Tom Bridge, in “a reminder” to his son Charlie, enumerates the “complaints of inequitable treatment” by King George III, and notes:

As we take stock of 249 years of history, especially the last few months, the colonists’ rebuke of King George III’s cruelty feels a lot more like the present than any of us would care for. The unitary executive that the Trump Administration has sought to pursue has twisted our nation’s leadership to look more like the tyrants your great great great grandfather Andreas Hauff fought while in that Continental Army, a brand new immigrant to this continent. […]

The risks that our forebears took, and the sacrifices that they made to take those risks, are a permanent reminder that the price of free society can be high.

But the alternative, to see people placed in subjugation, to see others jailed abroad without due process, to see a corruption of our laws, and of the executive authorities, and do nothing?

That isn’t it, either.

Wonderfully written, with an uplifting close.

Joyce Vance, in her Civil Discourse newsletter:

Here it is, right on schedule. We’ve moved onto the next phase of the plan, where the Civil Rights Division, the once proud crown jewel of the Justice Department, will participate in stripping naturalized American citizens of their citizenship.

We are living through 1984.

I’m waiting for the executive orders that rename the Department of Defense to the Ministry of Peace, the Department of Agriculture to the Ministry of Plenty, and ICE to the Ministry of Love.

We, of course, already have the Ministry of Truth (Social).

Then we get to category 10:“Any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue. These categories are intended to guide the Civil Division in prioritizing which cases to pursue; however, these categories do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case, nor are they listed in a particular order of importance. Further, the Civil Division retains the discretion to pursue cases outside of these categories as it determines appropriate. The assignment of denaturalization cases may be made across sections or units based on experience, subject-matter expertise, and the overall needs of the Civil Division.”

I don’t know what that means, and that’s exactly the problem. “Any other cases…that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.” The provision is so vague that it would permit the Division to denaturalize for just about anything. It could be something prior to or following naturalization. Given the other priorities discussed in the memo, it could be exercising First Amendment rights or encouraging diversity in hiring, now recast as fraud against the United States. Troublesome journalists who are naturalized citizens? Students? University professors? Infectious disease doctors who try to reveal the truth about epidemics? Lawyers? All are now vulnerable to the vagaries of an administration that has shown a preference for deporting people without due process and dealing with questions that come up after the fact and with a dismissive tone. “Oopsie,” and there’s nothing we can do to get them back. The way the memo is written, there is no guarantee DOJ will pursue cases against violent criminals—they could just do easy cases to ratchet up numbers like we’re seeing with deportation. Or they could target people who, they view as troublemakers.

As I wrote Tuesday, “Any reason will do.”

We—every one of us—are subject to the whims of a mad king and his administration lackeys, Supreme Court monarchists, and Congressional sycophants, all gleefully destroying America for power and petty revenge.

This regime is coming for anyone who doesn’t support them. It doesn’t matter if you’re here legally or not, rich or not, citizen or not.

But your immigrant friends and family, especially—hug them if you can: they are low-key freaking out right now.

My friend James had one of those moments where you ask a question that’s obvious to you—and to a computer, well, isn’t:

Ha ha, okay very funny DuckDuckGo.

To explain the joke: James searched for “base64 encode image”—looking for information on how to encode an image using base64. Instead, the search engine took the query literally, as a command, and returned the base64-encoded version of the word “image”.

Humans know what we meant. Computers know what we said.

This brought to mind an anonymous aphorism I’ve had in my head for nigh-on 40 years. It’s as relevant today as when I first heard it:

I really hate this damn machine

I wish that I could sell it.

It never does quite what I want

But only what I tell it.

Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, now machines can do neither.^[1]

(A more verbose version of the query—“how to base64 encode an image”—skips the artificially intelligent response in favor of actually useful links. That makes the original version one of those instances where brevity bites you. John Siracusa had a good take on this on ATP 445. Ironically, his suggestion—ask your question using complete sentences—works even better today with LLMs.)

Jess Weatherbed, at The Verge (possibly paywalled; Apple News+ link):

Apple is suing a former employee for allegedly stealing confidential Vision Pro headset research before leaving to join Snap’s product design team.[…]

According to the lawsuit, Liu falsely claimed he was quitting his job for health reasons and did not disclose that he had a new job lined up as a product design engineer for Snap. This prevented Apple from immediately revoking Liu’s access to internal systems, a standard protocol activated by the company upon notice that employees are joining a competitor. Apple alleges that this allowed Liu to copy a “massive volume” of proprietary information that he could later access after being locked out of Apple’s network.

Why do people think they can get away with such skullduggery?

Apple says it’s unable to determine exactly what was downloaded by Liu, but argues the overlap between the information Liu took with Snap’s AR Spectacles products “suggests that Mr. Liu intends to use Apple’s Proprietary Information at Snap.” According to the complaint, Apple is pursuing unspecified financial damages from Liu for breaching contractual obligations and requesting that Liu be forced to return the stolen documents.

Apple is asking for, among other things:

• An award of damages in an amount to be determined at trial;
• Prejudgment and post-judgment interest at the maximum rate allowed by law; and
• Apple’s actual costs, expenses, attorneys’ fees incurred in this suit.

Whew. This will have a deleterious effect on Mr. Liu’s finances and future employment opportunities, I’m sure.

I doubt stealing files for a Snapchat position will have been worth it.

I suspect a surprisingly well-written apology will be forthcoming.

My favorite part from the complaint:

Mr. Liu gave his resignation from Apple at the end of October 2024. At the time, he told his colleagues he wanted to spend more time with his family and take care of his health. As a result, Apple allowed him to keep working—and maintain access to Apple’s Proprietary Information—for two more weeks.

