Karen Attiah, The Guardian:

This week, seven years almost to the day since the CIA announced the crown prince’s responsibility in the murder [of Jamal Khashoggi], Mohammed bin Salman returns to Washington, invited for an offical visit by America’s Temu pharaoh, Donald Trump. The reconciliation between Trump and MBS was perhaps inevitable, given that even before the first Trump presidency, Trump spoke often of his love for the Saudis and their wealth. (“I get along great with all of them; they buy apartments from me. They spend $40m, $50m,” he quipped in 2015. “Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much!”)

Attiah, who was until recently the editor of the Washington Post’s global opinion section, hired Khashoggi in 2017.

A year later, Saudi Arabia had Jamal killed. In the aftermath of Jamal’s murder, Trump administration officials worked overtime to launder Saudi Arabia’s blood-stained image. Jared Kushner was advising Prince Mohammed on how to “weather the storm”. Last year, Kushner’s equity firm received $2bn from Saudi Arabia’s private equity firm.

There’s much to say about the Saudification of western cultural spaces through the sheer sums of money the kingdom is so obviously throwing into what it sees as soft power. Writers and observers have commented for years about Saudi Arabia’s “sportswashing”, like the kingdom’s sponsorship of LIV golf tournament and the purchase of the Newcastle United soccer team.

“Gameswashing” too: Pokemon Go (and its location data) for $3.85 billion, Electronic Arts ($55 billion), and many more.

Attiah again, this time on her personal site, The Golden Hour:

Yesterday, ABC news reporter Nancy Bruce asked the question of MBS. “Your royal highness, the U.S. concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you?”

At first, the crown prince smirked at the camera during the mention of 9/11 families. Then, seconds after that question about Khashoggi’s murder, the millennial crown prince looked down, fidgeting with his hands like a nervous schoolchild called into the principal’s office. And he let Trump do the dirty work -to attack ABC as fake news before launching into more vile commentary and smearing Jamal’s name:

“You’re mentioning someone [Khashoggi] who was extremely controversial; a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen,” Trump said.

The written word doesn’t do the quote justice. The malice oozing from Trump as he spews out “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman” needs to be seen and heard to fully comprehend its odiousness.

That’s in addition to Trump’s vile and appalling implication that murder—dismemberment—is, perhaps, somehow, acceptable if you’re “controversial” or disliked, a perfectly reasonable consequence in Trump’s twisted, mob-boss mind.

Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian:

Catherine Lucey, who covers the White House for Bloomberg News, was doing what reporters are supposed to do: asking germane questions.

Her query to Donald Trump a few days ago during a “gaggle” aboard Air Force One was reasonable as it had to do with the release of the Epstein files, certainly a subject of great public interest. Why had Trump been stonewalling, she asked, “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”.

His response, though, was anything but reasonable.

It was demeaning, insulting and misogynistic.

He pointed straight at Lucey and told her to stop doing her job.

“Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” said the president of the United States.

Donald Trump has never been a nice man, but he’s generally managed to maintain an in-public grip on his vituperativeness, especially in front of the cameras.

That grip is slipping.

Like Sullivan and others, I’m shocked-not-shocked by Trump’s explosion of anger toward a female reporter, but I’m genuinely dismayed that the other reporters around him didn’t bat an eye. The male reporter to his left displays no reaction whatsoever and the female reporter whose question Lucey was supposedly interrupting just… asks it. No hesitation, no surprise. Seemingly just another outburst the press has come to expect—and ignore.

What I find deeply disturbing—and why I say he’s losing some of his self-control—is the suddenness of his outburst and the equal speed with which he regains his composure. Note how calmly he answers a question before his eruption, and how calmly he answers after.

His first “quiet” to Lucey is angry, as he raises his finger in admonishment. It’s the level of anger from someone who’s pissed off at being interrupted.

His second “quiet” is menacing, an escalation as he lunges toward Lucey and thrusts his finger right in her face, an attempt to intimidate, dominate. This is the moment he lost self-control. You can imagine Trump shoving her, or slapping her, to shut her up.

Calling her “piggy”—an epithet seemingly expressing his deep personal disdain for the reporter—feels almost tacked on. He knows he can’t physically strike Lucey, but he needs to strike out at her. He needs to insult her, put her down. This is the moment Trump’s survival instincts kick in, but he’s not yet fully back in control. He can’t help himself, and out slips “piggy,” one of his favorite misogynistic yet comparatively “polite” insults.

But I’ll bet you that wasn’t the word he was thinking.

The YouTube algorithm at its best. Beautiful.

I throughly enjoyed this conversation between Cynthia Erivo and Tonya Mosley on Fresh Air (Overcast, Apple Podcasts). Mosley asks great questions, and Erivo has wonderful, thoughtful answers. It’s in support of Erivo’s newly-released memoir, Simply More: A Book for Anyone who Has Been Told They're Too Much (Amazon, Bookshop, Apple Books) and of Wicked For Good, which comes out Friday (I’m excited for part two, despite some concerns induced by the stage production, which I thought dragged in the second act).

I also recently watched the season two opener of Poker Face, in which Erivo deftly plays quintuplets. She is ridiculously talented.

Apple details a new manufacturing process for its titanium Apple Watch cases:

It started with a pie-in-the-sky idea: What if 3D printing — historically used to create prototypes — could be leveraged to produce millions of identical enclosures to Apple’s exact design standards, with high-quality recycled metal? […]

This year, all Apple Watch Ultra 3 and titanium Apple Watch Series 11 cases are 3D-printed with 100 percent recycled aerospace-grade titanium powder, an achievement not previously considered possible at scale.

I found this story utterly fascinating. It’s an example of Apple creating truly innovative processes to solve tough materials science challenges (like needing to atomize the titanium into powder by “fine-tuning its oxygen content to decrease the qualities of titanium that become explosive when exposed to heat”). As a software guy, I find this manufacturing stuff deeply riveting.

