Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced the expansion of Apple Retail into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the launch of the Apple Store online and Apple Store app, introducing support directly from Apple in Arabic for the very first time. The arrival of the online store marks a new era for customers in Saudi Arabia, who will be able to shop Apple’s full range of products with exceptional service delivered by Apple’s talented, dedicated team members.

And:

Apple announced its plans to begin opening the first of several flagship Apple Store locations in Saudi Arabia starting in 2026. As part of this expansion, Apple is in the initial stages of planning an iconic retail store coming to Diriyah, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

This is the fruition of Apple’s Saudi Arabia retail expansion plans announced in December. Before today, Saudi Arabian customers relied on Apple Authorized Resellers and Service Providers—no direct Apple sales or support. Quite remarkable for a country of nearly thirty-five million people.

Apple also announced support for “Buy Now Pay Later” service Tamara, Saudi Arabia’s first fintech unicorn.

Apple customers have apparently been missing out on quite a lot until now: Apple Store Online brings Personal Setup and shopping support, the Apple Trade In program, AppleCare+, the Apple Education Store, Mac configure-to-order options, personalized Apple Watch case and band combinations, and engraving in Arabic and English on products that support engraving. I think this warrants a well-earned أخيراً! (finally!).

This Slate piece from 2013 is especially relevant in light of the tragic drowning death of Malcolm-Jamal Warner.

If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that’s all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew know what to look for whenever people enter the water. […]

Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely seen in real life.

The Instinctive Drowning Response—so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind.

There are several signs of the Instinctive Drowning Response—that someone is drowning—including:

• An inability to call out for help. (“Breathing must be fulfilled before speech occurs.”)
• Their mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. (They “are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help.”)
• An inability to wave for help. (“Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface… so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.”)
• An inability to control their arms (that is, voluntary movements like “waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment”).
• “Their bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick.” (They “can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.”)

There are several other details to watch for—details that could save a loved one. I urge you to take a few minutes to read the Slate article and educate yourself. As it notes:

Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them, “Are you all right?” If they can answer at all—they probably are. If they return a blank stare, you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents—children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.

Be safe.

Associated Press reports this terrible news:

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who as teenage son Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” was central to a cultural phenomenon that helped define the 1980s, died at age 54 in an accidental drowning in Costa Rica, authorities there said Monday.

I’m gutted. And such a harrowing way to go.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Theo Huxtable was like the brother I never got a chance to meet but always knew what he was up to. Almost exactly one year younger than me, Warner’s Theo and I grew up together, two Black male Brooklynites navigating our teenage and young adult years. I often saw myself reflected in Theo—our overconfidence undercut by our awkwardness, intelligence tempered by academic anxiety, even our mutual slovenliness—everything about Warner’s Theo felt familiar, relatable, and real—albeit a more heightened, absurd, and infinitely funnier reality.

Kevin Fallon at The Daily Beast:

Theo was a conduit for the modern teenager in the ’80s and ’90s: a sense of entitlement and arrogance permeating the usual haplessness that accompany coming of age. That it rang so true—hilarious, endearing, and often profound—is because of the performance of Malcolm-Jamal Warner.

Watching scenes of Warner from The Cosby Show—as difficult as it was given what we know of its namesake—reminded me of just how incredibly talented he was, with boundless energy, impeccable timing, and irresistible charm.

A truly tragic loss.

See also: The New York Times obituary and The Rolling Stone tribute to Warner’s most memorable moment on the show.

From Myke Hurley’s “State of the Workflow” series on the Cortex podcast (Overcast, Apple Podcasts):

Myke interviews John Gruber of Daring Fireball. They take a deep-dive into how John’s writing takes shape – from capturing ideas and drafting articles to the meticulous editing behind his influential work.

This was a fantastic interview. Gruber started writing at Daring Fireball in 2002, about a year after I started at Apple, and I’ve been reading him since day 1. He’s very prolific and very influential within the Apple community. I’ve always been curious about his writing process, which allows him to churn out piece after interesting piece—but especially so now, early in my second year of public writing as I find my voice, a rhythm, and an audience.

It was revelatory to hear that several of my challenges, from procrastination to word obsession, mirror his own. I was especially chuffed to learn that our writing processes are similar. Asked “Do you agonize over word choice?”, Gruber answers:

I have always, I mean, literally since childhood, always tried to write my final draft right off the bat. Especially the longer the article, the more editing I do for myself. But I can’t bring myself to write other than thinking that I’m just going to start typing with the first word and get to the final word and just hit publish.

