I could spend a long time talking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s past and her impact on women’s rights and American history in general, but I don’t claim to be an RBG expert, and I certainly wouldn’t do her justice. Instead, spend a few minutes reading the other justices’ statements on her passing.

I don’t want to politicize a tragedy, but 2020 has been one politicized tragedy after the next. It’s been a bit like a movie — if political thriller were a popular genre — with about seven hours worth of plot shoved into ninety minutes, and RBG’s death is the plot twist.

When I got the CNN breaking news alert on my watch, I felt my stomach drop; I’m desperately afraid we’re about to see the great American experiment finally collapse on upon itself. Throughout this year, we’ve seen just how dysfunctional and corrupt the majority of our federal government officials truly are. One much needed respite from the bad faith politicking came when a majority of our Supreme Court justices proved that they were, at least for the time being, still managing to hold the judicial branch above the political warfare that has consumed the executive and legislative branches.

Now the high court faces a real chance of receiving a Trumpian makeover that will throw the last remaining branch of our federal government into hyper-partisan disarray. Trump will have yet another opportunity to nominate someone to the court, and the group of people who are capable of standing in his way is hopelessly small and demonstrably spineless. I think we can be sure that Trump’s third nominee to the court will not be as moderate or as qualified his second, or especially his first. After all, in the coming months, the Supreme Court very well may be in a position where they’re making decisions regarding the election results, or hearing cases on any number of Trump’s alleged crimes. It’s all but guaranteed that Trump’s next nominee’s loyalties will lie not with the law, but with the most dangerous demagogue in our nation’s history.

Hopefully, notorious flip flop and shameless Trump simp Lindsey Graham still wants his words used against him.

From the website for “Class Action Park,” a new documentary streaming on HBO Max:

Here's the gist: During its 1980s and 1990s heyday, New Jersey’s Action Park earned a reputation as the most insane — and possibly the most dangerous — amusement park that ever existed. 

It was known as a lawless land, ruled by drunk teenage employees and frequented by even drunker teenage guests. The rides were experimental and illogical, and seemed to ignore even the most basic notions of physics or common sense—not to mention safety. […]

Lying somewhere between Lord of the Flies and a Saw movie, Action Park is remembered as a place so insane and treacherous that, decades later, anybody who ever stepped foot in it is left wondering whether their memories could possibly be true. It became a nearly perfect breeding ground for urban legends and myths.

Do yourself a favor and watch this documentary.

Erika Edwards and Denise Chow, reporting for NBC News:

In the predawn hours of March 30, Dr. Deborah Birx stepped in front of the camera on the White House lawn and made an alarming prediction about the coronavirus, which had, by then, killed fewer than 3,000 people in the United States.

"If we do things together, well, almost perfectly, we can get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities” […]

On Saturday, Birx's prediction came true, as the number of lives lost to Covid-19 in the U.S. topped 200,000.

Now, many experts are making another ominous prediction: A surge in the number of new infections in the fall and winter, combined with growing fatigue over social distancing and other public health measures, could result in more than 415,000 deaths in the U.S. by January, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, or IHME, at the University of Washington.

Uh oh Republicans, it looks we’re outside of Trump’s defined “very good job” territory. It’s okay, I’m sure he’ll soon move the goalposts again to ease your cognitive dissonance so you’ll carry on with supporting him via willful ignorance.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

From a nuance-lacking report from The Guardian on the results of a survey commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference):

The survey, the first to drill down to state level in the US, ranks states according to a score based on three criteria: whether young people have definitely heard about the Holocaust; whether they can name one concentration camp, death camp or ghetto; and whether they know 6 million Jews were killed.

My gut instinct is that whoever conducted this survey didn’t know what they were doing, or they were trying to produce clickbait-y results.

In regards to the first question:

One in eight (12%) said they had definitely not heard, or didn’t think they had heard, about the Holocaust.