I own an Apple Watch Ultra 3 (in black), and I had no reason to notice a change: the quality seems as high as ever.

One curiosity:

Using the additive process of 3D printing, layer after layer gets printed until an object is as close to the final shape needed as possible. Historically, machining forged parts is subtractive, requiring large portions of material to be shaved off. This shift enables Ultra 3 and titanium cases of Series 11 to use just half the raw material compared to their previous generations.

“A 50 percent drop is a massive achievement — you’re getting two watches out of the same amount of material used for one,” Chandler explains. “When you start mapping that back, the savings to the planet are tremendous.”

In total, Apple estimates more than 400 metric tons of raw titanium will be saved this year alone thanks to this new process.

(That’s Sarah Chandler, Apple’s vice president of Environment and Supply Chain Innovation.)

Creating two watches from the same amount of raw titanium previously used for one watch is indeed great for the planet, but I can’t help noticing that Apple hasn’t lowered the price of the Apple Watch to account for the reduced material cost, suggesting the reduction is also good for Apple’s bottom line.

Update: My friend and former colleague Matt did some back-of-the-envelope math (sparking me to do the same) which suggests Apple’s per-watch savings might (generously) amount to no more than 50¢–$1 per case—scarcely enough to move the retail price, even with Apple’s high margins. The effect on its bottom line would likewise be minuscule: assuming 5 million titanium watches sold, Apple could save $2.5–$5 million annually—a rounding error for the company. I hereby rescind my snark and acknowledge that Apple may in fact be doing this purely to benefit the planet.

Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac:

Last July, Apple announced that its longtime Chief Operating Officer, Jeff Williams, would retire “late in the year.” According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, he just clocked out for the last time.

His name and photo have been removed from Apple’s leadership page.

Which reminded me: a couple of weeks after his announced retirement, I ran into Williams on a flight from the Raleigh/Durham airport to San Francisco. He (like me) was returning home from a family visit. I congratulated him on his pending retirement, noting that I’d recently taken the step. He asked for retirement advice. We both laughed.

During the flight, he was reading Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most (an actual book, not from Apple Books). It’s described as “a guide to defining and then creating a flourishing life, and answering one of life’s most pressing questions: how are we to live?” and is based on a popular course at Yale. He was clearly preparing himself for an after-Apple future.

I wish him well.

(And Jeff, if you read this, reach out… there’s an after-Apple Slack channel invite waiting for you!)

Sam Kelly, at Literary Hub, asks “Did Shakespeare Write Hamlet While He Was Stoned?”:

That’s right, Shakespeare was a stoner. I’m not making this up—they found the evidence in his backyard. Back in 2001, some anthropologists got permission from a museum to borrow twenty-four clay pipe fragments that had been dug up in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare used to live. Using state-of-the-art forensic technology, the anthropologists discovered cannabis residue on eight of them—including several from Shakespeare’s backyard garden—that dated back to the late 1500s/early 1600s, around the time he actually lived there.

Kelly admits the evidence is circumstantial:

Pipes with cannabis residue were dug up in Shakespeare’s garden, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Shakespeare is the one who put them there. (Hey, maybe they were planted in his garden by Sir Francis Bacon, right?)

Kelly also suggests that one of Shakespeare’s sonnets “comes pretty close” to “admitting that he smoked cannabis”:

Professor Thackeray, the same anthropologist who performed the pipe analysis, points to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 76, which talks in part about the act of writing […]

The wording in Sonnet 76 is pretty convincing. Many scholars believe the “noted weed” in which the author finds “invention” is a reference to cannabis and its ability to stimulate creativity.

I’m not sure who those “many scholars” are, but “weed” in Sonnet 76 has long been understood to mean “clothing or style of dress” (Oxford English Dictionary: “an item of clothing, a garment”). This usage is even seen in Two Gentlemen of Verona, where Julia disguises herself as a man and asks her waiting-woman Lucetta to “fit me with such weeds / As may beseem some well-reputed page.” It is not a reference to marijuana; the earliest use of weed in that sense is from 1898, almost three hundred years after Shakespeare wrote this sonnet.

“Noted weed” means “recognizable or familiar clothing or style of dress,” or, in the context of the sonnet, “familiar words and a recognizable writing style.”

This theory of “noted weed” being a reefer reference has apparently been floating around a long time. Hilary Hanson wrote about it for Huffington Post in 2015, in which she spoke to James Shapiro:

James Shapiro, a Columbia University professor who has published multiple books about Shakespeare’s life isn’t so convinced that Shakespeare was a stoner. […]

He’s especially skeptical of Thackeray using Sonnet 76 as supporting evidence, which Shapiro called a “really lame interpretation” of the poem.

“The line ‘keep invention in a noted weed’ is referring to weeds as dressing up, as clothes,” Shapiro said. “The poem is about dressing up language in a certain way and you really have to be insensitive to the poem to force the reading [to be about marijuana use].”

Back to Kelly at LitHub:

Some also think the phrase “every word doth almost tell my name” is a sly reference to the fact that “shake” (as in Shakespeare) is another word for cannabis—specifically, the scraps left over after cannabis buds have been plucked and packaged.

This is such a stretch that it defies logic and requires no rebuttal. You might as well argue that “tell my name” is a “sly reference” to Destiny’s Child. And the less said about Thackeray’s interpretation of “compounds strange” the better. (“Thackeray believes [Shakespeare] chose to avoid using other, more dangerous drugs, such as cocaine, because they were ‘compounds strange’ that could prove harmful.” I mean, c’mon. It’s clear from context that “compounds strange” is about composing unique word combinations.)

