I finally watched this marvelous talk from legendary game designer Jordan Mechner on the development of his groundbreaking game, Karateka, presented at GHC ’24, 40 years after the game’s debut.

I enjoyed hearing Mechner discuss his inspirations, development process, and challenges. He has kept journals since college and uses them to illustrate his story. His ambition is evident in his writings. In one entry, he noted:

My goal for this summer is to finish Karateka. If it’s half as big as I dream it may be, that should be enough to launch me into the video game world.

In another:

I can’t help vaguely dreaming about doing for video games what Walt Disney did for animation.

No doubt that ambition was a major contributor to his eventual success.

He also shared constructive insights:

This is the phase when it’s tempting to just wrap it up, but it’s also the phase that makes the different (sic) between an okay product and a really outstanding one.

Karateka was one of a handful of games I played obsessively on my Apple //c during high school and beyond (others include Lode Runner and Mechner’s second game, Prince of Persia). There was nothing quite like Karateka at the time. The combination of mechanics, storytelling, and music created a classic game and an unforgettable experience. The talk transported me back to my youth, a wonderful opportunity to reminisce.

Mechner also has two books based on the journals he kept: “The Making of Karateka” (also an interactive documentary) and “The Making of Prince of Persia”.

For the techies, he also released the source code for Prince of Persia on the Apple II and related technical information. Reading 6502 assembly after 40 years is a trip!

Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic reviews another delightful time-waster from Neal Agarwal (Apple News+):

The name of this monstrosity, which was released earlier this month, is Stimulation Clicker, and it is more than a game. It is a reenactment of the evolution of the internet, a loving parody of its contents, and a pointed commentary on how our online life went wrong. In bringing each element of the web to life and layering them on top of one another, the game ingeniously re-creates the paradox of the modern internet: Individually, the components are enjoyable. But collectively, they are unbearable. When everything on the internet demands attention, paying attention to anything becomes impossible.

At one point I had LoFi beats, a true-crime podcast, rain sounds, a streamer, an exercise guru, and a few more things all vying for my audio attention. I found the cacophony surprisingly soothing: Unable to focus on everything, I ended up focusing on nothing. It became meditative—an unexpected cheat code that disconnected my brain, allowing it to relax in the clamor.

I played for about 15 minutes. That’s 14 minutes more than I expected—or wanted. Eventually, I was generating 8,000 stimulations per second without having to click a thing.

After buying a bunch of stuff, including a full-screen Subway Surfer, one more item appeared. It cost 2,000,000 stimulations and came with a warning that it could not be undone. I bought it.

It was the perfect reward.

The enormously talented Joan Westenberg launched her “self funded and independent” publication The Index earlier this year. From her launch announcement:

Today, I’m launching The Index - a new publication focused on thoughtful, independent journalism and editorial opinion that matters. It’s always free to read, and never ad-supported.

From day one, we’re taking a stance that’s both principled and practical.

We’ll be funded solely by donations and by our readers through pledges and donations, not venture capital or billionaire ownership.

I learned about The Index because these fantastically written blog posts, all with evocative titles, kept popping up on my social media and RSS feeds. For example:

• “Flags at Full Staff, Discourse at Half-Mast: How Trump’s Inauguration Turned Protocol into Protest”:

But why? Why are we talking about flagpoles? When did the vertical position of a piece of cloth become a measure of patriotic devotion?

Like much of what happens in Trumpworld, it’s a game of performative signaling. Abbott’s order demonstrates loyalty to Trump, broadcasts defiance of federal (and therefore, Democrat) authority, and frames respect for Carter as subordinate to celebrating Trump’s return to power. The technical violation of flag protocol is a feature rather than a bug; and it allows Abbott to position himself as a bold defender of Trump against an *entirely imagined *conspiracy of Democratic flag-lowerers.

• “What Does “Masculine Energy” Even Mean, Mark?”:

He means being an asshole. Full stop.

He means the Trump approach to leadership: belittling opponents, dismissing criticism as weakness, and treating basic human dignity as optional. He means the Andrew Tate brand of masculinity: performing dominance while calling it strength. He means the Elon Musk school of management: firing people via tweet and calling it efficiency.

• “This Man is a Nazi.”

If it walks like a Nazi and talks like a Nazi, there is a good chance it’s Elon Musk.

• “This Man is a Coward.”

Power corrupts, but cowardice corrupts more completely. It corrupts not through excess but through absence - the absence of backbone, principle, and basic human courage. Zuckerberg had every resource needed to stand up to Trump’s assault on American institutions. He chose weak-willed submission in its place.

• “Nobody Wants a Nazi Electric Car”:

Remember 2015? A Tesla parked in your driveway announced something specific: innovation, environmental consciousness, and a stake in the future. The cars weren’t perfect, but they meant something. They represented hope - for clean energy, American manufacturing, and a world beyond fossil fuels. That Tesla is dead. Elon Musk killed it. He took it out back and strangled it with his sweaty, bare hands.

There are more, and that’s my point: They’re all really good. Sharp, pithy, often brutal, remarkably forthright. As I read them I find myself ruefully muttering “Damn, wish I’d written that.”

If you want more from her (and you will!), she also writes at the self-titled westenberg.

I’m a massive fan of Apple’s 1987 Knowledge Navigator concept video. Like other tech nerds, I often filter technology advancements through the lens of that vision: How close are we to that future?

Much of what it anticipates has come to pass in the ensuing four decades—video streaming, touchscreens, globally connected computers, wireless networking, and more.

Even some portions of the most fantastical and oft-discussed aspect of the video—the human-like digital assistant, Phil—are possible today; for example, Phil’s ability to summarize vast amounts of data, understand the spoken word, or speak in a voice that’s virtually indistinguishable from human.

However, the core of the video—where a professor has a human-like conversation with his digital assistant, which can anticipate needs and act autonomously on the professor’s behalf—well, we’re not quite there yet.

This fascinating research paper (PDF, video summary) attempts to answer the questions I’ve often asked myself: Why aren’t we there yet? What’s preventing us from having a “conversational agent” like Phil? Is it purely technological limitations, or are there other issues at play?

What struck me the most about this paper was the systematic approach the authors took to identify the nature of the interactions between the professor and Phil: What is Phil’s role at any given moment? Is it proactive, interruptive, collaborative, or passive?

The researchers looked at every verbal exchange between the professor and his digital assistant, then identified what those exchanges represent and how various “constraints” might prevent or delay the implementation and adoption of conversational agents today.

The authors applied three frameworks to analyze the interactions between the professor and Phil, and using these frameworks, they captured “dialogue, actions, and agent capabilities” and identified “events” that were:

[…] feasible and common today, feasible and not common today, or not feasible today. Feasibility was determined by comparing the demonstrated agent capabilities to those of widely adopted agents like Apple’s Siri and to current trends in HCI [Human Computer Interaction] research and development. These characterizations were then used to consider why the Phil agent differs from today’s personal digital assistants.

From this effort, they identified

[…] a list of 26 agent capabilities, such as “Knowledge of contacts and relationships” (e.g., Mike’s mother) and “Can accurately extract data from a publication” (e.g., Phil summarizes the results of an academic paper using a graph).

Those 26 agent capabilities were condensed into nine broad capabilities—knowledge of user history, knowledge of the user, advanced analytic skills, and so on. For each of those, they focused on two actionable categories (“currently feasible but not common today” and “not currently feasible”).

For me, these “agent capabilities” and their feasibility were the most intriguing part of the study. When Apple announced Apple Intelligence last June, I did a very naïve version of this with their demos. I wish I was familiar then with the frameworks and methodology this paper used! 

Back to the paper…. The nine broad capabilities were then:

[…] tagged with constraints that restrict their adoption or development […]. Some were based on the user, such as trust or privacy, and some were based on available technology itself. The authors used categories similar to those used in previous studies of barriers to technology adoption to group the constraints into three user-centered categories (privacy, social and situational, trust and perceived reliability), and one technology category.

