Casey Liss perfectly captures my feelings on why I love some products and brands:

I tend to feel… strongly. That applies to most aspects in life, including when I find a company whose product(s) I really enjoy.

Those products tend to share common traits; they are often simple on the surface, but have surprising depth to them. They can mold themselves to fit my needs, but once that mold is set, they get out of my way. But more than anything else, they tend to be reliable. I fell in love with Apple because, back in the mid aughts, their products really did just work.

I think my appreciation for a product crosses the rubicon into love when it regularly and repeatedly demonstrates one trait: respect for the user.

Like Liss, I tend to become a bit of a superfan when a product or brand consistently and reliably solves my problems with minimal intrusion.

I’m all in on Apple (shocker!); I’ll also co-sign Liss’s assessment on the M4 MacBook Air: it’s my number one recommendation. I noted my Anker affection recently. I have two sets of Sonos home theatre systems (purchased at tremendous discounts, thank goodness!); fortunately I rarely use the app, so the fallout from that debacle was minimal. While I was once a strong Eero aficionado (and still recommend them, with the same caveats Liss lists), I switched to Unifi a couple of years ago (and am loving it).

And yes, I happily pay for a Callsheet subscription.

I had been planning to buy a Synology system, but their recent decision to limit which drives they work with turned me off—they almost had my money, but got greedy. I’ll now be looking at Unifi (or QNAP?) for that, and I’m open to other suggestions as well.

Outside of the tech sphere, this “respect for the customer” is a big reason I shop at Costco and America’s Tire, choose DoorDash instead of GrubHub, and, on the flip side, why I strive to avoid Facebook, X/Twitter, Spotify, and Reddit.

It’s a simple equation, really: Respect == Loyalty.

Gratifying to see sharp presidential critiques like this one from Dana Milbank remain tenable in the “personal liberties and free markets” era of The Washington Post:

By any reasonable measure, President Donald Trump’s first 100 days will be judged an epic failure.

Milbank outlines failure after failure: Legislative. Economic. Foreign policy. Constitutional. And on and on.

Milbank also identifies a “key difference” between Trump and “previous attempts at executive overreach”:

We have been through ruinous periods before, but never when the president was the one actively and knowingly causing the ruin. During past upheaval, there “wasn’t this sense that the White House, the president, is directing the destruction of 250-year-old American values,” [David Greenberg of Rutgers University] says. He also notes that, because of the expansion of the executive powers over the past century, particularly during the New Deal and the Cold War, Trump has more ability to cause destruction than his predecessors did. “I don’t think we’ve ever had the combination of such a vast and extensive executive apparatus and at the same time an attempt to eliminate the built-in safeguards,” he says.

The entire piece is a recitation of receipts, the many dozens of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things Trump and his regime have unleashed on this country. It’s relentless. A political pummeling.

More like this, please. If “democracy dies in darkness,” shine some damn light.

I greatly admire the candor and moral clarity Teen Vogue brings to its headlines and reporting. The publication often provides the most forthright, unflinching version of vital issues. This headline is a tremendous example. It tops this “Teen Vogue Take” from Lex McMenamin, who, in reaction to a student’s description of the shooter as a “normal college dude”, writes:

To that student’s point, the alleged gunman is a quintessentially American school shooter: a radicalized, young white male who, classmates told NBC News, espoused white supremacist rhetoric. The son of a longtime local sheriff’s deputy, according to NBC, he used one of his mother’s guns to commit the shooting.

At the sheriff department’s press conference about the shooting, Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil told media that Ikner was a “longstanding member” of the office’s youth advisory council, and that, due to his training, it was “not a surprise to us” that Ikner had access to a gun.

So, just to sum up the state of things in this country: The American government is so hostile to immigrants and those sympathetic to Palestine that it is deporting them, snatching them off college campuses, and separating them from their families. Meanwhile, the real threat to college campuses are people like the FSU shooter, who, a fellow student told NBC, had been kicked out of a campus debate club over his white supremacist views.

