apple Immersive on Apple Vision Pro. That’s where I’ll be watching the game. I hope they win. I worry they’ll embarrass themselves.

Because baseball is designed to break your heart.

Dave Roos at History.com, earlier this week:

As horrific as it is to watch the World Trade Center towers crumble to the ground, those indelible images were recorded from the relative safety of the streets below. The final phone calls and voicemails left by 9/11 victims, however, provide a raw, real-time record of what it was like to be trapped inside the towers or aboard one of the hijacked planes.

Twenty-five years later and I still find it difficult to read or watch anything related to these attacks. I couldn’t make it through this article without becoming emotional. Actually hearing these calls would shatter me.

Apple:

Watch a quick Apple Event recap to learn about iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5.

Even Apple scrubbed right to the end for the iPhone Duo intro, and also found the “Fertile Window notification” sequence awkward.

Stephen Hackett, 512 Pixels:

Well, this little Easter Egg in Apple’s 27 OSes is fun. If you go into Settings → Appearance → Liquid Glass and scroll down far enough in the example content, an old friend appears […]

This is an absolute delight and I must now have a physical 3D model of Clarus the DogCow immediately.

(You need a recent iOS 27 or macOS 27 beta to see her.)

Clarus, if you don’t know, is (or at least was) the mascot (“icon” for you gear heads) of Apple Developer Technical Support (DTS), where I spent two decades of my career. I’ve always loved her history. I did my best to keep her memory alive while I was in DTS, even starting a new Technote (to go with TN31 and TN1031) to further extend her story, but I never finished it, and eventually left Apple.

DTS folks, I have time now… call me… Moof!

Via Tyler Stone.

Nick Heer at Pixel Envy isn’t thrilled with Apple’s new “Live Rewind” feature coming to Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, which Apple describes thusly:

Live Rewind recalls what was just said in the last 15 seconds by showing a text snippet on your Apple Watch when you double-press the Digital Crown, so you can catch something you missed or are less familiar with. You can ask Siri about the content of the snippet or simply save it to the Siri app.

Heer:

Apple swears up and down it is doing all it can to make this private and secure, and I have no reason to believe otherwise. The audio is apparently not actually saved and is, instead, merely transcribed by a dedicated coprocessor. That text is automatically deleted unless the user takes an action to save it, too.

But good luck explaining that to anyone around you after you read back an exact transcript of what they just said. […]

This feels like a glimpse of how Apple will market its inevitable wear-anywhere glasses product. I do not think it does enough to assuage privacy concerns. I think normal people will continue to react negatively when you tell them you have been passively recording them because, outside Silicon Valley, that is considered gross and invasive.

Apple also introduced Siri Recap, which it describes this way:

Siri Recap ambiently takes notes on your conversations throughout your day and creates high-level Apple Intelligence–generated summaries that you can use later to jog your memory, so you can stay present in the moment. Your summaries auto-delete after 7 days if you choose not to save them.

There’s definitely a high creep factor when your devices are always listening. Heer concludes:

This feels like a glimpse of how Apple will market its inevitable wear-anywhere glasses product. I do not think it does enough to assuage privacy concerns. I think normal people will continue to react negatively when you tell them you have been passively recording them because, outside Silicon Valley, that is considered gross and invasive.

On the plus side, these features might help resolve spousal disagreements over who said what when.

Resolve. Cause. Six of one.

Apple Worldwide Developer Relations now has videos, workshops, group labs, and other resources to help developers build apps for the new iPhone Duo. (Videos available now; the rest are coming soon.) “Design for iPhone Duo” is a good introduction. (There’s a distinct Schweddy Balls/Wayne’s World vibe to these videos. Very charming.)

Ricky Mondello:

Would you believe me if I told you that the best device to switch password managers on might be your iPhone or iPad? For many pairs (exporter and importer) of apps, it’s true!

Mondello offers great advice for migrating from one password manager to another. (Mondello knows a thing or two about password managers.)

Why this post, now? Because many of us are looking to abandon 1Password after the company chose to support a fascist-adjacent organization:

1Password’s recent investment in the Omarchy Linux distribution, created by the outspoken and dangerous David Heinemeier Hansson, and the subsequent industry conversation, inspired me to “fast”-track publishing updated advice on switching password managers. This investment was justifiably criticized by many, including employees of 1Password. I feel for those employees because it’s a terrible feeling when the impact of your work is diminished by actions you had no say in and can’t control.