Those “constraints” are effectively reasons why it may be difficult—or impossible—to develop and deploy a “conversational agent” today. A few reasons, from my perspective:

• Technology. With today’s available systems, two-way conversation with a digital assistant is just barely possible, and the ability for those systems to interrupt a conversation to provide answers to unasked questions is nonexistent. We’re barely at a level where questions we ask are answered correctly. While tools enabling autonomous behavior are coming online, they remain highly experimental and limited in scope.
• Privacy. Phil seemingly knows everything about Professor Mike, and is actively listening at all times. There remains an inherent distrust of systems that are “always on.” Many consumers today already (wrongly) believe their Siri, Google, or Alexa devices are “spying” on them. It will take a concerted effort to convince customers to allow the kind of constant, active listening that’s demonstrated in the video.
• Trust and Reliability. The professor implicitly trusts Phil to accomplish assigned tasks, without requiring confirmation, and without concerns about Phil’s ability to successfully complete those tasks. Even with an extremely competent human assistant, such trust can take significant time to establish, and a single mistake can erode that trust completely. Meanwhile, we’ve all had that experience where “Call mom” becomes “Call Ron”, or our dictated text message shows up as unintelligible on the other side. We’re currently a long way from trust and reliability.
• Social and Situational. Phil and the professor primarily communicate verbally. While they appear to be in a large, private (home) office, making these interactions feasible, it would limit functionality in most other spaces, including traditional offices, libraries, and classrooms. Even with headphones, talking out loud “to yourself”—even if others are doing the same thing—might be a stigma that’s difficult to overcome. Apple introduced “Type to Siri” in iOS 18, partly as a way to allow non-verbal users to benefit from Siri, but also with an explicit acknowledgment that “out loud” communications are frowned upon in some environments.

My takeaway from the paper is that while (much) improved technology is a necessary component to enable conversational agents, it is not sufficient. Overcoming the technical hurdles does not immediately bring us the kind of human/digital assistant engagement we see Knowledge Navigator. Even if there’s an unanticipated technological leap forward, the other three constraints remain as significant barriers to the introduction and eventual adoption of a Phil-level agent.

Technology, it seems, is the easy part.

Produced and directed by my friend (and former colleague) Thaddeus Cooper and his partner Kevin Kreitman, this award-winning 90-minute documentary (subtitled The Real Story of the Beautiful Game of Skee-Ball) is the culmination of thirteen years of meticulous research, writing, and production. It tells the fascinating—and unexpectedly involved—story of how “the 116 year old game of Skee-Ball survived wars, depressions, [and] tech revolutions to become the most beloved game in arcade history.”

The documentary is based on Thad and Kevin’s 464-page book on the history of Skee-Ball, so calling this documentary “deeply researched” is truly a massive understatement. It uses hundreds of historic photographs, newspaper clippings, even personal letters—some from Thad’s own collection—to give life to the narrative. I was thoroughly engrossed. Who knew there was so much history behind this ubiquitous arcade game?

And the Ball Rolls On…: The Real Story of the Beautiful Game of Skee-Ball is now available for purchase or rent on AppleTV, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube.

Over the weekend and into this morning, seemingly every entry in my newsfeed was about DeepSeek, a China-based AI lab which rolled out a highly capable AI model called R1. By far the best of the summaries I saw was from Ben Thompson at Stratechery.

The long and short of it: DeepSeek’s newly announced R1 model reportedly equaled the capabilities of OpenAI’s o1 model, which is considered the leader in the space, but uses vastly less powerful—and vastly less expensive—hardware to do so. This led to a meltdown of sorts in both the AI community at large, and the tech stock market. Nvidia, the world’s most valuable “AI” company, cratered nearly 17% on the news, and other AI-adjacent companies were also affected, both positively and negatively.

(Thompson’s podcast partner, John Gruber, helpfully distills the market impact over at Daring Fireball.)

Thompson delves into the backstory of DeepSeek, explains some of the technical underpinnings, and assesses the ramifications (real and imagined) on the future of AI computing.

He also highlights a tweet from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella suggesting one future we can certainly anticipate (and introducing me to Jevons paradox): 

Jevons paradox strikes again! As AI gets more efficient and accessible, we will see its use skyrocket, turning it into a commodity we just can't get enough of.

Cheaper and ubiquitous AI is coming. We’re edging ever closer to an intelligent agent future.

Clever design, powered by two AA batteries, and waterproof. I went from viewing to buying in under a minute. Usually that kind of purchasing abandon is reserved for Apple products.

We’re all in on AirTags—they’re in all of our suitcases, purses, and backpacks, on my bike, plus a spare one for rental cars. I’ve always worried about an AirTag battery dying just when it was needed^[1]—the very inspiration for this product.

Now, about the name TimeCapsule….

(Via Kottke.)

In an article for The Conversation, Dr. David Sterling Brown draws surprising parallels between Shakespeare’s Richard III and Donald Trump, while wielding his hyperlinks like a blade:

As Shakespeare depicts the king’s reign from June 1483 to August 1485, Richard III’s kingdom was wrought with chaos, confusion and corruption that fueled civil conflict in England. […]

Shakespeare’s play highlights the flawed character of a man who wanted to be, in modern terms, a dictator, someone who could do whatever he pleased without any consequences.

Dr. Brown is a scholar of Shakespeare and Associate Professor of English at Trinity College. In his piece, he lays out several more striking similarities between the two men:

Much like Trump during his first term, Shakespeare’s Richard did not lead with morals, ethics or integrity.

Richard lied compulsively to everyone, as his soliloquys (sic) that contain his innermost thoughts make clear.

Like Trump, Richard used empty rhetoric to persuade people with “sugared words” — he was not interested in speaking or promoting truth.

Moreover, Shakespeare’s Richard was a sexist and misogynist who verbally and physically disrespected women, including his wife and mother.

Each link is a swordsman’s cut, underscoring an already compelling case.

He wraps with this:

As a political leader, Richard III left a legacy in English history as one of England’s worst monarchs.

Thus hath history spoken, the comparison is complete.

Jared Newman at Fast Company rediscovers paper note-taking (because Field Notes):

I’ve never been much of a paper person. Although I did carry around a reporter’s notebook for a newspaper job in the pre-iPhone era, I prefer to file my thoughts away in digital form, where they can be categorized, backed up online, and accessed from any device.

By contrast, I love stationery and notebooks and have dallied, on and off for over twenty years, with ink-on-paper for my note-taking. But, for many of the same reasons Newman gives, it doesn’t tend to keep. Plus, I type infinitely faster than I write, and seldom struggle to decipher my own typing.

However—

Perhaps best of all—at least for me—is that you can’t delete what you’ve written in ink. I’ve tried using an iPad with an Apple Pencil for handwritten notes and have reviewed a few digital writing tablets, and they always feel counterproductive to me. As an obsessive self-editor, I can’t resist the erase and undo tools that digital notepads provide. The only option with paper is to forge ahead.

This resonated deeply. I, too, am an “obsessive self-editor”—for me, writing and editing are inextricably linked. (Or, as I first wrote, the act of editing is inextricably linked to the act of writing.) I’ll often spend more time editing a piece than I writing it, as I get bogged down on how to express this thought here rather than getting the broader ideas out.

When I use an iPad and Apple Pencil, I end up with the worst of both worlds: a slower, harder-to-decipher output that I still endlessly edit as I write—truly a hell-on-earth scenario.

I’m going to experiment with drafting a few future pieces on paper. Will I find it “relaxing” and “less stressful,” as Newman did, or be frustrated by my inability to refine as I go? It’s been years since I wrote more than a few sentences by hand. I’m as worried about cramps in my hand as I am in my writing style.

Paul Kafasis engages in some excellent, self-inflicted nerd-snipping on One Foot Tsunami:

I asked my iPhone who won Super Bowls 1 through 60 (that’s “I” through “LX” in Super Bowl styling) and captured a screenshot of each result.

The results are utterly appalling:

So, how did Siri do? With the absolute most charitable interpretation, Siri correctly provided the winner of just 20 of the 58 Super Bowls that have been played. That’s an absolutely abysmal 34% completion percentage. If Siri were a quarterback, it would be drummed out of the NFL.

Some of the results are especially awful. For example, to the question “Who won Super Bowl XXIII?”, Siri responds with the number of times Bill Belichick has won or appeared in the Super Bowl—completely irrelevant.

John Gruber at Daring Fireball wrote a brutally (but fairly) titled follow-up, Siri Is Super Dumb and Getting Dumber, sharing the appalling results to his own query, “Who won the 2004 North Dakota high school boys’ state basketball championship?”

New Siri — powered by Apple Intelligence™ with ChatGPT integration enabled — gets the answer completely but plausibly wrong, which is the worst way to get it wrong. It’s also inconsistently wrong — I tried the same question four times, and got a different answer, all of them wrong, each time. It’s a complete failure.

We’ve all had the Siri experience of getting a clearly wrong or patently useless answer to our query. It’s gotten to the point where I merely roll my eyes and move on—I rarely even screenshot mistakes anymore.