A review of Mr. Liu’s Apple-issued work laptop showed that he was not honest about his stated reason for leaving Apple. Weeks before his departure, he negotiated a position with Snap Inc. (“Snap”), a maker of augmented reality (AR) glasses. He received an offer of employment on October 18, which means he waited nearly two weeks until October 30 to notify Apple that he was resigning from his position with Apple. And even then, he did not disclose he was leaving for Snap. Apple would not have allowed Mr. Liu continued access had he told the truth.

It’s well-known inside Apple: if you’re leaving for a competitor, you’re shut out from your accounts and walked out the door. He had time to download those files before resigning—without lying to his coworkers. What happened to honor among engineers?

Then there’s this:

On his final days as an Apple employee, he used his Apple-issued work laptop to copy more than a dozen folders containing thousands of files from a folder used for Apple work to his personal cloud storage account in a folder named “Personal” and a sub-folder within named “Knowledge.”

I’ll give Mr. Liu the benefit of the doubt here and suggest he downloaded these files as a personal reminder of the great work he did. But c’mon, everyone knows you name your surreptitious smugglings “Porn.”

Jaclyn Diaz and Juliana Kim for NPR (a news organization that stands to lose its federal funding for “unfairly” reporting stories like this):

The Justice Department is aggressively prioritizing efforts to strip some Americans of their U.S. citizenship.

Department leadership is directing its attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases involving naturalized citizens who commit certain crimes—and giving U.S. attorneys wider discretion on when to pursue this tactic, according to a June 11 memo published online. The move is aimed at U.S. citizens who were not born in the country; according to data from 2023, close to 25 million immigrants were naturalized citizens.

At least one person has already been denaturalized in recent weeks. On June 13, a judge ordered the revocation of the citizenship of Elliott Duke, who uses they/them pronouns. Duke is an American military veteran originally from the U.K. who was convicted for distributing child sexual abuse material—something they later admitted they were doing prior to becoming a U.S. citizen.

It’s not difficult to see where this ends.

First, use an admitted child pornographer as a test case—few will defend the “indefensible.” The “American military veteran” part might give brief pause, but using they/them pronouns eclipses veteran status for this regime.

Next, declare any crime—right down to parking tickets and jaywalking—as a reason to denaturalize. You so much as drop a tissue on the street and you’ll be rounded up.

Finally, strip citizenship at will. Any reason will do. Membership in a terrorist organization—say, the Democratic Party, a mosque, or merely anti-Trump protesters—will be a leading contender, at least until they get to “because we felt like it.”

The DOJ memo says that the federal government will pursue denaturalization cases via civil litigation—an especially concerning move, said Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

In civil proceedings, any individual subject to denaturalization is not entitled to an attorney, Robertson said; there is also a lower burden of proof for the government to reach, and it is far easier and faster to reach a conclusion in these cases.

Robertson says that stripping Americans of citizenship through civil litigation violates due process and infringes on the rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

Presuming protection of the law is folly, because capriciousness isn’t a legal doctrine. Laws only matter when equally enforced—otherwise it’s just a whim.

Dan Mullen, ESPN:

The calendar has turned to July 1, and that means one thing: It’s time for Mets fans everywhere to wish each other a Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! Why? On Tuesday, 62-year-old Bobby Bonilla will collect a check for $1,193,248.20 from the New York Mets, as he has and will every July 1 from 2011 through 2035.

David Suggs, Sporting News:

[Bonilla] returned to the Mets in 1999 but was released in 2000. New York still was on the hook for $5.9 million. Mets ownership, locked into doomed investment partnerships with Bernie Madoff, believed it more financially viable to defer payment for Bonilla’s contract, spreading it across 25 years (2011–2035) with eight percent interest.

Jenna West and Dan Shanoff, The Athletic:

[…] the Mets originally offered Bonilla the deferred payments of the $5.9 million they owed him because they thought they could exceed the deferral payments by investing that $5.9 million in Bernie Madoff’s fund, which, up until that point, had produced meaningful returns for then-Mets owner Fred Wilpon. Madoff’s fund, of course, turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.

Suggs, again:

That initial $5.9 million fee now sits at $29.8 million.

Financial wizards.

Speaking of naturalization, Azucena Rasilla at The Oaklandside reports this glum news:

For Alejandra Vila, an Oakland resident for the past 25 years, having her oath ceremony at the Paramount Theatre was a special moment in her journey to becoming a U.S. citizen.

“When you get that letter with your oath ceremony information, you know you’re about to become free,” Vila said. “The night I got the letter, I walked to the Paramount with my wife, and I looked up at the lighted-up marquee, and I told her how my freedom would start at the Paramount.” […]

Now, as part of cost-cutting under the Trump administration, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has stopped holding naturalization ceremonies at the Paramount Theatre and all other non-government venues throughout the Bay Area and across the country.

This saddens me tremendously, as my naturalization ceremony was held there—a special, unforgettable experience.

(It was also the location of one of the earliest dates with my now-wife. So two special and unforgettable experiences.)

The Paramount Theatre is an historic and stunningly beautiful Art Deco space, a perfect place to welcome new citizens. What a loss.

(Via this Mastodon thread where I saw Kieran Healy’s piece on becoming a citizen.)

