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.

Poor Aunt Chippy.

When will she learn? If it’s weird, it’s a prank.

Anna Betts, writing for The Guardian:

The satirical news outlet the Onion has purchased Infowars, the rightwing media platform run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, at a court-ordered auction.

The news was confirmed on Thursday morning in a video by Jones himself, as well as the head of the Onion's parent company.

“[T]he head of the Onion’s parent company” is one “Bryce P. Tetraeder”, Global Tetrahedron CEO, who explained his reasons for the purchase on The Onion:

All told, the decision to acquire InfoWars was an easy one for the Global Tetrahedron executive board.

Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic “panic” and growing steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses. With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.

Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society—values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.

This both is, and isn’t, “an Onion story.”

The (supposedly real) CEO of The Onion, Ben Collins, wrote on Bluesky^[1]:

Hi everyone.

The Onion, with the help of the Sandy Hook families, has purchased InfoWars.

We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website.

We have retained the services of some Onion and Clickhole Hall of Famers to pull this off.

I can't wait to show you what we have cooked up.

InfoWars was already “very stupid” so they only need to make it “very funny.” I have faith they can do that.

(Collins also included a link to a New York Times story as—I suppose—confirmation this wasn’t “an Onion story.” He should have chosen a more reputable site.)

Collins also wrote:

You better fucking subscribe to The Onion. This is the kind of thing we will do with your money.

It allowed us to buy InfoWars. Now help us staff it.

membership.theonion.com

Done.

Jesse Sheidlower—an old acquaintance from our days on echonyc—with a welcome announcement a couple of weeks ago on Mastodon:

News: the 4th edition of The F-Word is coming out in two weeks from Oxford UP! Everything you could want to know about the word fuck.

This is a major revision: 500 pages with 150 new entries, 150 antedatings, & 2,500 new quotations.[…]

I already own the second edition, purchased in 2001, and it was one of the most fun reads I’ve ever had. I laughed my fucking ass off thumbing through it, all the while learning about my most-used expletive. I pre-ordered the fourth edition immediately, and it arrived today. Alas, it’s 25-fucking-hundred miles away from me, so I’ve had fuck-all chance to read it. Fuck.

Here’s Sheidlower’s description of the book:

The F-Word is a historical dictionary devoted to the word fuck, including all parts of speech, compounds, phrases, and certain euphemisms. A “historical dictionary” means that, like the Oxford English Dictionary, it illustrates every sense of every entry with quotations, from the earliest that can be found to a (relatively) recent example, showing exactly how the word has been used throughout history.

And:

This new, fourth edition (2024) is not just a minor update but a comprehensive revision. The fourth edition includes over 2,500 new quotations; over 150 new entries; and over 150 antedatings—earlier examples of existing entries, improving our understanding of the word’s development. Major new discoveries push back the known history of fuck by almost 200 years.

Sheidlower was an editor for the OED, so he understands comprehensive dictionaries, including the importance of antedating entries:

Many antedatings represent significant improvements in our knowledge of the word's history. The expression for fuck's sake, previously first recorded in 1943, is now known from 1922; fucked 'crazy' has been improved from 1971 to 1951, fuckload from 1984 to 1970, headfuck 'something that causes confusion' from 1993 to 1976, ratfuck 'a frenetic social event' from 1979 to 1969. In particular, research into early erotica has resulted in a number of major antedatings. The noun ass-fuck, previously first found in 1940, is now recorded in 1874; dogfuck has been improved from 1980 to 1867, face-fuck from 1972 to 1899, fuckstick 'the penis' from 1973 to 1904, mouth fuck from 1954 to 1868, and tongue fuck from 1974 to 1902.

It’ll be fucking great. I hope it sells a fuckton.

Nitish Pahwa, in a Slate piece densely packed with receipts:

Now that Trump is headed back to the White House, with X’s Elon Musk in tow, there is not even a pretense of hope on that platform for anyone who voted against Trump. It’s better late than never, but it’s well and truly time to cut X loose.