So, no, Shakespeare wasn’t seeking the sticky icky in Sonnet 76. He’s explaining why he hasn’t changed his writing style, which is recognizably his.

Tim Bradshaw, Stephen Morris, Michael Acton, and Daniel Thomas, reporting for Financial Times (paywalled, but summarized by Reuters):

Apple is stepping up its succession planning efforts, as it prepares for Tim Cook to step down as chief executive as soon as next year.

Is this news? Perhaps. Coming as it did on a Friday evening is extremely fortuitous timing for Apple—too late to spook the markets, plus the weekend to digest the news: the stink of a planted story—with the “news” being the purported timing of Cook’s eventual announcement, which is implied to be as early as February, but with enough ambiguity for it to be as late as December 31, 2026, or well beyond that.

The piece has thirteen more paragraphs, but only five of them are relevant, as they reference FT’s supposed sources—the always reliable “people familiar with discussions”:

Several people familiar with discussions inside the tech group told the Financial Times that its board and senior executives have recently intensified preparations for Cook to hand over the reins at the $4tn company after more than 14 years.

A planned transition for any CEO takes time, especially so for the longest-running CEO of one of the most valuable companies on the planet. Apple has been planning for Cook’s departure since Cook became CEO. As the report notes, Cook turned 65 this month. Of course Apple is “intensifying” its preparation as their CEO hits the traditional retirement age in the U.S. That’s just prudent. To do otherwise would be corporate malpractice.

John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice-president of hardware engineering, is widely seen as Cook’s most likely successor, although no final decisions have been made, these people said.

Ternus has been seen as a possible candidate since at least early 2024, and more so since Jeff Williams announced his retirement in July. Are “these people” sharing new internal insight on Ternus’ likelihood of succession, or merely parroting the existing speculation? (Perhaps “these people” are merely saying “no final decisions have been made” and the rest is just FT fluff?)

People close to Apple say the long-planned transition is not related to the company’s current performance, ahead of what is expected to be a blockbuster end-of-year sales period for the iPhone.

So this isn’t a “leave while the stock is at an all-time high with even more good news to come” scenario? Got it.

The company is unlikely to name a new CEO before its next earnings report in late January, which covers the critical holiday period.

An announcement early in the year would give its new leadership team time to settle in ahead of its big annual keynote events, its developer conference in June and its iPhone launch in September, the people said.

I’ve included both paragraphs here because this seems to be the point of the piece, laundered through FT’s obfuscation machine. Taken together, they suggest an announcement could come as early as February. That would be huge news, if true.

These people said that although preparations have intensified, the timing of any announcement could change.

This, along with the lede’s “as soon as next year” language, provides that necessary ambiguity should the transition happen later than FT implies.

This report could be a scoop, a PR plant, or the entire piece could be based on a few people setting up a WebEx call and ordering pizza.

When Williams announced his retirement, I wondered “if this makes it less likely Tim Cook will be stepping down as CEO in the near-term” because “Apple usually only does one or two of these big executive transitions a year,” so I’d be surprised by an early-2026 transition. I’d also be surprised if Cook chose to leave before Apple’s 50th anniversary in April (or even before the 20th anniversary iPhone in 2027). But perhaps starting “Apple’s next 50 years” with a new CEO is justification enough.

One final thought:

Cook has voiced his preference for an internal candidate to be chosen as his replacement, saying the company has “very detailed succession plans”.

Cook hasn’t merely “voiced his preference” here; he’s telling us what will happen. There is zero chance—none—that Apple replaces him with someone from outside Apple. When John Siracusa called for new leadership at Apple earlier this year, I wrote:

[…] any change at the top will come from within: today’s Apple is institutionally averse to bringing in an external CEO, so someone on that leadership page is Apple’s next CEO.

I stand by that. There are two reasons:

One, Apple’s structure is unique among companies of its size, organized functionally—marketing, software, hardware, sales, operations, etc.—rather than by product lines or business units. Most external CEOs are familiar with managing “general managers,” not functional experts.

Two, and more importantly, Apple is extremely culture-driven, and they take great pains to maintain that culture. Every leader (or potential leader) goes through “Apple University,” which strives to instill, cultivate, and reinforce that culture.

A CEO who hasn’t spent a decade-plus inside Apple, who doesn’t already understand Apple’s business structure, who isn’t steeped in Apple’s culture—who doesn’t embody “What Makes Apple, Apple”—will not succeed at Apple.

The headline and lede from Jason Lange’s Reuters story is infuriating and mortifying:

Just 29% of Americans support US military killing drug suspects

Only 29% of Americans support using the U.S. military to kill suspected drug traffickers without a judge or court being involved, a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

Using “just” and “only” is doing a lot of heavy lifting, here. It would be more honest—and equally accurate—if Reuters dropped both words and wrote that almost a third of Americans are cool with extrajudicial murder. Here’s a rewrite:

29% of Americans Support US Military Killing Drug Suspects

Fully 29% of Americans support using the U.S. military to kill suspected drug traffickers without a judge or court being involved, supporting President Donald Trump’s strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

Naturally, the Republicans are more bloodthirsty, with 58% supporting these illegal strikes against unarmed civilians, versus 10% of Democrats. Disturbingly, 15% of both Republicans and Democrats are “unsure” whether they support or oppose such strikes.

Mark Gurman and Edward Ludlow, writing for Bloomberg under the headline “Tesla Is Working to Add Apple CarPlay in Bid to Boost Vehicle Sales” (paywalled; Archive.ph link):

Tesla Inc. is developing support for Apple Inc.’s CarPlay system in its vehicles, according to people with knowledge of the matter, working to add one of the most highly requested features by customers.

The carmaker has started testing the capability internally, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the effort is still private. The CarPlay platform — long supported by other automakers — shows users a version of the iPhone’s software that’s optimized for vehicle infotainment systems. It’s considered a must-have option by many drivers.