I was already all in on Apple Passwords, with 1Password as a historic repository I (unhappily but willingly) paid to maintain, but the price ($72 a year), a forthcoming forced migration to 1Password 8, and support for fascists have finally pushed me to stop paying for and using 1Password. Fortunately, this is an easy switch to make.

All it took to get Marcia Griffith’s Electric Boogie immediately and irrevocably stuck in my head for three days was seeing the title of an episode of The Pitch podcast about an electric vehicle charging company called it’s electric. Seriously, three full days. The song—and the accompanying “Electric Slide” line dance that inevitably starts halfway through any semi-decent party—are infectious and joyous and deeply embedded in my subconscious. I can’t recall the first time I heard the song or danced the Slide, but also stuck in my head is a scene from A Different World, which had Ron (I think) dressed as a caveman (I think) and other Hillman students doing the Slide. I can’t find that scene anywhere. I don’t think it’s a fever dream.

(The main link is to the official promo video. Here’s the official music video. Both are very much of the ’80s, complete with neon leotards and patterned parachute pants. I don’t know how I survived that decade.)

Indie Developer Simulator:

You have $99 and a dream. Your goal: publish an iOS app.
The dream is negotiable.

From the HTML source file:

Get rejected. Get reviewed. Get sherlocked.

You don’t need to be an Apple developer to “get” this, but if you are, steel yourself. This “simulation” hit me viscerally. Absolutely gutted. Yes, I laugh-cried my way through it, but the entire experience made me cringe in painful recognition. Years of helping developers fight past these types of rejections came flooding back instantly. No word on who created this, but they’re clearly a veteran of the Apple developer community and are deeply damaged from too many interactions with Apple.

To my friends in Developer Relations and the App Store: You’ll be tempted to dismiss this as mere hyperbolic satire, but it reflects reality—and developer sentiment—more than many of you will care to admit. Play it—cringe deeply—and then get on Slack, build a tiger team, and get to work fixing things.

“zedeus,” in an update dated September 7 on Nitter.net:

On 24 August 2026 cease and desist letters were sent by X Corp. demanding a permanent takedown of Nitter instances and the project’s repository.

Following legal advice, the Nitter project will continue. This instance and others will be back up and running shortly. An announcement will be made within a week, once we’re able to reveal more information.

A similar message was added to the Nitter GitHub repository (in a commit entitled “Nitter lives”).

I stumbled across this while testing out the aforelinked Litterbox. Imagine my delight at clicking an XCancel link and seeing it load.

Perhaps the law and logic of fair use have prevailed, if only briefly.

App developer Zhenyi Tan launched a new tool for people who want to limit their X/Twitter exposure:

Litterbox is a free Safari extension that opens x.com links in a popup. The idea is you open it, take a look, gag a little, then close the lid

A perfect name and description that accurately captures the garbage experience that is X/Twitter. It’s especially welcome in the wake of the demise of XCancel.

It might even survive Elon Musk’s churlishness:

Litterbox doesn’t send your cookies when you open those popups, because of course. It uses the same API X uses for its website embeds. I don’t think they’ll kill the website embed feature. But if they do, it will be very funny.

Enabling the extension is a bit finicky, but it works perfectly once configured.

Tan has established quite the niche, building several apps and extensions designed to de-enshittify the daily web experience, even if just a little bit.

As with most viral internet sensations, I am late to #OreoGate, a hilarious, drama-filled, musically enhanced group chat of moms debating the merits of adding (or not) Oreos to their kids’ lunchboxes. Don’t worry about whether it’s real or merely a clever marketing campaign for the AI music-generation software that “performs” the group chat; just revel in the escalating pettiness. You will laugh, you will scream, you will find yourself rooting for (or perhaps against) the adult and kindergarten dramatis personae of this delicious little spectacle—this household certainly bonded over the absurdity. And, as befits any viral sensation, naturally there’s now merch.

(Main link is to Part 1 (of 23, as of this writing) on Instagram, or enjoy it on TikTok.)