But I do feel sorry for the Siri team. I have some good friends who work there, and I had occasion to work with the team on Siri responses a few years back. I know they cringe every time these failures hit the blogs. They know more than anyone just how much Siri needs to improve.

The latest scuttlebutt (from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg) is that longtime Apple exec Kim Vorrath is moving to Apple Intelligence in an effort to whip it into shape. I’ve watched Vorrath and her Program Office teams operate from the inside for many years. The biggest impact she and her team had across engineering was instilling discipline: every feature or bug fix had to be approved; tied to a specific release; and built, tested, and submitted on time. It was (is!) a time-intensive process—and engineering often complained about it, sometimes vocally—but the end result was a more defined, less kitchen-sink release each year. To a significant extent, her team is the reason why a feature may get announced at WWDC but not get released until the following spring. She provided engineering risk management.

I hope the Vorrath and the Siri team can make this work. I need them to make this work. The future promised by Apple Intelligence is too compelling for it to fail.

MacRumors:

Directed by Ridley Scott, the advertisement was designed to highlight the Macintosh as a groundbreaking computer that offers freedom and individuality in a market dominated by corporate conformity. It drew inspiration from George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, with Apple positioning itself as a liberator from the homogenized control represented by the fictional “Big Brother,” a veiled allegory for IBM.

A lot has changed since this ad first aired. Foremost is that IBM is no longer the tech behemoth to be feared; Apple has indisputable taken on that role, and is now seen by many as the company we need to be “liberated from.” Meanwhile, in the politics sphere, every day feels more and more like Nineteen Eighty-Four.

And of course, the Super Bowl, which used to air in mid-to-late January, has crept later and later, with this year’s game being held on February 9.

George Orwell would be dismayed.

Amanda Font, in a story from the Bay Curious podcast on KQED (article/transcript):

Can a place be defined by a beverage? If I mention champagne, you must think of France. If I say mint julep, you’re thinking of the South. If you hear Malört, and you know what that is, you know I’m talking about Chicago. So, what’s San Francisco’s defining drink? If you ask some people, especially bartenders, it’s Fernet-Branca.

It’s true. You won’t find many San Francisco bars without Fernet-Branca on the shelves. If you do, maybe walk out.

If there’s one thing people will tell you about Fernet-Branca, it’s that it’s very much an acquired taste. It is a dark, syrupy-looking liqueur with a strongly medicinal smell and taste, and unlike other similar herbal digestifs, it is not sweet at all. […]

[Antoinette Cattani, former sales and marketing rep for Fernet-Branca] said she’ll never forget the time she was at the legendary Key Club in Los Angeles and when she gave someone a shot of Fernet-Branca, “This guy literally wiped his tongue and said, ‘Why would you do that to me?’”

I’m a spirits enthusiast, and I appreciate a good Amaro, but even this long-time San Francisco resident can’t quite bring himself to enjoy Fernet-Branca.

(Via Tammy Tan.)

This episode of Last Week Tonight offers useful context for TikTok’s stunt shutdown on Sunday. John Oliver delves into the issues—including national security, privacy, and First Amendment concerns—with his trademark nuance and humor. It first aired in November but remains relevant.

(Also good: John Gruber’s piece from Sunday, which focuses on the immediate effect of the takedown, and Donald Trump’s “pinkie-swear promise” to indemnify companies like Oracle and Akamai that re-enabled TikTok in violation of the law. The fines are $5,000 per user, amounting to $850 billion for TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users. And that’s for each company in violation.)

Apple dedicates its homepage to Dr. King—as is their tradition on this day—with a selection of his quotes (video for posterity):

• “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.”
• “You must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.”
• “We cannot preserve self without being concerned about preserving other selves.”

It’s worth understanding the quotes in context.

The education quote comes from an article in the Morehouse campus newspaper:

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

Preserving other selves is from Where Do We Go From Here Chaos or Community? (Archive.org):

From time immemorial men have lived by the principle that “self-preservation is the first law of life.” But this is a false assumption. I would say that other-preservation is the first law of life. It is the first law of life precisely because we cannot preserve self without being concerned about preserving other selves. The universe is so structured that things go awry if men are not diligent in their cultivation of the other-regarding dimension. “I” cannot reach fulfillment without “thou.” The self cannot be self without other selves. Self-concern without other-concern is like a tributary that has no outward flow to the ocean. Stagnant, still and stale, it lacks both life and freshness. Nothing would be more disastrous and out of harmony with our self-interest than for the developed nations to travel a dead-end road of inordinate selfishness. We are in the fortunate position of having our deepest sense of morality coalesce with our self-interest.

The speak for yourself quote is from The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., but I’m unable to find the full context online. The relevant sentence reads:

I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.

Education against propaganda, the importance of thinking critically, concern for others, the dangers of selfishness, and using your voice… I can’t definitively say Apple intended these quotes to speak to the challenges this country faces at this moment, but I’m confident they were chosen deliberately.

From “Bryan” at the Field Notes Dispatches blog:

The anniversary date of “Field Notes” varies a bit, depending on who you ask. Aaron Draplin first used the name (typeset, of course, in all-caps Futura Bold) on a customized one-off red hardcover notebook in 2002. Our “official line” sets the birth of the company in mid-2007, when Coudal Partners and Aaron first printed a batch of 3-Packs for the “Swap Meat,” followed shortly by the establishment of “Field Notes Brand” as an actual thing.

But a good case can be made that the very first Field Notes were made in “early January 2005,” making this, January 2025, an important 20th anniversary.

I’ve been using Field Notes since September 2007^[1], and a subscriber to their gorgeous quarterly Limited Editions since at least June 2016 (possibly 2014)—though I reluctantly admit that most of them have become collector’s items rather than daily carries.

Field Notes and a favored pen^[2] have long been my preferred capture tools. Even as I’ve shifted toward using my iPhone as my primary capture device^[3], I still gravitate toward Field Notes for capturing unstructured notes (like whiskey tastings) where I might need to scratch out, annotate, or revisit an entry, or for times when fumbling with a phone might seem boorish. (No one has ever raised an eyebrow as I scribbled in my notebook—except, perhaps, in appreciation on those occasions when it’s impeccably dressed in rich leather attire.)

Tapping on a phone feels weightless—ideas are recorded, then dismissed, permanent yet inconsequential. Scratching words onto paper feels momentous, at once discursive and considered, ephemeral yet archival.

Unsheathing my Field Notes is a declaration: This moment matters.

Fun promotion for Severance season 2, which debuted yesterday.

(Warning! The theme music is an insidious earworm. I had it running for ten minutes and when I stopped it I felt like a bit of my soul went away too.)

Apple’s home page is swarming with balloons too.

As part of the promotion, on Wednesday, Grand Central Terminal was transformed into the Lumon Industries office, with the main cast (in character) and director/producer Ben Stiller on hand.

One final note on the ERA, from Associate White House Counsel, Ainsley Hayes:

(Via Aaron Sorkin.)

A helpful explainer^[1] from Emily Amick on the history of the ERA, and the legal issues that suggest President Biden’s recent assertion is legally meaningless, in large part due to the amendment’s ratification deadline—plus an interesting take:

Legally, I think it’s pretty clear the congressional ratification deadline is law, and therefore needs to be extended in order to ratify the ERA. There is a political argument here to push for ratification, and even to steamroll Biden into doing this to force Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court to overturn it (under Trump’s watch). This could create a galvanizing moment for further political organizing.

The problem is that this isn’t who Joe Biden is. He isn’t someone who will do something contravening Supreme Court precedent, and I don’t think this is the issue he is going to evolve for.

She wrote this in December, 2024 and later added a postscript:

The more I’ve thought about this the more I’ve realized what a terrible strategic move this idea was. If Biden were to force the Archivist to publish the ERA, it would have gotten litigated and gone to the majority-conservative Supreme Court. They would undoubtedly overturn the decision, and in doing so would likely make arguments similar to those we saw in the 2020 Trump OLC memo. They would give us a binding decision that Congress can’t fix the ratification deadline. The actual result of this would be to make it nearly impossible to ever get the ERA as an actual part of the Constitution. This strategic mess is emblematic of the leadership we’ve seen from feminist organizations who oversaw the fall of Roe, legally, politically and optically flawed.

I don’t think President Biden was “steamrolled” into this, and clearly he’s “evolved” at least a little bit on the matter. While he hasn’t pushed the Archivist to ratify, I agree with Amick’s assessment that Biden’s decision was meant to create a “galvanizing moment,” but I don’t agree that it was a strategic blunder.