Maybe it seemed, once, that a spirited internal resistance could effectively limit Musk's damage and preserve some of the prior spirit of the microblogging platform that writers, public agencies, and other creative types had come to depend upon. I honestly cannot tell you what exactly was my justification for maintaining a Twitter/X presence, even as I explored other social media outfits and publicly acknowledged that Musk's regime was repelling masses of tweeters, boosting easily debunkable disinformation, shedding all of X's remaining utility for journalists, bullying transgender users, spreading straight-up white-supremacist rhetoric, and influencing CEOs in every other field to become as domineering and unapologetic as Musk is, whatever the backlash.

I refuse to fuel Musk’s algorithms with my content and attention. I started winding down my participation in October 2022 (after first trying to do so in 2018). I had several “professional obligations” on it at the time that made it impossible for me to fully disengage, but once those obligations no longer existed, I stopped posting on X/Twitter, and only read it when someone links to something over there.

(I then bleach my eyeballs, because yeeech.)

The only people still in the Nazi bar either are Nazis, like Nazis, or enjoy debating Nazis; or who—despite all the Nazi insignia, salutes, and propaganda surrounding them—still don’t believe they’re in a Nazi bar. Perhaps they’re busy nursing their carefully curated follow list in a back corner, and haven’t realized how many of their not-Nazi friends already left or are grabbing their coats. Or their friends are waiting on them to rise and head for the door so they can follow.

Or, perhaps, they don’t know better bars exist.

Today, the three meaningful alternatives to X/Twitter are Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon. I chose Mastodon, because it’s because it’s not owned by any (billionaire) individual, and it’s where most of my (generally geeky) people are. It’s big advantage is it’s decentralized: there are multiple servers talking to each other rather than one single, central server. A benefit of this is you can join a server based on topic or affinity (e.g. technology, journalism, or activism). The biggest downside? It’s decentralized, which requires you to choose a server (in the way you choose an email provider) with no easy way of comparing them, and the getting started process can be arduous for many non-techie folks.

More and more people are moving from X/Twitter, some 700,000 in a week to Bluesky alone, according to Jay Peters at The Verge:

Bluesky gained more than 700,000 new users in the last week and now has more than 14.5 million users total, Bluesky COO Rose Wang confirmed to The Verge. The “majority” of the new users on the decentralized social network are from the US, Wang says. The app is currently the number two free social networking app in the US App Store, only trailing Meta’s Threads.

That’s the second large influx recently:

The independent platform has seen a lot of growth in recent weeks — on October 24th, Bluesky announced it had 13 million users. After X’s recent announcement that it would let blocked users still see posts from the person that blocked them, for example, Bluesky said it added 500,000 new users in one day.

Many friends are happy on BlueSky. Some prefer Meta/Facebook’s Threads (though I’m not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg any more than I am of Elon Musk). I have accounts on both, mainly as a hedge, in case someone I really care about is active on one of them.

The Verge offers more specific advice on how to leave X/Twitter, including taking your account private, downloading your content, and eventually deactivating your account completely.

Regardless of which new social network you choose, it’s important to start the process now. The best time to leave a Nazi bar is the day it becomes one. The next best time is today.

Speaking of Wallace and Gromit, they have a new adventure coming to Netflix (and the BBC in the UK). It’s the first new Wallace and Gromit film since 2008’s “A Matter of Loaf and Death”—and since the 2017 death of Peter Sallis, who brilliantly voiced Wallace in the previous shorts and movies.

“Vengeance Most Fowl” brings back one of my favorite characters, Feathers McGraw, apparently out for revenge after the events of “The Wrong Trousers”….

Watching “A Grand Day Out” today feels as joyful as it did when I first saw it decades ago. Guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

A Grand Day Out | Wallace & Gromit

Wallace and Gromit enjoy a day out with a difference when a quest to find cheese prompts a visit to the moon.

Wallace & Gromit

(Surprisingly, it’s available on the Internet Archive (and also on Amazon Prime.))

I absolutely adore Wallace and Gromit: The characters, the voices, the stories, and of course, the animation. I especially love the expressiveness of both of their faces.

All three short films (the other two being “The Wrong Trousers” and “A Close Shave”) and the feature length movies (“Curse of the Were-Rabbit”, “A Matter of Loaf and Death”) are wonderful and endearing masterpieces of animation and storytelling. Hard to believe it’s been 35 years since Nick Park first introduced us to these brilliant blobs of plasticine.