Every news outlet should strive for this level of lucidity, and ask themselves: Why is a “young person’s guide to conquering (and saving) the world” a better truth-teller than us?

Josh Dawsey and Alex Leary with an “exclusive” for The Wall Street Journal: (Apple News+ Link)

Donald Trump’s inaugural committee raised almost $250 million from Corporate America, more than doubling the previous record as companies sought to win favor with Trump and the incoming administration.

The record sum shows how the country’s largest and most powerful companies flocked to Trump in the period after the election, with senior executives traveling to his Florida club and cutting seven-figure checks. The previous record for an inaugural committee was about $107 million, which Trump amassed in 2017 in the run-up to his first-term swearing in. Other recent presidents have raised less than $100 million, according to financial disclosures.

The list of contributors is exactly who you’d expect (crypto, oil companies, tech) with some surprises, like “Pilgrim’s Pride, a sprawling poultry company that gave $5 million.”

Dawsey and Leary add:

A filing reviewed by The Wall Street Journal in advance of a federal deadline Sunday showed a range of companies contributed to the inauguration, including many industries that have benefited so far from Trump’s decisions in office.

You can guess what comes next:

Trump has now alienated some of those same companies, putting in place stiff tariffs and starting a trade war that has caused the markets to sag.

I’m sure these companies and individuals have no regrets parting with their hard-earned cash.

Parker Molloy, at The Present Age, on NPR’s frustrating decision to effectively ignore the large-scale, nationwide protests against the Trump administration in early April:

NPR Public Editor Kelly McBride defended this editorial decision in her April 10 newsletter, titled “How does NPR cover peaceful protests when the only news is the protest?,” writing that “aside from crowd sizes, most protests aren’t newsworthy enough to warrant continuous, national coverage.” She even went to New York to watch one of the demonstrations herself, concluding, “As a news event, it wasn’t very compelling.”

Molloy:

When Americans feel compelled to take to the streets in mass numbers, news organizations should be asking why. They should be interviewing participants, exploring the issues that drove people to protest, and examining the policies being contested. Instead, NPR opted for a couple of radio stories and three web articles.

McBride writes: “The individual protests themselves are unlikely to become significant news events. Instead, NPR’s best service is to describe the broader implications of the protests, if and when those implications are clear and significant.”

But how can audiences understand the “broader implications” if news organizations don’t explain what people are protesting about in the first place?

She astutely observes:

McBride’s position essentially argues that mass protests only become newsworthy when they turn violent or disruptive. She writes that “once a protest movement results in conflict or property damage, NPR journalists covering the protests will often note the exception.” This creates a perverse incentive: want coverage? Create conflict.

Unsaid is that Trump is likely hoping for violence and conflict, as an excuse to declare martial law and use military force against the protesters. The organizers and protesters understand this and specifically reject the idea of creating conflict.

I previously noted the lack of coverage of the Hands Off! protests (as did Molloy). With more nationwide protests happening today, how will NPR and other media organizations cover them this time?

(Early assessment: marginally better, judging from a quick check of several sites. I spotted at least a small mention on the front pages of New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, CNN, Chicago Sun-Times, CBS News, AP News, ABC News, Los Angeles Times, and NPR. Nothing on MSNBC, NBC News, Wall Street Journal. Let’s see what the front pages bring tomorrow.)

Wonderful “fanzine” by Maia Kobabe, a “mediation on loving flawed media and feeling betrayed by a childhood hero”:

We can love a thing and still critique it. In fact, that’s the only way to really love a thing. Let’s be critical lovers and loving critics and open ourselves to the truth about where we are and where we’ve been. Instead of holding tight to the same old, failed patriarchies, let’s walk a new road, speak new languages. Today, let’s imagine a literature, a literary world, that carries this struggle for equity in its very essence, so that tomorrow it can cease to be necessary, and disappear.