Time will tell, but I’m glad President Biden is doing something to nudge along a 50-plus-year amendment.

President Joe Biden, in a White House statement:

On January 27, 2020, the Commonwealth of Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The American Bar Association (ABA) has recognized that the Equal Rights Amendment has cleared all necessary hurdles to be formally added to the Constitution as the 28th Amendment. I agree with the ABA and with leading legal constitutional scholars that the Equal Rights Amendment has become part of our Constitution.

The New York Times, in a multi-bylined article notes:

Under the Constitution, however, the president has no direct role in approving amendments and his statement has no legal force by itself. The archivist of the United States, a Biden appointee, has refused to formally publish the amendment on the grounds that it has not met the requirements to become part of the Constitution.

President Biden did this knowing there’d be court and congressional battles, and is effectively daring them to argue that women aren’t equal under the law, rather than cowering behind “there’s no law that says they are, so who can tell?” Such battles could force many national and state leaders to go on the record and might prove quite distracting to the incoming regime.

To which I say: Fantastic! Do more! President Biden should throw more progressive-but-controversial acts behind him as he strides out of the Oval Office, like caltrops strewn in front of a speeding car.

Todd Rosiak, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Milwaukee Brewers radio broadcasts will, sadly, never sound the same.

Bob Uecker, the voice of the team on the airwaves for 54 years, a Baseball Hall of Famer and local, statewide and national icon, died Thursday, the Brewers announced.

He was 90 years old.

I didn’t listen to many Brewers games growing up in New York (they were in the American League then, and I was a National League fan), but I still knew Bob Uecker. Ueck was a part of my baseball adolescence. As the Brewers’ team statement notes:

He was so much more than a Milwaukee Brewers icon. He was a national treasure. Bob entertained us with his words and storytelling, so it is no surprise that his passing now leaves us at a loss for our own words.

Fifty-four years broadcasting the sport, Miller Lite commercials, and Major League movies will do that. I’d also forgotten he starred in Mr. Belvedere for six seasons.

His voice and humor will be missed. A huge loss for baseball fans everywhere.

Enjoy the front row, Ueck.

See also:

• MLB
• The Athletic/New York Times

Anna Betts, reporting for The Guardian:

American flags at the US Capitol will fly at full-staff for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington DC on Monday, despite a White House order for flags to remain at half-staff for 30 days after the death of former president Jimmy Carter last month.

The House speaker, Mike Johnson, first announced the change on Tuesday. In a post on social media he wrote: “On January 20th, the flags at the Capitol will fly at full-staff to celebrate our country coming together behind the inauguration of our 47th President, Donald Trump.” He added: “The flags will be lowered back to half-staff the following day to continue honoring President Jimmy Carter.”

How does the Speaker of the House get to decide what happens to flags on the Capitol? Isn’t that federal property, under the control of (still) President Joe Biden?

This, of course, follows Donald Trump’s childish griping about the flags being flown at half-staff during his inauguration, calling Democrats “giddy” about it. As I noted previously, no one is giddy, it’s the law. But apparently no one has to follow the law anymore if it makes them feel insecure.

It’s not just Trump and his Johnson worried about being at half-staff. Robert Jimison at the New York Times reports:

Republican governors in Alabama, Iowa, Nebraska and Florida also announced that flags in their states would be raised on Monday and returned to half-staff the next day.

Plus the Republican governors of Texas, North Dakota, Idaho, and Tennessee, according to Iris Seaton at the Asheville Citizen Times.

These “leaders” have no respect for the flag or the laws of this country. They’ve pledged fealty to one man, patriotism or common decency be damned.

In Trump’s social media whining, he also wrote:

[…] the Flag may, for the first time ever during an Inauguration of a future President, be at half mast.

He’s wrong, of course. From the January 21, 1973 edition of the New York Times, in which R. W. Apple Jr. wrote about the second inauguration of Richard Nixon:

The President spoke from temporary portico erected adjacent to the Capitol, with the United States Marine Band, in scarlet tunics, arrayed before him. All flags on the Capitol were still at half‐staff in memory of former President Harry S. Truman, who died last Dec. 26.

Even Nixon had more integrity and empathy.

Harry Litman disputes, in an article for The New Republic, the very common criticism (including my own) that Merrick Garland slow-walked the Trump investigation:

The charge of foot-dragging has become a meme. Elie Honig, writing in New York magazine, was particularly cocksure: "The debate about whether Garland took too long to charge the Trump cases—or to appoint a Special Counsel to get the job done—is over. Exhibit A: there's not going to be a federal trial before the 2024 election. End of story."

But the charge is a bum rap.

The record demonstrates that Garland made investigating Trump a top priority, even as he also focused on restoring integrity to the Justice Department. The investigation was extraordinarily complicated and slowed by unusual and unpredictable obstacles, including the Supreme Court's lawless immunity ruling. Moreover, events entirely outside of Garland's control ensured that Trump would not have been held accountable before the election. Finally, Garland's efforts, among others, made Trump's criminality more than clear to the voters, but they nevertheless were content to reelect a felon and serial sexual offender.

The storyline that Garland let moss grow on the investigation—some say until Jack Smith came aboard, others until the work of the January 6 committee embarrassed the department—doesn’t gibe with even the publicly available evidence, which likely will be supplemented over time with details that we still don’t know.

Litman outlines a compelling rebuttal, suggesting Garland may deserve more credit for pursuing this case than I (and others) have given him.

He concludes:

It’s understandable that some of the frustration over Trump’s escape from justice has been displaced onto Garland. We put our hope in him to bring Trump down, and it didn’t happen. It’s easy to make him a scapegoat. But once you factor in all the other reasons for delay, it never was in the cards to bring Trump to justice before Election Day. And that was notwithstanding an overall diligent focus on the prospect from Garland’s first days in office.

Perhaps instead we should focus our ire on those who allowed Trump to remain a politically viable candidate after January 6, 2021, like Mitch McConnell and the 42 other Senators who voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial.

David Smith, writing for The Guardian:

Donald Trump would have been convicted of crimes over his failed attempt to cling to power in 2020 but for his victory in last year’s US presidential election, according to the special counsel who investigated him.

Special Counsel Jack Smith concludes Volume 1 of his just-released 174-page Special Counsel Report thusly:

The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind. Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.

While every prosecutor is expected to claim “we would have won,” the depth and scope of the report suggests an extremely solid case—unsurprising, considering we all watched the events it charges unfold live as they happened.

But Donald Trump did exactly what he set out to do: Delay, delay, delay, and hope to convince a plurality of Americans to grant him a get-out-of-jail-free card. And while I can’t say definitively, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that had Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special prosecutor a year earlier—or perhaps had President Biden nominated someone else for AG—Trump would have likely been convicted of his attacks on democracy, or at least found himself severely weakened politically, well before the election, and we would not be in the nightmare position we now find ourselves of having a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and clearly criminal politician as president.

The American people were denied justice, and democracy might be Donald Trump’s next victim.

Jamison Foser over at Finding Gravity brings the receipts in a great takedown of the aforelinked Washington Post’s all-but-useless capsule approvals of Trump’s nominees, highlighting their five worst endorsements. I only wish he'd done all of them.

The Washington Post Editorial Board weighed in over the weekend on Donald Trump’s cabinet picks:

We would not have picked any of his choices for our hypothetical Cabinet. But, as we have argued for decades, that is not the standard we — or U.S. senators — should apply when evaluating potential executive nominees for Senate confirmation. The president-elect won the election. He deserves deference in building his team, and the Americans who elected him deserve an operational government, absent disqualifying deficiencies in competence, temperament or philosophy.

By that standard, all but two of Trump’s planned Cabinet nominees seem confirmable — as well as all but two of his picks for Cabinet-rank jobs that require confirmation.

These are little more than thumbs-up or thumbs-down for each, with a sentence or two capsule review (at best; some have no commentary at all).

For example, for Doug Burgum, nominee for Secretary of the Interior:

The outgoing North Dakota governor and Stanford MBA built a successful software company that he sold to Microsoft.

I’m unclear how this is relevant experience for running the Department of the Interior—unless, perhaps, there’s a plan to sell federal land to Microsoft.

Or for Sean P. Duffy, nominee for Transportation:

The former reality TV star is also a former congressman from Wisconsin. He’ll still need to study.

That’s it. Remember, the Post Editorial Board’s criteria for approval is they’re “absent disqualifying deficiencies in competence, temperament or philosophy.” I guess “reality TV star” is the new mark of competence in the coming Trump regime.

