Giovanni Russonello for the New York Times on Roberta Flack’s resplendent voice:

Critics often struggled to describe the understated strength of her voice, and the breadth of her stylistic range. In its poise, its interiority and conviction, its lack of sentimentality or overstatement, her singing seemed to press the reset button on any standard expectations of a pop star. She placed equal priority on passion and clear communication—like an instructor speaking to an inquisitive student, or a lover pledging devotion.

“I’ve been told I sound like Nina Simone, Nancy Wilson, Odetta, Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, even Mahalia Jackson,” Ms. Flack told The New York Times in 1970. “If everybody said I sounded like one person, I’d worry. But when they say I sound like them all, I know I’ve got my own style.”

Where Is the Love is a gorgeous jewel of a song, while Killing Me Softly With His Song remains an indelible part of my ’70s soundtrack. (Though I now can’t hear the opening phrasing without the Fugees’ sitar interlude^[1] popping in. Their cover is a testimonial to the song’s staying power.)

I wasn’t aware Flack was also a gifted and classically trained pianist:

Sitting on her mother Irene’s lap while Irene played piano and organ at their Methodist church, Flack began to tinker herself, then to properly play, demonstrating a prodigy-grade prowess as a young child that those around her clambered to support.

A Sunday-school teacher paid for Flack to take lessons. Flack’s father, Laron, brought home a ramshackle upright piano from a junkyard, which the family restored and painted green. By age 9, Flack was playing Chopin nocturnes, crying at the keyboard because the music moved her so powerfully. At 13, she accompanied her church’s choir on Handel’s “Messiah.” […]

At the time, America didn’t necessarily expect a Black child to master Verdi or Bach, and wasn’t always open to having its expectations upended. Flack would often recall skillfully performing a Scarlatti sonata in a statewide competition as a teenager, only to come in second in the segregated “Negro division”; Scarlatti, she gathered, wasn’t what the judges wanted from someone like her.

(From Jon Mooallem’s piece in The Wall Street Journal (Apple News+), which opens with a stunningly emotive lede.)

The New York Times piece has more on that competition:

At 13, Ms. Flack won second place in a statewide competition for Black students after performing a Scarlatti sonata; she was convinced that she had deserved the main prize and that the judges were thrown off by the sight of a Black girl playing classical music with such command. Just two years later, she entered Howard University on a full scholarship. She became the first undergraduate vocal student to give a public recital in classical vocal literature, and she conducted a student production of “Aida” that drew a standing ovation from Howard’s music faculty.

But a dean warned that the opportunities in classical orchestras would be scarce for a Black woman, advising Ms. Flack to pursue a teaching career. Upon graduating, she started working toward a master’s degree in music education.

A mixture of reactions here: delighted we were blessed with her voice; disappointed that we missed out on her classical piano virtuosity; disquieted the dean was almost certainly right in their assessment then; and disheartened that assessment may remain valid today.

Flack died of cardiac arrest, and was diagnosed with ALS in 2022. My usual donations to American Heart Association and ALS Association will be supplemented today in her honor.

Apple Newsroom:

Apple will spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years

Apple today announced its largest-ever spend commitment, with plans to spend and invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. This new pledge builds on Apple’s long history of investing in American innovation and advanced high-skilled manufacturing, and will support a wide range of initiatives that focus on artificial intelligence, silicon engineering, and skills development for students and workers across the country.

My immediate thought upon seeing Apple’s headline: How much of this is actually new, rather than a repackaging of existing plans? 

Dan Gallagher for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

Apple’s $500 Billion U.S. Investment Is Mostly Already in the Books

Unclear, though, is how much of the planned spending is actually new. Apple has spent about $1.1 trillion over the past four fiscal years on total operating expenses and capital expenditures—and Wall Street expects nearly $1.3 trillion in total spending over the next four years, according to consensus estimates by Visible Alpha. While Apple doesn’t break out its expenses per geography, about 43% of its revenue comes from the Americas region, which it defines as North and South America. Assuming the U.S. constitutes the large bulk of that number, and if spending is about in line with revenue, then a rough figure of 40% of projected global spending through the 2028 fiscal year equates to about $505 billion.

In short, Apple’s announced figure is in line with what one might expect the company to be spending anyway, given its financials. 

I don’t know that Apple announced this only for the benefit of Trump, but Trump, of course, claimed credit:

There is also domestic politics to consider—no small matter for a U.S. consumer-electronics company that still builds the bulk of its products overseas. Indeed the announcement seems to have already paid off: “Thank you Tim Cook and Apple!!!” President Trump exclaimed on his Truth Social platform Monday morning. 

The full post reads (in all caps, naturally, complete with a typo and three exclamation marks):

APPLE HAS JUST ANNOUNCED A RECORD 500 BILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THE REASON, FAITH IN WHAT WE ARE DOING, WITHOUT WHICH, THEY WOULD’NT BE INVESTING TEN CENTS. THANK YOU TIM COOK AND APPLE!!!

Also on Truth Social, Trump released a graphic touting Apple’s $500 Billion commitment as part of “Investments in the U.S. Under President Trump”.

To quote myself on Mastodon in early February: 

Everyone: We’re Doing The Thing.

Trump: I will SEEK VENGENCE upon anyone not Doing The Thing!

Everyone: After speaking with Trump, we’ve agreed to Do The Thing.

Trump: Thanks to me and me alone, everyone is now Doing The Thing. You’re welcome.

Everyone: 😶

There’s no reason to believe Apple’s announcement today had anything to do with Trump or that it would have been any different under another administration—except that this administration is deeply, corruptly transactional and rewards behavior that demonstrates fealty.

Back to Apple’s announcement:

As part of its new U.S. investments, Apple will work with manufacturing partners to begin production of servers in Houston later this year. A 250,000-square-foot server manufacturing facility, slated to open in 2026, will create thousands of jobs.

Previously manufactured outside the U.S., the servers that will soon be assembled in Houston play a key role in powering Apple Intelligence, and are the foundation of Private Cloud Compute, which combines powerful AI processing with the most advanced security architecture ever deployed at scale for AI cloud computing. The servers bring together years of R&D by Apple engineers, and deliver the industry-leading security and performance of Apple silicon to the data center.

It’s a tantalizing tidbit that the servers being built in this new facility are for Private Cloud Compute, hardware Apple doesn’t even sell. Obviously very important to Apple’s AI plans, but I’m surprised they’re important (unique?) enough to require a dedicated facility. I’m very curious to see what these servers might look like. (Honestly, a rack-mountable M4 Max relaunch of the Xserve—Apple Server?—would be dope.)

One final thought, on Apple’s hiring plans:

In the next four years, Apple plans to hire around 20,000 people, of which the vast majority will be focused on R&D, silicon engineering, software development, and AI and machine learning. The expanded commitment includes significant investment in Apple’s R&D hubs across the country. This includes growing teams across the U.S. focused on areas including custom silicon, hardware engineering, software development, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

This is deftly worded. It specifies how many people it plans to hire, but doesn’t state if it’s additional or replacement headcount. If 20,000 people leave, and 20,000 people are hired to replace them, will Apple claim success on its hiring plan? It does meet the letter, if not the spirit, of the statement. Likewise, it plans on “growing” specific teams, but says nothing about “shrinking” others to balance things out.

Quite the facility with language, Apple has.