Katharine Q. Seelye, The New York Times (gift link):

Gloria Steinem, the feminist crusader who galvanized the modern women’s movement, helping millions of women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at home, at work and in society at large, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 92. […]

Calling herself “an entrepreneur of social change,” Ms. Steinem helped usher in sweeping cultural transformations across virtually every facet of American life, from the boardroom to the courtroom to the bedroom.

Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex (from a series of tributes at the embedded link):

But my very favorite story about GLO is when she was out one day in NY, and a woman approached her in absolute awe and said she wanted to introduce her young daughter to her (though she was embarrassed to say the young girl may not know who she was).

Gloria replied: “It doesn’t matter if she knows who I am. What matters is that she knows who SHE is.”

I was fortunate to grow up around strong, successful women who shattered notions of patriarchy and instilled in me an unwavering sense of gender equality. By the time I came of age, feminism and women’s equality were rarely debated. To oppose it was to expose your ignorance. Of course women could become doctors and lawyers and CEOs and congresspeople and astronauts—even as we still frustratingly experience a surprising number of “first woman to…” moments and have failed to shatter a surprisingly resilient glass ceiling.

Witnessing the recent and ongoing unraveling of women’s rights must have been a tremendous disappointment to Ms. Steinem, but many of us remain proud to call ourselves feminists.

Erin Reed of Erin in the Morning:

Six weeks before a new federal rule stripping Medicaid and CHIP funding for transgender healthcare is set to take effect nationwide, a coalition of 21 attorneys general and one governor has filed a lawsuit to block it. The coalition, co-led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta alongside the attorneys general of Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The lawsuit targets a rule published on Aug. 13 that bars federal reimbursement for puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery for anyone under 18 on Medicaid or under 19 on CHIP, and which could do significant harm to transgender youth in these states, who currently have that care covered. The lawsuit follows an earlier successful suit that blocked the administration from threatening hospitals and doctors with exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid for providing that care. A companion rule that would have barred hospitals outright, through Medicare “conditions of participation,” was never finalized, meaning no in-tact federal rule requires hospitals to stop providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth, though roughly 40 dropped their programs anyway and many have not restored them.

Reed’s included map of the states that are suing is a stark illustration of the rapidly dwindling number of places in America where transgender people might feel even a modicum of safety. Unsurprisingly, the majority of these states also tend to vote for Democrats.

Terrific long-form reporting by Lauren Feiner for The Verge on the impact of data centers on municipalities, both positive and negative. It’s the first of an apparent three-part series The Verge is calling “The Center Will Not Hold,” with Utah and Arizona “coming soon.” This one is headlined “Is This the Future of America?” and is about Loudoun County, Virginia (home to MAE-East, for old internet denizens). (Gift link in case you’re hit with a paywall.)

A couple of excerpts:

Within the past few years, data centers have been elevated from an unremarkable part of daily life in Loudoun to something that many residents now think about every day. For some, it’s the constant hum they hear from their decks; for others, it’s the transmission towers that loom over their favorite green space, or the surprise call from their energy utility that one of those towers could go up in their own backyard. While residents recognize that data centers have brought a lot of prosperity to the county, they’re beginning to wonder how much more they can take.

And:

Over the past 20 years, though, Loudoun residents have seen a direct impact of data centers on their lives, whether they knew it or not. Real property tax rates declined dramatically, while property values have gone up in some communities as much as 182 percent in the last decade, even at residences close to data centers, according to county officials. The county has paved smooth roads and built sprawling athletic fields, a recreation center with an Olympic-size pool, and an average of nearly one and a half state-of-the-art public school buildings every year for the past 15 years, all thanks largely to the revenue generated by the county taxes data center companies have to pay anytime they get new equipment. And while data centers have gotten a reputation for creating relatively few jobs once they’re constructed, the county says that for every job inside those buildings, three and a half non-construction jobs are “supported” throughout the rest of the state economy. Those include ongoing maintenance at data centers, like electricians or HVAC technicians, and employment at other tech companies that move to Loudoun to be near where the data lives.