Created in 2019 and 2023, and particularly relevant today in light of the recent UK supreme court’s ruling that excludes transgender women from the legal definition of a woman. That ruling led the British Transport Police to update their policy to allow male officers to strip search transgender women. The victorious gender-critical activists were applauded—and financially supported—by JK Rowling.

Sometimes we must abandon our heroes.

I’ve never seen any of Netflix’s Black Mirror (and had no idea it was seven seasons in), but this bit of streaming shenanigans, as detailed by GamesRadar, intrigued me enough to finally catch an episode. I love when shows play with the medium—especially when it perfectly fits the episode’s narrative. Yes, I’m being purposefully vague… spoilers abound!

(Via IGN, which includes a spoilerific side-by-side video of the relevant scene.)

Season 1 of Poker Face (starring Natasha Lyonne, created by Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Glass Onion), and featuring a slew of guest stars) was my favorite new series of 2023. Season 2 starts streaming May 8 on Peacock. It’s an absolute must-watch if you like the “howcatchem”, inverted mystery-of-the-week shows, as epitomized by Columbo, one of my current television obsessions. I think I was turned onto Poker Face by Pop Culture Happy Hour, on which they compared Lyonne and her character, Charlie, to Peter Falk and Columbo.

As with Columbo, the constant parade of guest stars is a delight, and from the new trailer, they’re clearly leaning even harder into it. It has the makings of a get me on that show! show.

Poker Face makes for great binging—compact in length, with enough continuity to make you want to keep watching, yet sufficiently standalone that you can skip it for a few days or weeks without losing the thread.

Rian Johnson has become one of my favorite creators. Between this, Knives Out, and Looper (I’ll reserve comment on The Last Jedi), he’s quickly moving into if he’s involved, I’m watching territory.

I know how I’ll be spending my summer.

Jamelle Bouie, writing for The New York Times Opinion page under the (visible) headline “The Tariff Saga Is About One Thing” (and a hidden headline of “Trump’s Lust for Power Cannot Be Satiated”) ^[1]:

The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance. His long history of scams and hostile litigation — not to mention his frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers and other people who were working for him — is evidence enough of the reality that a deal with Trump is less an agreement between equals than an opportunity for Trump to abuse and exploit the other party for his own benefit. For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win, and someone has to lose. And Trump, as we all know, is a winner.

And later:

The upshot of this understanding of Trump’s personality is that there is no point at which he can be satisfied. He will always want more: more supplicants to obey his next command, more displays of his power and authority and more opportunities to trample over those who don’t belong in his America.

When Trump suggested sending American citizens to foreign prisons, I wrote about how I anticipated newsrooms would react:

[…] those newsrooms will dismiss it as the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind, because they still haven’t learned that when Trump says something, even if it was just a stray stream of consciousness thought, that statement becomes a part of his identity and he can’t back down from it. He must defend it, double down on it, make it real. It’s a crippling personality flaw that he can never be wrong, and the toadies he surrounds himself with enable it.

These two character deficiencies—his desire to appear strong, coupled with his desperate need to always be right—have toppled us into autocracy.

Glenn Fleishman is wrapping up another successful Kickstarter project:

The book Six Centuries of Type & Printing briskly tells the story of the evolution of type and printing, starting with early documented efforts and surviving artifacts from China and Korea, and introducing Gutenberg and his innovations. It then takes you through each generation of increasing sophistication in metal and relief printing until the abrupt 20th century shift into flat offset printing, which was made possible through photographic and digital improvements, and phototypesetting and digital composition.

I’ve been fascinated by the history and process of printing since I was a teenager, inspired to learn the traditional methods by the then-new world of desktop publishing. I often printed and bound my own works, and I spent the first five or six years of my career in magazine and book publishing. A hardcover book about type and printing—bound in cloth, with a foil-stamped and debossed cover—was an insta-back: exactly the kind of Kickstarter I want to support, and it was a mere $32 for the print and ebook bundle. It didn’t hurt that it’s from Fleishman—I backed his lovely How Comics Are Made last year and The Magazine: The Book (Year One) in 2016)—and I’ve been reading his work for literally decades.