I wish I had some Wensleydale to celebrate.

(H/T The Spaceshipper.)

AP, with a heart-of-the-matter headline:

Yankees blow 5-run lead with epic defensive meltdown as Dodgers rally to clinch World Series

Mike Fitzpatrick, writing the story for AP:

Just when it appeared Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees were right back in this World Series, they all but gave away the trophy.

An epic meltdown of defensive miscues, beginning with Judge's embarrassing error in center field, helped the Los Angeles Dodgers rally in a five-run fifth inning that tied the score at 5.

As much as I detest watching the Dodgers win, I very much enjoy seeing the Yankees lose, especially in their own house, in front of their awful fans^[1], and in come-from-behind fashion.

Pinstripe Alley has a good recap of that disastrous fifth inning, calling it

one of the worst innings in the Yankees’ long, storied history.

Thomas Carannante writing for FanSided:

Care to know how many teams facing World Series elimination blew a five-run lead and lost? Zero! Care to know how many times in World Series history a team blew a five-run lead and lost? Six ... out of 233. It was an historic choke job that takes this franchise's modern day failures to new heights.

I didn’t watch the game, but I’ll definitely do so now, so I can delight in this Yankees disaster.

Yes, I’m a petty, petty man.

Clever, unexpected, and immediately understandable: The M4 is powerful enough to make seemingly impossible tasks easy, even elegant.

Simply perfect.

Apple, via Newsroom:

Apple today introduced the new iPad mini, supercharged by the A17 Pro chip and Apple Intelligence, the easy-to-use personal intelligence system that understands personal context to deliver intelligence that is helpful and relevant while protecting user privacy. With a beloved ultraportable design, the new iPad mini is available in four gorgeous finishes, including a new blue and purple, and features the brilliant 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display. A17 Pro delivers a huge performance boost for even the most demanding tasks, with a faster CPU and GPU, a 2x faster Neural Engine than the previous-generation iPad mini, and support for Apple Intelligence.

The new iPad mini features all-day battery life and brand-new experiences with iPadOS 18. Starting at just $499 with 128GB — double the storage of the previous generation — the new iPad mini delivers incredible value and the full iPad experience in an ultraportable design. Customers can pre-order the new iPad mini today, with availability beginning Wednesday, October 23.

From the iPad mini comparison chart, the two significant upgrades are the A17 Pro (vs. an A15 Bionic) and 128GB storage minimum. The A17 Pro is the same chip used in last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max; technically a generation old, but enough for Apple Intelligence.

(I can’t help but wonder whether the storage bump will increase useable space, or if the OS and Apple Intelligence will take up most of it.)

There’s also improved WiFi (6E vs. 6, though I’m unclear of the real world difference in WiFi speeds), and new colors: blue (replacing pink) and a different (seemingly lighter) shade of purple.

It also adds support for Apple Pencil Pro. If you aren’t aware of the differences between this, the Apple Pencil (2nd generation), and the Apple Pencil (USB‑C), don’t worry, you’re not alone. In brief, Pencil Pro adds barrel roll, haptic feedback, Find My support, and hover.

This otherwise minor (but absolutely necessary) speed bump may explain why it garnered nothing more than a press release.

What strikes me as odd is that it was announced ahead of an expected end-of-October Apple event, and without a corresponding iPad-no-modifiers.

The obvious reason is that Apple wants to focus on new Mac hardware and not confuse things by having iPads thrown into the mix.

But does this then suggest there might not be any iPad announcements in that event? Or, as some are theorizing, no event at all? Both would surprise me.

The iPad Air (11” and 13”) sports an M2, making it Apple Intelligence-ready while positioning it below the M4 iPad Pro. Plus the Air was just updated in May of this year; no reason to update it again so soon.

That’s not true of the current (10th-generation) no-modifiers-iPad. It’s $349, and it’s likely Apple’s best selling iPad by far, but it can’t handle Apple Intelligence: Its A14 Bionic chip is a generation older than the one in the outgoing 6th generation iPad mini. I can’t imagine Apple would let its most popular iPad lag behind without support for Apple Intelligence, so why not update it now, in a joint press release with the iPad mini?