Julie Bolthouse, “a longtime Loudoun resident”:

Today, Bolthouse is the director of land use at PEC and helps lead a coalition of Virginia groups that advocate for stronger protections, tracking, and transparency around data center development. Bolthouse isn’t dispositionally anti-data center, nor does she want to see existing ones in the area torn down or shut off. But she does advocate for a pause on new development. “This industry is kind of creating a narrative that they’re up against communities, and that there’s a community backlash, and we just need to explain to the communities the benefits of data centers,” she says. “But what they’re really up against is physics. They’re up against the reality of what it takes to build out gigawatts of power, and the impact of building out gigawatts of power has direct impacts on people.” […]

“It’s not about trying to get rid of the existing data centers. These data centers are here. They’re running. I don’t want them to go anywhere,” Bolthouse says. “The question isn’t, ‘Do we need data centers?’ The question is, ‘Is it worth threatening our air quality, threatening our water supply, and throwing our communities into chaos, and taking people’s private land for transmission lines to get it?’”

I wouldn’t wish proximity to a data center on anyone—I wouldn’t want one in my backyard—but I understand their importance. Early in my career, I spent plenty of time in tiny data centers (more like data rooms) and I know what being inundated with the constant hum of computer fans and HVAC systems and power supplies does to your nervous system—and how utterly, indescribably relieving it is to exit those rooms into relative silence. (I think it’s one reason so many IT and computer people find themselves escaping far onto oceans, deep into forests, or high atop mountains. Silence is golden.)

This is a refreshingly nuanced and balanced look at the tradeoffs of building these data centers. They offer tremendous benefit to communities and society while also imposing a tremendous burden on communities and society. A thoughtful, considered approach is mandatory.

Emma Roth, The Verge:

Apple Maps has officially changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The company joins Google in re-labeling the Great Lake following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in the midst of a trade dispute with Canada.

Glad I didn’t hold my breath.

(I still see “Lake Ontario” when zoomed in (video). I presume the changes are still propagating, and not an act of civil disobedience.)

Disappointing but not surprising. I wish he’d joined Mastodon instead.

The account shows that he “Joined June 2026” and is “Verified since September 2026,” with “2 username changes Last on June 2026.”

His bio simply reads “ CEO.” I also appreciate the simplicity of his first message—“hello”—a callback, I presume, to the Macintosh and iPhone introductions and the greeting they display when they first start up.

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

New Apple CEO John Ternus has just sent his first company-wide memo.

Ternus’ first memo is exactly what you’d expect: “a quick note to thank everyone for the warm wishes,” fawning praise for the outgoing guy, “honored” and “excited,” and a tease about future products. I’m waiting on his “second” memo in which he outlines any changes to the organization or shares his personal “North Star.”

Read his first memo in its entirety below (or at 9to5Mac, The Verge, etc.):

Team,

Today, on my first day as CEO, I just wanted to send a quick note to thank everyone for the warm wishes. I also want to extend my deep appreciation to Tim for sharing so much of his knowledge and experience during this transition, and more importantly, for everything he contributed to Apple over the years. We’re so lucky to have had a CEO who led with his values and with such decency and humanity. We are all better for it, and I’m so grateful he’ll be our executive chairman.

I’m honored to be stepping into this role at what is truly the greatest company in the world, and I am so excited about everything we have in store. We have a huge launch next week that’s going to be phenomenal. Thanks for everything you’ve all done to make it possible.

I’m just as excited about what lies beyond that, including the incredible products already in the works and the ones we haven’t even imagined yet that we’ll dream up and create together. There’s no team in the world I’d rather build the future with.

More to come. In the meantime, thanks for your excellent work!

John

Chance Miller, 9 to 5 Mac:

Today is Tim Cook’s last day as Apple CEO, with John Ternus set to take over tomorrow. To mark his last day in the role, Cook penned an emotional memo to Apple employees today.

I’m not sure I’d characterize the memo as “emotional”; it’s a rather staid collection of corporate “moving on”-speak: “a moment I always knew would come one day”; “how grateful I am for the outpouring of affection”; “the privilege of a lifetime”; “my success […] is all because of you”; etc. Cook doesn’t really do “emotional.”

Cook does acknowledge what I agree have historically been the best traits of Apple: “culture triumphs over everything,” “a belief that what we build matters,” and that Apple has “both the opportunity and the responsibility to leave the world better than we found it.” These were true when I was there, and I believe that most Apple staffers continue to hold fast to these truths. And I believe Cook believes them, too. I’m less confident in how he and other senior executives interpret and act on these principles—in the same way religious extremists often pervert their religion to achieve goals seemingly antithetical to it. Right words, wrong intentions.