As I write this, this project is successfully (over-) funded with about 24 hours to go.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Michael Lee at The Washington Post recounts the many ways that Jackie Robinson Day is very much entangled in the politics of our moment:

Sports sells itself as the ultimate meritocracy, but that wasn’t always the case. Robinson didn’t need a three-letter acronym to prove that the game’s best players should all share an equal playing field, regardless of their race, heritage and nationality.

MLB:

Major League Baseball, its clubs and other partners, and the Jackie Robinson Foundation are once again working together to honor the legacy of the Dodgers icon throughout Jackie Robinson Day on Tuesday.

The tributes will be most prominent on the field. All MLB players and coaching staff will continue the tradition of wearing Robinson’s No. 42 during Tuesday’s games, with each team using a Dodger blue ‘42’ regardless of the club’s normal colors. Players, managers, coaches and umpires will also wear a ‘42’ patch on the side of their hats.

It’s impossible to celebrate Jackie Robinson Day this year without acknowledging the deep racial, ethnic, gender, and political divides that engulf our lives and scar our psyches.

Baseball—like politics—is a long, grueling slog, and, perhaps, instructive: Keep playing, even when you’re behind. Focus on this game, this at bat, this pitch, this swing. You’ll win some and lose some; celebrate and mourn them the same—briefly—then move on. Sometimes you play offense, sometimes you play defense—both are equally important. You don’t have to swing at every pitch. Small actions matter. Play until you win—the result is worth it.

Jackie Robinson endured, and so shall we. Jackie never stopped fighting for his game, and neither shall we for our country. For just a brief moment, let’s put aside rivalries and take a break from our daily doomscrolling to celebrate the man who first stepped onto a Major League Baseball field on April 15, 1947, and forever changed the complexion of the game.

Even if he was a Dodger.

Zoe Morgan pens this amusing story for local news site Redwood City Pulse (and for Palo Alto Online, Mountain View Voice, Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine…):

Crosswalk buttons along the mid-Peninsula appear to have been hacked, so that when pressed, voices professing to be Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk begin speaking.

“Zuckerberg” and “Musk” say several hilarious and quite unflattering things about themselves (all of which sound perfectly plausible to me) and I applaud the merry pranksters for the billionaire takedown and act of civil disobedience. I initially wondered how the crosswalk signs were accessible to hackers and how long they knew of a vulnerability, only to learn that these crosswalk devices are standard issue hardware, use Bluetooth and a smartphone app to configure them, and can be configured in the app, to quote the marketing site, “from the comfort of your vehicle.”

Mind blown.

My only question now? Why did these pranksters choose to greenlight this droll bit of defiance now, and for this purpose? The backstory on this one will be fun to learn.

Of course, as an inveterate killjoy, I must also note this:

City of Palo Alto spokesperson Meghan Horrigan-Taylor said that city employees determined that 12 downtown intersections were impacted and have disabled the voice announcement feature on the crosswalks until repairs can be made.

The crosswalk audio helps people—especially those who are sight-impaired—know when it’s safe to cross. Hacking the audio made these intersections funnier, but less safe, and the city’s quick decision to disable rather than fix them reeks more of a concern over the reactions of Musk and Zuckerberg than of a desire to restore safety. To quote one Mastodon wag:

How considerate that the city disabled the hacked crosswalks to save two billionaires embarrassment. I’m sure the larger number of people who rely on those systems for safety won’t mind risking life and limb so that the egos of two billionaires are protected, because that is what’s really important.

I hope the affected cities restore proper audio quickly and patch the access issues soon.

But the prank did make me laugh out loud.