On June 27, 2025, Kieran Healy became one of America’s newest citizens. He writes a lovely essay about the process. It’s a wonderful distillation of an emotionally complex experience:

When I sat down to write something about becoming a citizen, I was immediately tangled up in a skein of questions about the character of citizenship, the politics of immigration, and the relationship of individuals to the state. These have all been in the news recently; perhaps you have heard about it. These questions ask how polities work, how they impose themselves upon us, how power is exercised. They are tied up with deep-rooted principles, claims and myths—as you please—about where authority comes from and how it is or whether it ever has been justly applied. These are not easy matters to understand in principle or resolve in practice. Nor can they simply be dismissed. But I am not writing this note because I want to take on these questions, even though I acknowledge them. I am writing this because I do not want to forget how I felt yesterday.

He peppers questions from the Naturalization Test throughout his essay, each one an implicit rebuke of the many Americans—elected and otherwise—who ignore the rights and responsibilities they were born, or sworn, to uphold.

Some of the questions, Healy writes, “are not trivial at all,” adding:

I think many Americans would get them wrong if asked. And I feel confident every one of the fifty or so people who took the Oath with me on Friday knew them backwards and forwards.

I agree; I studied hard to make sure I could answer all 100 questions. I’m guessing fewer than half of “natural born” citizens could answer six of the ten (random!) questions needed to pass. (Give it a shot, then share your score—you’re aiming for at least 60%.)

Healy continues:

I know the nationalities of my fellow oath-takers because of the next stage of the ceremony. This was the Roll Call of Nations. I did not know this was going to happen. Every country of origin represented was announced in turn. As your country was named, you were asked to stand up, and remain standing. Afghanistan came first. Then Algeria. The last person to stand, immediately to my left, was from the United Kingdom. There were twenty seven countries in all, out of only fifty or so people. For me this part in particular was enormously, irresistibly moving. It perfectly expressed the principle, the claim, the myth—as you please—that America is an idea. That it does not matter where you are from. That, in fact, America will in this moment explicitly and proudly acknowledge the sheer variety of places you are all from. That built in to the heart of the United States is the republican ideal not just that anyone can become an American, but that this possibility is what makes the country what it is.

But isn’t it more complicated than that? You know as well as I do that it is. So much more complicated. So much more painful. So much more dangerous. So much more messed-up. I will think about and work on strands and threads of that impossible tangle tomorrow, just like I have thought about and worked on bits and pieces of it since I came here. But I will not forget this moment. I will not forget what it felt like.

Seven years on and I still remember how I felt as I got sworn in as an American citizen. The feeling never fades, but it crystallized my view of my adopted country—as I’m sure it did for many others. More than most, we’re acutely aware when America strays from her ideals, and we remain resolute in their defense—a fierce loyalty not to what America is, but to what it claims to be.

I’ve always found the possessive-ied name of Ruth’s Chris Steak House quite curious. I’d once assumed “Chris” was “Ruth’s” child, thus “Ruth’s Chris”—an homage to their mom—but no: the actual origin is both delightfully charming and boringly corporate. The origin story of this “non-chain chain” is surprisingly heartwarming.

It also brought to mind the chintziest experience I’ve ever had at a steakhouse.

Almost 20 years ago I created a site called Steak Adventures—“Enjoying good steak with good friends then bragging about it.” Every few months or so a couple of us would visit a San Francisco steakhouse and write a “review.” It was mainly an excuse to hang out with my good friend Cathy, my then-girlfriend-now-wife Ying, and one or two other friends. (It was also an early attempt at being a food blogger—what today we might call an influencer 🤮.)

Anyway, one of those Adventures was to Ruth’s Chris Steak House on Van Ness. I’ll let two-decades-ago us take it from here:

Ruth’s Chris is a non-chain chain; you probably have at least one in your neighborhood, but it’s considered higher-end. It’s all dark wood and dim lighting. In many ways, it’s a reproduction of what many people think of when they think “steakhouse”. And like most reproductions, it pales in comparison to the real deal.

We were very excited to go to Ruth’s Chris; it was five of us after an improv workshop, and we had worked up an appetite bouncing around a room making bad puns. […]

When we were finally seated, we quickly ordered a bunch of appetizers, including an order of steak fries. When the fries arrived, they looked great. One problem: the dish contained exactly four french fries. Four french fries for five people. The phrase “clip joint” comes to mind. It’s bad enough to serve an appetizer of four fries, it’s beyond unacceptable to do so to a table of five people.

To this day, four french fries for five people remains shorthand for inappropriately small servings and inattentive service—would it have killed them to put one more french fry on the plate? It’s the first thing that comes up when someone mentions Ruth’s Chris.

The rest of the experience wasn’t great—we had to wait to be seated (despite having reservations), the “famed buttered steak” used the extra dairy to mask bland meat, the tables were too tightly spaced, the wine list was uninspired, and the bill was excessive for the quality of food and service. (About $50 per person—a fortune in 2006! That wouldn’t even get you a petite filet today.)

We concluded:

We couldn’t recommend Ruth’s Chris to anyone looking to experience a good steak, or a good steakhouse.

I haven’t been to a Ruth’s Chris since. I hope their plates have more fries.

Elie Mystal, writing powerfully for The Nation:

The legal upshot of the Supreme Court’s monumentally disastrous decision in Trump v. CASA (more commonly known as “the birthright citizenship case”) is chaos. Utter legal chaos. In its ruling on Friday, the court’s usual six monarchists granted Donald Trump’s request to reexamine various nationwide injunctions preventing Trump and Stephen Miller from implementing their plans to revoke birthright citizenship to any American who doesn’t happen to be white. With the legal sleight of hand so beloved by the Roberts court, the ruling doesn’t actually allow Trump to end birthright citizenship. It just makes it incredibly difficult for courts to stop him from ending birthright citizenship. It’s a distinction, one that lawyers will try to exploit for an entire rearguard action to defend citizenship in this country, but one that’s unlikely to make much of a difference if you happen to be born on the Republican side of the tracks. Once you read the fine print, it becomes clear that this decision is a historic, five-alarm catastrophe.