Adding CarPlay would mark a stunning reversal for Tesla and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who long ignored pleas to implement the popular feature.

Via Jason Snell at Six Colors, who notes:

With the evaporation of U.S. EV rebates, Elon Musk’s controversial political moves, and a generally stale product line-up, Tesla is facing a sales crisis. Meanwhile, new car buyers very much want CarPlay as an option. Adding CarPlay isn’t quite a cure-all, but it sure couldn’t hurt in giving potential Tesla buyers one less reason to shop elsewhere.

That it’s even being considered is 1) a sign of desperation for Tesla, and B) indicative of the clout CarPlay wields. No doubt other carmakers will realize their mistake, too.

But while CarPlay is necessary when I’m considering a car, it’s not sufficient for considering a Tesla. A free Tesla wouldn’t be sufficient. Only Elon Musk’s departure (and a lot of sage burning) could get me to consider a Tesla. This might help Tesla sales on the margins, but Musk is a much greater anchor on Tesla than a lack of CarPlay.

Zeba Blay, for Teen Vogue:

You’re doomscrolling. On TikTok, or Instagram, or YouTube, or some other equally distracting online platform. In between harrowing news stories pointing to the nation’s decline, clips from balloon-popping dating shows, and ads for the latest viral lipstain, you see a face. The face may give you pause. This is because what you are looking at is only the concept of a face: a Black woman, perhaps in her mid-20s, with glowing brown skin, immaculate brows, slicked down baby hairs, and sharp acrylic nails on her fingers.

“Get ready with me,” she says, “I need to go shopping. I have to find some clothes for my Miami trip. I’m thinking about wearing this little tan Skims…” She heads to the mall. She goes to Zara. “I found four outfits, I still need two more. But the four I found are definitely tea.” She is not a real person. […]

And here we are, at the end of everything: the uncanny valley of Black generative AI influencers. A vast wilderness of hyperrealistic avatars doing mukbangs, wig installs, and calling us broke. Like all digital blackface, they implicitly play into racialized stereotypes of Blackness, particularly Black femininity. Digital blackface has evolved, or rather adapted, to the demands of late-as-hell stage capitalism. What once lived in the pixels of reaction GIFs and memes has now transformed into something slicker, though no less insidious — the continuation of a long, wearying American tradition of stealing Black expression and exploiting it for profit.

I read this article as part of Karen Attiah’s ongoing Race Media and International Affairs class that she liberated after it was canceled by Columbia.

Attiah herself is quoted in this piece, in reference to her conversation with “Liv,” Meta’s “Proud Black Queer Momma” chat character:

“Some people reacted to my questioning saying ‘Oh it reveals the racism of its creators, it reveals so much about the tech industry.’ Yeah, that’s true, but you guys are assuming that revealing these things means that it will bring these people shame. They’re still going on. Liv is still active.”

“It’s important to remember that Meta said they weren’t doing this to increase people’s trust in reality,” she adds. “They weren’t doing this because they wanted to educate people. Their term was engagement. And what does engagement mean? It means more money, more eyes on their platform. So if they can use Blackness to extract our attention, even if it’s negative attention, they still win.”

The article isn’t just about non-Black people appropriating Blackness via fake Black AI personas, however. Real Black people are doing it too, in an effort, suggests UK media literacy and pop culture creator Benjy Kusi, to “exploit a system that’s exploiting them.”

The article’s author, Blay, again:

In that sense, this is not just about the perils of AI, the dangers of generating hyperreal imagery of fake Black people without regulation or transparency. This is also about the economy of influence itself, and economy that is, by design, structured to keep us all in endless loops of exploitation as a means of survival. And what does it mean to survive within an ecosystem where Blackness is extracted for profit without the necessity of paying or giving fair working conditions to real Black people?

“To me it’s digital slavery,” Karen Attiah says. “Because AI won’t revolt. It’s programmed.”

Joey Cappelletti and Matt Brown, AP News:

As the House returns Wednesday for the first time in months, Democrat Adelita Grijalva will be sworn in as its newest member, more than seven weeks after winning a special election in Arizona to fill the seat last held by her late father.

Grijalva’s swearing-in is expected to be among the first actions by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who had previously declined to seat her until the chamber reconvened following a deal to end the government shutdown. The official ceremony is set for 4 p.m. EST, shortly before the House is expected to begin voting.

For Grijalva, it’s the end of a weekslong delay that she and other Democrats said was intended to prevent her signature on a petition to eventually trigger a vote to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein. In an interview with The Associated Press, she said the thought of finally being sworn in was “emotional” and “very much a roller coaster.”

It’s outrageous that Johnson has held up the swearing-in of an elected Congresswoman for over seven weeks under the flimsiest of pretexts.

Grijalva would be the final necessary signature on a discharge petition linked to legislation that would require the Justice Department to release all unclassified documents and communications related to Epstein and his sex trafficking operation.

I’m assuming—perhaps uncharitably—that one reason Johnson is finally allowing Grijalva to be sworn in is because one of the other 217 people who previously signed the petition is now willing to revoke it. Speculation is rampant that it’ll be Nancy Mace, but I’m not ruling out Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Not that it matters. Denying Grijalva and her Arizona constituents has been one big waste of time over a petition for a vote on legislation that will never become law.

Ashley Ogawa Clarke for Vogue, on the aforelinked iPhone Pocket collab between Apple and Issey Miyake (paywalled; Apple News+; Internet Archive):

Though Miyake and Jobs are not around to see it, there is a significance to the collaboration that transcends the product. “Both these great masterminds are now gone, but what we have in common is how we continue to challenge ourselves to be innovative, and to create new and original things,” says Miyamae. “It’s a moment of connecting the dots.”

