If you’re a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a completionist, or enjoy absurdity—or all three—I’m guessing you will too.

I found Donald Trump’s interview in Time to be both utterly maddening and deeply disturbing. Trump is seemingly incapable of completing a thought. He self-interrupts, backtracks, repeats himself, and goes off on digressions. Kudos to Time for allowing that to come through in the transcript. (And for fact-checking his statements, even though it would have been even better if it had been both more extensive and presented inline.)

There are several jaw-dropping moments in the interview, but I wanted to highlight two. The first for the political ramifications; the second as a stark example of Trump’s Swiss-cheese mind.

First is Trump’s refusal to state that he won’t invoke the Insurrection Act (or deploy ICE) ahead of or during the midterm elections. Steve Benen at MS Now covers Trump’s hedge pretty well. As Benen writes, “when asked whether he would rule out declaring a state of emergency in the run-up to the midterms, the correct answer should have been, ‘Of course I’d rule that out.’” Trump can’t do that because, as is obvious to anyone paying even partial attention, he wants desperately to affect the midterms, and invoking this Act, either as a means of intimidation at the polls or to disrupt the election, is being seriously considered by him and his administration. He can’t stop talking about it. He understands his regime screeches to a halt the moment Republicans no longer control Congress and that he’d quickly face serious calls for both impeachment and prosecution.

The second section worth highlighting starts early in the interview, when Trump is asked about the U.S. debt, which reached $40 trillion and for which he, naturally, blamed Joe Biden (please excuse—and prepare yourself for—the extensive exposure to Trump’s words):

You haven’t lowered the debt because of President Biden?

No, because they keep paying higher interest rates. We had great job numbers two weeks ago, right? What do they do? Raise the interest rate. Because today…I say it all the time because I want to try and get these people to do what’s right for the country. When we did well years ago, they lowered the interest rate. Now, when you do well—in fact, I had great job numbers, 162,000. It was four times bigger than projected. And I said, “Oh, that’s not good news because they’re going to raise the interest rate.” It used to be they’d lower the interest rate, so we have great—because we’re better credit.

So you say if they’re going to do that all the time, how do you ever pay off the debt? Now you can do it through other means. I know I’m the best in the world. The best—I don’t want to tell you what those means are, but you can pay off the debt through other means. But the one thing that you can do is pay it off through growth, and we’ve never had growth like this.

Then later:

What’s driving this growth is AI, so we’d love to ask you a few questions about that.

No, what’s driving the growth is automobile plants are opening, many plants, Pfizer, all of the drug companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars. How about Apple? Apple’s spending $600 million. The great chip company from Taiwan is spending $500 billion. Jensen Huang is spending. No, it’s not—look, we’re building more automobile plants in the United States, and bigger ones, than we’ve ever built before. […]

It’s not just AI.

Then, after a question about a recent OpenAI attempt to access government websites, he opines on the artificial intelligence—sorry, super intelligence—industry:

I don’t have to destroy the industry. We’re making a lot of money with that industry. That industry is the industrial revolution, but bigger. It’s the internet, but much bigger. I don’t have to destroy that industry. By the way, you know, I had a very good meeting with President Xi. We get along, right? We talked about it not much, but a little bit. But I told him, I said, we don’t want—you know, we’re leading them pretty good. He knows that. And I said, “We don’t want to take this thing that we’ve done so well with and turn it off. I don’t want to turn it off. It’s tremendous amounts of money.”

Now, when you talk about the debt, the growth is going to pay off the debt. Growth will pay it off. Now, it’s pretty bad when they keep raising interest rates, and they only raise them because they have Trump derangement syndrome. And I don’t blame Kevin. In fact, when he took the job, he’s got mostly people from Barack Hussein Obama and Sleepy Joe Biden on the board. And I don’t know what he’s—I actually said, “What are you going to do?” But they would rather see the country do badly because I’m President. But we’re blowing through interest rates because it’s got—we got this thing going. If the interest rates were—even, if they were low, we should be paying the lowest interest rate of any country in the world, because all these countries that are making money, almost all, are only making money because of this.

Switzerland. They sell billions of dollars of watches. We didn’t take their watch, and they’re considered [unintelligible]. They have the lowest interest rate, one half of 1%, and we’re paying much more than that. And yet, if I said to Switzerland, “Sorry, I don’t want to lose $40 billion a year in order to have your watches.” We just picked up $40 billion. I could do the same thing with 50 countries, more than that, much more than that, and we would make more money than any country has ever dreamed of. We should be the lowest interest rate with the most prime country—we should be the lowest interest rate in the world. In the old days, that would happen. When you did well, the interest rate used to—you could check. You did well, you announced good numbers. Now you announce good numbers, we’re going to rock and roll and raise interest rates to try and kill it.