This is especially deep brown-nosing following the Post’s cowardly refusal to endorse a presidential candidate this election cycle. The editorial board should be ashamed of itself.

I wasn’t expecting to link to a five-year-old video of a conversation about grief today, yet here we are. The topic has been on my mind a lot recently as close friends have lost their parents (and I start contemplating the inevitable loss of my mother, aunts, and uncle) and in the wake of the devastating, ongoing Los Angeles fires.

It’s a beautiful and touching conversation between two men who experienced heart-rending grief at an early age—both Cooper’s and Colbert’s dads died when they were 10 (about the age I lost my dad and grandfather)—and the difficult-yet-invaluable act of sharing our losses with others.

One thing that makes Apple products so distinctive is their iconic sounds, from the Mac start-up chime, to the distinctive iPhone ringtone, to the sad tones AirPods play when their batteries run low. Twenty Thousand Hertz explores these sonic landscapes in two beautifully produced episodes of their podcast. If you use Apple products, or just appreciate great sound design, you’ll enjoy these:

• The Sound of Apple 1.0
• The Sound of Apple 2.0

(These links have been sitting in my queue for months, but last week’s episode of Accidental Tech Podcast prodded me to finally link them. My thanks to The Boys™ for the reminder.)

Mike Allen and Sara Fischer for Axios:

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is terminating major DEI programs, effective immediately — including for hiring, training and picking suppliers, according to a new employee memo obtained by Axios. […]

From the memo itself (reportedly written by Janelle Gale, vice president of Human Resources):

The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics. The term "DEI" has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.

Every word of this is utter bullshit. It falsely equates “DEI” with “discrimination”, when DEI programs are about providing opportunity and ensuring equality. It uses a deeply conservative, far-right Supreme Court to buttress the company’s (and by that I mean Mark Zuckerberg’s) own believes about the value of these programs. You could win good money betting these folks also think Dred Scott v. Sanford and Plessy v. Ferguson were decided correctly.

Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, Meta Quest, Ray Ban Meta Glasses) is just the latest in a long list of companies which never really believed in these programs. As I wrote back in July when Microsoft announced their DEI dissolution,

It was always just lip service. Companies never really bought into the progressive ideals. They just wanted to shut up Black folk.

Last month, Costco strongly defended its DEI practices. They’re the only large company I’ve seen take a (semi-) public stance in favor of inclusion and diversity. Even Apple, which I (still) believe takes DEI seriously, has been quiet (while they seem to be hiring for I&D roles, they’ve quietly ended Apple Entrepreneur Camp). Will Apple ever make a public statement about the importance of inclusion and diversity?

These companies are merely using the Supreme Court and “changing landscapes” as convenient cover. The programs are being rolled back because the class of people most affected by a push for equality are those who’ve benefited from a lack of it. Once again, when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

In the middle of his fascinating piece “A Day in the Life of a Prolific Voice Phishing Crew”, Brian Krebs (Krebs On Security) writes about a victim getting scammed because the scammers successfully posed as Apple customer support:

In the first step of the attack, they peppered the target's Apple device with notifications from Apple by attempting to reset his password. Then a "Michael Keen" called him, spoofing Apple's phone number and saying they were with Apple's account recovery team.

The target told Michael that someone was trying to change his password, which Michael calmly explained they would investigate. Michael said he was going to send a prompt to the man's device, and proceeded to place a call to an automated line that answered as Apple support saying, "I'd like to send a consent notification to your Apple devices. Do I have permission to do that?"

The victim gives his permission. The scammers then call Apple’s customer support number while spoofing the victim’s phone number and use Apple’s automated system to trigger an alert on all the victim’s devices. The message that appears is legitimately “from Apple”:

In essence, the voice phishers are using an automated Apple phone support line to send notifications from Apple and to trick people into thinking they’re really talking with Apple.

I can understand why someone who is busy or distracted or just unaware of the potential for being scammed can fall for this. To be (somewhat) fair to Apple, the message says (emphasis added):

Would you like to confirm your Apple Account and allow Apple to access your device serial numbers to expedite your interaction? If you did not contact Apple, do not confirm this request.

with two buttons, “Confirm” and “Don’t Confirm”. A close reading suggests you should select Don’t Confirm, as you did not contact Apple (“Apple” contacted you), but most people will either misread—or not read—the full dialog, relying on the logical progression of:

1. I’m talking to someone who says they’re from Apple;
2. They say they’ll send me a confirmation;
3. Here’s a confirmation request on my devices.

As Krebs writes of this particular victim:

[…] this technique fooled the target, who felt completely at ease that he was talking to Apple after receiving the support prompt on his iPhone.

“Okay, so this really is Apple,” the man said after receiving the alert from Apple. “Yeah, that’s definitely not me trying to reset my password.”

So a few reminders:

• If you get a call from someone claiming to be from some company’s customer service, don’t provide them any information. End the call and call the company’s published customer service line directly. (A simple “I’m sorry, I’m in the middle of something and can’t talk right now. Let me call you back in 10 minutes” will get them off the line quickly.)
• Don’t approve notifications on your device without reading and understanding what you’re approving. If you did not do something that would trigger a notification, assume it’s an attempt at phishing.
• Never enter passwords or confirmation codes on a website you can’t verify is real. Using a password manager helps here because they only trigger on the sites they were saved for; “apple.com” or “support.apple.com” and not “p1234-apple[.]com,” for instance.

Specific to Apple, it’s worth reading their support document “What to expect when in contact with Apple Support.”

An aside: I was very amused to read the scammers using the classic customer support phrase “go ahead and” (as in “go ahead and click OK”). It’s a phrase I’ve tried to excise from my lexicon (and from that of the support teams I’ve led), but having used it for 30-something years, it sometimes slips in uninvited. It’s practically a customer support shibboleth: If you don’t use it, are you really in customer support?

Emma Roth, for The Verge:

More than a year after launching its smart TV platform in Europe, TiVo is now bringing it to the US. The company's putting its TiVo OS platform inside a new Sharp TV arriving as soon as February, rivaling the likes of Roku, Google TV, and Amazon's Fire TV.

TiVo first announced TiVo OS in 2022, but the platform didn't actually launch until last year. The company bills its operating system as a "neutral" platform, allowing TV manufacturers to put their own spin on the viewing experience. It says TiVo OS supports "a wide range" of streaming services and comes with a recommendation system that serves up "personalized suggestions." TiVo OS also offers voice controls for select TVs, but it doesn't say whether this Sharp one is included.

55" 4K OLED. Three HDMI ports. Dolby Atmos. No price yet.

I actually didn’t realize TiVo was even still a thing. I say this as someone who’s owned seven TiVos since 2001 (four still “active” with “lifetime subscriptions”). All are in storage. Streaming (and Plex) covers 99% of my needs today; OTA (antenna) covers the rest—usually live baseball.

I miss precisely three things about TiVo: A single view into all my channels. SkipMode. And of course, the “peanut” remote.

I’m struggling to understand who this product is for. I can’t imagine many people are clamoring for a TiVo-powered television today, but if it challenges Roku, and replaces the usually awful TV operating systems, more power to them.

In December I speculated about the eventual fate of Judge Erin Gall:

My unsupported-by-any-facts guess is that by avoiding a hearing she expects to lose, she preserves some standing with the Courts, and perhaps allows for a very lucrative pension she might otherwise be ineligible for if the appeal failed. There might even be a job offer that’s contingent on her being merely “a retired judge” rather than “a fired judge.”

(Is it too much to suggest such an offer would be with the incoming administration?)

I was wrong about the “incoming administration” part, but, per Mike Goodwin and Patrick Tine of the Times-Union:

Erin P. Gall, the state Supreme Court Justice who initially fought removal from the bench after a July 2022 incident in which she threatened to shoot a group of Black teenagers, has landed a job as an attorney working for Herkimer County.

The disclosure of her new position as an assistant county attorney is included in a filing from the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which declined to sign onto Gall’s bid to end her appeal of the commission’s recommendation that she should be removed from her $232,600-a-year post.

The supposed new job pays $52,000 a year (for two days a week) and is state pension eligible.

Quite the step down, but it still gives her the ability to retire on New York State’s taxpayers’ dime, and she’s still involved in deciding people’s legal fates.

Though, “I’m a f___ing Assistant County Attorney! That’s how Assistant County Attorney Gall rolls!” doesn’t quite hit the same.

