Jorge L. Ortiz, reporting for USA Today:

Even as the USA becomes the first country to reach half-a-million COVID deaths – the actual figure was 500,071 as of Monday at 4:40 p.m. EST – there are signs the pandemic may be abating, from the decreasing number of cases, hospitalizations and fatalities to the improved vaccine rollout and production. 

Amid this hopeful scenario, the emergence of coronavirus variants scrambles the picture of what the near future may look like.

[…]

Closing in on the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus outbreak being declared a pandemic – March 11, 2020 – it’s still not clear when the United States, which has reported more than twice as many cases and deaths as any other country, will have a hold on the health crisis.

It’s hard to know who to blame at this point. China? Trump? Ignorant people who refuse to wear masks? State governments who’ve managed to fuck up the response at every step of the way? Take your pick, really. Five hundred thousand deaths leaves plenty of blame to go around.

Get rid of it. Pretty simple.

Don’t get me wrong, there are good points to be made on both sides of this debate, but I think the right answer is to either get rid of the filibuster entirely, or to at least reform it to the point where it can no longer be used to completely kill popular legislation.

As many have pointed out, the filibuster has not always been a tool in the Senate’s tool belt. It has a long and complex history, but it gained its popularity during the Jim Crow era when southern Senators used it repeatedly to halt legislation that would have benefited black people at the time, like the federal criminalization of lynching or the outlawing of requirements that people pay to be able to vote.

Getting rid of the filibuster entirely is a scary concept, because then a simple majority in the Senate would be able to pass whatever legislation they wanted. However, I think it would also force more cooperation from the minority party, who would have to be less hostile towards their across-the-aisle colleagues in order to have a say in amending the passing legislation to benefit their constituents. You would also see more unique coalitions of senators who could come together to pass legislation that isn’t perfectly aligned with one party’s platform or the other, instead bringing together more specifically focused factions of senators whose aims would be to help their constituents rather than to toe the party line. It would free up a lot of the gridlock in Washington, and even if you don’t agree with everything the party in power wants to do, at least progress could be made, unlike the past several decades of stagnation. If a law were passed that proved to be unpopular or to have negative consequences, then a faction of senators opposing the legislation would be able to remove it from the books the next time they take power (assuming the legislation in question is actually unpopular with voters, and not just the special interest groups who fund the senators’ campaigns). Everyone says they hate Congress because they never get anything done, and the filibuster is to blame for that.

For those who aren’t aware, Taylor Swift is in the process of re-recording her first six albums.

My hope for the re-recordings was that they would be as similar to the originals as possible. I’ve never been a fan of remixes, and Taylor’s old songs in particular hold such a sacred place for so many people. I was very afraid that we’d end up with pop versions of country songs that would just sound like garbage, and that’s probably the worst case scenario. I wanted to be able to listened to the re-recorded songs instead of the originals, not have them as supplemental versions.

While the originals will always hold a special place in my heart, from what we’ve heard so far, I think I’ll be able to make a clean break from them, and leave them in the past to prevent Taylor’s bullies from profiting off of their underhanded deal to buy her music out from under her.

The first re-recorded song to be released was “Love Story,” and it sounds incredible. It’s so similar to the original that you may not notice it isn’t the original, but once you’re clued in, you can hear subtle differences, like the more present violin in the chorus, and a few words that Swift pronounces ever so slightly differently. On the whole, her voice is smoother and more mature, but the song is just as authentic as ever. It’s nostalgic, it really feels like you’re revisiting a moment in time.

The album artwork is great, it’s a similar pose to the original album, and it makes use of the yellow/gold color, but it too is more mature. Like the other albums Taylor owns, the cover does not feature her name.

The rest of the re-recorded “Fearless” album comes out April ninth, and you can go ahead and pre-order/pre-add it to your library here.

Ben Hall, reporting for News Channel 5 Nashville:

Police were warned Anthony Warner was making bombs in his RV more than a year before his Christmas morning attack in downtown Nashville.

The tip came from Warner's distraught girlfriend in August of 2019.

Police went to Warner's home the day of the complaint, but were unable to make contact with him.

The case was later closed as unfounded.

“He’s not home, case closed!”

She told officers that her boyfriend - Anthony Warner - "was building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence."