Paul Kafasis at One Foot Tsunami:

[…] I don’t want to alarm you, but Major League Baseball appears to be running out of names. First, there was Max Muncy, the two-time World Series champion infielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers who is now also a rookie shortstop for the Placeless Athletics. Two Maxs Muncy in one sport is too many, but even more ridiculously, they were both born on August 25 (though 12 years apart).

It doesn’t stop there, though. Earlier this week, we met the Luises Castillo of Seattle. Yes, the Mariners have not one, but two, starting pitchers by the name of Luis Castillo. On Tuesday and Wednesday, they started consecutive games for the M’s, which surely caused plenty of confusion.

His final link is to an MLB story about the two pitchers. Its headline is “Rock embraces Pebble: Castillo takes same-named teammate under his wing”. Castillo the Elder is known as “La Piedra” (“The Rock” in Spanish), so the team nicknamed Castillo the Younger “Pebble.” 

I love when Baseball embraces its oddities.

I was overcome with nostalgia and an urge to bop while watching Gorillaz in their hour-long concert, Demon Days Live from the Apollo Theater, recorded in 2006 and released earlier this week on the official Gorillaz YouTube channel. Energetic, musically and visually breathtaking, and packed with guest appearances (De La Soul, Neneh Cherry, Dennis Hopper (!)). Even if you don’t know Gorillaz by name, you’re likely familiar with their Top 20 hit Feel Good Inc.. Two decades later, Demon Days remains one of my favorite albums.

(A hat tip to my good buddy Michael for the share.)

Sara Boboltz, at HuffPost:

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is exploring legal pathways to “deport” U.S. citizens to El Salvador, where the administration has already arranged to house deported immigrants in a prison known for its human rights abuses. […] “These would be heinous, violent criminals who have broken our nation’s laws repeatedly. These are violent, repeat offenders on American streets,” Leavitt told reporters at a press briefing.

“The president has said if it’s legal, right, if there is a legal pathway to do that. He’s not sure, [and] we are not sure if there is,” Leavitt continued. “It’s an idea that he has simply floated and has discussed very publicly in the effort of transparency.”

They desperately want concentration camps.

This should be setting off klaxons across the country, and every newsroom should be leading with this story. Donald Trump Suggests Sending American Citizens to Foreign Prisons.

Instead, those newsrooms will dismiss it as the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind, because they still haven’t learned that when Trump says something, even if it was just a stray stream of consciousness thought, that statement becomes a part of his identity and he can’t back down from it. He must defend it, double down on it, make it real. It’s a crippling personality flaw that he can never be wrong, and the toadies he surrounds himself with enable it. Little miss can’t be wrong.

RawStory quotes Trump:

“I love that,” Trump said. "If we could take some of our 20 time wise guys that push people into subways and hit people over the back of the head and purposely run people over in cars, if he would take them, I would be honored to give them.

Those who purposely run people over in cars you say? I wonder if he means this guy? Or maybe this one? He could mean the guy who put someone in a wheelchair, or any of these guys. Perhaps this police officer, or anyone from this list. Wait, he definitely means this guy. Right?

Edith Olmsted at The New Republic:

President Donald Trump said that he hopes to erase the U.S. trade deficit with other countries—but anyone who understands economics knows that wouldn’t be a good thing. 

“I spoke to a lot of leaders—European, Asian—from all over the world. They are dying to make a deal, but I said, ‘We’re not gonna have deficits with your country,’” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One Sunday. “We’re not gonna do that, because to me a deficit is a loss. We’re gonna have surpluses or at worst we’re gonna be breaking even.”

A trade deficit isn’t a “loss,” regardless of what Trump thinks. A trade deficit simply means that one country spends more on goods from another country than that country spends on goods from them. 

Crucially, economists say that having a trade deficit is not an inherently bad thing at all, because the U.S. simply can’t and shouldn’t make everything. Trump’s insistence that the U.S. is being taken for a ride betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of economics that is built on a dislike of other countries and a desire to be the dealmaker responsible for a new world order.