Brooke Nelson Alexander, writing for Reader’s Digest, in 2023:

Per federal law, all government buildings, public schools, offices and military bases must lower their flags to half-staff for 30 days when a U.S. president or former president dies.

It is not, in fact, something one gets “giddy” about. It’s the law.

An incredible, must-read story from Joshua Kaplan at Pro Publica about “John Williams,” who spent years infiltrating right-wing militias:

Posing as an ideological compatriot, Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country. He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his files in the middle of the night. He’d devised elaborate ruses to gather evidence of militias’ ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials. He’d uncovered secret operations like the surveillance of a young journalist, then improvised ways to sabotage the militants’ schemes. In one group, his ploys were so successful that he became the militia’s top commander in the state of Utah.

Now he was a fugitive. He drove south toward a desert four hours from the city, where he could disappear.

The entire piece is wild, but the parts I found most disturbing describe how close members of the militias are to the U.S. military and to law enforcement. For example:

[David] Coates was an elder statesman of sorts in the Oath Keepers, a 73-year-old Vietnam veteran with a Hulk Hogan mustache. There’d been a break-in at the Utah attorney general’s office, he reported to the group, and for some unspoken reason, the Oath Keepers seemed to think this was of direct relevance to them. Coates promised to find out more about the burglary: “The Sheriff should have some answers” to “my inquiries today or tomorrow.”

That last line would come to obsess Williams. He sent a long, made-up note about his own experiences collaborating with law enforcement officials. “I’m curious, how responsive is the Sheriff to your inquiries? Or do you have a source you work with?”

“The Sheriff has become a personal friend who hosted my FBI interview,” Coates responded. “He opens a lot of doors.” Coates had been in D.C. on Jan. 6, he’d told Williams. It’d make sense if that had piqued the FBI’s interest.

To Williams, it hinted at a more menacing scenario — at secret ties between those who threaten the rule of the law and those duty-bound to enforce it.

We are sixteen days away from a regime that supports—and is supported by—right-wing militias, members of which are either in law enforcement and the military, or are “personal friends” with those who are.

We are in dangerous times.

(Via @funnymonkey b/w/o @mmalc.)

George Lakoff and Gil Duran at FrameLab offer “Advice for defeating the authoritarian threat.” All are great; three stood out for me:

Avoid brain rot and lies. Social media is overrun with clickbait traps that profit from outrage and misdirection. Block these and seek out legitimate information sources grounded in truth and reality. Subscribe to trusted media outlets so journalism survives – we’ll need it more than ever. Always do a basic fact-check before sharing memes, texts, or stories. Never spread false stories or conspiracy theories, even if you wish they were true, even if you think they’re funny. Once we can no longer discern fact from falsehood (or we no longer care), the authoritarians win. Don’t be on the wrong side of the information war!

I’ve seen a lot of very compelling social media posts that I very much wanted to be true and to share. My natural skepticism would kick in and lead me to do some digging, only to find it was misleading, a conspiracy, or an outright hoax. I’m always happy I don’t accidentally spread misinformation, but it’s getting harder, and we all need to be more vigilant.

Don’t help Trump. Some of Trump's opponents are obsessed with focusing on him personally; thus, they unwittingly amplify and boost his propaganda. By focusing solely on Trump – his ridiculous statements, mannerisms, and antics – Trump's opponents make him a larger-than-life figure. They also reinforce his messages by constantly repeating them and thus marketing them. In short, they help Trump. We can’t completely ignore his quirks and lies, but the constant boosting of his every utterance appears to have worked in his favor so far. See: 2024 election results.

I’ve been guilty of dunking on The Other Side by sharing news or memes that make them look doltish or disorganized, but I recognized I was part of their propaganda machine. For the coming Mump Regime, I’m defaulting to a new policy: Media oxygen deprivation. I won’t ignore them, but I won’t blindly boost them either. Let their ideas suffocate in the right-wing echo chambers while the rest of us focus on democratic efforts to govern.

Demand accountability. Authoritarians thrive on impunity. It’s critical to hold leaders, corporations, and institutions accountable. Insist on accountability. Write letters, sign petitions, and participate in boycotts when necessary. Demand transparency and fairness at every level. Corruption and injustice wither under the light of scrutiny.

You’ll be forgiven for wondering if this could possibly still be true today. Trump, the GOP, the Supreme Court, state legislatures—all have repeatedly escaped accountability. Many simply ask themselves what the consequences of their actions will be, or, as Dave Rahardja succinctly put it, “Or Else What.” For most, the answer is “nothing.” This must change.

The rest of Lakoff and Duran’s advice is just as compelling, cogent, and actionable.

I especially enjoy slow mornings and time for fun and play. I plan to enjoy more long walks, home cooked meals, and good books.

I hope 2025 allows for more real luxuries for you and your loved ones.

Happy New Year.

(Original author unknown. @breadandcircuses via @gogoronzilla.)

Jay Kuo pens a thorough (and thoroughly entertaining) summary of last week’s in-fighting:

Right wing populism has always had an uneasy relationship with the tech bro billionaire class, which is often responsible for who gets good jobs and who doesn’t in the U.S.

Over Christmas, that uneasy tension erupted into an online bloodbath as the face-eating leopards pounced. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are the co-chairs of Trump’s newly designated Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), came out publicly in favor of H-1B visas for highly skilled, foreign workers.

Musk said the quiet part out loud, arguing that the number of "super talented engineers" who were also "super motivated" was far too low, implying that Americans lacked both talent and motivation.

Hmmm. Folks on the right didn’t like that so much.

I cackled throughout.

The Guardian:

Broadly unpopular then, Carter went on to become not just the longest-lived president but also to have one of the most distinguished post-presidential careers. He was awarded the Nobel peace prize for “decades of untiring effort” for human rights and peacemaking. His humanitarian work was conducted under the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which he founded in the early 1980s, with Rosalynn.

Jimmy Carter was the first president I was aware of, thanks to my grandmother, who thought him a kind man. I knew him best for his commitment to Habitat for Humanity. In the handful of instances I’ve seen him speak, he always seemed to have a twinkle in his eye. It certainly seemed to me like he enjoyed being a former president far more than being president. And it positively tickled me when he declared his intention to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris—and then did so.

President Biden has ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff for the next 30 days and declared January 9, 2025 a National Day of Mourning. I’m grateful President Carter will be honored in a state funeral led by a president respectful of both the office and the man.

Elsewhere:

• The New York Times

iA, the company behind iA Writer, my preferred tool for writing on this site, has a new award:

We’re always interested in finding and celebrating good writers and presenters. That’s why we’re launching writing and presenting awards. Show us what you created using our tools.

The prize is their simply stunning iA Notebook.

(Aside: I love notebooks, and I’ve recently returned to an old love of fountain pens. I’ve eyed the iA Notebook but hesitated to buy it because 1) My handwriting is atrocious, and B) it’s $73… $98 with shipping. The nearly hundred dollars is an easy justification for someone who hand writes more than I do, but I’m confidant I’d find all sorts of excuses to use it if I won (or finally break down and buy one for myself. End aside.))

I submitted one of my articles—Happy Birthday, America—to give myself at least a chance to win this stunning notebook (though I have no illusions about those chances!).

I selected this one because it’s my most popular piece, and was a lot of fun to write.

I’m a huge fan of iA Writer; in my submission email, I wrote:

Every word (of this article and of the site) was written in iA Writer and published directly to Ghost via its integration.

Being able to write across multiple devices and have them in sync via iCloud is fantastic. Many a time I’ve drafted an article on my iPhone, polished it on my iPad, and published it from my MacBook—with nary a missed comma.

Because iA Writer is markdown-flavored plaintext, I can also roundtrip between it and several other tools, like Drafts, BBEdit, and git. It’s become the center of my writing workflow.

Update: The deadline for submissions has been extended to January 1, 2025. Get your writing and presentations in!

A welcome yet deeply unsatisfying coda^[1] to an appalling story I linked to back in August, from Brian Lee at New York Law Journal:

A New York judge who's serving a suspension with pay for threatening to shoot Black teens, and had urged police to do so, for crashing a high school graduation party her family attended, will no longer appeal for her reinstatement, the Law Journal has learned.

State Supreme Court Justice Erin Gall of Oneida County said through a motion filed by her attorney that she’s no longer opposing the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct’s recommendation for the state’s top court to remove her.

The Commission, Lee writes,

[…] had unanimously voted to recommend Gall's removal for a “racially offensive, profane, prolonged public diatribe” [….]