I don’t even know where to begin. It’s a turbulent ride through Trump’s unencumbered mind as his wildly misfiring neurons grab hold of any snatch of seemingly relevant data and regurgitate it.

You can pay off the debt through growth which is because of automobile plants and drug companies and Apple and has nothing to do with AI but we’re making tremendous amounts of money with AI driving interest rates too high because countries are making money off us and we’re losing $40 billion a year buying Swiss watches and we could make so much money if we stopped buying stuff from other countries and lowered our interest rates. Sleepy Hussein.

His screed about Switzerland is especially illuminating because it exposes Trump’s complete lack of understanding of how trade works. You don’t “lose money” when you buy something you want or need. That’s called “spending money.” It doesn’t imply a trade deficit, it has nothing to do with interest rates, and it isn’t addressed with tariffs that raise the price of the very thing you’re buying. And you definitely aren’t “making money” when you stop buying stuff. At best you’re saving money—but then you don’t have the thing you otherwise wanted to buy.

Kudos again to Time for letting Trump ramble and then just transcribing him in a way that is reflective of how he actually speaks. They seemingly only added punctuation to make it passably readable.

No word on whether he spoke that punctuation out loud.

The opening of the Public Citizen report I noted in the aforelinked Trump Crypto Game (“‘Thin Air,’ Real Money: Donald Trump’s Crypto Products Have Left Investors at Least $4.7 Billion Underwater”):

“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” President Donald Trump tweeted in July 2019. “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.”

Seven years later, Trump has become the world’s foremost crypto salesperson, hawking nonfungible tokens, meme coins, governance tokens, stablecoins, and shares in a digital-asset treasury.

What changed? The president realized there were billions to be made hawking thin air to supporters, supplicants, and speculators.

Trump recognizes a scam when he sees one. It just took him a while to figure out how to profit from it.

In “Thin Air, Real Money,” you attempt to make money from Donald Trump’s cryptoscams, playing either as Trump (“Difficulty: None”) or one of his sucker investors (“Difficulty: Impossible”) in an ’80s-style video game. It was created by Public Citizen and is based on its recently published “‘Thin Air,’ Real Money: Donald Trump’s Crypto Products Have Left Investors at Least $4.7 Billion Underwater” report, which details the depth of Trump’s crypto corruption.

Glenn Fleishman, Six Colors:

ElevationLab has released an AirTag product I find appalling, and I strongly urge they immediately withdraw it from sale and recall all inventory. The AirTag Silencer is a simple device: remove the back panel and battery from an AirTag, position the Silencer’s highly engineered pin over the speaker, tap the pin with a hammer, and the AirTag’s speaker is destroyed. This prevents it from emitting an alert in three circumstances, only one of which is triggered by an owner. The other two scenarios aid stalkers and perpetrators of domestic violence, among others. I will not link to it.

Disabling an AirTag speaker is a way for an unwanted party to more easily track someone without their knowledge and consent. Apple designed the AirTag to alert people when an unknown tracker was moving with them (via software), or when a tracker moved or was bumped (via a sound) after remaining in a location for a period of time. The latter case is critical, as Find My items have been found in purses, luggage, vehicles, and other things that move, left there either provably or putatively by a party attempting to track someone otherwise unaware they’re under remote observation.

Selling a product that deliberately breaks a safety feature designed to alert you to unwanted tracking is incredibly, unbelievably myopic. (Not just sell it, they give one away when you buy a 4-pack of their AirTag cases.) They spent untold hours iterating on this product, refining it over “many prototypes and hundreds of destroyed AirTags,” and not once did someone stop and ask, “Can this be used by bad people to do bad things?”

It’s the type of product a company creates when there’s no one in the room advocating for victims of stalking and abuse—or those people are silenced by management who decide to put products over people.

By releasing this product, ElevationLab is legitimizing a back-alley practice, a tacit endorsement that it’s okay to surreptitiously silence AirTags. If ElevationLab is selling a hassle-free solution, it must be acceptable. It’s not.

To say I’m disappointed in ElevationLab is woefully inadequate. I’m appalled.

I have long respected the company’s product design, and own and have recommended several of their products (including the 10-Year Battery AirTag case). I won’t be doing that unless and until they pull this product and apologize for releasing it.