I love reading Mystal because he doesn’t mince any words.

The decision means that some courts, districts, and states will still defend the concept of birthright citizenship, while others will not. That could mean that whether or not a child born in America on or after June 27, 2025, is considered a citizen of the United States will depend on what state, or even county, that child happens to be born in.

If that setup sounds familiar, it should. It is exactly how this country determined citizenship from June 21, 1788, (when the Constitution was ratified) until July 9, 1868 (when the 14th Amendment was ratified).

I cannot begin to express how abhorrent and terrifying I find this decision.

Mystal writes that “one’s fundamental rights should not wildly change if they miss their exit on the interstate.”

Having fundamental rights shift as you move between states—a citizen here, not a citizen there—means a loss of rights for women, LGBTQ+, minorities, and, inevitably, a return to slave states.

Imagine you’re born in California, where your rights as a citizen of the United States of America are recognized. You hop on a plane to New York (another state that will recognize your American citizenship), and your plane is diverted mid-flight to Texas. It’s boarded by masked ICE agents, and you are shackled and dragged off, because in Texas, you are not a citizen of America. You have no rights. You can be held indefinitely or deported to a country you’ve never been to—legally, with no recourse.

What other rights can be stripped from you? How about your right as a woman to decide who—or whether—you marry? If you’re a LGBT couple, your marriage might be illegal in Utah. Your interracial relationship? Void in West Virginia. Georgia already forced a brain-dead woman to give birth in Georgia. What makes you think that won’t be extended to all women?

It’s fashionable to say that the court’s ruling is not really about birthright citizenship, because the legal question focused on the power to issue nationwide injunctions. But that sanewashing of the court’s opinion does not survive its first contact with reality. By taking away the ability of courts to enter nationwide injunctions in this case, the court is giving Trump carte blanche to violate the constitutional definition of citizenship in any district where a friendly Trump judge will allow him to. And, in practice, this ruling will extend to every other single issue where Trump has been stopped thanks to a nationwide injunction.

And here is how we return to a country with slave states. Trump is one executive order away from declaring that “slavery is legal.” Obviously California, New York, and the rest of the “blue” states will challenge the order, and win. But it will only be enforceable in those states (at best—as Mystal notes, the nature of this ruling might make it valid only for those who themselves are part of the lawsuit). In states where there is no challenge—or a challenge is lost—slavery will be legal.

If you think I’m being hyperbolic and irrational, think back a few months to when the idea of abducting of a legal visa holder in broad daylight by masked men seemed hyperbolic. Or to when deporting a man protected from deportation was an irrational idea. Or to just a few days ago, when a Supreme Court decision stripping lower federal courts of their authority seemed absurd.

Indeed, this decision places virtually unchecked power in the hands of the Supreme Court. The “court’s usual six monarchists” (as Mystal calls them) have set themselves up as the most powerful arbiters of what’s legal, rendering their decisions as untouchable. Any law can be declared unconstitutional. Any executive order can be deemed lawful. If they don’t like what Trump is doing, they can constrain his actions—unless, perhaps, he agrees to do something for them, I suppose. As Mystal notes,

We’re living in a world where six Republican Supreme Court justices used the courts of a monarchy we revolted against as the controlling authority on whether the president of the United States has to follow the Constitution.

It took exactly three seconds to know I’d be linking to this Living Colour appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. Living Colour is one of my all-time favourite bands—I’ve listened to Vivid possibly hundreds of times, and named my post-college creative endeavors “Broken Hearts Productions” after one of their tracks.

Growing up in New York in the late ’80s, I caught them early in their rise. Hard rock was new to me, and Black hard rock artists were a rarity. Living Colour pried open a genre of music I didn’t know existed, and forged a core part of my musical identity. They reminded the world—and me—that Black musicians went way beyond jazz, reggae, and soul. My everlasting thanks to Anton, my friend of 40-plus years, for introducing me to them.

The band sounds phenomenal, especially Corey Glover’s wails—enjoy it on a big screen and your best headphones—but the concert was all too short. I ended up watching it twice, back to back—then immediately started playing the albums.

What’s your favorite color, baby?

John Gruber over at Daring Fireball summarizes the recent controversy over Apple’s vomitous use of an Apple Wallet Push Notification to promote F1 The Movie, adding:

iOS 26 adds new settings inside the Wallet app to allow fine-grained control over notifications, including the ability to turn off notifications for “Offers & Promotions”. That’s good. But (a) iOS 26 is months away from being release to the general public; and (b) at least for me, I was by default opted in to this setting on my iOS 26 devices.

I was also opted in by default on iOS 26 (beta 2)—I’ve since turned it off.

The Wallet app wasn’t the only transgressor; I received a notification from the new-to-iOS 26 Apple Vision Pro app.

The Apple Vision Pro app has a “New Content Available” Push Notification setting (defaulting to opt in, natch). It would reasonably cover the first half of this notification—I want to know when new Apple Vision Pro content is released—but tacking on the F1® ad puts me in the wholly unacceptable position of either allowing tacky ads, or not learning about new immersive content. (I have, of course, chosen the latter.)

Unsurprisingly, Apple has App Review Guidelines covering this exact scenario. Also unsurprisingly, Apple is violating its own guidelines:

4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out of receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.