I can’t imagine a single person in the United States has “definitely not heard” about the Nazi’s genocide. My K-12 education focused enormously on it, from grade four, to eight, to ten. Collectively, we spent months covering it. It makes me wonder about the surveyors’ definition of “Holocaust”, as well as whether the survey was conducted in a way that treated people like they were stupid and compelled them to give incorrect answers out of spite. I simply do not believe that 12% of people aged 18-39 years in the USA have “definitely not heard” about the Germans’ extermination campaigns. You’d have to be immaculately stupid to not know anything about it.

In regards to the second question:

According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.

I don’t think we ought to expect people who haven’t studied the third reich to be able to list off their concentration/death camps: they’re German names that people here have no idea how to pronounce, and they all served roughly the same purpose, so it’s hardly fair to fault people for not committing the names of the camps to memory when they aren’t of integral importance to their lives or careers. It’s worth noting that 44% of people surveyed were able to identify the Auschwitz camp; I would’ve expected that number to be a little bit higher.

In regards to the third question:

Nationally, 63% of respondents did not know 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and more than one in three (36%) thought 2 million or fewer had been killed.

I also don’t think we ought to blame people for not knowing the number of millions of people who were killed. Any number that large is too difficult for people to visualize, so the best way to understand it is by comparison, but to compare it to the general population of Europe or of specific countries (the most natural comparisons to make) would portray the number of people killed as a small percentage, and discounting the number of people who were murdered just isn’t an acceptable outcome when trying to educate people about a genocide. It’s a difficult problem for educators to tackle.

Another reason I don’t expect people to know the exact number is because different numbers get thrown around a lot, and that comes back to the definition of “Holocaust”. The vast majority of people think the word “Holocaust” refers to the genocide in general, not realizing that it’s a more specific term that ONLY applies to the extermination of the Jews. So while it is accurate to say “the Holocaust was the event/time period/operation where the Nazis killed 6,000,000 Jews in concentration camps”, it misses the big picture, and excludes form the conversation everyone the Nazis killed who wasn’t Jewish. In total, 11,000,000 people were killed by the Nazi state.

It’s possible that the survey could’ve have a number of respondents give close-to-accurate numbers like 10 or 11 million, but counted those responses as incorrect on the grounds that they were only asking about Jewish victims. Given the wide misunderstanding of the term, if the surveyors intended to use the technical definition of “Holocaust”, then they should’ve taken the time to explain the term to the people they surveyed before allowing them to answer. I doubt any such effort was made.

Obviously, I don’t make that distinction to diminish the gravity or significance of the Jews who were killed — the Nazis certainly had it out for them — but I do find it oddly judeocentric and frankly and irresponsible that the number most frequently thrown around when we talk about the Nazis’ genocide is 6,000,000. Yes, they killed that many Jews, but again, they killed 11,000,000 people in total. I find it disrespectful to focus only on the Jewish victims. Let’s not lose sight of the forest for the trees and forget about the other 5,000,000 political opponents, homosexuals, Russians, and people with physical/mental disabilities that the Nazis imprisoned and exterminated.

Let’s get this out of the way: several of my pre-event thoughts turned out to be pretty incorrect. But hey, the only way to be right all the time is to correct yourself when you’re wrong, so here we are. My gut feelings about how yesterdays announcements would go were, admittedly, not as accurate as some of the rumors and leaks. Now, moving forward.

Before we jump into the new products, some general thoughts:

• They’re really killing it with the announcement videos. The production value is very high, the transitions are fun, and the videos don’t feel too long. I do miss live demos, though.

• In hindsight, it still doesn’t feel quite right that they announced new watches without phones.

• The lack of AirTags also makes sense. That’s another accessory that will be primarily used with the phone.

• No phones in general at a September event just doesn’t feel right.

Apple Watch:

• The blood oxygen saturation measuring capabilities are nice, but it seems like the type of feature that takes a lot of R&D overhead, but will be ignored by most customers. I have never once seen someone taking an ECG with their Apple Watch. I doubt very many people will check their blood oxygen saturation either, except maybe serious athletes or people experience cardiac/respiratory distress. I don’t say that to devalue the watch’s lifesaving capabilities (the stories they told were, as always, very moving), it’s just a very rare scenario and I’m not sure how lifesaving that particular capability (or the ECG function) will prove to be, especially compared to the high/low heart rate notifications.