Three possibilities:

1. It’s coming in a separate press release after all.
2. It’s coming in an October event after all.
3. It’s not coming at all.

A second press release a day or a week later for the same product line seems odd, and perhaps without precedent. Announcing both iPad and iPad mini together would make sense: they don’t really cannibalize each other, and can be messaged as “Our New iPad Lineup Is Ready for Apple Intelligence,” a statement that is glaringly untrue today.

Would Apple announce an 11th generation iPad-with-no-modifiers at an otherwise-Mac-focused event? Sure, as the appetizer to the main course, but then, why not include the iPad mini?

The final possibility is rather intriguing: What if there’s no update to the iPad-with-no-modifiers, because that iPad is going away? That leaves us with a classic Good/Better/Best scenario: iPad Mini (A17 Pro, Good), iPad Air (M2, Better), iPad Pro (M4, Best).

But would Apple drop its likely best-selling iPad to execute this strategy? I’m having a tough time believing that.

My guess: A significantly upgraded iPad is coming. M4-based is a strong possibility, but my money (today) is on an A18 or A18 Pro (likely)^[1], the same chips in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. The performance delta between it and the iPad mini would explain the latter’s press release treatment: No need call attention to the new iPad mini using last year’s chip.

I’ll also guess it kicks off a late-October event, before Tim and team focus on M4 Macs.

Yale Engineering, on the publication of a “landmark study in hair animation”:

We have grown accustomed to seeing many aspects of our everyday world depicted using computer graphics, but some phenomena remain difficult for even the most experienced animators. Hair, specifically the highly coiled hair that is most common to Black characters, remains a notoriously difficult digital challenge.

Part of this problem is the lack of algorithms. Scores of technical papers have been written over the last few decades proposing algorithms for hair, but they have focused on the features most closely associated with white characters: straight or wavy hair. The number of papers written for highly coiled hair (a.k.a. Black hair) is virtually zero.

Theodore Kim, the Yale Professor who led this study, announcing the paper on Mastodon:

There has NEVER been [a] paper at #SIGGRAPH on Black, Afro-textured hair in its entire 50 year history. UNTIL NOW.

I’m shocked but not surprised to learn this is the first such paper presented at the premiere computer graphics conference.

The challenge with modeling “highly coiled hair” is that it doesn’t behave like straight hair, just with more coiling. Kim and his team identified

[…] three geometric phenomena unique to highly coiled hair: phase locking, switchbacks, and period skipping.

These phenomena do NOT appear in straight hair, and thus have been ignored at #SIGGRAPH, and CGI in general, for half a century.

These will be familiar to anyone with “Black hair” (or who has Black friends): strands that coil together; kinked strands that stick out; and flyaways and “bushiness”.

I read the abstract (which is very approachable—the videos and images help) and the paper, though I won’t pretend to fully understand the math and science presented. I grokked enough to be fascinated that my hairstyle, with all its kinks, twists, and coils could be accurately represented by a series of (complex) mathematical formulae.

Lends credence to the idea we’re living in a computer simulation and we’re figuring out how it works.

Dan Goodin, writing for Ars Technica last week:

Archive.org, one of the only entities to attempt to preserve the entire history of the World Wide Web and much of the broader Internet, was recently compromised in a hack that revealed data on roughly 31 million users.

Wes Davis, writing for The Verge:

Jason Scott, an archivist and software curator at the Internet Archive, said the site was experiencing a DDoS attack, posting on Mastodon that “according to their twitter, they’re doing it just to do it. Just because they can. No statement, no idea, no demands.”

The site is still down as of this writing. (Update/clarification below.)

Brewster Kahle, founder and “Digital Librarian” of Internet Archive, has been providing updates via his X/Twitter account, noting that the “data has not been corrupted” and “is safe,” which surely comes as a huge relief to both Kahle and the millions of fans and users of the Internet Archive.

The Wayback Machine part of the site—the part most of us use—has now “resumed in a provisional, read-only manner,” though it may get “suspended again” for ”further maintenance,” said Kahle in a Sunday night post.

The data breach—which consisted of at least a user accounts database—apparently happened at the end of September; it doesn’t appear to be directly related to the denial of service attack.