Like, the canonical ideal for me would be to not even proofread and just write what I think it’s going to be and hit return. So I, at every step, every single word of the way, am trying to pick the right word. And so yes, I obsess over word choice.

This is almost exactly how I write—and have for as long as I can recall. My goal (rarely achieved): Write straight through, as perfectly as possible, and publish. Start with a thesis—often just an emotional reaction—and write until I’ve exhausted the idea I’m pursuing, agonizing over each word, sentence, and paragraph as I go. Allow the act of writing to determine what needs to be written—How can I know what I think until I see what I say? I’ve rarely had success using outlines or bullet points to write, because the words I want to write I can only find by writing them. Bits and bobs become full sentences, which turn into complete paragraphs, and suddenly I’m not outlining, I’m writing. As Gruber says:

Don’t prepare to do the thing, just do it. I just need to sit down and start writing. And anything that feels like I’m working on the article, if I’m working on the article at all, I might as well just start writing it.

“Writing is thinking on paper.”

Olbermann (again) shares his distaste for Colbert, this time in response to Paramount’s cancellation of Colbert’s The Late Show. Consider it a counterpoint of sorts. His critique starts at about the 15:53 mark. (Also available on Overcast and Apple Podcasts.)

Stephen Colbert is not an honest broker. He is not a sincere guy. He is not worthy of your trust, and the more I reflect on it, the more I think there was something to the old conservative theory about the Comedy Central show, that he was not some liberal pretending to be a stupid conservative, a really dumb Bill O’Reilly, who kept stepping on rakes, that he was a conservative, pretending to be a stupid conservative, so he could surreptitiously counter liberal narratives in a liberal space, and counter, more importantly, things like reality, and facts, and Democrats.

He details his early experiences with Colbert and rails against Colbert’s treatment of David Letterman’s staff after taking over the late-night slot.

It’s clearly personal. I wonder what Colbert thinks of Olbermann?

John Gruber, at Daring Fireball (under the biblical title “Curse Not the King”):

In the way that fish take water for granted, Americans take true freedom of speech and freedom of the press for granted. It’s the culture we were born into, the air we breathe. And to my mind, the fiercest and most effective form of criticism — especially political — is mockery. Mark Twain, America’s first great (and perhaps still greatest) humorist, said, “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”

No one in Russian media mocks Vladimir Putin, lest they find themselves falling out one of Russia’s easily-fallen-out-of windows. No one in Chinese media mocks Xi Jinping. Back in 2017 the CCP went as far as to censor images of Winnie the Pooh, because Xi resembles Pooh so clearly, and people naturally find that amusing. Trump, clearly, has authoritarian instincts and desires, but US media — print, web, podcasts, YouTube, social, and TV — has been replete with unrelenting mockery aimed at him. There’s no better example of that than late night talk shows: Colbert on CBS, Jimmy Kimmel on ABC, Seth Meyers on NBC, Jon Stewart and his fellow hosts on The Daily Show at Comedy Central, John Oliver and Bill Maher on HBO. Vociferous, unrelenting critics of Trump, all of them. (And it works both ways: Greg Gutfield’s Gutfield! is a ratings success at 10:00pm for Fox News.)

That’s been one of the canaries I’ve been monitoring in the Trump 2.0 drift-into-authoritarianism coal mine. So long as Trump is getting skewered by comedians on major TV channels nightly, in some sense, we’re doing OK.

But while our Constitution and cultural fabric protect our media from government interference, there’s no such protection from ownership interference.

Solid piece—well researched, with terrific framing. Gruber really captures much of my shock, anger, and frustration when I learned of Colbert’s cancellation.

While I stopped watching late-night shows years ago, Colbert’s was the one show whose clips I’d catch semi-regularly. He was funny, nerdy, and we were (seemingly) politically aligned.

I could (if I squint really hard) understand Paramount firing Colbert if they were unhappy with his performance—or his politics—but to also end The Late Show is astonishingly short-sighted, and screams of pretext, a desire from Paramount to punish (silence) Colbert, while providing (in-)sufficient cover for doing so: “We’re not getting rid of Colbert; we’re exiting the late-night business!” It reeks of political animus disguised as an economic choice.

Thirty years of history, evaporated, just like that.