• The new altimeter is nice feature for hiking, and I imagine it should make the “flights climbed” metric in the activity app more accurate.

• Making the display brighter while inactive outdoors will make for a nice upgrade to the general experience.

• I don’t love the solo loop and braided solo loop bands. I find the multitude of sizes distressing, and I’m not sure how comfortable a non-adjustable band could really be (I don’t know about you, but my watch fits tighter or looser depending on how warm I am — whether because of the weather or physical activity — and I like being able to adjust it accordingly). Also, the braided one doesn’t look great to me, and yet it costs a hundred bucks.

• The new colors are nice. I really like the blue and (PRODUCT) red aluminum, but the new gold and graphite stainless steel colors are nice as well. My only concern with the blue and red would be how bright the colors are and how few bands will pair nicely with them, but they’re undeniably fun.

• The Apple Watch SE is an interesting product. I imagine it will be a popular gift for kids, now that Family Setup let’s parents give their kids a watch without giving them an iPhone first.

iPad:

• I didn’t expect them to introduce the A14 chip without the iPhone, but they did. It seems like a solid upgrade over last year’s A13.

• I imagine the iPad Air will be a good fit for some high school college students, now that it supports the Magic Keyboard.

• Touch ID built into the top button is interesting. In any other year, it would seem like a weird lateral step and almost a regression to build a full screen iPad that doesn’t use Face ID, but during 2020 and with everyone (who’s not a dick) wearing masks, Touch ID is more convenient. At the end of the day, I think Apple’s motivation was probably money: I figure it would’ve been more expensive to build the iPad Air with Face ID, though, completely redesigning the Touch ID sensor to fit in the power button probably wasn’t too cheap, either.

• The new iPad Air colors were unexpected, but I don’t hate them. I wish they were a little more vibrant, though.

• Also: the bottom of the barrel iPad model is six times faster than the top selling Chromebook. And that’s using Apple’s A12 chip, which they built for the 2018 iPhones. Let that sink in.

Fitness+:

• This is an interesting category of service that I wouldn’t have expected Apple to get into. There were some rumors about it and they seemed credible, but it still just didn’t make a ton of sense to me.

• I think $10/month is too expensive, and I think it should’ve been free for a year with the purchase of a new watch, rather than free for three months.

• I have a theory that Fitness+ is less about giving you workout videos synced with your watch, and more about giving Apple the sensor data from tons of people. They could take anonymized motion and heart rate data from a session, sync it with the workout you did, and calibrate new sensors with more specific data. Suddenly, the whole world becomes their Apple Watch health and fitness development lab.

One:

• I think this is generally a good deal. With the individual plan, you can get Music, TV+, Arcade, and 50 gigabytes of iCloud storage (which isn’t really enough) for $15 for an individual, or it’s $20 for a family plan (and the iCloud Storage jumps up to 200 gigabytes, though I still don’t think it’s quite enough). The highest level, One Premier, includes all of the above, plus News+ and Fitness+, a respectable two terabytes of iCloud storage, and it can also be shared with your family for no additional charge.

Software Updates:

• I’ve been using iOS 14 since the developer betas were released, and while it’s gradually gotten more stable, it still doesn’t feel ready for prime time. Another four or five weeks to iron out the kinks would’ve been good.

• I know the developer community isn’t happy about having one day’s notice before the official release. Usually they have a week to get their apps ready.

Well, it seems like today may well be the day that Tile dies. Apple’s AirTags have been rumored for a long time, but all signs are indicating that Apple will finally reveal them at their event today.

Apple’s AirTags will likely have a few advantages over Tile’s trackers, from a much wider audience of prospective buyers (I don’t know the makeup of Tile’s user base, but I would guess it skews strongly toward iOS users), to the increased functionality and precision added by the (all but guaranteed) inclusion of Apple’s W1 chip, and other features Tile never would’ve been able to develop properly because they didn’t have the financial bandwidth to invest in the necessary R&D. I’m no doctor, but I’ve got a feeling the announcement of AirTags will be roughly the equivalent of a stage four cancer diagnosis for Tile.