Lawrence Abrams from Bleeping Computer says of the leak:

The database contains authentication information for registered members, including their email addresses, screen names, password change timestamps, Bcrypt-hashed passwords, and other internal data.

This leak will impact Internet Archive users, but hopefully will have minimal impact on the service itself. Assuming that’s all that was leaked.

The hacker who apparently infiltrated the system left a taunt:

Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!

(HIBP is Have I Been Pwned, a website that collects and notifies users of data breaches like this.)

Last week in “Saving the Internet Archive” I wrote:

We also need to address the “single point of failure” nature of the Internet Archive. These recent lawsuits—or future ones—could very well kill the nonprofit, and with it, petabytes of valuable archives.

The lawsuits were the stated context, but implicit in it was that this valuable trove of data exists in just one place—hopefully not literally, but certainly figuratively. Any type of disaster—financial, natural, or, like here, man-made—could wipe it out, a calamitous outcome.

Perhaps this crisis brings attention to the important work the Internet Archive is doing, and the limited resources it has to do it. As important an institution as many of us think it, it is, as I noted in my piece, supported by donations amounting to a mere $30 million a year, with expenses of $26 million. As I wrote:

I’d be surprised if that’s sufficient to continue archiving the ever-growing digital world—and to defend itself from lawsuits.

Now I must add, ‘… and against hackers’.

Speaking of DWB, here’s “The World's First 2024 DWB,” a car that’s “fully equipped to survive being racially profiled.”

I won’t spoil it, but it’s worth exploring the site. It’s a campaign from Courageous Conversations Global Foundation:

The mission of the Courageous Conversation® Global Foundation is to elevate racial consciousness through interracial healing. We believe that the key to driving systemic change in communities all over the world is uniting people of all races and helping them engage in authentic, sustained and compelling interracial dialogue. The conversations we foster create safe spaces for learning, solidarity and transformation to occur. If we are to eradicate racism, this is the hard work that must be done.

Other campaigns include America Erased (about eliminating Black history), What If They Were Black? (a reimagining of the January 6th insurrectionists), and Not a Gun (on systemic police bias).

Wenfei Xu, David Levinson, Michael J Smart, and Nebiyou Yonas Tilahun summarizing their paper, “The racial composition of road users, traffic citations, and police stops” in The Conversation (a new-to-me “fact-based” nonprofit news organization):

Our research, published in June 2024, used data on the racial composition of drivers on every street in Chicago. We then compared who is driving on roads with who is being ticketed by the city’s speed cameras and who is being stopped by the Chicago police.

Our findings show that when speed cameras are doing the ticketing, the proportion of tickets issued to Black and white drivers aligns closely with their respective share of roadway users. With human enforcement, in contrast, police officers stop Black drivers at a rate that far outstrips their presence on the road.

For instance, on roads where half of drivers are Black, Black drivers receive approximately 54% of automated camera citations. However, they make up about 70% of police stops.

On roadways where half of the drivers are white, white drivers account for around half of automated citations – and less than 20% of police stops.

“Grimm”, snarking on Mastodon:

COP UNIONS RIGHT NOW: This is definitely an issue. We need to train AI to be racist.

Brutal, but fair.

The article goes well beyond the paper, with examples of the consequences of Driving while Black (DWB) and ways to improve policing and enact police reform.

There’s no denying DWB is real; I’ve experienced it myself multiple times. Removing human bias from policing and similar decisions can be beneficial, but I’m not a fan of increasing the “surveillance state,” especially because—as we’ve seen with almost every AI or automated system—our human bias is often baked into the system.

For example, they note in their paper that:

the location of the cameras themselves may not be [race-independent]

because

cameras are not placed in a race-neutral way

and acknowledges that

police stops do not occur on random streets but are selective of specific streets.

This all suggests that cameras may be deployed—and policing may occur—more in Black and Latino neighborhoods than in white ones.

The cameras may be race-neutral, but the people placing them are not.

(Via Paul Cantrell.)

Vroom, a short film by David Ma:

Vroom is the movie I always made in my head when I played with RC cars growing up.

Shot on iPhone 16 Pro, a phone I have in my pocket. I half-expected to see the Apple logo on the end card.

Check out Ma’s other work; he is an inventive and creative director and filmmaker.

(Via Rob Cheng.)