OpenAI:

ChatGPT can now do work for you using its own computer, handling complex tasks from start to finish.

You can now ask ChatGPT to handle requests like “look at my calendar and brief me on upcoming client meetings based on recent news,” “plan and buy ingredients to make Japanese breakfast for four,” and “analyze three competitors and create a slide deck.” ChatGPT will intelligently navigate websites, filter results, prompt you to log in securely when needed, run code, conduct analysis, and even deliver editable slideshows and spreadsheets that summarize its findings.

At the core of this new capability is a unified agentic system. It brings together three strengths of earlier breakthroughs: Operator’s⁠ ability to interact with websites, deep research’s⁠ skill in synthesizing information, and ChatGPT’s intelligence and conversational fluency.

ChatGPT carries out these tasks using its own virtual computer, fluidly shifting between reasoning and action to handle complex workflows from start to finish, all based on your instructions.

The site showcases several compelling video demos (but not, alas, the all-MLB-ballparks example from the intro video).

ChatGPT agent is available to Pro, Plus, and Team users (though it hasn’t shown up on my Plus account yet due to high Pro demand).

Dashiell Wood reviews Donkey Kong Bananza for TechRadar (“Donkey Kong Bananza is a must-have Nintendo Switch 2 game and worthy Super Mario Odyssey successor”):

Donkey Kong Bananza is a brilliant showcase of the power of the Nintendo Switch 2, thanks to its crisp visuals and showstopping destruction, and the hundreds of collectibles will provide tens of hours of entertainment even after the credits roll for those willing to put the time in.

It’s a worthy Super Mario Odyssey successor in almost every regard, and if Nintendo can keep this level of quality up with future Nintendo Switch 2 releases, it’s clear that the console will have a long and successful run just like its predecessor.

The “verdict”:

Donkey Kong Bananza is the greatest Nintendo Switch 2 title to date, delivering an incredible destruction system that showcases the power of the new system. It’s visually impressive and, while the story isn’t anything to write home about, benefits from charming and expressive voice acting and animations. Throw in a seemingly endless stream of collectibles and secrets, and you have a meaty adventure that’s a delight to explore.

See also Scott Stein’s review for CNet, which describes the game as “Mario and Zelda Smashed Together,” calling it “the best reason to buy a Switch 2 yet.”

I’m doubly excited.

It’s been a week since Nvidia topped, then closed above the $4 trillion market cap mark, and I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around “a graphics card company” becoming the first to achieve this milestone. Some analysts are already anticipating a $5 trillion market cap.

When Nvidia hit $3 trillion—just a year ago!—I linked to a story detailing their near-collapse in 1995. I remain awed by their resilience, but also skeptical of the AI frothiness that’s driving their valuation. 

Tripp Mickle, in his New York Times coverage, notes:

Nvidia’s rise is reminiscent of dot-com era titans like Cisco and Juniper Networks, which built the equipment that ran communications networks for the internet. Cisco’s shares increased more than a thousandfold between its initial public offering in 1990 and 2000, when it briefly became the world’s most valuable company.

What Mickle doesn’t say is that Cisco, valued at more than $550 billion at the height of the dotcom era, is worth only $270 billion today.

Nor does he mention that Juniper Networks was at the time valued at over $40 billion, with a share price over $244. It was acquired earlier this month by Hewlett Packard for $14 billion, or $39.95 a share.

I’m not predicting a similar trajectory for Nvidia—that would be foolhardy—but this unprecedented rise from $1 trillion to $4 trillion in two years gives me pause.

Of course, I also didn’t buy Nvidia at $45 like I was told to, so perhaps don’t come to me for stock advice.

No doubt I’ll be writing a “$5 trillion valuation” piece within the year.

KPBS Midday Edition in San Diego featured two local theatre groups—Uprise Theatre and Voces Unidas/Voices United—using improv to educate their community about their rights in the face of ICE raids. (Listen in Overcast or Apple Podcasts.)

Annie Rios, Uprise Theatre:

Uprise Theatre is a nonprofit organization here. It is rooted and run out of southeast San Diego in particular. We use art and activist lawyering to disrupt systems of oppression and reclaim power with the people. And that’s a really fancy way of saying that we use a lot of different creative and artistic techniques to educate and empower folks about their constitutional legal rights, especially as it pertains to law enforcement.