Instead of appealing, she’s resigning:

“I have resigned from my position and have no intention to remain on the bench even if I were to succeed before the Court of Appeals,” the motion read.

I presume she’s resigning before she’s fired for cause—she would be prevented from ever being a judge again if she lost her appeal.

My unsupported-by-any-facts guess is that by avoiding a hearing she expects to lose, she preserves some standing with the Courts, and perhaps allows for a very lucrative pension she might otherwise be ineligible for if the appeal failed. There might even be a job offer that’s contingent on her being merely “a retired judge” rather than “a fired judge.”

(Is it too much to suggest such an offer would be with the incoming administration?)

Her official reason, though, is fear for her family:

In her motion she said that her “story has [been] carried by not only local but national news and social media. The attention incited numerous physical threats upon my family, requiring 24-hour law enforcement protection. In particular, my two sons received numerous death threats. The fear has been immeasurable and terrifying. I do not believe that I can move forward with arguing this appeal for fear that my family will be put in danger once again.”

Also:

Gall asked the Court of Appeals to give her a lifeline by rendering "no specific findings other than removal to help lessen any potential harm to my family due to social media and national news exposure.”

While I don’t doubt the threats upon her and her family, I do find it rich that she’s effectively pleading for mercy so she and her family aren’t ravaged on Bluesky and YouTube.

I found this bit especially exasperating:

“I certainly do not think it fair to characterize my reactions as racially motivated and to stigmatize me with that finding based on the facts in the case,” she added.

I’ve said it many times: Racists aren’t concerned about being racist, just being called racist.

Ted Gioia, in his The Honest Broker newsletter (where he has written several times about the Spotify ‘ghost artist’ kerfuffle), adds some valuable context to the aforelinked Harper’s piece from Liz Pelly:

In early 2022, I started noticing something strange in Spotify’s jazz playlists.

I listen to jazz every day, and pay close attention to new releases. But these Spotify playlists were filled with artists I’d never heard of before.

Who were they? Where did they come from? Did they even exist? […]

Many of these artists live in Sweden—where Spotify has its headquarters. According to one source, a huge amount of streaming music originates from just 20 people, who operate under 500 different names.

Some of them were generating supersized numbers. An obscure Swedish jazz musician got more plays than most of the tracks on Jon Batiste’s We Are—which had just won the Grammy for Album of the Year (not just the best jazz album, but the best album in any genre).

How was that even possible?

How indeed.

They called it payola in the 1950s. The public learned that radio deejays picked songs for airplay based on cash kickbacks, not musical merit.

Music fans got angry and demanded action. In 1959, both the US Senate and House launched investigations. Famous deejay Alan Freed got fired from WABC after refusing to sign a statement claiming that he had never taken bribes.

Transactions nowadays are handled more delicately—and seemingly in full compliance with the laws. Nobody gives Spotify execs an envelope filled with cash.

But this is better than payola[….]

By Gioia’s estimate, Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek sold over $348 million worth of Spotify stock in 2024, and concludes:

[…] nobody in the history of music has made more money than the CEO of Spotify.

(He includes Taylor Swift in that “nobody” list, but I’m skeptical of that.)

He continues:

I need to complain about the stupid major record labels who have empowered and supported Spotify during its long history. At some junctures, they have even been shareholders.

I’ve warned repeatedly that this is a huge mistake. Spotify is their adversary, not their partner. The longer they avoid admitting this to themselves, the worse things will get.

He calls on Congress to investigate streaming companies, as they did with the payola scheme, and ends with this call to action:

And let me express a futile wish that the major record labels will find a spine. They need to create an alternative—even if it requires an antitrust exemption from Congress (much like major league sports).

Our single best hope is a cooperative streaming platform owned by labels and musicians. Let’s reclaim music from the technocrats. They have not proven themselves worthy of our trust.

I’m not sure calling on the record labels to be part of the solution is the right answer; “futile” might be a massive understatement. While it might be in their best interest to have a streaming solution they (along with musicians) control, I doubt such a service will change who makes the money. In the end, it’s the artists and musicians who may need to build a streaming service they control, and which has their interests at heart.

Deeply researched investigative reporting by Liz Pelly for her forthcoming book “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist,” excerpted in the January edition of Harper’s Magazine:

Spotify, the rumor had it, was filling its most popular playlists with stock music attributed to pseudonymous musicians—variously called ghost or fake artists—presumably in an effort to reduce its royalty payouts. Some even speculated that Spotify might be making the tracks itself. At a time when playlists created by the company were becoming crucial sources of revenue for independent artists and labels, this was a troubling allegation.

The challenge for Spotify was how its listeners use the service:

According to a source close to the company, Spotify’s own internal research showed that many users were not coming to the platform to listen to specific artists or albums; they just needed something to serve as a soundtrack for their days, like a study playlist or maybe a dinner soundtrack. In the lean-back listening environment that streaming had helped champion, listeners often weren’t even aware of what song or artist they were hearing. As a result, the thinking seemed to be: Why pay full-price royalties if users were only half listening? It was likely from this reasoning that the Perfect Fit Content program was created.

What a truly absurd justification: half-royalties for half-listening? Can you imagine Spotify being on the receiving end of such inane logic? “I‘ll pay you half your subscription fee because I’m only half listening.” You’d be laughed out of the room, and rightly so, too.

At least Spotify employees recognize this justification for what it is:

In a Slack channel dedicated to discussing the ethics of streaming, Spotify’s own employees debated the fairness of the PFC program. “I wonder how much these plays ‘steal’ from actual ’normal’ artists,” one employee asked.

These “normal artists” are creating works that generate millions of listens—and thus millions in revenue—for Spotify and the “fake” labels, but not the artists themselves:

The musician who made ambient tracks for one of the PFC partner companies told me about power imbalances he experienced on the job. “There was a fee paid up front,” he explained to me. “It was like, ‘We’ll give you a couple hundred bucks. You don’t own the master. We’ll give you a percentage of publishing.’ And it was basically pitched to me that I could do as many of these tracks as I wanted.” In the end, he recorded only a handful of tracks for the company, released under different aliases, and made a couple thousand dollars. The money seemed pretty good at first, since each track took only a few hours. But as a couple of the tracks took off on Spotify, one garnering millions upon millions of streams, he started to see how unfair the deal was in the long term: the tracks were generating far more revenue for Spotify and the ghost label than he would ever see, because he owned no part of the master and none of the publishing rights. “I’m selling my intellectual property for essentially peanuts,” he said.

It feels like Spotify is taking advantage of struggling musicians who don’t fully understand their role in this equation, that they, the musicians, are what Spotify’s listeners are paying for. Imagine if this artist had been able to publish their music themselves, while getting the same level of visibility this PFC program offers. They would make much more money. But this, of course, would require Spotify to pay way more in royalties, which isn’t nearly as profitable for them.

And you can’t have a discussion about the worth of creators today without AI entering the studio:

This treatment of music as nothing but background sounds—as interchangeable tracks of generic, vibe-tagged playlist fodder—is at the heart of how music has been devalued in the streaming era. It is in the financial interest of streaming services to discourage a critical audio culture among users, to continue eroding connections between artists and listeners, so as to more easily slip discounted stock music through the cracks, improving their profit margins in the process. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the continued fraying of these connections erodes the role of the artist altogether, laying the groundwork for users to accept music made using generative-AI software.

And:

Spotify, for its part, has been open about its willingness to allow AI music on the platform. During a 2023 conference call, Daniel Ek noted that the boom in AI-generated content could be “great culturally” and allow Spotify to “grow engagement and revenue.”

My translation: “We’d make so much more money if it weren’t for those pesky musicians.”

Spotify plays David in its battle against Apple App Store rules, but when it comes to musicians, it’s Spotify who’s the Goliath.

Techdirt and Diegetic Games launch a Kickstarter for a new card game:

Have you ever been on social media and thought “I bet I could run this site better than the people in charge”? Well, now’s your chance to test your skills. We’ve created One Billion Users: a fast, fun card game where you’re in charge of your own social network. It's for 2-4 players and lasts about 30 minutes.

In One Billion Users, players compete to build the most successful social network. Gain users and attract influencers to build your site while playing cards to slow down your rivals and overcome obstacles. But be careful about which communities you attract — the toxicity they bring with them could hurt your platform!

This is my kind of game, where the goal is as much to get ahead as it is to screw with the other players. This can be especially fun with a close-knit group of friends.