Greg Evans for Deadline:

John Amos, the actor whose characters in Good Times, Roots and The Mary Tyler Moore Show lent the 1970s a solid share of its too-few portrayals of strong Black male role models, died August 21 in Los Angeles of natural causes. He was 84.

His son, Kelly Christopher Amos said in a statement:

He was a man with the kindest heart and a heart of gold… and he was loved the world over. Many fans consider him their TV father.

Good Times was the first TV show I remember where there was an entire family that looked like me. Amos as James was my first TV dad. His—spoiler for a 48-year-old show—off-screen death in the fourth season was heartbreaking.

His good-natured, good guy vibe was—spoiler for a 34-year-old movie—a major reason the unexpected twist in Die Hard 2 landed so well.

And of course, I loved him in The West Wing as Admiral Fitzwallace, and his—spoiler for a 20-year-old episode—death in Season 5 gutted me.

He was also brilliantly funny in Coming to America, one of the best parts of the movie, and it was a real treat to see him guest in Psych as Uncle Burton.

I’ll be queuing up a few episodes of television in his honor.

See also: L.A. Times.

Wes Davis, writing for The Verge:

You know how Marvel and DC have held joint ownership over trademarks for “Super Hero” for decades? That time is apparently mostly over, as the US Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the companies’ claim to several of their trademarks, reports Reuters.

I had no idea that “super hero” was a trademarked term. I’d guess most of the public didn’t either, despite being registered back in 1967. I assumed it was just a generic term. Perhaps that’s just five decades of my hearing the term “super hero” though.

The cancellation comes as the result of a challenge from Superbabies Limited, a small company that produces a series of Superbabies comics about, well, superhero babies. Superbabies creator S.J. Richold decided to challenge the two comic giants’ claim to the trademarks after DC “attempted to block Richold’s efforts to promote The Super Babies,” wrote the law firm that represented Richold in a release.

Congratulations to Richold and Superbabies Limited for bringing—and winning—this challenge. It seems ridiculous on its face that such a seemingly generic term could be trademarked, and has remained so for this long.

Curiously, Super Heroes and Super-Villain remain trademarked by DC and Marvel, though. I hope those are invalidated soon, too.

One of the lawyers involved in the Superbabies trademark challenge, Adam Adler, actually wrote up a two-part series of articles for Escapist Magazine lightly explaining how the companies came to jointly own the trademarks and what they’ve done to guard that ownership over the years.

Both are worth reading.

Marissa J. Lang, with a beautiful story for The Washington Post:

The table was set. The pastries arranged. A white tablecloth dangled placidly in the early morning mist, surrounded by 12 golden-hued high-backed chairs.

Five decades ago, a dozen friends gathered here, on the National Mall, for breakfast. They wore morning coats and floor-length dresses, dined on oysters, drank champagne and danced together as a string quartet played in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.

The extravagant scene on July 19, 1974, drew in a Washington Post photographer, who captured the moment in an image that would ricochet around the country in newspaper reprints.

While I’d seen this photo in passing, I never gave it much thought. It was not a story I expected to move me, but by the end I was wiping away some dust from my eye.

(Via Steve Herman by way of Michael B. Johnson.)

The official YouTube channel of The West Wing polled their audience for the top episode for each of the seven seasons and this video compiles the results. It’s hard to quibble with the selections. I was emotional from the jump.

When I linked to the Jen Psaki interview with Martin Sheen and Mary McCormack, I neglected to count the number of years since The West Wing debuted. Twenty five years seems impossibly long ago, yet the show holds up remarkably well, even in the face of a political climate that has shifted, seemingly inexorably, rightward. I can’t help but wonder what a modern version would look like.

Speaking of cocktail versatility and ratios, this piece from Mark J. on The Right Spirit is a handy introduction to a core understanding of cocktails:

Really there are only a handful of cocktails. It is in the details that the magic is made.

Just as the Negroni becomes a Boulevardier when you sub the gin for bourbon, or using Scotch instead of rye transforms a Manhattan into a Rob Roy, most cocktails are essentially the same ratios as another, but with a key ingredient substitution (or two). Knowing the ratios of classic cocktails opens up a world of experimentation.