Guillermo Mendez, Voces Unidas/Voices United:

What we do is people’s theatre in action. […] Our job in theater is to put it on stage. The tears, the sweat, the blood, the death, the laughter, all the things that go on in the working class community, all our struggles—put it on the stage. But in this also, how we can figure out how to use theater, improvisation and teaching and working with the community, how to address this particular moment, how to address this fascism that’s in our community.

The conversation was deeply inspiring and it got me thinking of different ways I could use my theatre and improv background to get involved with a similar effort. A wonderful use of the performing arts to empower communities.

(Via Ronzilla.)

Lauren Feiner, The Verge:

A week after Elon Musk’s Grok dubbed itself “MechaHitler” and spewed antisemitic stereotypes, the US government has announced a new contract granting the chatbot’s creator, xAI, up to $200 million to modernize the Defense Department.

I guess Elon and Donald made up.

The contract announcement from the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) is light on details, but says the deals will help the DoD “develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas.” Alongside the contract award, xAI announced “Grok for Government,” which it says will supply “frontier AI products” to the US. In addition to the DoD contract, xAI says other federal agencies will now be able to purchase its tools via the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule. The company plans to work on new products for government customers, like custom models focused on national security, applications for healthcare and science use cases, and models accessible in classified environments.

Me, using ChatGPT earlier today:

ChatGPT 🤖: In AP style, dammit (with an “e”) is considered the standard spelling when used in print. 

🤦🏽‍♂️: I’m sorry?

🤖: Yes—you read that right. In AP style, the standard spelling is “dammit” (with an e), not “damnit.”

🤦🏽‍♂️: Where is there an “e” in “dammit”?

🤖: There is no actual “e” in dammit. I wasn’t saying there’s an “e” in the word itself—I was contrasting the two spellings (dammit vs. damnit)… The word is spelled dammit. No “e” beyond the one in dam.

Yeah, the government’s gonna be just fine under AI control.

Marcy Wheeler at Empty Wheel offers a terrific teardown of Trump’s “Truth” Social attack on Rosie O’Donnell, the media’s inability (or unwillingness) to identify the reason for it, and what his later Epstein follow-up says about Trump’s slipping “super power”:

Rosie O’Donnell made a powerful moral critique of Trump, and as that critique was bearing out, he responded to it by asserting to have power over her, power he doesn’t have. And rather than focusing on or even mentioning that moral critique — or even continuing to focus on the many ways the Trump Administration did exacerbate the flood — those who disseminated his tweet gaped in horror at his spectacular display of power, without identifying it as an attempt to avoid being held accountable.

[…]

Trump’s ability to command and direct attention — his ability to rupture context and redirect attention to his own claims of authority — is his super power. It is how he has attained and remained in government; it is how he has beat back scandals that would have doomed others.

And that super power has been failing him as his DOJ and FBI reversed course on past fevered promises to disclose everything about the Epstein scandal.

That’s what, I have tried to argue, has always been missing from reporting on this exchange: how badly Trump flubbed a role, suppressing coverage by bullying a journalist, that is second nature to him.

The illogic of Trump’s long post about the Epstein Files—they don’t exist, are a hoax created by Democrats to hurt him, which they haven’t released, and he doesn’t want to be seen—has turned the MAGA world on its head.

I want to say, this will be fun to watch, but Trump’s approach to bad news is to take drastic, destabilizing actions as a means to distract. That he’s losing some of his ability to do that in this instance is great, but I’m worried about what bomb he’ll drop next—literally or figuratively.

Andrew Liszewski at The Verge, earlier this week:

Google is introducing a new Gmail feature for those feeling overwhelmed by an onslaught of subscription emails in their inboxes. The Manage subscriptions view shows a list of emails delivered through active subscriptions, automatically sorted with the most frequent senders at the top, next to individual one-click links that will unsubscribe you from their mailing lists.

You can find the new feature by clicking the navigation bar in the top left corner of your Gmail inbox and selecting Manage subscriptions from the menu that appears. If you don’t see it yet, it’s being introduced on the web version of Gmail starting today, the Android mobile app starting on July 14th, and the iOS app starting on July 21st, but it could take a couple of weeks for it to show up for all users. It will be available for all personal Google accounts, Google Workspace customers, and Workspace Individual Subscribers in “select countries.”

Color me surprised to find this feature already available to me on iOS a week and a half earlier than expected (Gmail version 6.0.250622). This is a regular Gmail account, nothing special about it as far as I know (except maybe it’s been around a while).