Karl Bode:

In case you missed it, and I envy you if you did, Facebook/Meta recently unveiled “Muse,” its new AI agent that’s supposed to help you do things like craft emails, make dinner reservations, sell products on Facebook Marketplace, and offload mundane tasks to a massive and violently-unethical online ad monopoly. […]

Meta claimed repeatedly that their new Muse agent was built with a heavy focus on privacy and security. But this is Meta, a soggy ad monopoly run by an unfireable authoritarian-friendly manbaby with a long history of making positively terrible choices, so things very quickly got out of control.

Right out of the gate, Muse launched with a nasty zero-day flaw that created a backdoor on Mac computers, allowing a hacker to not only gain total control of the Muse AI client, but surveil you without your knowledge.

Muse also disclosed a YouTuber’s home address (without permission), accessed text messages and sent them to Meta (without permission), and compromised its own file system (just because someone asked it to).

Meta is the last Big Tech company I’d allow to access my computer. I’d just as soon grant access to a stranger on the street. I am unsurprised by these privacy violations, because Meta is the scorpion in the fable. It cannot help but abuse your privacy. It is its nature.

If you were wondering why the name Nikole Hannah-Jones was familiar, she’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist behind The 1619 Project:

The 1619 Project argues that the 250 years of chattel slavery that followed were not an aberration or a footnote; they were the foundation upon which the nation's wealth, culture, and political systems were built.

It is an origin story that forces a reckoning with the brutal hypocrisy at the heart of America's founding ideals and reveals who we have been, who we are, and who we might yet become.

The original collection of essays, published seven years ago in The New York Times Magazine, remains a journalistic tour de force and has spawned books, curricula, a podcast, and a television documentary.

I know I already linked to “An Argument,” episode #898 of This American Life, in yesterday’s post about Nikole Hannah-Jones’ decision to send her daughter Najya to segregated, high-poverty schools, but the episode is so good, it deserves a post of its own.

I was most struck by Najya’s quiet composure and understated exasperation. Despite her mom’s “experiment,” she was doing well. I couldn’t help wondering how much better she would be doing if she’d been sent to a higher-scoring school. It is, frustratingly, an unresolvable counterfactual.

I laughed out loud when Najya, still in middle school, informed her mom that she wanted to attend Harvard University, a predominantly white institution—not Howard University, the HBCU where her mom teaches:

Hannah-Jones: Yeah, I mean, look, I’ve been ingraining Howard into her since she was, like, three years old. And then one day, she comes back from middle school and she says she wants to go to Harvard. And I was like, we have never mentioned the word Harvard in our household. What the hell is happening? I’m like, what? […] Like, Harvard? What child? ’Cause I’m like, did I mishear you? Did you accidentally say Howard? No.

Joffe-Walt: I love that your child’s rebellion is to tell her mother that she wants to go to Harvard University.

Hannah-Jones: Exactly, and I’m disappointed. I’m like, what is wrong with you?

Chana Joffe-Walt, who produced the episode, sums up Hannah-Jones’ dilemma:

Public schools are unequal and segregated as they were ten years ago, 30 years ago, 60 years ago. If you sacrifice to make a change, but change doesn’t come, all you’re left with is the sacrifice.

Listen on the web, in Overcast, or Apple Podcasts.

Clare Duffy, CNN:

Apple says its decision to remove ICEBlock and similar platforms from the app store last year was prompted by concerns — including those raised by the Trump administration — about agent safety following a fatal shooting that left two detainees dead at a Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

Apple’s explanation came in a July letter to Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, who earlier this year launched an investigation into the Justice Department’s role in the removal of the apps from Apple’s and Google’s app stores and the impact on constitutionally protected speech. The letter has not previously been reported. […]

Ultimately, Apple determined ICE tracking apps violated its guidelines because they provided “precise location information about ICE officers (and, as a result, other individuals who may be in proximity to ICE agents, such as protestors or detainees), thus providing a potential roadmap for targeted violence and creating a significant risk of harm,” the company said in its letter.

For some reason, the CNN article does not point to either Congressman Raskin’s press release or to the letter he sent to Apple (PDF), both of which are worth reading. Additionally, Apple’s letter hasn’t been published by either Congressman Raskin or CNN (and certainly not by Apple), so it’s impossible to verify Apple’s response. If CNN and Duffy have a copy of the letter (and Duffy’s reporting suggests they do), I don’t understand why they haven’t released it.