That’s pretty clear-cut, and Apple violates all three parts:

1. It sent a Push Notification for a promotion without customers “explicitly” opting in to receive them.
2. The publicly available version of iOS offers no way to opt out of those notifications.
3. iOS 26 beta adds the required option to opt out from promotional pushes, but defaults customers to opt in.

Marco Arment:

This is a core system app interrupting you, promoting a sale by a movie-ticketing company, to push you to go see the platform vendor’s new movie.

Why not just pop up random ads all the time, always creating new channels that everyone’s opted-into by default so you can never keep up with opting out of them all?

Oh wait, that’s already what happens.

Apple’s as bad as everyone else. They don’t respect their customers — we’re fodder.

They truly have no standards anymore.

I’d say “Apple has lost their way” but they’ve been abusing Push Notifications—and customer trust—for so long they’ve clearly chosen this path. They haven’t strayed—it’s their strategy.

David Pierce, The Verge:

[…] sometime in the last several days, the Trump Mobile site appears to have been scrubbed of all language indicating the phone is to be made in the USA. (Like, for instance, the huge banner on the homepage that says the T1 is “MADE IN THE USA.” Just to name one example.)

Instead, the Trump Mobile website now includes what can only be described as vague, pro-American gestures in the direction of smartphone manufacturing. The T1’s new tagline is “Premium Performance. Proudly American.” Its website says the device is “designed with American values in mind” and there are “American hands behind every device.” Under Key Features, the first thing listed is “American-Proud Design.” None of this indicates, well, anything. It certainly doesn’t say the device is made in the USA, or even designed in the USA. There are just… some hands. In America.

Someone probably whispered “lawsuit” into a Trumpian ear, since “Made in USA” has a very specific legal meaning, state Attorneys General might want a word, oh, and there’s this:

[…] the Lanham Act gives any person (such as a competitor) who is damaged by a false designation of origin the right to sue the party making the false claim.

(Imagine Apple and Google using the Lanham Act to challenge the claim? Fireworks and popcorn.)

Several specs of the purported device were also changed or yanked from the site—the screen is now 6.25“ instead of 6.78”, and the previously claimed 256 GB storage and 12 GB memory are nowhere to be found. The release timing is also changed, to “later this year” instead of August or September.

Despite the scrubbing and rewording, Trump Mobile still claims, in a statement to USA Today, that the T1 Phone will be made in the U.S:

Chris Walker, a Trump Mobile spokesperson, dismissed the report, saying that “T1 phones are proudly being made in America. Speculation to the contrary is simply inaccurate.”

(Interesting that this statement only went to USA Today, and no other news outlet—including The Verge.)

The T1 site now has this completely vapid claim about the phone:

it’s brought to life right here in the USA. With American hands behind every device […]

I previously wagered that

someone will get a hundred devices’ worth of Chinese cellphone parts and screw them together in their garage, and that will satisfy the “Made in America” claim.

I’ll bet that’s what they mean by “brought to life,” but perhaps even that low bar will prove too ambitious for the Grifter-in-Chief’s family business—I fully expect this phone will never ship.

Joseph Cox, 404 Media:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a new mobile phone app that can identify someone based on their fingerprints or face by simply pointing a smartphone camera at them, according to internal ICE emails viewed by 404 Media. The underlying system used for the facial recognition component of the app is ordinarily used when people enter or exit the U.S. Now, that system is being used inside the U.S. by ICE to identify people in the field.

A reminder that technology used to expose illicit behavior can also be tools of autocracy and repression.

Perhaps it’s time to invest in a pair of anti-infrared glasses.

Emanuel Maiberg, 404 Media:

A new site, FuckLAPD.com, is using public records and facial recognition technology to allow anyone to identify police officers in Los Angeles they have a picture of. The tool, made by artist Kyle McDonald, is designed to help people identify cops who may otherwise try to conceal their identity, such as covering their badge or serial number.

“We deserve to know who is shooting us in the face even when they have their badge covered up,” McDonald told me when I asked if the site was made in response to police violence during the LA protests against ICE that started earlier this month. “fucklapd.com is a response to the violence of the LAPD during the recent protests against the horrific ICE raids. And more broadly—the failure of the LAPD to accomplish anything useful with over $2B in funding each year.”

Finally, an acceptable use of facial recognition. More like this, please.

A sudden storm on Lake Tahoe this past Sunday capsized a powerboat, and eight people died, among them Josh Pickles (a DoorDash executive), and his parents, Terry Pickles and longtime Apple employee Paula Bozinovich. Brian Croll (a now-retired Apple Product Marketing VP) emailed Daring Fireball’s John Gruber to share a touching reflection on Bozinovich’s impact on Apple:

Paula was an employee who you are not going to see profiled in any books on the history of Apple or Steve Jobs. She worked closely with the ops team to ensure CDs and then DVDs shipped on time and correctly packaged in a box. She knew all the systems and the right people to make things happen. She was always committed to getting things better than just right — perfect. Paula’s extraordinary commitment, along with all the hundreds of other unheralded employees, translated the vision of Steve, the designers, the engineers, and the marketing people into a shipping product.

One of the secrets behind Apple’s success has been its ability to execute. Paula was an important part of that fine-tuned machine. She was also quite a character!

I’m sending you this because I’ve seen front page obituaries of executives who probably did way more harm than good to their companies, and yet when you scratch the surface of a successful company you find that people like Paula make all the difference.