Intentionally or not, I’m reminded of two things: Jobs’ quote from his Stanford commencement, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards,” and WWDC 2013’s “a thousand no’s for every yes” video.

Apple:

ISSEY MIYAKE and Apple today unveiled iPhone Pocket. Inspired by the concept of “a piece of cloth,” its singular 3D-knitted construction is designed to fit any iPhone as well as all pocketable items. Beginning Friday, November 14, it will be available at select Apple Store locations and on apple.com in France, Greater China, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, and the U.S.

iPhone Pocket features a ribbed open structure with the qualities of the original pleats by ISSEY MIYAKE. Born from the idea of creating an additional pocket, its understated design fully encloses iPhone, expanding to fit more of a user’s everyday items. When stretched, the open textile subtly reveals its contents and allows users to peek at their iPhone display. iPhone Pocket can be worn in a variety of ways — handheld, tied onto bags, or worn directly on the body. Featuring a playful color palette, the short strap design is available in eight colors, and the long strap design in three colors.

Many people (including me) immediately likened it to Apple’s once-ridiculed, now-cherished iPod Socks—some derisively, others with what I presume to be nostalgia. Some questioned its authenticity or derided the “piece of cloth” description, and most everyone blanched at its $150–$230 price tag, with Marques Brownlee calling it “a litmus test for people who will buy/defend anything Apple releases.”

What few people noted is that Issey Miyake is a luxury designer brand founded by the “super famous Japanese designer” (to quote my wife) who designed Steve Jobs’ iconic black mock turtleneck, and which today sells $65 socks, $390 scarves, and $485 knit bags. A $230 iPhone holder is hardly an outlier for this brand.

Furthermore, “a piece of cloth” isn’t meant in its literal sense. Rather, it’s a reference to Miyake’s apparel concept of “A Piece of Cloth (or A-POC),” a “technique to reduce textile waste” that starts with a single thread that’s then woven into a finished garment—a design so influential, they were on display at The Met and MoMA. I’d describe it as “spiritually related” to Apple’s unibody design, which carves laptops and iPhones from blocks of aluminum.

My completely fashion-free sense tells me these will be extremely popular among a particular crowd.

Rindala Alajaji, writing for the EFF:

If you’ve been following the wave of age-gating laws sweeping across the country and the globe, you’ve probably noticed that lawmakers, tech companies, and advocates all seem to be using different terms for what sounds like the same thing. Age verification, age assurance, age estimation, age gating—they get thrown around interchangeably, but they technically mean different things. And those differences matter a lot when we’re talking about your rights, your privacy, your data, and who gets to access information online.

So let’s clear up the confusion. Here’s your guide to the terminology that’s shaping these laws, and why you should care about the distinctions.

I headlined my aforelinked piece on Apple’s API support for these laws as “Age Verification” rather than “Age Assurance.” That choice was deliberate:

Politicians and tech companies love using these terms interchangeably because it obscures what they’re actually proposing. A law that requires “age assurance” sounds reasonable and moderate. But if that law defines age assurance as requiring government ID verification, it’s not moderate at all—it’s mass surveillance.

Apple and Google are required under Texas SB2420 to “verify” a user’s age—children and adults alike:

Sec. 121.021. DUTY TO VERIFY AGE OF USER; AGE CATEGORIES.

(a) When an individual in this state creates an account with an app store, the owner of the app store shall use a commercially reasonable method of verification to verify the individual’s age category under Subsection (b).

And:

Sec. 121.022. PARENTAL CONSENT REQUIRED.

(a) If the owner of the app store determines under Section 121.021 that an individual is a minor who belongs to an age category that is not “adult,” the owner shall require that the minor’s account be affiliated with a parent account belonging to the minor’s parent or guardian.

Utah’s SB0142 and Louisiana’s HB570 each have similar language.

Language matters because it shapes how we think about these systems. “Assurance” sounds gentle. “Verification” sounds official. “Estimation” sounds technical and impersonal, and also admits its inherent imprecision. But they all involve collecting your data and create a metaphysical age gate to the internet. The terminology is deliberately confusing, but the stakes are clear: it’s your privacy, your data, and your ability to access the internet without constant identity checks. Don’t let fuzzy language disguise what these systems really do.

Naturally, Google uses “verify” and “verification,” while Apple opts for “assurance,” which is insufferably on-brand. Still, I’m deathly curious how the lawyers—or perhaps marketing—landed on their preferred terminology. Surely, it’s more than “at Google, the marketing people are all lawyers, and at Apple, the lawyers are all marketing people.”

Right?

Apple Developer News, in October:

Beginning January 1, 2026, a new state law in Texas — SB2420 — introduces age assurance requirements for app marketplaces and developers. While we share the goal of strengthening kids’ online safety, we are concerned that SB2420 impacts the privacy of users by requiring the collection of sensitive, personally identifiable information to download any app, even if a user simply wants to check the weather or sports scores. Apple will continue to provide parents and developers with industry-leading tools that help enhance child safety while safeguarding privacy within the constraints of the law.

Once this law goes into effect, users located in Texas who create a new Apple Account will be required to confirm whether they are 18 years or older. All new Apple Accounts for users under the age of 18 will be required to join a Family Sharing group, and parents or guardians will need to provide consent for all App Store downloads, app purchases, and transactions using Apple's In-App Purchase system by the minor. This will also impact developers, who will need to adopt new capabilities and modify behavior within their apps to meet their obligations under the law. Similar requirements will come into effect later next year in Utah and Louisiana. […]

More details, including additional technical documentation, will be released later this fall.

Apple Developer News, last week:

Today we’re releasing more details about the tools we’re making available for developers to help them meet their compliance obligations under upcoming U.S. state laws, including SB2420 in Texas. While we’re providing these tools to help developers navigate the evolving legal landscape, Apple remains concerned about the potential implications of laws like SB2420 in Texas.