My hope is that with Ternus’ ascendancy, we’ll see a clear and unmistakable return to the intent behind the principles.

Read Cook’s farewell memo below (or at 9to5Mac, The Verge, etc.):

Team,

Today is my last day as CEO of Apple. This is a moment I always knew would come one day, and yet it is still hard to believe it has arrived and I am writing these words. I love this company and the team behind it, and I couldn’t let this day pass without sending a note to you, to tell you how grateful I am for the outpouring of affection you’ve sent my way, for the way you’ve shown up each and every day, and most of all, for the privilege of a lifetime serving as your leader.

The truth is, whatever there is to say about my success, I know it is all because of you. You have brought out the best in me. In all my life, I have never seen or been with such an extraordinary team of people before, and every day I get to see more examples of that.

There is something truly special about Apple. I am most proud of what an annual report could never capture. This place is proof that culture triumphs over everything. We share a belief that what we build matters, and that we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to leave the world better than we found it. That purpose is part of what makes this place extraordinary. Apple helps nurture it, but I believe it lived within each of you long before you arrived here. It is what brought you to this company and what continues to drive the work you do every day. Together, we have created something far greater than any one of us could have imagined or accomplished alone. And that’s the secret to our success. We bring out the best in each other. We lift each other up. We have made it possible to leave our “dent in the universe,” as Steve once described it, because of who we are and what we believe, because of what we value and how we see the world. How fortunate we are. How fortunate I am.

As you know, I am not leaving Apple. But I am stepping away from a role that I have loved deeply. I will miss this work in ways I can only begin to imagine, even as I remain completely at peace with my decision. I will miss leading you and being with you for every step, even as I take enormous comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable as John. Few people understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does and I could not be more excited for his leadership.

I hope you know how much I appreciate you and what an honor it has been to be your CEO. Most of all, I hope you will continue to be proud to be part of this remarkable place we call Apple and always give it your very best. When we bring our whole selves to this work, with care for one another and for the people we serve, there is no limit to the profound difference we can make.

I look forward to seeing you in my new role at Apple Park and around the world.

With all I have and all I am, I am always

Yours,

Tim

Google:

The U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has formally changed the name for “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” in the United States. Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see “Lake America,” those in Canada will continue to see “Lake Ontario,” and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names. These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.

Congratulations to Google: the “which will capitulate first, Google, Apple, or Fox ‘News’?” derby trophy is yours. You must be so proud.

Google said Canadians would see “Lake Ontario,” but for a while, at least, several Canadian websites that rely on Google Maps were wrongly displaying “Lake America.” Some of them have since resolved the issue, which was likely caused by a misconfigured API call, but the unexpected name change highlights the deep reliance non-U.S. businesses have on U.S. companies and is a reminder of the importance of digital sovereignty.

Apple, as of this writing, continues to accurately label the lake as “Lake Ontario,” but it’s just a matter of time—and Reuters reports that Donald Trump is already bullying Apple into making the change:

“The president reached out to Apple directly, so I’m sure ​that we may be seeing that change ​coming up soon to Lake America,” [Interior Secretary Doug] Burgum said in an ‌interview ⁠on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria” program.

Not that Apple needs bullying; as demonstrated with the Gulf of Mexico, they’re more than capable of capitulating on their own.

To close this out, let me acknowledge a point my former colleague Dave Rahardja raised on Mastodon:

Yes, place names in the U.S. come from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which is run by the federal government, and yes, mapping services do “defer to GNIS for official names by default,” so without positive action on a provider’s part, a name change will propagate. But as I responded to him—and as MapQuest and OpenStreetMap demonstrate—it’s not automatic and remains a choice: how GNIS data is used is up to the providers. But Google trips over itself to make the change, and eventually Apple will, too.

Unless John Ternus surprises everyone. I’m not holding my breath.

Kiley Wren, News10NBC:

Rochester City Council has signed a proclamation that Rochester will continue to use the name Lake Ontario in all official local capacities, despite President Donald Trump’s executive order to rename it “Lake America.” […]

City council says the Lake Ontario name represents “centuries of culture and tradition,” and that “No serious person from the Native Tribes or U.S. and Canadian cities which share the Lake will ever … call Lake Ontario ‘Lake America.”