This is especially welcome on this particular Gmail account, as it’s my “bulk email” account, so it has a lot of subscriptions.

The feature works exactly as described, but more useful than the unsubscribing itself is seeing just how many marketing emails I get from businesses I no longer use. (Sorry Atoms.)

Alexandra Marquez and Lindsey Pipia, reporting on the crazy for NBC News:

President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to take away comedian Rosie O’Donnell’s U.S. citizenship, something that he cannot legally do, reigniting a decadeslong feud between the pair.

“Cannot legally do” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Trump’s insane threat was announced where he issues all of his official proclamations: “Truth” Social:

Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

1. The President of the United States doesn’t have the power to strip anyone of their citizenship.
2. Shouldn’t such a threat be impeachable?
3. Rosie O’Donnell gave a masterclass in how to respond to Trump. Just chef’s kiss perfection.

The media is treating Trump’s outburst as something worthy of debate—as though there’s a legitimate question of whether or not the President of the United States of America can just decide to revoke an American’s citizenship—rather than with outright ridicule, and a reminder that these diatribes are meant to distract from a very bad news cycle.

O’Donnell, however, understood her assignment and clapped back, hard—not once:

the president of the usa has always hated the fact that i see him for who he is - a criminal con man sexual abusing liar out to harm our nation to serve himself - this is why i moved to ireland - he is a dangerous old soulless man with dementia who lacks empathy compassion and basic humanity- i stand in direct opposition all he represents- so do millions of others - u gonna deport all who stand against ur evil tendencies - ur a bad joke who cant form a coherent sentence #nevertrump

… but twice:

hey donald –

you’re rattled again? 18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours.

you call me a threat to humanity –but I’m everything you fear:a loud womana queer womana mother who tells the truthan american who got out of the country b4 u set it ablaze

you build walls –I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still exists

you crave loyalty –I teach my children to question power

you sell fear on golf courses –I make art about surviving trauma

you lie, you steal, you degrade –I nurture, I create, I persist

you are everything that is wrong with america –and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it

you want to revoke my citizenship?go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan

i’m not yours to silencei never was

🇮🇪 rosie

—with her second Instagram post featuring a photo of Trump with his arm around Jeffrey Epstein.

I’m pretty sure Trump is now a blubbering mess in a corner of the White House.

I mean, more than usual.

The first half of Debbie Millman’s July 2023 interview with Alan Dye—Apple’s VP of Human Interface Design—is a gauzy look back at his career, before pivoting in the second half to his time at Apple. It reminded me that Dye started, not in user interface design, but in the world of glossy print, packaging, and brand marketing. He was initially hired onto Apple’s Marcom (Marketing Communications) team to work on iPod and iTunes marketing.

Liquid Glass is, as much as anything else, a branding exercise: it exists—at least in part—to differentiate Apple devices in print, web, and video marketing.

The back half (around the 30-minute mark) focuses more on Dye’s career at Apple, leading up to the introduction of Apple Vision Pro in June 2023. 

I was struck by this question:

Debbie Millman: You also started to expand your capabilities beyond branding and advertising. You created films, a cool paper line. You published little art books made by the individual designers in the studio that you then sold in the stores. And for those, you said that there were no boundaries, no brief and no restraints. So it gave the designers a chance to be challenged. Was that a terrifying experience? A designer with no rules?

I was hoping for an answer that acknowledged that there are always rules (of form, materials, engineering, time, etc.) even when none were stated. Instead, Dye gives a non-answer answer that sort of alludes to that but lacks real substance:

Well, rules are helpful, but I think everyone had their own set of passions. Everyone deeply understood kind of the ethos of Kate Spade and of Jack Spade and the kind of sense of humor and the irreverence. So I think because we were careful about who was in the studio, everybody contributed all these amazing ideas.

I got the sense Dye has a disdain for “rules,” relying instead on intuition and brand awareness.

The first version of Liquid Glass was a usability mess. Beautiful on a website and in videos, but not great in the real world. My understanding is that Dye (like Jony Ive before him) doesn’t have an “editor” to rein him in. He may well be operating without boundaries again. I wonder if that changes under Tim Cook—or gets worse?

(To be fair, beta 3 significantly improved legibility, at the expense of the flashier, glassier version showcased at WWDC.)

Later in the interview, Millman asks, “What does human interface design actually mean?”