The tools include the Declared Age Range API to obtain a user’s age category; a new StoreKit age rating property type to check if an app’s age rating has changed; the Significant Change API to re-obtain parental consent when the app changes “significantly”; and App Store server notifications to handle app consent revocations.

Google has a similar document and set of APIs—and expresses similar concerns—for its Play Store.

These laws claim to protect children from inappropriate content, but are actually a privacy nightmare, requiring everyone who wants to download apps to verify and share their age with Apple, Google, and app developers. This is mass surveillance under the guise of child safety—and doesn’t actually address the purported concerns that inspired the laws. It will likely cause harm to vulnerable kids by further exposing them to the capriciousness of their parents or guardians—imagine needing to obtain permission from your estranged parents to download a learn-to-code tutorial, a news app, or a period-tracker.

Notably—or perhaps, intentionally—these laws don’t apply to web apps—Meta, for example, doesn’t have to collect this information for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Threads when they’re accessed from the web, only from the apps. I suppose “child safety” is only important to them as long as it’s not their responsibility to ensure it.

Some developers may be unable or unwilling to comply with these laws. They can control the availability of their apps in 175 countries and regions, choosing whether to sell them in, say, Russia, Israel, or the EU—but cannot select individual U.S. states. It would be utterly satisfying—if wholly implausible—to see Apple add per-state controls.

Someone at Google clearly considered this option, as their page includes this FAQ:

Can I ask Google Play to block all users in a specific state from downloading my app?

We do not plan to change our approach to app releases and country targeting. However, you are free to implement your own geo-restriction solutions in your app.

I wholeheartedly endorse this option.

Peter Coviello, the former chair of Africana studies at Bowdoin College, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s alma mater, absolutely excoriates The New York Times for its piece on Mamdani’s “elite” education, under the Literary Hub headline “Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani”:

Like so many other bits of Times coverage, the whole of the piece is structured as an orchestrated encounter. Some people say this; however, others say this. It’s so offhand you can think you’re gazing through a pane of glass. Only when you stand a little closer, or when circumstances make you a little less blinkered, do you notice the fact which then becomes blinding and finally crazymaking, which is just that there is zero, less than zero, stress put on the relation between those two “sides,” or their histories, or their sponsors, or their relative evidentiary authority, or any of it. Instead, what you get is a piece making the various more or less bovine noises of studious grey-lady impartiality, with the labor of anything resembling “appraisal” surgically excised.

I’d bookmarked the NYT piece (“How a Small Elite College Influenced Mamdani’s World View”) but found its thesis so obviously and infuriatingly slanted (“The mayoral candidate has said his education at Bowdoin College was formative. But critics say that his degree exemplifies how colleges steep students in leftist dogma.”) that I let it slip by uncommented. I’m glad Coviello did not.

Ryan J. Reilly, NBC News:

Jurors showed no appetite for the Justice Department’s case against “sandwich guy,” the D.C. resident who chucked a Subway sandwich at the chest of a federal officer, finding him not guilty Thursday after several hours of deliberations.

My quip was wrapped and ready to toss: “I’d like to think this took several hours only because the jury ordered lunch. Hero sandwiches, of course.”

The jury — which feasted on sandwiches for lunch Thursday, according to a person familiar with jury lunches — deliberated the charges for several hours Wednesday and Thursday before delivering the verdict.

Damn. Satire is dead.

[Border Patrol Officer Greg] Lairmore had testified that the sandwich “exploded all over” his chest and claimed he could smell mustard and onions. But a photo showed that the sandwich was still in its wrapper on the ground after it hit Lairmore in his bulletproof vest.

I’m sure a perjury charge will be prosecuted with equal vigor.

Paul Kafasis, a few days ago:

On Saturday night, Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Will Smith smacked an 11th inning home run that wound up winning the 2025 World Series for his team. It was Smith’s third championship with the Dodgers, following titles in 2024 and 2020. That’s a good run, but even more impressively, it means that the World Series-winning team has now featured a Will Smith for six straight years.

Quips Kafasis: “Get your team a Will Smith, stat.”

The Wills Smith faced off in the 2020 NLCS, with the catcher smashing a three-run homer, but what I really need to see is a Will Smith-Will Smith battery.

Daniel Gilbert, The Washington Post (semi-gift link; Apple News+ link):

At 69 years old, Debby Orcutt was diagnosed last year with pancreatic cancer, a condition so dire that her doctor refused to tell her how long she had to live. With few good options, she enrolled in a clinical trial for an experimental drug.

[…]

A scan last week showed her tumor had shrunk 64 percent since starting the drug in January, according to her husband. It is the sort of clinical evidence that is stirring optimism and has prompted the Trump administration to put it on a novel path for rapid approval.

[…]

Based on early clinical trial results, the Food and Drug Administration in October awarded the drug’s sponsor, biotech company Revolution Medicines, a new and unconventional accelerated review designed to get promising drugs to patients faster than ever. […]

The FDA’s selection of Revolution Medicines’ daraxonrasib appeared to cement its status as one of the most promising experimental cancer drugs.

Proudly sharing this because it represents four years of my wife’s life: she leads one of the many research teams at Revolution Medicines striving to get this breakthrough drug into the hands of doctors and patients.

Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly forms of cancer. It’s what took the life of Steve Jobs and many other talented people. An effective treatment is welcome.

Elena Schneider, Erin Doherty, and Jessica Piper, writing for Politico after Tuesday’s strong electoral showing for Democrats:

All across the country, Democrats won big, from the marquee races to the down-ballot contests. Counties that had shifted right a year ago veered back to the left, and the suburbs that powered Democrats’ massive wins in the first Trump administration came roaring back. Exit polls even showed Democrats improved their margins with non-college educated voters.