Yes, completely “unfounded.”

The police report states that an attorney who was also there and represented both the woman and Warner - told police that Warner "frequently talks about the military and bomb making."

Attorney Ray Throckmorton told police that Warner "knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb."

"I made a report on the spot for him to get checked out and I did all that I knew I could do," Throckmorton said.

The police suck at everything they do (except lynching black people and getting away with it). Defund the police. Fuck the police.

Sami Fathi, also reporting for MacRumors:

Starting with iOS and iPadOS 14.5, Apple will proxy Google's "Safe Browsing" service used in Safari through its own servers instead of relying on Google as a way to limit which personal data Google sees about users.

While Google doesn't know which specific URL you're trying to visit, it may collect your IP address during its interaction with Safari. Now on iOS/iPadOS 14.5, that's no longer the case.

Juli Clover, reporting for MacRumors:

The iOS 14.5 beta, available to developers and public beta testers, adds a new Apple Maps feature that lets you report accidents, hazards, and speed checks along your route when getting directions.

Apple is out for blood with the privacy measures, and I’m here for it.

The change for safe browsing doesn’t seem like a big deal and it isn’t something users will notice, since Google wasn’t getting the URL you were gong to in the first place, but this also prevents them from getting your IP address, and a good rule of thumb is the less information funneled through Google, the better.

However, the change for Maps is huge. If it proves popular, it could effectively kill Waze on iOS. Apple’s implementation of crowdsourced traffic conditions certainly isn't as robust and feature heavy as Waze, but honestly, Waze was a pain to use from a design perspective, and its feature set was bloated. Apple’s option is a lot more straightforward while still conveying most of the data you’d want. I could see them expanding it a little bit in the future (to give more specific options for road hazards, or to indicate heavy traffic without any apparent accidents), but since it is a feature that most people will use while driving, the simpler it is to report conditions, the better.

These are two great steps to reducing iOS users’ reliance on Google, but the most obvious step remains: stripping Google’s status as the default search engine in Safari. That may not be super popular with users at first, but if more people realized that Google remembers every query they make and then uses that data against them, AND the new default search engine is at least 90% as good as Google (which has been getting steadily worse, increasingly bloated with advertisements), I think Apple could throw up a splash screen that would convince people to try the new option (or just don’t even clue users in until they start making queries and notice they aren’t landing on Google). Speaking of that new option, I think the best bet would be for Apple to just build their own search engine, but they could also set DuckDuckGo (the browser I personally use, because it doesn’t track or record your search history and sell you out to companies looking to buy that data) as the out-of-the-box browser and make users change it back to Google if they don’t like DDG, perhaps even explaining the privacy differences in the settings menu or forcing them to tap accept on a pop up acknowledging that they’re choosing to use a search engine that tracks them.

Be sure to check out the whole list, but here are a few highlights from AZQuotes.com’s list of Rush Limbaugh’s top 25 quotes:

Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

Ideal women: 36-24-36, five foot seven, flat spot on top of the head, deaf mute. The flat spot on the top of the head is for your drink.

When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult; it's an invitation.

There is no conclusive proof that nicotine's addictive... And the same thing with cigarettes causing emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease.

Even when I think I'm wrong I'm right. I am all-knowing.

It wasn’t cancer that killed Rush Limbaugh, it was karma.

While it’s a bit uncouth to relish someone’s death, Rush Limbaugh’s absence from this world is inarguably a net good. Mourning his death would be a bit like mourning for Joseph Goebbels. Speaking of whom, I’m sure those two peas-in-a-pod propagandists will have a splendid time falling in love with each other over brunches in hell.

Don’t miss: Another tally mark in the “Fuck Florida” column, as Governor Ron DeSantis issues a brazenly partisan order to lower flags to half staff for this asshole. Disgusting. Next time Florida threatens to secede, I say we let them.

Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson, reporting for The New York Times:

Surrendering our privacy to the government would be foolish enough. But what is more insidious is the Faustian bargain made with the marketing industry, which turns every location ping into currency as it is bought and sold in the marketplace of surveillance advertising.

[…]

A source has provided [The New York Times with] another data set, this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump’s political rally turned into a violent insurrection.