So human interface design at Apple is really, our team is responsible for designing how everyone interacts with our products, the experience of using an Apple product. And so we could call it interaction design. We like human interface because that’s really what it’s all about, is how people interact with Apple products. So of course, a big part of that is how our products look and how they feel, and maybe what’s on the screen. But again, we don’t think about it at that level first. In other words, of course we care about how things look, how the interface looks, but we really are mostly focused on what our products do, first and foremost, how they work. And so the most amazing part about what it is that we do is that we not only define how a product works, but also what a product is and what it ought to do. And that’s a really privileged position to be in.

I understand he’s riffing on Steve Jobs’ quote that design is “not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works” (he touches on it a few moments earlier), and that, as designers, they look at the whole widget. But “and maybe what’s on the screen” is a hell of a thing to hear from the head of Apple’s user interface team.

Millman later asks about Dye’s involvement with the 2023 iOS 7 redesign, and what the “jump in disciplines and skills” (from graphic design to human interface design) was like:

When Jony and I took over design more holistically beyond just industrial design, but also software design, he had a really clear vision for where he wanted to take the software design, and that was to move away from the sort of more glossy 3D look and feel to something much more, I would say minimal. And so I had a great relationship with Jony. It was a very ambitious project to redesign an entire operating system in short order. So I came over and joined what was an exceptional team that was already off and running on this. Yeah, I was very lucky to be part of an amazing team.

And it was very much trial by fire because along the way, while I think I was bringing my point of view and my craft and my kind of graphic design skills to this amazing team, I was also very quickly learning about interaction design, how applications are designed, how we think about user experience at Apple. In a lot of ways, it was trial by fire, and I still had my day job […]

I was still doing the Marcom work for iPhone and the rest of it, but it was a really special time. And how lucky are we as designers that we get to learn, right?

And for me, this is a really steep learning curve, but it was an amazing time, and I learned a lot from that team.

Even though I was on the inside at the time, I wasn’t disclosed on the redesign. I remember hearing about Dye’s move over to the UI team, and the concerns expressed by several coworkers that a “marketing guy” was designing the UI. When I first saw iOS 7, I remember thinking it looked like a magazine print design.

Turns out I was right.

Main link is to the podcast’s home at PRX. It’s also available in Overcast (my podcast player of choice) and Apple Podcasts.

Quotes are from PRINT Magazine’s transcript. They haven’t been edited except to spell Jony Ive’s name correctly.

Nick Miroff profiles ICE agents and officers for The Atlantic (Apple News+ link):

Officers and agents have spent much of the past five months clocking weekends and waking up at 4 a.m. for predawn raids. Their top leaders have been ousted or demoted, and their supervisors—themselves under threat of being fired—are pressuring them to make more and more arrests to meet quotas set by the Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Having insisted for years that capturing criminals is its priority, ICE is now shelving major criminal investigations to prioritize civil immigration arrests, grabbing asylum seekers at their courthouse hearings, handcuffing mothers as their U.S.-citizen children cry, chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots. As angry onlookers attempt to shame ICE officers with obscenities, and activists try to dox them, officers are retreating further behind masks and tactical gear.

“It’s miserable,” one career ICE official told me. He called the job “mission impossible.”

Pete Prodoehl on Mastodon:

Oh sure, ICE is miserable… but could we make them even more miserable?

The headline implies poor morale because of the evil these agents are doing, but it’s as much about them feeling underpaid and unappreciated while they commit evil. Most of these folks seem otherwise fine being the baddies.

A common theme of my conversations was dissatisfaction with the White House’s focus on achieving 1 million deportations annually, a goal that many ICE employees view as logistically unrealistic and physically exhausting. The agency has never done more than a quarter of that number in a single year. But ICE’s top officials are so scared of being fired—the White House has staged two purges already—that they don’t push back, another official told me.

Today’s version of “I was just following orders” is “I was just making a living.”

I also enjoyed this little dig at Kristi Noem:

While tagging along on a predawn operation early this year, Noem posted live updates on social media, blowing the team’s cover for the rest of the day.

This administration is filled with some of the dumbest people on Earth.

Jason Kottke posted this piece at his eponymous site before the Fourth of July weekend. I’m glad I didn’t read it then—I would have come away with scant hope. Reading it was like an elbow to the solar plexus. He starts by quoting Tressie McMillan Cottom on Bluesky:

I’m going to be very honest and clear.