The Apple employee community is surprisingly small in spite of the company’s size, and losing someone from the community, even if we don’t know the person, hurts. Though I’ve never met Paula, I’ve known many people like her: the unheralded people who made, and make, Apple hum. The high-profile names may get all the glory, but Apple would be nothing without people like Paula. I’m grateful to Brian for sharing this tribute.

My sincerest condolences to the friends and family of Paula and all those who died in this tragedy.

Matt Ford at The New Republic, on the poorly reasoned Supreme Court decision in United States v. Skrmetti (which I referenced in passing), under the headline “The Supreme Court’s Anti-Transgender Ruling Is a Tortured Mess”:

It is fitting that Roberts wrote the majority opinion in United States v. Skrmetti because it is representative of his court’s slipshod approach to major, high-profile cases. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority effectively engineered a landmark case on transgender rights in which no transgender person is a named litigant, reducing them and their interests to an easily ignored abstraction. The result is tortured reasoning, misapplied precedents, and a transparently outcome-oriented ruling. […]

The ruling, on its own terms, drew sharp criticism from the court’s three liberal justices. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor castigated the majority for what she saw as a blow to sex-based discrimination protections in general—and for the impact it would have on transgender Americans across the country. “By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims,” she wrote. “In sadness, I dissent.”

The Tennessee law notes PBS News:

bans puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors, but it allows the same drugs to be used for other purposes.

The logical hoops the Court jumped through to reach this conclusion boggle the mind. The world continues to trample over transgender rights, and there’s no end in sight. It’s sickening.

Lisa Melton, an early-2000s Apple colleague:

My post here should be a celebration of my coming out publicly. On Mastodon, no less. Two years ago today. Yay! I’m still so surprised at and so grateful for the positive reaction I received there. Those are good people.

But this is more than an anniversary party. It’s a vulgar rant. It’s catharsis. It’s a celebration of a different kind of triumph.

And it’s a long story. So, strap in and get uncomfortable. Just like I did.

Lisa paints a harrowing tale of a gender confirmation surgery delayed by unexpected medical issues and further exacerbated by the unwelcome “orange-faced fascist returning to power”—a potentially deadly combination that could prevent her from completing this “life saving” surgery:

I am not hysterical when I say that Cheeto Jesus and his goons are trying to exterminate me and every other trans person in this country. And while they’re at it, make sure no one else ever considers or attempts transition. Mind you, just that last plan will kill people.

She ends:

That’s where we are, folks. That’s how bad it is for trans people. Wake. The. Fuck. Up!

Am I angry and bitter about this? You’re goddamn right I am.

Now, I’m still going do my best to thrive, and not just survive, in spite of all of this horror. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with it.

You shouldn’t be either.

Especially relevant in light of the recent Supreme Court decision to deny minors the right to gender-affirming care.

The Onion Editorial Board on Friday, in an open letter (“Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice”):

Who will stand up for our democracy? This question, fraught in even the most peaceful times, has only grown more pressing as our country approaches its 250th anniversary. Each passing day brings growing assaults on essential liberties like freedom of speech and due process. Meanwhile, our delicately assembled legal system faces a constant barrage of threats. Even as this issue reaches publication, the U.S. military has been deployed against peaceful protestors. We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing.

Members of Congress—now, more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice.

Terrific timing.

The Onion also placed this as a full-page ad in Sunday’s print edition of The New York Times (a fitting choice, as the do-nothing paper of record) and sent physical copies to each member of Congress.

One of many reasons I subscribed to The Onion.

Donald Trump on “Truth” Social (the official channel for presidential proclamations, but reposted to X/Twitter for actual reach):

We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The “Thank you for your attention to this matter” confirms it’s an official communiqué, of course, but it’s the all-caps call for peace—after dropping 30,000-pound bombs on a sovereign country without congressional approval, thereby pushing America to the brink of yet another Middle East war—that shows just how seriously Trump takes this.

This unconstitutional military strike should be a clearly impeachable offense. I’m sure our do-nothing Congress will get right on that.

(An aside: What has happened to John Fetterman?)

I’m reminded today of two articles. First, this 2016 New York Times piece by Maureen Dowd:

Second, this 2023 Wall Street Journal opinion from J.D. Vance (Apple News+):

Both have aged like fine wine in a 100º cellar.

Time’s press release on “How the TIME AI Audio Brief Was Built”:

The new audio briefing tool uses generative AI to present the day’s top news stories, as written by TIME’s reporters, into an engaging discussion between two AI bots, Henry and Lucy, named after one of the founders of TIME, Henry Luce. Our goal is to create an experience that makes our journalism more digestible and interactive. The audio briefing is designed to provide trusted and accurate reporting in a conversational tone. It is limited to discuss only articles previously published by TIME.

I won’t go so far as to call these AI audio briefs bad, exactly, but they’re definitely not good. The “distinct voices” of “Henry and Lucy” are at once too earnest, overly enthusiastic, and bland. There is minimal tonal variation, and what little variation exists sounds out of place. The transitions between stories are forced. It’s exactly what it sounds like: an AI-generated script read by AI bots. Compare this to NPR News Now, which offers “the latest news in five minutes,” as read by one of NPR’s human hosts. It’s night and day.

Of course, most people probably won’t care (or even notice) that their news is generated and delivered by AI. Some may even welcome it, if it gives them the option to select the stories—and voices—they want to hear.

As artificial as this audio sounds, it’s not unlistenable—and I know AI audio will inexorably improve until it’s indistinguishable from human voices. No doubt Time and other news organizations welcome this—it benefits their bottom line. As noted in Time’s press release, the creation of these audio briefs “is a fully automated process.”