Given what is being reported, and what’s in the Congressman’s reply, Apple’s response doesn’t hold much water. As Congressman Raskin notes, this administration has a demonstrated “pattern of lying about facts and evidence.” Relying on the administration’s word is either naïve or bullshit, and Apple is anything but naïve. ICEBlock was as much of a threat to ICE officers as Apple Maps and Google Maps. Both, naturally, remain available.

Apple’s reason for pulling the app at the time was “objectionable content.” It seems obvious that Apple used that as a convenient excuse to remove an app because of direct pressure from the government out of a fear of retaliation.

Either that, or Apple was happy to remove an app that protected its customers from violent attacks and believes it’s perfectly acceptable to curtail a developer’s First Amendment rights.

Congressman Raskin asks Apple to—

… conduct your own independent review of the decision to remove those apps to ascertain if they do, in fact, violate your terms of service—and please notify me when that review begins and concludes.

I think it’s time to call Tim Cook (and John Ternus) into Congress.

I’m finally getting around to reading this terrific but gut-wrenching essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones, published last week in The New York Times Magazine. (Gift link.)

Hannah-Jones sent her daughter, Najya, to “a segregated, high-poverty school” in an effort to upend the status quo that often resulted in Black students attending underfunded schools. Najya eventually challenged her mom on that decision.

Glancing between her and the road, I told her everything that I had said a hundred times on stages, in interviews, in discussions since I had made her a symbol of how the choices we make can help sustain — or dismantle — educational inequality. I talked about the deep inequality in New York’s schools and how, like those Black families who came before us, we had an obligation to be part of the struggle of our larger community. Even if her schools were not academically the strongest, I explained, her father and I knew that we could provide for her tutoring and any other assistance to make up for what her school may have lacked.

But my child just shook her head, her face a mask of disbelief, and something else: betrayal.

“So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?” she said, hurling her words. “Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school?”

As a product of the New York public school system who did well in middle school and well enough in high school, I commiserate with both the author and her daughter. My mom made a different decision for me, first enrolling me in a private middle school the year I moved to America, then transferring me to a public intermediate school. Then, rather than having me attend the nearby (but academically weak) high schools, my mom insisted I apply to more academically challenging—and racially and economically integrated—schools. I eventually attended a well-regarded public high school that required interviews and high academic potential (and an interest in the medical sciences) to get in.

My private and intermediate schools were mostly Black, in mostly lower-middle-class Black neighborhoods that were walking distance from home, while my high school was a fully integrated “magnet” school an hour (and two buses) away in a mostly upper-middle-class white neighborhood.

If I had a kid, I’m not sure which decision I’d make. On the one hand, I’d want my child to have the best opportunities available to them, academically, socially, and culturally. On the other, I would not want them growing up in a bubble of privilege, wealth, racial isolation, and perceived superiority.

As I sit here today, I’m not sure which path I’d choose. Each of my school experiences was extremely valuable, but I’m confident that had I continued the expected path and attended my neighborhood high school, my life would have gone very differently: my magnet high school was one of the first in Brooklyn to have a computer science program.

I would want the same for my child. Yet I recognize that an “I got mine, and so will my kid” attitude leaves behind a population of children who could otherwise benefit from my having gotten mine. Hannah-Jones, again:

We desire to be let off the hook by these realities — that we tried and we failed; by the shamble of decades of halfhearted efforts; by how insoluble it is to achieve equality in a nation with our history. Instead of fortifying our determination to fight for integration, we have instead chosen to succumb to a collective apathy in the face of a system so devastatingly unequal that it puts at odds trying to be a good person with trying to be a good parent.

But for all of our justifications, including mine, an undeniable verity remains. As long as we continue to rescue our own children from the failing schools where we allow other people’s children to languish simply because those children have been born Black and poor in a nation of racism and riches, there is no absolution here. Not for me. Not for you. Not for any of us.

Set aside some time to read this (and some more for the This American Life episode #898, “An Argument”—Overcast, Apple Podcasts).

Alexander Bruzual, Trinidad Express:

Calypso legend Slinger Francisco, better known as the Mighty Sparrow, died on Sunday in New York at the age of 91.

A statement issued by Karen Francisco on Sunday afternoon said the calypsonian died peacefully, surrounded by family, after a brief illness.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Trinidad and Tobago’s Calypso icon, Slinger Francisco, known to the world as ‘The Mighty Sparrow’,” the statement said.