[…]

The sacking of the Capitol was a shocking assault on the republic and an unwelcome reminder of the fragility of American democracy. But history reminds us that sudden events — Pearl Harbor, the Soviet Union testing an atomic bomb, the Sept. 11 attacks — have led to an overreach in favor of collective security over individual liberty that we’d later regret. And more generally, the data collected on Jan. 6 is a demonstration of the looming threat to our liberties posed by a surveillance economy that monetizes the movements of the righteous and the wicked alike.

The data we were given showed what some in the tech industry might call a God-view vantage of that dark day. It included about 100,000 location pings for thousands of smartphones, revealing around 130 devices inside the Capitol exactly when Trump supporters were storming the building.

[…]

The data presented here is a bird’s-eye view of an event that posed a clear and grave threat to our democracy. But it tells a second story as well: One of a broken, surreptitious industry in desperate need of regulation, and of a tacit agreement we’ve entered into that threatens our individual privacy. None of this data should ever have been collected.

[…]

This collection will only grow more sophisticated. This new data set offers proof that not only is there more interest in location data than before, but it is also easier to deanonymize. It gets easier by the day. As the data from Jan. 6 eerily demonstrates, it does not discriminate. It harvests from the phones of MAGA rioters, police officers, lawmakers and passers-by. There is no evidence, from the past or current day, that the power this data collection offers will be used only to good ends. There is no evidence that if we allow it to continue to happen, the country will be safer or fairer.

In our previous investigation, we wrote that Americans deserve the freedom to choose a life without surveillance and the government regulation that would make that possible. While we continue to believe the sentiment, we fear it may soon be obsolete or irrelevant. We deserve that freedom, but the window to achieve it narrows a little more each day. If we don’t act now, with great urgency, it may very well close for good.

Excellent reporting, you should really read the full article. For additional context, also check out their 2019 piece, “One Nation, Tracked” as well as CopyrightBro’s commentary on it.

The thing to understand here is that it wasn’t just the insurrectionists at the Capitol that were being tracked, and they weren’t specifically targeted for this tracking beforehand. Granted, they’re probably a little bit stupider on average than most Americans, but probably not to the extent that they were more susceptible to the tracking and data collection that made it possible for a private company to compile all this information and recreate minute-by-minute itineraries of their little field trip to D.C.

Everyone’s phones (Android devices to a greater degree than iPhones, but still) are collecting troves of data about their lives and their behavior, practically at all times, and turning it over to creepy companies you’ve never heard of that can sell it or use it themselves to do astoundingly unethical, privacy-invasive shit like what we’ve seen here. Sure, there are some settings you can change to make it harder for them to spy on you, and CopyrightBro is committed to helping you understand what you can do, but this problem is too big to be solved by any amount of accountability journalism, hard hitting exposés from the New York Times, or even attempts by well intentioned companies like Apple to pressure their competitors to play by a fair, understandable set of rules. This problem requires sweeping regulation.

This is so much bigger than any one company, but it bears repeating: #deletefacebook

Ryan Mac and Rosie Gray, reporting for Buzzfeed News:

The Trump Organization negotiated on behalf of then-president Donald Trump to make Parler his primary social network, but it had a condition: an ownership stake in return for joining, according to documents and four people familiar with the conversations. The deal was never finalized, but legal experts said the discussions alone, which occurred while Trump was still in office, raise legal concerns with regards to anti-bribery laws.

Talks between members of Trump’s campaign and Parler about Trump’s potential involvement began last summer, and were revisited in November by the Trump Organization after Trump lost the 2020 election to the Democratic nominee and current president, Joe Biden. Documents seen by BuzzFeed News show that Parler offered the Trump Organization a 40% stake in the company. It is unclear as to what extent the former president was involved with the discussions.

Nothing says “capitalism” like shady white collar crime wherein you bribe a corrupt demagogue president with partial ownership of your company in exchange for his exclusive endorsement and use of your product.

Parler was a dangerous joke. John Matze was a dangerous joke. Donald Trump was a dangerous joke. Rebekah Mercer is still dangerous and she isn’t a joke: it’s people like her who use their money to pull the strings, and it’s people like her that we need to be paying attention to.