As ex-CBS journalist Sam Litzinger wrote when linking to this story, “Goodbye #radio news jobs.”

David McRaney, host of the terrific You Are Not So Smart podcast, recently interviewed Erica Chenoweth, who formulated the 3.5% rule that’s gone viral recently. The rule—based on Chenoweth’s (and Maria J. Stephan’s) research—finds that large-scale, non-violent political movements have always succeeded if they reach 3.5% of the population. Many succeeded at just 1.8% of the population.

I noted in my aforelinked No Kings/No Coverage that those protests represented “1.2–1.8% of the U.S. population.” The people of America are fired up. There’s still a long ways to go, but change feels possible.

McRaney’s interview leans philosophical and personal—we learn why Chenoweth landed on political science as a career, for example. For a more overtly political discussion, listen to Chenoweth’s conversation on Pod Save America with Jon Favreau (“The 3.5% Protest Rule That Could Bring Down Trump”).

(In Overcast: You Are Not So Smart, Pod Save America.)

Alaina Demopoulos, at The Guardian:

The scale of last weekend’s “No Kings” protests is now becoming clearer, with one estimate suggesting that Saturday was among the biggest ever single-day protests in US history.

You’d never know it from the so-called “mainstream” media’s dearth of coverage.

You’d think 4–6 million people protesting anything would be front-page news everywhere, and warrant wall-to-wall coverage. But no. It’s like they’re trying to avoid antagonizing Trump—either out of fear or allegiance. Regardless, the voices of this many people—1.2–1.8% of the U.S. population—will only grow louder and more insistent.

Donald Trump, per Ben Sobieck at The Hard Times:

Unfortunately, this holiday, and I use that term lightly, marks a time when everyday southern families who worked hard to build our 50 USA states, and we still might add Canada, lost all their workers. These people created jobs, they made America great, and a new addition to my Big Beautiful Bill will pay them reparations for all the workers they lost.

Satire? Or precognition? Who can say these days?

Vann R. Newkirk II, writing for The Atlantic on the occasion of today’s Juneteenth holiday (paywalled; Apple News+ link):

The purpose of Juneteenth was always a celebration of emancipation, of the Black community’s emergence out of our gloomy past. But it was also an implicit warning that what had been done could be done again. Now millions of schoolchildren will enjoy a holiday commemorating parts of our history that the federal government believes might be illegal to teach them about.

I once advocated for Juneteenth as a national holiday, on the grounds that the celebration would prompt more people to become familiar with the rich history of emancipation and Black folks’ agency in that. But, as it turns out, transforming Juneteenth into “Juneteenth National Independence Day” against the backdrop of the past few years of retrenchment simply creates another instance of hypocrisy. What we were promised was a reckoning, whatever that meant. What we got was a day off.

I've felt this conflict for several years now. Call it the flip side to joyous celebrations.

Taryn Finley, writing for Refinery29, on last Sunday’s Juneteenth celebration in Fort Greene Park:

Despite the gloomy weather, thousands of attendees gathered to enjoy the sixth annual event […]

Attended by creatives, engineers, doctors, nurses, businesspeople, children, babies, and everybody in between, their Juneteenth event has become a homecoming and annual sanctuary—a place where people can reconnect and feel at ease. Whether folks choose to be by the DJ booth dancing, on the grass playing games or chilling along the perimeter of the park, just enjoying the day, it’s become a space for Black people to just be.

Texas Highways celebrates Juneteenth with “A Visual History” of historic photos, including “The official handwritten record of General Order No. 3” which starts:

The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, “all slaves are free”.

Timothy Welbeck, in The Conversation, asks “What’s the right way to mark Juneteenth?” and provides a helpful recitation on the origins and meaning of the day, from the issuance of General Order No. 3, to its recognition as a national holiday, to the backlash of today.

By now you’ve no doubt heard of the Trump family’s most recent grift opportunity—sorry, business venture: a cellular brand called “Trump Mobile,” with a tacky, $500, gold-colored phone dubbed the “T1 Phone” (allegedly “Made in the USA”) and a mobile plan called “The 47 Plan” (which, at $47.45 per month, is roughly double that of other similar plans).

I’m not sure which is the bigger grift: a company owned by the current president selling this service and phone, or claiming the phone will be “Made in USA” (the press release says “designed and built in the United States”).

It’s complete bunko.

The Wall Street Journal bluntly states that “Trump’s Smartphone Can’t Be Made in America for $499 by August” (paywalled; Apple News+ link):

A spokesman for the Trump Organization said in an email that “manufacturing for the new phone will be in Alabama, California and Florida.”

[…]

“There’s absolutely no way you could make the screen, get that memory, camera, battery, everything” in the U.S., said Tinglong Dai, a professor of operations management and business analytics at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School. 

Dai estimated it would take “at least five years” for the U.S. to establish the infrastructure necessary to make “Made in USA” smartphones a real possibility.

Allison Johnson, The Verge:

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization doubled down on this claim to The Wall Street Journal, saying “manufacturing for the new phone will be in Alabama, California and Florida.”

But unless the organization has somehow hidden an entire domestic mobile device supply chain right under our noses, this is virtually impossible.[…]

More likely the T1 will be a white label device with most or all of its production handled by a Chinese ODM, or original design manufacturer.

I’ll wager someone will get a hundred devices’ worth of Chinese cellphone parts and screw them together in their garage, and that will satisfy the “Made in America” claim.