The strength of the wins hints at Democrats’ appetite to take on Trump as he ends his first year in office and voters’ concerns about cost of living.

Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill cruised to double-digit victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Two Georgia Democrats flipped seats on the state’s Public Service Commission, the first non-federal statewide wins for a Democrat in nearly two decades. Democrats flipped a pair of Republican-held state Senate seats in Mississippi, cracking the GOP supermajority in a deep-red state. And a successful California ballot measure delivered five additional seats for the party’s House margins ahead of the 2026 midterms, offsetting Texas’ redistricting push.

Zohran Mamdani also won the New York Mayoral race.

Americans have grown weary of Donald Trump’s divisive, vindictive, and revanchist politics—and they’re electing leaders unafraid to wield the power of their offices to stop him.

Trump, naturally, throws Republicans under the bus.

The City (“Reporting to New Yorkers”):

Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani culminated a meteoric political rise Tuesday by scoring a decisive victory in a polarizing mayoral election. At just 34 years old, he will become the youngest mayor in over a century, the first Muslim to lead New York City and one of the most prominent democratic socialists holding elected office in the country.

Mamdani took over 50% of the 2 million votes, and many of my New York friends are deeply excited about his win. While I haven’t lived in New York for over 25 years now, it’s still “home,” and I’m thrilled to see some positive energy raging through the city I still love.

Maybe I’ll move back. With nearly a million New Yorkers ready to flee the city after Mamdani’s election, the deals on apartments and condos will be wild. I’ll be happy to make anyone a completely reasonable, fleeing-the-city offer for their Upper West Side penthouse or brownstone.

If you want the usual staid “Vice President dies” obituary, read John D. McKinnon’s in The Wall Street Journal (Apple News+):

Dick Cheney, who served four Republican presidents and whose role as an architect of the post-9/11 war on terror made him one of the most powerful—and controversial—U.S. vice presidents in history, died. He was 84.

If you’d prefer something that offers a less rose-colored perspective of Cheney’s impact, I suggest Spencer Ackerman’s contemptuous piece for The Nation, the headline for which is “His Works Completed, Dick Cheney, Mass Murderer of Iraqis and American Democracy, Dies”:

Cheney, 84, picked an appropriate time to die. His decades-long struggle to consolidate the unparalleled might of US warmaking within the White House has succeeded. “In Cheney’s view,” wrote his biographer Barton Gellman, “the president’s authority was close to absolute within his rightful sphere.” Cheney defined that sphere expansively and fought for his definitions aggressively.

On Cheney’s unrelenting pursuit to create “an architecture of repression”:

Cheney did all of this because his deepest conviction was that the presidency was an elected monarchy. Misconstruing an argument of Alexander Hamilton’s from Federalist No. 70, Cheney pursued what became known as the unitary executive theory. It was predicated on the idea of an unencumbered presidency empowered to control every aspect of the executive branch, regardless of any affected office or agency’s intended independence from political decisions. Cheney had understood the post-Watergate reforms from Nixon’s criminal presidency as a congressional usurpation, and he intended to roll them all back.

Cheney got us into a war that convinced a generation of Americans that Muslims and the Middle East were America’s enemies.

We have a weak and ineffectual Congress today because Cheney sidelined it two decades ago.

There is a direct line between Dick Cheney’s unwavering belief in the plenary power of the president, and Donald Trump’s seemingly unchecked attempts to wield that power today.

We have Donald Trump because we had Dick Cheney.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple launched a new App Store on the web today, allowing users to browse through and search for apps across all of its platforms.

The web version solves one glaring limitation of the native App Store: it shows the current prices of apps you’ve already purchased.

Finally.

Via MJ Tsai, who notes:

But sadly, just like in the App Store app, Apple prevents you from selecting any of the text. I don’t understand why Apple insists on making its stores user-hostile in this way. However, unlike in the App Store app, you can find within the page using the browser’s built-in search feature. You can also fix text selection using StopTheMadness Pro’s “Protect text selection” feature.

“User-hostile” is exactly the right phrase—the same I used to describe this scourge in 2024 after I was prevented from copying text from the USPS Postal Store. I shared then a method for restoring the ability to copy text for Safari users, which I’ll share again: a custom style sheet to override the user-select CSS property many sites use to prevent content selection:

* {
    user-select: auto !important;
    -webkit-user-select: auto !important;
}

To use this override, save the above text to a file (I named mine nof—you.css—uncensored, of course), go to Safari > Settings, select the Advanced tab, click the Style Sheet popup menu, select Other…, and choose the file you saved. Safari will now use this css on any website you load, re-enabling content selection on any sites using user-select. Et voilà, you can copy again.

Patrick George, writing for The Atlantic under the very pessimistic headline “Enjoy CarPlay While You Still Can,” explains why GM and other short-sighted carmakers are ditching CarPlay, despite its popularity among car buyers (Apple News+ link):

Because GM’s software isn’t tied to a phone like CarPlay is, access to the full suite of software requires its own data plan—through GM, of course. (The cheapest plan costs $10 a month.) Get used to these kinds of subscriptions, regardless of what kind of car you drive. In recent years, automakers have realized how much money they can make from in-car technology: Maybe they charge a subscription fee for hands-free highway cruise control (GM has already had considerable success with that). Maybe they charge for apps that let you control aspects of the car from your phone. Or maybe they sell data that your navigation system collects about where you go and what you do.

Whatever the case, car companies are moving beyond making money only when they sell you a car. For GM, eliminating Apple as a middleman provides more opportunities to charge for things.

Just like I’ll never buy a car without CarPlay, subscriptions for driving my car are a non-starter—the idea of buying something and then paying more to use it is probably anathema to most car buyers. Imagine being unable to open your car door, start your car, or use the radio because your credit card payment lapsed.