Adi Robertson, reporting for The Verge:

Stock trading app Robinhood is facing dozens of lawsuits after the company restricted several stocks popular on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit. At least 30 parties across 10 states have sued the company in federal court, many seeking class action status. They allege that Robinhood users lost millions of dollars because they were unable to buy or sell stock during the freeze, and that the company chose to “manipulate the market” to help other financial institutions.

[…]

Disgruntled users aren’t the only threat for Robinhood, however. The company’s decision drew bipartisan condemnation from lawmakers, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and others calling to investigate the company’s decision.

Fuck Robinhood. What they did, regardless of the reason — let’s be clear, their own financial unpreparedness is not an excuse — was market manipulation and they should be held criminally liable. Even if their woe-is-me story about not having enough money to cover the trades makes sense, it’s much easier to believe that they did what they did because it directly benefited the hedge funds who were losing money even though it came at the expense of their users, for whom Robinhood claimed they were “democratizing the stock market.”

Many people didn’t realize this, but Robinhood is actually financed by those hedge funds. Their entire shady business model is based on selling information to hedge funds about what trades their users are making, so that the hedge funds can make split second trades before Robinhood actually processes their user’s trades. If you use Robinhood, you might as well delete your account because they’re more than willing to sell you out. I’ve already deleted my personal account.

Clearly, the free market is only free for the wealthy. When the little guy loses money on investments, they say “oh well, if you play the game you run the risk of losing,” but when it looks like big banks on Wall Street might lose, they just turn the game off.

Eat the rich.

Apple’s Privacy page has gotten a fresh update that explains how their products work together to keep your data safe from prying eyes. It includes this useful PDF, which uses an anecdote of a father-daughter date at the park to flesh out all the unethical, privacy invasive data collection tactics companies use to spy on you. It’s a good way to get your arms around just how ready and able companies are to unethically collect, analyze, and redistribute your data without your consent, and it also demonstrates how the tools Apple builds into their products can help you protect yourself in tangible ways. Even if you already have an Apple product, I implore you to check out the site and read the PDF.

If you aren’t sure about whether Apple’s commitment to privacy is genuine, or you don’t believe their products and services are substantially more respectful of their users privacy, the PDF explainer should convince you. Apple’s commitment to privacy is real, and it’s infinitely stronger than the other tech giants like Facebook and Google because Apple’s bottom line depends on selling you cool devices rather than selling you out to advertisers.

Taylor Swift’s surprise ninth album dropped December 11th. “evermore” broke records, but it’s one of her worst albums, in my opinion.

First, my general feelings:

Described as a sister album to “folklore,” “evermore” certainly does have much in common with its predecessor. Generally though, such comparisons only serve to make “folklore” look better: “evermore” is, undoubtedly, the ugly sister. Well, maybe not ugly — “evermore” doesn’t completely lack redeeming qualities — but “folklore” was objectively the better album.

My gut tells me that there is enough sonic cohesion and similar themes that there was potential for “evermore” to be good, but it just missed the mark. Yes, it tries to be about storytelling in the same way that “folklore” was, and that’s not entirely bad, but it feels like too much of a stretch. If I had to sum up the theme of what this album SHOULD have been in one word, that word would be “closure.” Yes, there is a track called “closure,” but that’s not why that word comes to mind: “closure” is the unacknowledged overarching theme of this album because the best songs are about making peace with turbulent pasts.

Song by Song:

I’ve given each song two ratings out of ten, the first rating is how I felt about it after the first time I listened to it, the second is how I feel about it now, a few weeks later and after dozens of listens.

“willow”: 7.5/10, 7/10

I think this was probably the best choice to start the album with. It’s a solid song, catchy and sweet. Although, as someone whose name escapes me pointed out, the lyric “lost in your current like a priceless wine” doesn’t really make any sense.

“champagne problems”: 6/10, 8/10

“champagne problems” is a very specific and I don’t suppose very many people are going to feel a direct connection to a called off engagement, but it really has some solid lyrics and a gripping story. You can almost imagine it being an alternate reality version of “All Too Well.” It certainly has a similar sound. Definitely works with the “closure” theme I mentioned.

“gold rush”: 5/10, 5.5/10

I expected this track to be my favorite, but it just isn’t. I expected something historical based on the title, and was left with something disappointingly metaphorical.