It’s kind of sad. But not really. Their trackers were never great in the first place. I had quite a few of them over the years, and even bought them as stocking stuffers for my family for Christmas one year. The experience was never as good as I wanted it to be. The batteries died after a year, they only worked about 80% of the time, and they weren’t even that accurate or helpful when they were functioning properly. Furthermore, I read Tile’s privacy policy a while ago, and immediately threw all of my still-functional tiles in the trash. Their privacy policy allows them plenty of legal latitude to collect your personal data and location data, and then funnel it back to other companies, including Facebook. The only way to limit that data sharing is to delete your account and stop using your tiles.

The Tile company saw the end coming, as evidenced by the fact that they took legal action against Apple on the grounds that the “Find My” app was anticompetitive because it came with the operating system, and they proceeded to argue on the record that it gave Apple an unfair advantage to sell their AirTags (which, mind you, at the time, and still as of 12:39, September 15, 2020, did/do not exist). They’re smart folks, but the transition to a different type of product or expansion into a niche market should’ve began long ago. Perhaps more partnerships with companies to build Tile functionality into their products directly for items like wallets or remote controls (assuming that using the functionality would be optional and the data collection could be disabled) would be a sustainable route. Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose.

But still, here’s to Tile. 🥂

You had a good run, and you’ve given the tech industry a good idea that they can now make into a successful business without relying on flagrant privacy abuses and vaguely prototypical hardware. I’m truly grateful for that, but I can’t say that I wish you any further success.

UPDATE: 9/16/20, 11:32;

Apple did not announce AirTags yesterday, so it’s time to eat my words I suppose. Tile will live another day (or month). I expect we‘ll hear about AirTags along with new iPhones whenever they’re announced, so we’ll table this article for now and revisit it in a few weeks.

A lot of the rumors and leakers have been suggesting that tomorrow’s Apple event won’t feature new iPhone hardware. Allegedly, the even will focus on Apple Watch, iPad, and the long-rumored “AirTags” tracking devices. My gut instinct is that they’re nuts to say we won’t see iPhones.

My inside sources can’t confirm whether we’ll see new iPhone hardware tomorrow or not, but it’s hard for me to imagine a September Apple event with no new iPhone hardware. Of course, Apple did let us know on their earnings call a few months ago that iPhones will be a few weeks behind schedule this week, but I didn’t take that to mean that we wouldn’t still hear about them in September. After all, the iPhone X wasn’t released until November of 2017, but it was announced in September. The iPhone XR was announced in September of 2018, but didn’t ship until October of that year. It’s not unprecedented, particularly in recent years, for Apple to announce new iPhones several weeks before they’re ready to ship.

For a few reasons, an event that focuses on Watch and iPad (and AirTags) doesn’t seem to pass the sniff test for a couple reasons. First, it’s difficult for me to imagine Apple announcing new watches before new phones (especially if the rumors about a new, “midnight blue” color option for the watch are legitimate; it would give the game away for the new “midnight blue” iPhone, which was rumored long before a blue watch). Second, a whole event for Apple Watches, iPads, and AirTags would feel a bit lean to me, unless the watch gets some pretty major upgrades, which again, based on the rumors, doesn’t seem likely. Perhaps, if we truly don’t see new iPhones, we’ll see an Apple Silicon Mac or something else that will take a bit of time to introduce.

So, I’m not saying the leakers and the rumor sites are wrong, I’m just saying it’s hard for me to believe they’re right on this one.

Bonus thought: Why do we, the Apple-obsessed community, put up with John Prosser? Sure he’s had a handful of accurate leaks, but he’s certainly had his share of downright wrong calls as well (as recently as last week). And his attitude is so annoying that I’d just as soon abandon the possibility of any future, correct leaks he may share just so that I don’t have to hear the slurping noises from him trying to suck his own dick.

Robert Costa and Philip Rucker, writing for The Washington Post:

“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

[…]

“Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states,” Woodward writes. “There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced.”

No shit.

Trump knew it was worse than the flu.