This New York Times article (“What Rights Do Immigrants Have?”) by Albert Sun and Miriam Jordan—purportedly about who is and isn’t “safe” from arrest and deportation based on their legal immigration and citizenship status—is written in the typical here’s how it’s normally done/here’s what’s actually happening approach we’re all used to from the Times, with its quiet, thoughtful, “we’re just sharing facts, here” tone, with links to stories that are the editorial equivalent of I can’t talk… he’ll hear me….

I find it absolutely maddening.

Especially frustrating are the charts it includes, which give a deeply misleading sense of, for example, who could be “arrested and deported based on [their] speech or for engaging in protest”—look at all the green! Things are fine!—but which doesn’t match current reality. The article itself acknowledges this fact, in its own blink-twice-for-no manner, by circling the “Situations in which the Trump administration has attempted to restrict the rights people have.”

In other words, the premise of the article—here are the protections green card and visa holders have under the law—is undermined by the article itself. The Times knows that these legal residents are being arrested and deported for their speech, for engaging in protests. That it’s happening without those people being convicted of—far less committing or even being accused of committing—any crimes. Yet they refuse to speak it plainly.

The entire article reads like a well-mannered version of “Oh my god! Trump’s immigration plan is completely fucked up! Look at this shit! He’s denying legal residents due process of law! We must fight against these atrocities or citizens are next!”

They need to get a damn anger translator.

I must give credit where it’s due for my use of “Mafia Don” in my two previous pieces. It’s from David Rothkopf’s article at The Daily Beast, which he opens thusly:

Imagine a mob boss were president of the United States. See, that wasn’t very hard, was it?

It’s paired with a pitch-perfect photo illustration that nails the comparison.

Rothkopf writes:

Trump seldom acts as past presidents do. Clearly, he does not put America’s national interests first. (Otherwise he would not weaken our institutions or national standing with every move he made.) But he does act as a crime boss. And he thinks like a crime boss.

The result is the question to ask when looking to understand a Trumpian action, big or small: What’s in it for Trump?

His bottom line:

These aren’t tariffs. They are a horse’s head in the bed of (almost) every world government and business leader.

Chef’s kiss.

I referenced this The Washington Post story in my last piece about the TikTok ban, but I wanted to flag this bit on Trump’s obvious Art of the Deal brilliance:

The White House was hours away from announcing a proposal this week to spin off the popular video app TikTok when the Chinese government shattered the idea, saying it would not approve of any deal without first discussing President Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade policy, three people close to the negotiations said.

The White House and TikTok’s Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, had agreed to a proposed deal by Wednesday and were preparing to announce it Thursday […].

Trump must be the greatest dealmaker in the world to get China to agree to a sale, and then blow up that sale by imposing 34% tariffs on China on the same day (and then threatening another 50% the next).

Clearly Trump is an n-dimensional chess player, where n is so bigly only Trump can play.

Trump this week mused about the possibility of including the sale in broader negotiations with China amid the escalating trade war.

“I’m a very flexible person,” Trump said. “Maybe I’ll take a couple of points off if I get approvals for something.”

Oh, no, my bad. It’s just his usual Mafia Don approach to doing “business.”

Matt Novak, Gizmodo:

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will sign another executive order to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S. for 75 days while a deal to sell the social media platform is negotiated.

Announced on “Truth” Social, where all legal proclamations are made, despite Trump not actually having the legal authority to extend the ban unilaterally, and especially via an executive order.

Or, as Mike Masnick headlines his Techdirt story, “Who Knew You Could Press A Snooze Button On The Law?” From that piece:

If you’re the President of the United States and you don’t like a law, you can apparently just… decide not to enforce it for a while? I mean, it’s not supposed to work that way, but for the past 74 days, that’s exactly what’s happened with the TikTok ban. Not just ignoring it quietly – Trump has explicitly declared we’re ignoring it. And today, he announced we’ll keep ignoring it for another 75 days.