Joseph Cox at 404 Media tried to pre-order the phone with a $100 down payment:

The website failed, went to an error page, and then charged my credit card the wrong amount of $64.70. I received a confirmation email saying I’ll receive a confirmation when my order has been shipped, but I haven’t provided a shipping address or paid the full $499 price tag. It is the worst experience I’ve ever faced buying a consumer electronic product and I have no idea whether or how I’ll receive the phone.

Todd Spangler, Variety:

Trump Mobile and its carrier partners are subject to regulatory oversight by the Federal Communications Commission, which is headed by Trump-appointed FCC chairman Brendan Carr.

No conflict of interest here, I’m sure.

Clare Duffy and Samantha Waldenberg reporting for CNN:

“President Trump will sign an additional Executive Order this week to keep TikTok up and running,” Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a statement. “As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark. This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”

This would be the third extension signed by Trump to stave off the shutdown or sale of TikTok—something he doesn’t have actual authority to do, by the way. What’s the point of making a big stink and passing a law over “national security” if it’ll just be ignored? As Mike Masnick notes at TechDirt, this third snooze button proves it was always bullshit.

Erik Hayden at The Hollywood Reporter lays out the facts in this week’s big lawsuit:

In the next chapter of Big Entertainment vs. Big Tech, Disney and Universal have filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Midjourney over tools that allow users to create images and videos that can manipulate famous characters at the click of a prompt.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday by Disney Enterprises, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century, Universal City Studios Productions and DreamWorks Animation, describes the David Holz-run generative AI firm Midjourney as a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.”

The legal salvo marks the first major foray from Hollywood against tech giants that are hoping to reorient consumer habits with personalized entertainment and information by vacuuming up data on the internet and spitting it out in the form of chatbot copy or images.

Anyone looking at the images in the complaint can see that Disney, Universal, and the rest have a strong copyright infringement case here.

No doubt Midjourney will argue A) their ingestion of copyright images is “fair use” and 2) they’re just a tool to create art (it’s the users causing it to regurgitate infringing images!)

Jennifer Zhan at Vulture has a helpful explainer for the lawsuit; in it she notes:

The studios want this case to be decided by a jury trial.

A jury may very well have no choice but to declare infringement on the facts, but I’ll bet good money most people have no problem with what Midjourney is doing.

I’m not saying they’re right, only that America’s jury pools are filled with people sporting a peeing Calvin on their minivan windows and downloading Kung Fu Panda 4 from BitTorrent—they don’t care about copyright, they just want to have fun making pictures of Mickey Mouse as Darth Vader.^[1]

I don’t envy those jurors. They’ll be asked to decide between massive corporations defending their billion dollar portfolios, and an AI company building its business by sucking up those portfolios without permission, and then spitting them back out, just… altered slightly.

A second Hollywood Reporter piece, by Steven Zeitchik, examines the possible outcomes of the lawsuit:

There are several ways the lawsuit unfolds. The most obvious is the way of most lawsuits — with a settlement. In this scenario, Midjourney (and no doubt other AI model operators) pay the studios for their infringement and strike a deal to keep on licensing. (They’re never going to yank studio fare from their models – by the executives’ own words the models would collapse without Big Content.) So AI models keep getting trained on, and spitting our facsimiles of, Hollywood material.

Similarly, studios could simply lose. That nets them less money, but it ends in the same place: OpenAI, Google Gemini and the others crank out Hollywood-trained content at will.

Then there’s the other way: With a studio legal victory. The AI models are deemed prohibited from training on this content — this “fair use,” a judge says, ain’t that. In such a scenario we are ensured that for the indefinite future what gets generated in the way of Hollywood images comes from Hollywood and Hollywood alone.

What does this lead to? Well, it leads to studios continuing to do what they have always done — being the main incubators for and generators of so much of the film, television and other entertainment we consume.

And what does the first option lead to? Well, it hardly takes an imaginative leap to see where we end up if anyone can go to an AI model and plug in prompts to generate stuff that looks a lot like the movies and television we know. It means the end of studios doing it for us.

I know that can seem like a bold statement, but it really isn’t.

Zeitchik posits that if the Hollywood studios lose, they’ll “morph into something else: IP rights managers.” I proposed a similar outcome for Reddit’s own AI lawsuit.

I don’t expect Midjourney will walk away from this unscathed; they’ll pay a crap-ton of money—whether it’s for infringement or licensing doesn’t matter. But the studios are pinning their hopes on jurors who just want to crank out Mickey Mouse memes.

Speaking of Joanna Stern, she goes hard in her interview with Federighi and Joz for the Wall Street Journal, asking questions that clearly made both Apple execs uncomfortable. At one point, Federighi looks like he’s about to panic, but his media training kicks back in and he manages a smile.

I only wish the interview had gone longer. Stern is the best tech journalist in the biz.

Three takeaways:

• Hammering hard on the point that “Apple Intelligence” as a whole wasn’t delayed last year, only a “small” part of it. They really wanted us to understand just how much of Apple Intelligence they already shipped.
• Disabusing us all of the notion (or trying to anyway) that any of last year’s demos were in any way “faked” or mere “concept videos”. They insisted the software was real (though perhaps not spectacular).
• A “v1” of the “more personal Siri” was a technical dead-end, and the shift to “v2” was one cause of the delay—and will (supposedly!) be more fruitful.

I’m only 30 minutes in to John Gruber’s conversation with Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel, and Stern is killing it. She and Patel were terrific choices to join Gruber in lieu of senior Apple execs. I hope this becomes a new tradition, but I’ll miss seeing Craig, Phil, and Joz (slightly) loosened up.