The full Proclamation (PDF) is a beaut, and includes lines like:

Whereas: This desperate and flaccid stunt by the President is a clear distraction from the issues that matter most to U.S. voters: the failing economy, housing, affordability and, lest we forget, President Trump’s unwanted and unwarranted war with Iran

That’s a good phrase, a fine phrase. “Desperate and flaccid” is a fine phrase.

OpenAI:

Today, we notified SpaceX that we intend to wind down our contract providing OpenAI models to Cursor, with a proposed shutoff date of November 12, 2026. […] We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts.

What a remarkable statement—and accusation—to make publicly. Such comments are generally couched in opaque corporate speak. Points to OpenAI for its plainspokenness.

To work with a large partner like SpaceX, we typically rely on custom contracts to ensure compliance with our terms of service and that the integration provides for safety at scale. After Musk acquired Twitter, now part of SpaceX, the company broke⁠ the terms of our contract (alongside many others). Under oath earlier this year, Musk admitted that xAI, now also part of SpaceX, had violated OpenAI’s terms of service (terms which are similar to xAI’s own).

The first link is to a 2023 New York Times article (here’s a gift link) ostensibly about Elon Musk’s contentious split with Sam Altman amid Musk’s push to compete with OpenAI. The piece opens with an anecdote about Musk’s decision to unilaterally “cut OpenAI off from Twitter’s data,” which it had been licensing “for about $2 million a year to help build ChatGPT.”

The second is to an April 2026 report in Forbes (archive link) headlined “Musk Admits Distilling OpenAI Data For His XAI,” which notes that “OpenAI’s terms of service prohibit outputs from being used to train competing AI models.”

Musk, naturally, is salty about it but pretending he’s not, spouting on X:

I couldn’t care less. Scam Altman and Greg Stockman are utterly untrustworthy assholes who stole an open source nonprofit.

Yes, calling your rivals by childish, dare I say Trumpish, names is a well-established sign of not caring.

Anthropic co-founder and Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown apparently also chose to step into the fray, commenting on X without context:

Cursor has been a trusted partner of Anthropic since Sonnet 3.5. We’ll continue to increase compute to support Claude models in Cursor and are excited for what comes next with them at SpaceX.

Mercenary.

Tennessee Office of the Governor:

Today, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and Nashville International Airport®, also known as BNA®, announced their intent to name BNA in honor of Dolly Parton, creating a lasting tribute to her indelible legacy and the generations of people she inspired across Tennessee and around the world.

Gov. Lee spoke with Dolly’s team about the proposal this week. Her team expressed their appreciation for the extraordinary outpouring of support to honor Dolly and said they are touched by the idea and open to continuing the conversation. In keeping with the way Dolly lived her life, her team believes she still has a special way of bringing people together for good, and they hope this tribute can be another example of that enduring legacy.

Now this is an airport rename I can support without reservation. No controversy or airport code jokes here. (DPA is taken, but DPI is available.)

AP News reports:

The change would make Parton the first woman whose name adorns one of America’s 50 busiest airports.

Now we have two reasons.

XCancel:

On Monday 24th August at 8PM EST, we received at letter from X Corp. asking to cease and desist the service XCancel.

The service XCancel is stopped until further notice.

We are seeking legal advice and won't share more details for now.

Thank you for the trust you have put in these two years of XCancel.

(Read TechCrunch’s coverage of the cease-and-desist against Nitter, the open source software powering XCancel.)

XCancel allowed you to view posts on X/Twitter without contributing views and clicks that benefit Elon Musk. It was also faster to load and let you read complete threads without logging in, not just the single post X otherwise limits you to.

I don’t link much to X/Twitter (if you don’t hang out at the Nazi bar, you don’t know what’s happening at the Nazi bar), but when I did, I most often linked to xcancel.com instead of x.com (with exceptions made to links embedded in quoted material).

That means—for now, at least—existing links will be broken. I’m considering doing a search-and-replace across the site to swap xcancel.com links with x.com, but I’m holding out hope it’ll be unnecessary.

It also means that any future links will necessarily be to X.com. My apologies in advance.

(I do something similar with “Truth” Social, linking instead to Trump’s Truth. I clearly need to rethink that decision, too.)