In their story headlined “The White House had a TikTok deal. Trump’s China tariff wrecked it,” The Washington Post wryly notes:

Executive orders cannot overturn laws, and some lawmakers and legal critics have argued that Trump’s measure is insufficient to halt the law’s enforcement.

What’s striking about this second extension is that the ban was necessary for national security, but apparently not so necessary that a delay of another 75 days isn’t a national security concern, which makes exactly the kind of sense that doesn’t.

This second extension also leaves service providers like Apple, Google, and Oracle on shaky ground—facing fines of as much as $850 billion each for violating the plain language of the law—but they’ve received assurances that as long as they follow instructions, no one will get hurt, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman:

Apple Inc., following assurances from the Trump administration, is keeping TikTok and other apps from ByteDance Ltd. on its US App Store for at least another 75 days.

The iPhone maker on Saturday received a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi telling the company it should follow President Donald Trump’s executive order that will extend the pause on a TikTok ban in the US, according to people with knowledge of the matter. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

These ruinous fines dangle like a financial Sword of Damocles over Apple, Oracle, and Google, held back only by the thin, orange hair of Mafia Don’s good graces. Does anyone doubt he’s using it as a way of keeping them in line?

An admission which may result in the revocation of my geek card: I’ve seen Tron maybe twice and I think it’s… fine? I love the lightcycle and other visuals, not so much the plot. I haven’t seen Tron: Legacy (though I’ve listened to the Daft Punk soundtrack dozens of times). I didn’t know an animated series existed until today. Can I even code? But the trailer for Tron: Ares looks (and sounds) gorgeous. I look forward to streaming it.

This report from Michael Barnard on CleanTechnica is a looming disaster of Trumpian proportions:

In April 2025, while most of the world was clutching pearls over trade war tit-for-tat tariffs, China calmly walked over to the supply chain and yanked out a handful of critical bolts. The bolts are made of dysprosium, terbium, tungsten, indium and yttrium—the elements that don’t make headlines but without which your electric car doesn’t run, your fighter jet doesn’t fly, and your solar panels go from clean energy marvels to overpriced roofing tiles. They’re minerals that show up on obscure government risk registers right before wars start or cleantech projects get quietly cancelled.[…]

What China did wasn’t a ban, at least not in name. They called it export licensing. Sounds like something a trade lawyer might actually be excited about. But make no mistake: this was a surgical strike. They didn’t need to say no. They just needed to say “maybe later” to the right set of paperwork. These licenses give Beijing control over not just where these materials go, but how fast they go, in what quantity, and to which politically convenient customers.[…]

The materials China just restricted aren’t random. They’re chosen with the precision of someone who’s read U.S. product spec sheets and defense procurement orders.

The potential ramifications Barnard describes are a direct consequence of Trump’s terrible tariffs. We’re talking an inability to build our own jet engines, semiconductor chips, fiber optics, radar systems, electric vehicles, solar panels… frankly, it’s quite alarming—and a diabolical move by China. And Trump still thinks he can bully them.

See also: The U.S. Department of Energy’s assessment of critical materials and minerals charting the critical Supply Risk of these (and other) minerals in the short and medium terms. I would imagine concerns have accelerated since publication in 2023.

A chilling site from Danielle Harlow:

Inspired by the USA Disappeared Tracker account on BlueSky, this dashboard visualizes persons brought into ICE custody when the Trump Administration has demonstrated undeniable political motive/animus and/or the person has been denied appropriate due process, even if the charges are eventually substantiated in a court of law.

As of April 6, 2025, it shows 803 people have been “disappeared.” When I first saw it on April 2, it was 243 people. A testament to the power of crowdsourcing no doubt, but that this site exists—that it needs to exist—is appalling, and a scathing indictment of both the United States government for doing it, and its citizens for allowing it.

As you explore the progress (regress?) captured in the Project 2025 Tracker, remember that Donald Trump knows nothing about Project 2025, even as his regime has already implemented a third of its goals.

(Also: Apt use of the .observer TLD.)