Margalit Fox, The New York Times:

A singer, songwriter and guitarist, Sparrow — his given name was Slinger Francisco — was renowned for his sonorous voice, unremitting energy and extraordinary command of the verbal prestidigitation and sly double-entendre that are among the hallmarks of calypso lyrics.

Sparrow, who began his career in the mid-1950s, was sometimes described as the last of the true calypso singers. But in fact he was a Janus-headed figure, simultaneously preserving calypso tradition and inventing it anew. As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, he continued to dazzle audiences with witty, topical lyrics and arrangements that defied listeners not to dance.

In 2005, The Daily News of New York called him “the Frank Sinatra of Trinidad.” But in the estimation of many, the Mighty Sparrow was so mighty that he exceeded even Sinatran proportions.

Peter Mason, The Guardian:

Loved and feted by Trinidadians more than any other public figure in the island’s history, he was to calypso what Bob Marley was to reggae — an inspirational living legend. In Britain, no less than elsewhere, the sheer wit and quality of classic songs such as Jean and Dinah, Congo Man and Mae Mae brought calypso to many who would never otherwise have encountered the music form, particularly in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when he was in his prime.

NBC News/The Associated Press:

The Mighty Sparrow will be remembered as “a defining voice of our culture, a master storyteller and a towering figure whose music helped carry calypso from Trinidad and Tobago to the world,” the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians’ Organisation said in a statement.

The Mighty Sparrow was a mainstay of my youth in Trinidad and after moving to Brooklyn. Jean and Dinah, Wanted Dead or Alive, Drunk & Disorderly, Gu Nu Gu, Tobago Girl, Doh Back Back, Whole Night We Jamming… if you were at a Trini lime, Ten to One is Sparrow pulsing through the speakers, uncles and aunties clinking Carib bottles and wining to the rhythm. Danceable, sure, but also lyrically dense with history lessons—and irreverent ribaldry. I doubt there’s a Trinbagonian over the age of twenty-five unfamiliar with Birdie.

Everybody down by de Express… Sparrow Dead.

Vidit Bhargava on Mastodon:

Made an iPhone Duo Walkman. Duo-Man!

Duo-Man offers the complete walkman experience on the iPhone Duo. Open the Duo to pick and ‘insert’ the cassette, Close the Duo to start listening.

And Yes, I actually recorded the button clicks and static noise from a real Walkman! 😀

This was for @BitRigApp ’s hackathon today. Fun 3 hr sprint.

The first killer app for iPhone Duo. (Be sure to watch the video.)

(I didn’t think “kids these days” had any idea what a “Walkman” was, but this isn’t Bhargava’s first Walkman concept.)

I’m predicting an abundance of clever (or at least whimsical) apps that hinge (sorry) on the Duo’s folding design, much as the original iPhone was a playground for experimentation. My 5% chance of buying a Duo is now up to about 8%.

James Savage spent ten years at Apple as a software engineer on Safari, App Clips, and other technologies. He left last year “to focus on smaller and more personal work.” Last week he released Drops, his first app since going indie:

Super excited (and only a little nervous) to say that Drops, my caffeine tracking app, is finally out! After 12 years, I once again have something on the App Store.

James describes his app as “a simple habit tracker for iPhone”:

Drops focuses on quickly logging drinks and places information front and center, getting you in and out without games or distractions. Log the soda you had at lunch, see where it leaves your caffeine for bedtime, and get on with your day.

Drops is thoughtful and carefully crafted, with an attractive yet wonderfully minimalist UI that gets out of your way. You can quickly record what you consume throughout the day with a single tap on one of the dozens of beverage presets (with caffeine levels for everything from Americanos to Sprite), or customize your drink by adjusting the caffeine level (decaf, half, full), number of espresso shots, even bean type. You can also easily add your own custom beverages. Drops is completely free (and ad-free), with an optional $7-a-year in-app purchase to unlock more themes and support its development. It also sports a beautiful icon designed by the good folks at The Iconfactory.

If you want to track “how caffeinated you are,” give Drops a shot.

Between this emotional farewell ceremony for Mike Krukow and his final KNBR Post-Game Wrap, I sobbed for nearly 90 minutes straight. I think I went through a quarter of a Kleenex box.

I’ve been listening to Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper—Kruk and Kuip—call ballgames for 28 years, far longer than any other announcers. They are the voices of Giants baseball and a beloved San Francisco institution.

Only Kruk is retiring this season; Kuip plans to continue calling games (despite a recent throat cancer diagnosis). But Giants broadcasts won’t be the same without this iconic duo yucking it up in my ear. (I attended many a game at Candlestick Park with a transistor radio and earpiece so I could hear them call the game, a tradition that continued at what is now Oracle Park, just with an iPhone and the MLB app.)