While the game is new, the mechanics are anything but:

One Billion Users is inspired by the public domain game “Touring” which William Janson Roche released in 1906. Touring is a car racing card game, in which you try to go further while putting obstacles on other players. It is considered to be the first “take that!” style card game, which has been imitated and adapted many times since. The most famous such adaptation was 1954’s Mille Bornes, which was so popular that it briefly outsold Monopoly. Mille Bornes is almost an exact replica of Touring with just a few small changes.

We’ve taken the basic mechanics of Touring and adapted it to a favorite topic of ours: social media. Beyond retheming the game, we’ve added new mechanics including: attracting and stealing influencers, balancing user toxicity, and random events (like tech bubbles) that affect all of the players.

I love that a turn-of-the-(last)-century game is the inspiration for an extremely-21st-century game.

As of 1:30 PDT, the campaign had about ten hours to go and were just a few thousand dollars shy of their $50,000 goal. I backed on both the concept, and the strength of an endorsement of a friend. Let’s push them over the top!

Update: Immediately after posting this I checked the campaign again, and it hit its goal. I’m excited to play!

See also: The Verge review.

(Via @zkiraly.)

Gus Mueller from Flying Meat:

Acorn 8 has been released!

This is a major update of Acorn, and is currently on a time-limited sale for $19.99. It's still a one time purchase to use as long as you'd like, and as usual, the full release notes are available.

I’ve been using Acorn since—I think—2007 (my earliest receipt is for an Acorn 3 upgrade in 2012), and I’ve been a fan of Flying Meat (Gus & Kirstin Mueller) for even longer (I was an early VoodooPad user, which came out in 2003).

Acorn is by far my most-used graphics tool. Almost every image on JAG’s Workshop makes its way through Acorn before landing here, even if it’s just a resize. I also used it extensively for title cards and social media posts when I was producing the (on hiatus) Lettuce Wrap podcast.

While the AI Subject Selection, Live Text, and other features in Acorn 8 are sure to be the ones to grab headlines, the feature I’m most excited about is Data Merge:

Acorn 8 has the ability to read in a CSV file and it'll dynamically swap in the row values and replace text or bitmap graphics depending on what's in the data file. It's like mail merge, but for images. This is pretty awesome if you have a bunch of templated images you want to create.

As usual for Flying Meat, the documentation for the feature is clear and easy to follow. Good documentation is a sign a developer cares deeply about their customers.

One of my favorite existing features of Acorn is the Export (Web & Other) tool, where I can quickly compare output quality and sizes, trim image edges, and remove metadata. It’s a feature that seems straightforward—perhaps even boring—but greatly simplifies my workflow. It’s been further improved in Acorn 8, adding saved configurations and more export options (including the next generation JPEG XL format).

I love indie developers and spent most of my career supporting them (including Gus/Flying Meat!). Acorn 8.0 was an easy insta-upgrade.

Graham Fraser, writing about the BBC, on BBC:

The BBC has complained to Apple after the tech giant's new iPhone feature generated a false headline about a high-profile murder in the United States.

Apple Intelligence, launched in the UK earlier this week, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to summarize and group together notifications.

Apple Intelligence is new to the U.K, but those of us in the U.S. have been ridiculing it for a month now. As John McClane said, “Welcome to the party, pal!”

This week, the AI-powered summary falsely made it appear BBC News had published an article claiming Luigi Mangione, the man arrested following the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself. He has not.

Headlines are an editorial decision, and represent the voice of the publication. A poor summary can be embarrassing. A misleading one—as this was—can sully the publication.

"BBC News is the most trusted news media in the world," the BBC spokesperson added.

"It is essential to us that our audiences can trust any information or journalism published in our name and that includes notifications."

Apple can’t afford this bad press if Apple Intelligence is going to be taken seriously and drive hardware sales.

If Apple can’t address this quickly, they may have another egg freckles situation on their hands.^[1]

Dave Rahardja on Mastodon:

John Lennon’s 1974 music video of Mind Games was remastered to 4K, featuring Lennon meeting fans around Central Park and New York City. The original was shot on film, so a ton of details were recovered. I love how vivid this footage is. It really transports you to a bygone time.

I missed this video when it was released in August; my thanks to Dave for sharing it.

It captures a very ’70s vibe (color palette, clothing, hairstyles) I remember when I first visited New York, and which still permeated the city when I moved there in 1981. I can practically taste those Marino’s Real Italian Ices Lennon was checking out around minute 1:15.

I’m not sure this type of video—a massive star wandering around a city, meeting fans who were respectful even in their obvious excitement—could be made today. At least, not without a massive security apparatus.

An aside: I especially appreciated seeing Lennon goofing around in the Central Park Bandshell, a place where I also goofed around as a youth actor with the New York Parks’ Shakespeare Company—and where Lennon’s death six years later was mourned by over two hundred thousand people.

If, after reading my last entry, you remain unconvinced that we are already in dangerous territory, here’s Erin Reed’s Post-Election 2024 Anti-Trans Risk Assessment Map that shows the states where it is safe—or extremely dangerous—to be LGBTQ+.

Twenty-six states have anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Florida and Texas, unsurprisingly, are the two worst, earning a “Do Not Travel” rating.

Whether you are yourself trans, have trans friends or family, or are simply a decent human being, it’s impossible to ignore the existential threat the new administration poses. Not just because of the awful laws they will certainly look to enact in the future, or because of the protective laws they simply won’t enforce. It’s because of the permission it will give—and already has given via its 2016 incarnation—to states, municipalities, and individuals to do their worst. All politics is local, and the incoming administration doesn’t need to enact a single damn law to make life for the LGBTQ+ community even more dangerous than it already is^[1].

Sixteen states, incuding California, Hawaii, and Minnesota, recognize the threat and have enacted strong protections, including shield laws that ensure access to transgender healthcare. Many LGBTQ+ people are moving into those states to cloak themselves in a mantel of security. I’m grateful these states are willing to take a stand. I hope it’s sufficient.

Elizabeth Haste:

My partner and I first broached the possibility that we might need to flee the country last summer. After election day, we began that preparation in earnest.

There’s a lot we don’t know. The incoming administration has threatened to do a lot of terrible things to transgender people; withholding medication; legislative erasure; forced detransition; mass incarceration; extermination. Many of these things, I’d want to stay and fight through. Others would make daily life impossible or unbearable.

She and her partner went through several scenarios that might push them to fight, or force them to flee, and she’s shared a template to help others think through their decision points.

She also shared a long list of existing anti-trans legislation and rhetoric from politicians. It’s terrifying to realize we’re already deep into dangerous territory; it’s not theoretical, or, as Haste titles that section, “These Things Are Already Happening. You are not overreacting.”

I’ve been wondering recently when the people who survived the Holocaust—because they fled Germany and elsewhere—decided it was time to leave. How bad did it get before they packed up their belongings and left their homes, family, friends, and country behind?

Right now, five weeks after the election, and five weeks before the next administration takes control, it feels both too soon and the absolutely right time to start thinking about an exit plan if you or a loved one are vulnerable.

At some point it may be too late. We might only recognize that moment in retrospect.

(Via @inthehands@hachyderm.io.)

An all-too-brief origin story about one of my favorite drinks, sorrel, from culinary historian Ramin Ganeshram in Imbibe:

Our folklore tells us that the first sorrel maker was Anansi, the trickster spider, a character from the Akan storytelling tradition. Anansi traveled from Ghana to the Caribbean with enslaved people, and was adapted based on local traditions. Anansi, the story goes, steals a stalk of roselle hibiscus, flings it into a pot of boiling water with sugar and spices (including a native Caribbean addition, allspice), and tries to pass it off as wine. When villagers don’t believe him, Anansi cries, “It is so real!” What they hear is “It’s sorrel,” and so the drink and the name were born.

The truth of the name is a darker story. As violence stripped enslaved people of their cultural identities and languages, the drink called bissap in Senegal, zobo in Nigeria, and zobolo in Ghana became known as “sorrel,” a pidgin form of roselle.

Ganeshram also drops this nugget:

In the last 12 years, bartenders have come to know an elegant form of this heritage Caribbean drink in Sorel, the liqueur made by Jackie Summers (whose mother's parents emigrated from Barbados) and his company, Jack From Brooklyn. Made with roselle flowers from North Africa, Sorel is the most awarded liqueur in American history, with more than 200 accolades in the gold or better category. It's a smooth, complex brew that subtly and consistently marries the flavors of traditional sorrel without the home-brewed inconsistencies that can make it too sweet or sour, or too heavy on certain spices.

I’ve enjoyed Sorel for years and had no idea it was so well-appreciated by others.