Trump knew coronavirus was deadly. #TrumpKnew and he did nothing. pic.twitter.com/rWKzj5Ti1i

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 9, 2020

This is real audio (expertly assembled into a video by our friends at The Lincoln Project), straight from Donald Trump, where he admits to knowing how deadly the coronavirus was, and a subsequent admission that he intentionally downplayed it to the public. Allegedly he wanted to avoid creating a panic.

This is a stunning revelation, but to hear it come directly from Trump’s own mouth is really something else. The pandemic is the biggest issue of this election, and a lot of pundits have been saying the election could boil down to a referendum on the Trump administration’s response to it. If the election really does turn out to be a referendum on the COVID response, then Trump’s already hole-y ship just hit an iceberg. The question now isn’t whether the ship will sink (it’s undeniably going down; history will not look favorably upon his response), but whether they can keep it afloat until November third. They’ll certainly try to patch up the damage as much as they can (probably by releasing an untested vaccine in mid-October), and they’ll try to deflect attention to other issues, but I personally think they’re taking on water too quickly to stay afloat until the election. If it does come down to a COVID referendum — knocking on lots of wood here — I don’t think Trump can win.

From a CTV News interview with American History Professor Allan Litchman, summarized by Graham Slaughter:

[The revelation that] Donald Trump knew COVID-19 was deadly in the early days of the pandemic but publicly downplayed the virus will go down in history as "damning."

“This is the greatest dereliction of duty in the history of the U.S. presidency,” Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University for nearly 50 years, told CTV News Channel on Thursday.

I respect Litchman and his analysis a great deal. You may recognize his name, as he’s the historian who constructed the unbelievably accurate “Thirteen Keys” model of predicting U.S. presidential elections.

Why Trump felt comfortable speaking so candidly with Woodward, one of the most influential journalists in American politics, has everything to do with his “pathological ego” Lichtman said.

“Donald Trump thinks he’s smarter than everyone, he thinks he’s more cunning than everyone,” said Lichtman, who is a Democrat. Only one of the dumbest people in the room would constantly act like they’re the smartest person in the room.

As for Trump’s defence that he didn’t share how deadly the virus was because he didn’t want people to panic, Lichtman said it simply doesn’t pass the sniff test.

“What is Trump’s whole campaign based on? Causing panic. ‘Elect Joe Biden and your streets are going to burn. The criminals will be attacking your houses. The suburbs will be abolished.’ This is a guy who’s worried about causing panic? Come on. How could you possibly believe that?”

Again, rich hypocrisy. He’s effectively saying “look at what’s happening, our cities are on fire, Antifa* is coming, this is what will happen if you elect Joe Biden”, hoping his followers are stupid enough to ignore the fact that Trump is president now and it’s already happening. It’s so self unaware.

But let me guess, Republicans: y’all are totally okay with this. Something about not wanting to create a panic, sometimes you have lie to your kids because you love them, yadda yadda yadda. Republicans should be more offended by this than anyone. It’s an outright admission by Trump that he’s playing them for fools because they take every (self conflicting) thing he says as gospel.

*The “Pod Save America” boys aptly pointed out that Trump’s whole “Antifa” play is basically the 2020 rebrand of his “caravan” play from 2018. Baseless, divisive fear mongering that his most ignorant supporters are all too happy to gobble up without any evidence.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

UPDATED: 10/06/20, 14:58

Jeffery Goldberg, reporting for The Atlantic:

In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit [to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018], Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

[…]

… he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.” […] “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides.

[…]

Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II.

[…]

The president did not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War because of the alleged presence of bone spurs in his feet. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases constituted his “personal Vietnam.”

[…]

According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”

[…]

Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades, but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.

This behavior would be disgraceful from any American, but coming from our Commander in Chief, it’s absolutely abhorrent. You cannot support Donald Trump and call yourself a patriot.

Further reading: Trump Knew The Russians Were Paying The Taliban To Kill U.S. Troops.