The ratios listed here are not themselves the magic. They are common, which only happens for a reason: They tend to work well. But nuanced variations also work. A change of ingredient—something with a stronger or subtler flavor profile than average, for example—might necessitate a change of ratio to achieve balance. Adding a fourth or fifth ingredient into or on top of the ratio will create further nuance. Or a mess! But that’s part of the learning curve and the fun. To that end, these templates make a reliable starting point from which to make the magic happen.

After laying out the basics, Mark J. performs a few experiments, resulting in a handful of drinks I’ll definitely be trying.

Mark J. also highlights a few folks he’s learned from, including one of my faves, Anders Erickson, who has a video demonstrating how to go from “Manhattan to Margarita in 6 recipes,” highlighting the similarities of each of the cocktails and the power of substitutions.

I’m one hundred percent aligned with Mark J.’s idea that making cocktails is like playing with magic. I am, like him

a cocktail enthusiast whose ambition is to make great cocktails for friends and family.

Cheers to that.

(Via Tammy Tan.)

Imbibe magazine, on negroniweek.com:

In 2013 Imbibe Magazine launched Negroni Week as a celebration of one of the world’s great cocktails and an effort to raise money for charitable causes around the world.

Since then, Negroni Week has grown from about 120 participating venues to thousands of venues around the world, and to date, the initiative has raised over $5 million for charitable organizations.

The charitable organization this year is Slow Food:

Slow Food is a global movement acting together to ensure good, clean and fair food for all.

We’re halfway through the week, but better late than never.

There are about 60 venues participating in San Francisco; you can search your area.

I’ve been celebrating Negroni Week since at least 2015, and while I don’t need an excuse to tip a Negroni—it’s my favorite “daily drinker” cocktail—I welcome the opportunity.

While I definitely enjoy a classic Negroni (a 1:1:1 ratio of gin, sweet vermouth, and a bitter apertivo, historically Campari—my current standard being Sipsmith London Dry Gin, Cocci Vermouth di Torino, and St. George Bruto Americano or recent fave Bordiga “Red Bitter”) my favorite “Negroni” is in fact a variant, the Boulevardier, which swaps out gin for Bourbon.

What I love about the Negroni is its versatility. There are an infinite number of gins, bitter aperitivos, and vermouths to explore, each imparting its own distinct flavor on the classic, plus adjustments in ratios as taste dictates.

Then consider the spirit swaps. Prosecco for gin: the suddenly everywhere Sbagliato. Rum instead: The Kingston Negroni. Dry vermouth instead of sweet: The Cardinale. Sub in Rye and dry vermouth: The Old Pal. And of course, the aforementioned Boulevardier’s Bourbon. The Negroni Week site has several recipes that are with trying.

A few years back I joined a Negroni club (through Bitters and Bottles in South San Francisco) so I’d have an excuse to explore a range of Negroni-inspired cocktails.

Any (reasonably priced) spirit that enters my home bar will eventually get the Negroni treatment as part of its evaluation. It’s an experimenter’s delight.

Adam B. Vary and Carmel Dagan for Variety:

James Earl Jones, the prolific film, TV and theater actor whose resonant, unmistakable baritone was most widely known as the voice of "Star Wars" villain Darth Vader, died Monday morning at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y., his rep confirmed to Variety. He was 93.

Jones was a mainstay of my generation’s entertainment landscape. Star Wars, Coming to America, Field of Dreams, The Lion King… He brought gravitas and warmth to every role he played, even if it was “just” with his voice.

But oh, that voice! Powerful, majestic, authoritative, and unmistakable. I’ve been trying to imitate it since I was a kid. From “Commander, tear this ship apart until you’ve found those plans!” to “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball” to “This is CNN.”

(It wouldn’t surprise me if “This is CNN” is among the most recognizable “spoken audio logo” in history, the closest competition likely being “You’ve Got Mail!” and “This is Audible.”)

Jones always struck me as a regular guy who just happened to be a world famous actor. He never seemed to take himself too seriously, including his willingness to do random guest appearances and silly cameos on sitcoms. (Frasier, Big Bang Theory, and Will & Grace come to mind.) He always seemed like an actor who wanted to work simply because he enjoyed the work. Nothing ever seemed beneath him, and he elevated everything he did.