I am fully preparing myself to die under this new American regime. That’s not to say that it’s the end of the world. It isn’t. But I am almost 50 years old. It will take so long to do anything with this mess that this is the new normal for me.

I do hope a lot of you run. I hope you vote, sure. Maybe do a general strike or rent strike. All great!

But I spent the last week reading things and this is not, for ME, an electoral fix. So now I will spend time reflecting on how to integrate this normal into my understanding of the future.

Most of this will be personal. Some of it will be public — how we move in the world.

Right now, I know that I need to make a decision on my risk sensitivity. How much can I take? I also need to meditate HARD on accepting the randomness of that risk. No amount of strategy can protect me.

Those are things I am thinking about.

Kottke:

Cottom nails how I’ve been feeling for the past few months […]. America’s democratic collapse has been coming for years, always just over the horizon. But when everything that happened during Trump’s first three months in office happened and (here’s the important part) shockingly little was done by the few groups (Congress, the Supreme Court, the Democratic Party, American corporations & other large institutions, media companies) who had the power to counter it, I knew it was over. And over in a way that is irreversible, for a good long while at least.

Both Cottom and Kottke sum up my gnawing and palpable fears. In conversations with friends, we all keep nodding toward hopefulness, anticipating a Blue Sweep in the midterms and a rout in 2028—we’re all, as Kottke puts it:

Trying not to fall prey to doomerism and subsequently spreading it to others.

But when I’m honest with myself… I think about what it might look like to leave America. I worry about my transgender and immigrant friends being rounded up, or worse. I can’t confidently say we’ll have free and fair elections in 2026—much less a presidential election. And so much more.

It’s unlikely my mom—soon to be 79 and in less-than-ideal health—or any of her generation will survive to see the demise of this regime. At almost 56, I’m not sure if I will either. Optimism feels like a luxury I can’t quite afford.

The issues we’re dealing with aren’t the result of just one man or one party. There are too many “everyday people” supporting this regime’s policies for new leaders to make meaningful change. That no doubt disappoints the many who wish for a quickening of the actuarial tables brought on by one too many cheeseburgers. (I’d much rather see a trial and conviction.) The thing is, our country’s woes are well beyond any one man, and one man’s demise won’t pull us back from the brink. Toppling Trump and his regime is merely a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, to return this country to health.

This fascistic turn is something we will be battling for a long while, no matter who’s in power. This is, as Anil Dash wrote, “a rest-of-my-life fight.”

Fortunately, Bruce S. in Kottke’s comments provides some of that scarce optimism:

The new regime has not yet consolidated its power on the federal level, let alone among all 50 state governments. Plenty of states are still run by Democratic trifectas and our federal system still gives those state governments real power. […] there’s still a chance to start a liberal counter-revolution. […]

FDR saved our Republic from fascism; it can be done again.

Alex Blair, for News.com.au:

Spotify’s billionaire CEO Daniel Ek is under heavy fire from artists and industry advocates after announcing a €600 million (A$1.07 bn AUD) investment into Helsing, a military tech start-up developing AI tech for war.

Helsing, now valued at around €12 billion (A$19.5bn), builds AI-driven drones, submarines and aircraft and claims to “develop and deploy these technologies” to “protect fragile democracies”.

Ek’s investment, made via his firm Prima Materia, saw him aggressively double down on an earlier €100 million (A$162 million) pledge in 2021.

He now chairs the company.

Via Dave Rahardja, who notes on Mastodon:

• Spotify spent $250M of your subscription dollars to invite Joe Rogan to spew his disinformation on their platform.

• They’re still trying to embrace and extinguish Podcasts.

• They’re developing in-house, AI-generated “music” so users will play them (royalty-free) instead of music created by humans (who demand royalty).

And now, he’s using his wealth, created by your subscriptions, to fund tech that will use AI to literally murder humans in war.

Stop funding him. Quit Spotify now.

I’ve never been a Spotify user—between signing Joe Rogan, their fake-artist, better than payola schemes, and their anti-Apple crusade, any shot at that went out the door long ago. This alone would be a solid reason to never support them, though.

If you’re looking to leave Spotify, there are alternatives.

The responses to Rahardja’s post, though are absolutely wild, with one person—seemingly unironically—saying:

It’s actually one of the reasons why I subscribed to Spotify premium again. That “ai war” thing is a great defence tool and is what might save me and my family from a Russian invasion.