From the Apple Newsroom:

Today Apple announced it will invest in the construction of two of the world’s largest onshore wind turbines, a source of clean, renewable energy that will bring its supply chain and products one step closer to carbon neutrality. Located near the Danish town of Esbjerg, the 200-meter-tall turbines are expected to produce 62 gigawatt hours each year — enough to power almost 20,000 homes — and will act as a test site for powerful offshore wind turbines. The power produced at Esbjerg will support Apple’s data center in Viborg, with all surplus energy going into the Danish grid.

These wind turbines are sleek.

Also, 20,000 homes! From just two wind turbines! Anyone who says renewable energy isn’t practical because it’s inefficient is ill informed. Don’t buy into the lies that the fossil fuel lobbyists pay their congressional Republican lapdogs to feed to you.

Holly Yan and Madeline Holcombe, reporting for CNN:

Just over seven months ago, no one in the US had a confirmed case of Covid-19. On Monday, the US topped 6 million cases of coronavirus, which has killed over 183,000 people and left many young adults with long-term problems.

My god, this is getting old.

The pandemic seems to slowing at this point, but this most recent million can still be attributed to the south. Southerners: see here.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

A fascinating story from David Shayer, writing for TidBITS:

“I have a special assignment for you. Your boss doesn’t know about it. You’ll help two engineers from the US Department of Energy build a special iPod. Report only to me.” […]

They didn’t actually work for the Department of Energy; they worked for a division of Bechtel, a large US defense contractor to the Department of Energy. They wanted to add some custom hardware to an iPod and record data from this custom hardware to the iPod’s disk in a way that couldn’t be easily detected. But it still had to look and work like a normal iPod. […]

We discussed the best way to hide the data they recorded. As a disk engineer, I suggested they make another partition on the disk to store their data. That way, even if someone plugged the modified iPod into a Mac or PC, iTunes would treat it as a normal iPod, and it would look like a normal iPod in the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer. They liked that, and a hidden partition it was.

Next, they wanted a simple way to start and stop recording. We picked the deepest preferences menu path and added an innocuous-sounding menu to the end. I helped them hook this up inside the code, which was rather non-obvious. In all other respects, the device functioned as a normal iPod. […]

My guess is that Paul and Matthew were building something like a stealth Geiger counter. Something that DOE agents could use without furtively hiding it. Something that looked innocuous, that played music, and functioned exactly like a normal iPod. You could walk around a city, casually listening to your tunes, while recording evidence of radioactivity—scanning for smuggled or stolen uranium, for instance, or evidence of a dirty bomb development program—with no chance that the press or public would get wind of what was happening.

Wow, what a story. It’s a commentary on the cultural ubiquitousness of the iPod in the 2000s, and an intriguing reminder that the secretive exploits of the U.S. government were not limited to the cold war. It reminds me of this clever image from the HBOMAX listing of CNN’s docuseries, “The 2000s”.

Graeme Wood has a great piece in The Atlantic about the sheepdog mentality of people like Rittenhouse. It’s well complemented by my piece on militarized masculinity. From Wood’s piece:

If you have never walked around with a gun in your pocket, you probably have poor intuitions about how it feels—the power; the discomfort of having a hunk of metal or plastic impeding your gait and mobility; most of all, the sense of responsibility. The writer Dan Baum strapped on a .38 in the course of researching a 2013 book on gun culture and described the experience well:

“Everything around me appeared brilliantly sharp, the colors extra rich, the contrasts shockingly stark. I could hear footsteps on the pavement two blocks away ... It made me more organized. Wearing the gun, I was Mr. Together. There was no room for screwing up when I was equipped to kill.”

Baum would avoid trouble, because he didn’t want to be anywhere near a fistfight, unstable people, or anything that might raise the possibility that he would fire his gun. The feeling of empowerment comes with a wearying imperative of caution: You do not seek out danger, and instead you live the most boring life possible, to avoid using the murder machine you have for some reason decided to attach awkwardly to your midsection.

What distinguishes Baum, who crossed the street to avoid violence, from Rittenhouse, who carried openly and crossed state lines to find violence? One is a seersucker-wearing, middle-aged journalist, and the other is an adolescent. The other salient difference, though, is that at 17, Rittenhouse has never known a world where owning a gun did not go along with what is sometimes known as the “sheepdog mentality”—the belief that your gun exists to protect others, and that you should rush in to perform that duty. [...]