I’m not nearly as pessimistic as George when it comes to CarPlay, though: I think we’ll see consumers voting with their wallets, and I’m willing to bet GM and other manufacturers will quietly start supporting CarPlay again.

Probably via a subscription.

Anthony Castrovince, MLB:

The Dodgers are MLB’s first repeat champs since the 1998–2000 Yankees, and the four-hour, seven-minute, extra-innings affair it took to decide that was a fitting end to a true Fall Classic in which these two clubs exhausted each other – not just in the 18-inning epic at Dodger Stadium in Game 3 but throughout a Series in which they both had to empty the tank.

This might be the best World Series—and Game 7—in recent memory, arguably ever. It may also be the most heartbreaking loss in World Series history: the Blue Jays had several chances to win it—including a bottom-of-the-ninth play at the plate and a game-saving outfield catch for the ages, both of which were an inch or two from giving the Jays their first franchise championship title.

Congratulations to both teams for an amazing Series—but damn, Dodgers fans are going to be even more insufferable than usual.

Match Game was one of my favorite game shows growing up in the 80s, and remains so even today. A recent conversation with a friend who worked with its creator, Mark Goodson, reminded me to link up this 2006 Game Show Network documentary, The Real Match Game Story: Behind the Blank. It’s a little lacking in depth, and focuses on Gene Rayburn more than I expected, but it was fun and enlightening. For example, I learned that Richard Dawson’s popularity with contestants during the head-to-head portion led to several rules changes—and eventually his departure from the show. I also enjoyed hearing from several of my favorite celebrities, like Brett Somers, Betty White, and Charles Nelson Reilly, and the hijinks they got into on and off the set. A fun diversion for fans of Match Game.

Canva:

When Affinity joined the Canva family last year, we made a promise to preserve its power while expanding what’s possible. Today, that vision comes to life with the all-new Affinity: a studio-grade creative app that brings vector, photo, and layout tools together in one high-performance platform. Fully featured. Lightning-fast. And completely free.

Affinity previously sold three separate apps: Designer (vector design), Photo (photo editing), and Publisher (page layout), all available on Mac, iPad, and PC. The new, combined app offers the full functionality of all three apps, for free:

Affinity is now completely free, forever. The full, professional-grade Affinity experience, available to everyone.

There’s no catch, no stripped-back version, and no gotchas. The same precise, high-performance tools that professionals rely on every day are now open to all, because creative freedom shouldn’t come with a cost.

From the FAQ:

Is Affinity really free?

Yes, Affinity really is free. That doesn’t mean you’re getting a watered-down version of the app though. You can use every tool in the Pixel, Vector, and Layout studios, plus all of the customization and export features, as much as you want, with no restrictions or payment needed. The app will also receive free updates with new features and improvements added.

The only thing that seems to require a (paid) Canva account is (optional) AI functionality:

For everyone with a Canva premium account, Canva AI’s tools are now included directly inside Affinity through the new Canva AI Studio. This includes familiar favorites like Generative Fill, Expand & Edit, and Remove Background – powerful features that speed up repetitive steps while keeping designers in full control of every detail.

When I paid $115 for an Affinity universal license in 2024, I thought it was a screaming good deal: three terrific apps, three platforms, and no subscriptions. I balked slightly at the Canva acquisition because these kinds of deals often go south, either via price increases or crappier apps.

Instead, we get what looks like a massively improved app for Mac and PC (an iPad version is “coming soon,” with a beta expected “next year,” promises CEO Ash Hewson). Making it free was a truly unexpected bonus—I was fully anticipating the apps would be locked behind a $120-a-year Canva Pro account. I couldn’t be happier my concerns were misplaced.

I hope Adobe is quaking in its overpriced subscription boots.

Apple:

The Company posted quarterly revenue of $102.5 billion, up 8 percent year over year.

“Today, Apple is very proud to report a September quarter revenue record of $102.5 billion, including a September quarter revenue record for iPhone and an all-time revenue record for Services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

And:

“Our September quarter results capped off a record fiscal year, with revenue reaching $416 billion, as well as double-digit EPS growth,” said Kevan Parekh, Apple’s CFO.

The market loved the results, briefly pushing Apple’s after-hours stock price over $284 (from a $271.40 close), before settling in just under $278.

There were two notable and related “forward-looking statements” in the earnings call. First, from Tim Cook:

We expect the December quarter to be the best ever for the company, and the best ever for iPhone.

Then, from Kevan Parekh, Apple’s CFO:

We expect our December quarter total company revenue to grow by 10 to 12 percent year over year, which would be our best quarter ever. We expect iPhone revenue to grow double digits year-over-year, which would be our best iPhone quarter ever.

If these “statements” prove accurate, that would translate to:

• $136.73 to $139.216 billion in total revenue (December 2024 revenue: $124.3 billion)
• $76.051 billion in iPhone sales (December 2024 iPhone sales: $69.138 billion)

That alone might justify Bank of America’s $320 price target, which is now looking almost conservative.

As usual, Jason Snell at Six Colors offers additional details, as well as his always helpful transcript and multi-color charts.

Sam Boughedda, Yahoo Finance:

Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan raised the bank’s price target on Apple to $320 from $270 in a note on Wednesday, reiterating a Buy rating on the stock.

The move comes after BofA provided a new five-year outlook for the company that projects sustained growth across products and services, underpinned by the ecosystem, brand, and installed base.

And:

The bank now forecasts fiscal 2025 revenue and earnings per share of $418 billion and $7.41, respectively.

This comes out a day ahead of Apple’s earnings announcement.

A $320 price would value Apple at about $4.5 trillion, which is still well below Nvidia, which reached the $5 trillion mark on Wednesday.)