The value of X (such as it is) exists in the content its users create and consume. X should not be able to gate that content—it’s not its content to gate. Both XCancel and Nitter are “seeking legal advice.” If they decide to fight the cease-and-desist, I’ll gladly contribute to their legal fund.

Xavier Martinez, writing for The Wall Street Journal under the headline “Why the Drugmaker Behind a Pancreatic Cancer Breakthrough Stayed Independent” (paywalled; Apple News+ link):

Earlier this year, an oncology biotech with no drugs on the market—just promising research—was attracting takeover interest. Revolution Medicines stayed independent.

This week, that bet paid off.

The 12-year-old drugmaker, more commonly known as RevMed, had spent much of its existence trying to solve a scientific puzzle that had stumped some of the industry’s leading researchers. It successfully targeted a common cancer mutation, resulting in a drug that nearly doubled how long people with pancreatic cancer survived—a remarkable breakthrough for a notoriously deadly disease.

Now that the Food and Drug Administration has approved its new drug, Rasonque, the Redwood City, Calif., biotech is taking on its next challenge: figuring out how to quickly bring the drug to the thousands of patients desperate to take it. […]

RevMed is set on doing this on its own. In a matter of months, it has built its first-ever sales force, distribution network and reimbursement operation from scratch. It has struck deals to make the drug overseas and is planning to invest in several manufacturing lines to guard against bottlenecks. […]

Wall Street expects Rasonque—which costs more than $477,000 for a year’s supply—to generate more than $1 billion in sales as soon as next year.

No doubt those companies are quietly kicking themselves.

Michelle L. Price and Will Weissert reporting for AP News:

President Donald Trump said Thursday he is renaming Lake Ontario to be known as “Lake America” in the United States as he escalates his trade war with Canada.

The Republican president signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to update the lake’s name in the U.S. geographic naming service. Trump cannot force Canada to follow along, however.

Donald Trump is a small, petty man, capable only of truculent displays of impotence. No one of any consequence will ever call it “Lake America”; anyone who does reveals themself to be a toadying brown-noser. Which makes me wonder: which will capitulate first, Google, Apple, or Fox “News”?

The name Lake Ontario comes from the Huron Indigenous people’s word “oniatarí:io,” which means “lake of shining waters.” The province of Ontario, founded in 1867, took its name from the lake.

The mnemonic for the Great Lakes is HOMES: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. Trump’s attempted adulteration would make it SHAME.

How apropos.

Sopan Deb, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):

Mr. Cullen has said his favorite voice role was the one with which he was most closely associated: Optimus Prime, the honor-bound protagonist of the “Transformers” franchise, which began as a television cartoon series in 1984, based on a popular set of toys.

His take on the character was inspired by his brother Larry, who had served with the Marines in Vietnam. The brothers were roommates when Mr. Cullen auditioned for a role in the series, about robots that transform into other objects, like vehicles.

“I say, ‘I’m going to an audition,’” Mr. Cullen told The Los Angeles Times in 2014, recalling an exchange with his brother. “He says, ‘For what?’ I say, ‘I’m going to be a truck.’ He laughs. I say: ‘No, Larry. It’s a hero truck!’ He says, ‘A hero truck? Well if you’re going to be a hero, be a real hero. Don’t be a jerk.’”

His brother then offered one final pointer: “Be strong enough to be gentle.”

Etan Vlessing, The Hollywood Reporter:

He “passed away peacefully, surrounded by his loving family — and held in the hearts of his many friends and countless fans worldwide,” his family said in a statement. They ask “that you honor his remarkable legacy by serving your communities and leading others with compassion, integrity and loyalty and always remember ‘be strong enough to be gentle.’”

And then there was Eeyore:

“I enjoyed doing Eeyore because he was simply charming,” Mr. Cullen told NPR in 2014. “And I get an awful lot of reactions from, especially, young kids when I go up and just say” — he slipped into Eeyore’s voice — “‘Hello. Thanks for noticing me.’ And to see their faces light up, that to me is one of the great joys.”

For Generation X, Cullen was the voice of our Saturday mornings: Monterey Jack from Chip ’N’ Dale Rescue Rangers, Mario from Donkey Kong, Hulk (and Bruce Banner) from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and dozens of characters across DuckTales, G.I. Joe, Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Heathcliff, and so much more. It’s been a rough week for our generation.

Autobots, transform and roll out.