Here are my thoughts on Kyle Rittenhouse: electric chair.

No, wait, that’s too easy. Give him life in prison but make him work to earn his meals and housing. And none of that special treatment for his own safety; put him in with the general population and let the inmates who are in for petty drug charges take turns turning him out in the showers. Don’t give me that “he’s only 17” nonsense, he clearly didn’t let his young age restrict him when it came to possessing a firearm, no reason to let it stand in the way now.

If you think he’s innocent or that he acted in self defense, go ahead and tap out of the argument, carve a swastika into your forehead, and leave the real patriots with fully developed brains to deal with this shitbag Republican superstar.

See also: Kyle Rittenhouse and friends beating the shit out of a girl, three on one.

The COVID-19 pandemic has become an omnipresent aspect of life in 2020 America, and many articles on CopyrightBro reflect that. It’s no secret that the federal government has completely fumbled the response to the pandemic, at times ignoring it entirely while at other times intentionally spreading misinformation. Rather than post dozens of links in each COVID-19 related article to illustrate how they’ve screwed this up, we decided to give you one single link to this page, which compiles all of CopyrightBro’s articles on the subject. If they do anything good or effective, that’ll be included as well, but don’t hold your breath.

Click here to check out our COVID-19 Roundup.

I first heard about Allan Litchman in the weeks before the 2016 election, and at the time, his prediction that Trump would win seemed far fetched. Still, I was enthralled with his “thirteen keys” system, and anxious to see if it would prove accurate for that election cycle. Of course, it did. However, Trump’s win wasn’t the only thing Litchman predicted: he also predicted that Trump would be impeached way back in 2017. Suffice to say he has a strong track record, and I trust his judgment.

Allison Gordon, reporting for CNN:

He has correctly predicted the winner of each presidential race since Ronald Reagan's reelection victory in 1984 using his "13 keys" system. […]

Now, Lichtman and his "13 keys" are ready to call 2020.

In an interview with CNN, Lichtman was definitive in his answer: "The keys predict that Donald Trump will lose the White House this year."

Lichtman bases his prediction on a model of "13 keys" that can be answered as either true or false for any given election. The "13 keys" in his system include factors such as the economy, incumbency, social unrest and scandals, as well as the candidates' personal charisma. […]

When asked if the key model could account for something as cataclysmic as the Covid-19 pandemic, Lichtman remained confident. "Look, retrospectively and prospectively, the keys go all the way back to 1860. They are what we call a robust system. So, I don't fiddle with them. They've lasted through enormous changes in our politics, in our economy, in our democracy. Don't fiddle with the keys," he explained.

I’ve been feeling pretty good about Biden’s chances the past few months, and this really cemented my belief that he will win the election (I’m knocking on wood read hard, though, believe me). Things can certainly change, and this doesn’t mean we should let off the gas in our attempts to get people excited about the Biden Harris ticket, but for the past 12-18 months, you could just feel Trump’s public support eroding. He still has his inalienable base, of course, but I think he’s losing ground among fair-minded people. I believe America has enough non-racists, non-xenophobes, non-white supremacists, non-homophobes, and non-bigots to outvote Trump’s base. The the issue now is whether we can get enough of those people to turn out to be able to counteract the damage that will be done by his blatant efforts to cheat.

If you’re interested in learning more about the thirteen keys, here’s a good place to start.

Turns out that Steve Bannon and the other We Build the Wall con artists actually TORE DOWN two miles of the wall and resold the rebar on Craigslist.

— Al Franken (@alfranken) August 21, 2020

You hate to see it.

Note, the poorly tuned Trumpets who donated to this are apparently stupid enough to think this is still a win for them, saying they don’t feel ripped off.

*Photograph of Steve Bannon by Gage Skidmore.

Jessica Bursztynsky, reporting for CNBC:

Apple hit a market cap of $2 trillion, doubling in valuation in just over two years.

It’s the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a $2 trillion market cap. 

Apple was also the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market cap.