And other implying that the only two options are developing AI war machines or “have humans be sent to fight on the frontlines instead.”

As I said: absolutely wild.

Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report:

Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop dancing around the language, around the morality, and around the history.

What’s being built in the Florida Everglades, for example — what they’re calling “Alligator Alcatraz” — is not just another immigration facility. It’s a political prison engineered not merely to detain, but to humiliate, dehumanize, and broadcast terror.

It’s America’s first open-air symbol that our democracy is not just dying: it is being dissected publicly, cruelly, and with calculation.

A concentration camp built in eight days, in a state where over 30,000 people are experiencing homelessness.

Hartmann calls for us to engage through lawsuits; journalistic documentation of all that happens; direct action via peaceful protests, civil disobedience, and national mobilization; accurate language (it’s not a “detention center,” it’s a “political prison” or “migrant concentration camp”); and remembering and sharing history—in particular about Dachau and how it started:

Not with mass extermination, but with silence. With a single camp, surrounded by a fence, where people were put “for their own protection.”

He reminds us:

Dachau didn’t just hold communists. Over time, it expanded to include denaturalized Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma, and anyone who opposed Nazi policy. It became a national crucible of cruelty. It normalized the idea that “certain people do not deserve legal protections.” […]

Today, DeSantis is using FEMA funds intended for hurricane victims to build migrant cages. Tomorrow, it could be protesters. Journalists. Teachers. You.

It’s heartbreaking to witness the creation of another American concentration camp. I hope to witness its destruction—and history’s final judgment upon its perpetrators.

Jon Brodkin, writing for Ars Technica (“Paramount accused of bribery as it settles Trump lawsuit for $16 million”):

CBS owner Paramount has reached a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump over his claim that 60 Minutes deceptively manipulated a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Trump’s lawsuit has been widely described as frivolous, but Paramount seemed motivated to settle because its pending $8.4 billion merger with Skydance needed regulatory approval from the Trump administration.

In a statement provided to Ars today, Paramount said it “has reached an agreement in principle to resolve the lawsuit filed by President Trump and Representative [Ronny] Jackson in the Northern District of Texas and a threatened defamation action concerning a separate 60 Minutes report.”

CBS News, reporting on its own demise as a trusted news source:

Under the agreement, $16 million will be allocated to Mr. Trump’s future presidential library and the plaintiffs’ fees and costs. Neither Mr. Trump nor his co-plantiff, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, will be directly paid as part of the settlement.

The settlement did not include an apology.

One thing Donald Trump is unquestionably good at is convincing others to pay him large sums of money to influence his behavior or to avoid harm he’s promised or implied.

If only we had a word or two for that.

Michael Ian Black, in an opinion piece for The Daily Beast:

I’m a conservative now, I guess, because I believe in the social compact? Because I believe in such a thing as “the public good.” Because I want to conserve that which made the United States the destination of choice for those with dreams larger than their nations of origin can hold. I’m a conservative now, I guess, because I love so much about this country and it hurts me to see it gutted.

I agree with much of Black’s view here, though I would never call myself a conservative. But our usual definitions of the terms have been wrenched so far right that caring for the elderly, feeding the hungry, protecting consumers, and reducing the deficit are now practically radical.

In what I intend to make an annual tradition, here’s Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is Your Fourth of July?” as read by the late James Earl Jones. As I wrote last year, it’s powerful, made more so by Jones’ emotive baritone.

Douglass’ speech is alarmingly apropos right now—simply substitute “immigrant” for “slave”—

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

While this is the best-known passage from Douglass’ speech, there are many others equally worthy of recognition. Reading it in its entirety is both eye-opening and depressing. There are countless passages uncomfortably analogous to our current moment. Take, for example, this:

By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. […] By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans, have, within the past two years, been hunted down, and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery, and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey, stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, nor religion.

The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them, a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound, by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, to hear only his accusers!

Douglass is speaking of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; it’s distressingly easy to imagine a similar edict being pronounced today—probably via executive order and summarily approved by the Supreme Court. In truth, it feels like we’re already well on our way.

I encourage you to read Douglass’ entire speech. While long, I found it quite enjoyable—I found myself reading it aloud—and extremely well written, despite Douglass’ claims that “With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together.” One hundred seventy-three years later, and Douglass’ hasty and imperfect words still weigh heavily.

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.