A site tracking the golfing habits of the President of the United States would be mildly amusing, if its current office holder hadn’t already spent over a quarter of his days in office playing golf and wasn’t actively working to destroy the country. Instead, it shows just how sad, pathetic, and out of touch he truly is.

If a trailer’s raison d’être is to get you pumped, The Naked Gun official teaser succeeds beyond all reasonable expectations. I went in with trepidation—Really? Remaking The Naked Gun? Move along, nothing to see here…—but by the time the OJ joke hit, I was locked in. It’s a sequel, not a remake, with Liam Neeson, known for his Very Serious action roles, playing Frank Drebin Jr.—truly inspired casting, much as Leslie Nielsen’s was. I hope Neeson plays it as straight as Nielsen did. Absolutely everything about this movie is absurd, right down to the Leslie Nielsen/Liam Neeson snowclone. I can’t wait.

Charlie Hall at Polygon presents the bigger picture of the impact of the Trump Tariffs on tabletop gaming. It goes well beyond the one (comparatively large) company I noted in my aforelinked piece:

Nearly 20 organizations that Polygon spoke with said that profits will be severely impacted. Many said jobs will be lost, companies shuttered, and games that have been in development for years may simply never come to market.

Tabletop gaming, which includes board games, card games, and role-playing games, has enjoyed a roughly two-decade renaissance brought on in part by crowdfunding. Nevertheless, much of the industry consists of individual creators, sole proprietors, small family businesses, and remote teams of creatives. The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) said Thursday that the impact of these tariffs will be nothing short of a disaster.

People’s livelihoods are at stake.

Meredith Placko, CEO of Steve Jackson Games, under the headline “Tariffs Are Driving Up Game Prices Now”, writes candidly about the challenges her small company will face under the new Trump Tariffs:

On April 5th, a 54% tariff goes into effect on a wide range of goods imported from China. For those of us who create boardgames, this is not just a policy change. It’s a seismic shift.

Placko writes that the company is “actively assessing” the impact of these tariffs on their games, pricing, and future plans, and notes:

We do know that we can’t absorb this kind of cost increase without raising prices. We’ve done our best over the past few years to shield players and retailers from the full brunt of rising freight costs and other increases, but this new tax changes the equation entirely.

Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That’s not a luxury upcharge; it’s survival math.

She then anticipates the question many tariff hawks will have:

Some people ask, “Why not manufacture in the U.S.?” I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn’t meaningfully exist here yet. I’ve gotten quotes. I’ve talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply aren’t.

Placko acknowledges that tariffs can be useful, when implemented intelligently:

Tariffs, when part of a long-term strategy to bolster domestic manufacturing, can be an effective tool. But that only works when there’s a plan to build up the industries needed to take over production. There is no national plan in place to support manufacturing for the types of products we make. This isn’t about steel and semiconductors. This is about paper goods, chipboard, wood tokens, plastic trays, and color-matched ink. These new tariffs are imposing huge costs without providing alternatives, and it’s going to cost American consumers more at every level of the supply chain.

Sadly, we don’t have an administration that thinks long term or strategically.

We usually focus our concern on big companies, but many small businesses will bleed to death as a result of these Trump Tariffs.

Nintendo, in a statement to Polygon (and others):

Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.

By which I presume they mean “We’re probably gonna have to raise the $450 price tag in the U.S.”

Fucking Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, which already seems like a lifetime ago, Nintendo announced its long-anticipated Switch 2. You can read all the details in The Verge, but in short:

• A large, 7.9", 1080p, 120Hz screen
• 4K (upscaled) dock for TV playing
• 256GB internal storage (up from 32GB in the original Switch)
• “Mouse mode” with the (larger) JoyCon 2 controllers
• Custom Nvidia processor

it looks great, and I’d buy it in a heartbeat, even though we hardly use our original Switch, if it was less expensive. And the market didn’t just crash.

Again: Fucking. Donald. Trump.