Hartley Charlton, writing for MacRumors:

"Now, more than ever, people need a secure payment solution they can rely on. We're excited to be able to put the control back into our customers' hands, by launching Samsung Pay Card” […]

Samsung Pay Card offers five percent cashback on purchases from Samsung, and one percent cashback at other retailers. […]

Unlike ‌Apple Card‌, Samsung Pay Card does not offer a physical card. It is a purely digital service available via NFC on Samsung smartphones and smartwatches.

I think we’re past the point of nitpicking over which device or OS had a particular feature first and who copied it — smartphones have matured to the point where virtually any new idea is bound to be iterated upon by a competitor — but credit cards don’t really have anything to do with smartphones.

To me, Apple Card didn’t even seem like a very strong product, and the credit card market didn’t seem like a space that a company like Apple would want to be in. The fact that Samsung (and Verizon, for what it’s worth) has now blindly followed Apple into that thicket a year later is just another indicator that they’ll never be anything more than shameless copycats who happen to have a side gig making household appliances.

Side note: “Samsung Pay Card” is a clunky, unattractive name that sounds like it was poorly translated from another language, and the design of the card itself looks like something you’d apply for in a Best Buy.

Robert Burnson, reporting for Bloomberg*:

In the new lawsuit, filed Monday in state court in Redwood City, California, the company is accused of collecting, storing and profiting from the biometric data of more than 100 million Instagram users, without their knowledge or consent.

The practice violates an Illinois privacy law that bars the unauthorized collection of biometric data, according to the lawsuit. Under the law a company can be forced to pay $1,000 per violation -- or $5,000 if it’s found to have acted recklessly or intentionally.

Everything Facebook does is either reckless or underhanded. The company is defined by their old motto of “move fast and break things”.

The system needs to come down hard on Facebook. Clearly, they don’t care about legal slaps on the wrist: what they need is a hard, legal kick in the balls that causes them to double over in pain and take a beat to catch their breath. Prosecutors need to not back down and accept a measly settlement, they need to pursue every dime they can in the hopes that they get enough to teach Facebook a real lesson, and if it financially levels them and drives the whole operation into the ground, so be it. All of Facebook’s products are doing more harm than good at this point, anyway.

#deletefacebook

*Quick note to remind readers that last year, Bloomberg was the publication that put out “The Big Hack”, a sensational piece by Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley which claimed that many American companies, including Apple and Amazon, were having data siphoned from their servers by a tiny, Chinese military unit designed chip which had made its way onto their motherboards during production in Chinese factories without the companies’ knowledge. All parties involved denied the claims made by the Bloomberg reporters after conducting internal investigations which yielded no evidence that such tampering had occurred. Bloomberg has offered no evidence to corroborate their “reporting”. By all accounts, it seems like The Big Hack was a big farce. Until Bloomberg retracts the story or corroborates it, their institutional credibility must be questioned.

From the Biden campaign’s website:

Kamala Harris Will Be The Next Vice President of The United States.

My first response to this news wasn’t outright disappointment, just the kind of let down you feel when you’re expecting something incredible and receive us something acceptable but bland. I just don’t feel like this pick really energizes the ticket or adds to it in a way that other options couldn’t have.

My first pick for Joe Biden’s VP was Stacy Abrams, followed by Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. There was a lot of speculation about Kamala Harris in recent weeks, but in her last few debates, she just didn’t seem very genuine to me, so I was hoping it wouldn’t be her. Plus, there was the issue of her record which didn’t sit well with me, but I suppose the Biden campaign has decided that, while unsavory, her record isn’t likely to be a disqualifying issue for many of the undecided voters they’re gunning for. Kamala checks a few demographic boxes while keeping the ticket moderate enough not to scare away undecided independent voters. I liked Abrams most because I thought it would be a good move for the campaign to announce a fresh, young running mate with more progressive ideas, but I suppose the DNC wasn’t going to pick Biden’s running mate based what I or anyone else would’ve liked.

All in all, Kamala is more exciting than Mike Pence, but I feel like the Biden campaign has fumbled an opportunity to get people excited.