I will miss Kruk—and Kruk and Kuip—dearly.

Atta babe.

(The entire 65-minute ceremony is worth watching, but if you don’t have an hour, Kuip’s tribute to his broadcast partner starts at 35:31, and Kruk’s farewell starts right after, at 47:06. But if you’re a Giants fan—or even just a baseball fan—you’ll want to watch it all. Just stock up on Kleenex.)

There are many reasons why baseball is a beautiful sport, but none more than for moments like this. If this doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, you’re not hooked up right.

Not a bad start either for Verlander’s final game: 5⅓ innings, 5 hits, 2 runs, 6 strikeouts, 1 walk in a 4–3 no-decision win over the Pittsburgh Pirates that ended with a 2-run walk-off homer.

Verlander pitched one unremarkable season for the San Francisco Giants in 2025, finishing 4–11 with a 3.85 ERA in 29 games. But with a career 266–159 record, 3.33 ERA, 3 Cy Young Awards, a Top 40 finish in career wins (266), and a Top 10 in strikeouts (3,560), Verlander is a sure-bet first-round Hall of Famer.

Melody Schreiber, reporting for The Guardian:

The Trump administration is removing 760,000 people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace on allegations of fraud, officials said on Tuesday – adding to previous efforts to chip away at federally subsidized insurance programs and likely causing some of the lowest-income Americans to forego healthcare, experts said.

The US government is also investigating about 420,000 people whom they suspect of fraud, and they are putting a six-month enrollment moratorium on new agents and brokers selling Obamacare policies, officials said at a press conference.

The removed enrollees are a mixture of “phantoms” and “ghosts” as well as people who don’t meet the eligibility requirements of Obamacare, said Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

“These are not real people,” he said, claiming that expelling them from the ACA marketplace would save the federal government $2.2bn.

I’ll grant the potential for fraud here (though the CMS press release and fact sheet provide scant details). I’ll even let the “not real people” comment slide as a rhetorical explanation for the purported fake enrollments.

But this:

About 35% of ACA enrollees have never used their health insurance, Oz said. “That’s just not possible,” he said, adding, “So we know there is fraud.”

Oz—the head of a federal health insurance agency—clearly has no idea how insurance works. Healthy people who pay for and don’t use health insurance help spread the risk and costs of insurance coverage across a larger pool. Many healthy people pay for health insurance as a hedge against emergencies because the astronomical medical costs could otherwise bankrupt them. In some states, you’re required to carry medical insurance, regardless of your health. Some people refuse medical service because they can’t afford the after-insurance cost of care. Insurance companies count on a subset of people who dutifully pay their premiums and use little or no healthcare. Asserting fraud from non-use is logically flawed at best and actively deceitful at worst. Not only is it possible to have insurance and not use it, it’s literally the business model.

From the top down, this entire administration is filled with incompetent, clueless clowns.

Chris Dalla Riva at Can’t Get Much Higher combs through music streaming data to determine a workable definition of a “one-hit wonder”:

After crunching these numbers, I think a resolution to The One-Hit Wonder Paradox begins to emerge. A one-hit wonder doesn’t need to actually have a hit in the traditional sense. It can help. But nobody needs to crack the top 40 to join the one-hit wonder hall of fame. You just need to meet a few criteria.

A fun read (and listen—it’s copiously linked to YouTube music videos).

Jared Greenspan, MLB:

Ichiro [Suzuki] was on the mound in an annual All-Star Game against the best high school girls baseball players in Japan. And he dominated. Ichiro pitched a complete game shutout on 127 pitches with a whopping 17 strikeouts to steer his team to victory.

Ichiro has participated in similar exhibitions since at least 2021, helping to spotlight girls’ and women’s baseball in Japan. That’s fantastic, and a laudable goal.

Less fantastic are the predictably misogynistic responses to his appearances; see, for example, the comments on X/Twitter to the original (paywalled) Seattle Times article. Apparently some SportsBros are epically excited about an aging former professional baseball player dominating high school girls in a sport he played at the highest level for longer than most of his opponents have been alive.

What I’m seeing surprisingly little of from these SportsBros in this age of virulent transphobia is pushback against a “biological man” playing in “women’s sports.” I’ve been told this is the reason why we must ban transgender people from participating in sports.

This lack of pushback might lead one to believe that banning transgender players is about something other than “protecting our vulnerable girls.”

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.)