I’m happy that he was so prolific; it gives us dozens of performances for us to remember him.

A personal anecdote: Sometime around 1988 or ’89, shortly after I started acting, my teacher/director commented after one of my monologues that I reminded him of James Earl Jones in August Wilson’s Fences. I was 19 or so, and the reference slid right past me, but it always stuck in my head. It was many years before I realized what a compliment that was.

Fifteen years ago, the producers of The Oprah Show staged a massive flash mob in Chicago for a stunned Oprah Winfrey, in celebration of her 24th season. Tens of thousands of people gathered to perform it.

The expressions of confusion, realization, and joy that parade across Oprah’s face as it slowly dawns on her what’s happening are absolutely priceless.

I get emotional watching a group of people come together to perform a synchronized dance, especially when it starts small and just… grows. From Soul Train, to party line dances like the Electric Slide or Cupid Shuffle, to music videos like Thriller, synchronized, choreographed dance numbers are a physical manifestation of humanity’s need for communal togetherness.

In musical theater, when your emotions are too strong to speak, you sing; when they’re too strong to sing, you dance. A flash mob breathes life into this, imbuing emotion into a few fleeting minutes that took hours or days to prepare for. A flash mob created to elicit joy from one person may be the ultimate expression of love, and this crowd loved Oprah.

I also recommend you watch the behind-the-scenes and making-of videos. It seems Oprah isn’t a big fan of surprises, so this was a bit of a calculated risk by her team. Watching Oprah bop around in excitement, I’d say it worked out OK.

Jen Psaki, introducing her interview with Martin Sheen and Mary McCormack on Inside with Jen Psaki:

The story goes like this: The historically successful but aging Democratic president prepares to step aside from public life, and throws his support behind a young, impressive, diverse, and inspiring successor to carry his mantle forward. And no, I’m not talking about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Psaki is talking about Season 7 of The West Wing, which I’m currently halfway through on my third? fourth? rewatch. The clip Psaki played, and Sheen’s reaction to it, made me emotional too.

Sheen and McCormack were promoting McCormack’s new book, co-authored with Melissa Fitzgerald, “What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service.” With a foreword by Aaron Sorkin, and an introduction by Allison Janney, it promises to

reunite the West Wing cast and crew in a lively and colorful “backstage pass” to the timeless series

while offering

a deeper analysis of the show’s legacy through American culture, service, government, and civic life underscores how the series envisaged an American politics of decency and honor

which made the book  an insta-buy.

The West Wing remains one of my favorite television shows. It asked us to believe that politics could be hopeful, that government could be helpful, and that good people can put partisanship aside for the sake of the country. It made idealists out of many of us, and spurred many to public service.

Sheen and McCormack are clearly fans of the Biden/Harris administration, but especially, it seems, of Harris herself. I sense they see her as part of a “West Wing Generation” of politicians inspired by the show, and who embody a “public servant” selflessness in their approach to politics.

A final note: Sheen references an idea by co-star Richard Schiff for a West Wing reboot which would focus on local politics, with members of the original cast acting as mentors and boosters to up-and-comers. I would absolutely watch that show, especially if it gave us insight into the staff’s post-West Wing lives.

Someone needs to greenlight this one immediately.

Rachel Tompa, writing for Stanford Medicine News Center:

If it’s ever felt like everything in your body is breaking down at once, that might not be your imagination. A new Stanford Medicine study shows that many of our molecules and microorganisms dramatically rise or fall in number during our 40s and 60s.

Researchers assessed many thousands of different molecules in people from age 25 to 75, as well as their microbiomes — the bacteria, viruses and fungi that live inside us and on our skin — and found that the abundance of most molecules and microbes do not shift in a gradual, chronological fashion. Rather, we undergo two periods of rapid change during our life span, averaging around age 44 and age 60.…

“We’re not just changing gradually over time; there are some really dramatic changes,” said Michael Snyder, PhD, professor of genetics and the study’s senior author. “It turns out the mid-40s is a time of dramatic change, as is the early 60s.

It brings to mind Hemingway’s quote about bankruptcy happening “gradually, then suddenly.” As several friends in their mid- to late-40s have noted, “This explains why everything hurts for me!”