“‘tis the damn season”: 7/10, 6.5/10

This is another one that’s quite specific, but to the holidays rather than a called off engagement. It’s a relatable story about a desire to rekindle an old flame, though personally I find the temporary nature of the sought after relationship to be a little off putting on the grounds of its disingenuousness.

“tolerate it”: 7/10, 3/10

A real bore, if I’m being honest. I think my initial rating was based more on the expectation that it was going to be great because it was track five, but that’s simply not the case. Yes it’s sad, but it’s not as emotionally stirring as a track five is supposed to be. Sonically, it’s monotonous and certainly not the best track five candidate from the album.

“no body, no crime (feat. HAIM)”: 8/10, 5/10

People seem to like this one a lot, but I’m not the biggest fan. Yes it tells a fun story, but it’s very fictional and the music sounds a little… cliche. It sounds like something from the movie “Holes.”

“happiness”: 9.5/10, 9/10

All hail track seven, the track five of “evermore.” It’s emotionally gripping, not just sad for the sake of being sad. The pace is good, the lyrics are great. Best track on the album, no contest. It’s one of the only songs on this album that can hold it’s own with the rest of Taylor’s work. Fits beautifully with the “closure” theme.

“dorothea”: 5/10, 4/10

How many tracks do we need named after old ladies? This is filler.

“coney island”: 4/10, 3/10

Another song that, based on the title, had a lot of potential to tie in a cool historical element like “the last great american dynasty,” but it’s just another missed opportunity. It drones on, the national sucks, and it’s very forgettable. The most memorable line is a stupid one about a birthday cake in a hallway that’s completely out of place. You could argue that this goes well with the “closure” theme, though.

“ivy”: 6/10, 6.5/10

Not a bad song. It’s catchy and it tells an interesting story, but Taylor’s inner potty mouth really came out on this one. I’m not personally offended by swearing, but a lot of people are, and making the catchiest line of the song include the word “goddamn” for no reason is an interesting choice.

“cowboy like me”: 4/10, 3/10

This one is just monotonous and forgettable. Filler.

“long story short”: 6.5/10, 7/10

Definitely one of the better songs on the album. It’s upbeat and positive. Nothing super remarkable about it, though. This one also definitely works with the “closure” theme.

“marjorie”: 4/10, 5/10

Maybe I’m a dick for saying that I don’t like the song about Taylor’s dead grandmother, but I just don’t like it. It’s a sweet idea to have a recording of Marjorie herself singing in the background, though, so I’ll give it an extra point for that. Fits the theme.

“closure”: 5/10, 5/10

“closure” is alright. It isn’t my favorite, but I dare say it works with the theme.

“evermore”: 3/10, 3/10

I don’t like this one at all. The pacing is weird, and Taylor and Justin Vernon singing over each other was annoying and impossible to follow. Terrible choice for the album title based on how bad the song is. Maybe if you got rid of Bon Iver, this song could be better. I think it would actually still work as the album title if it sounded a little better, because I do think it fits with the “closure” theme.

“right where you left me”: 4/10, 5.5/10

This one is a little bit catchy, and it grew on me a little after the first time I heard it, but it also feels like filler. Probably why it ended up being a bonus track.

“it’s time to go”: 5/10, 6.5/10

This one is not bad. I don’t love it but I’m not mad that it exists, it could’ve been a nice addition to an album that wasn’t “evermore.” I can’t say exactly why, I just don’t think it fits here. Maybe a different version of “evermore” could’ve made it work: the version where the “closure” theme was properly recognized.

Final Notes

I don’t love the cover. The colors and the photography are nice, but a closeup shot of the back of her head is an odd shot to go with.

Unfortunately, this album just feels a bit aimless; I don’t know what it set out to accomplish. “folklore” was all about telling stories, and this one tells a few stories, but some of them feel manufactured just for the sake of calling this a sister album to “folklore.” The stories “evermore” tells weren’t stories that were dying to tell themselves.

Rather than writing a bunch of songs and then deciding which ones to form into two distinct albums, I get the impression that Taylor wrote “folklore,” saw how well received it was, and decided to just keep going. A bit like when a child tells a joke and makes the adults in the room laugh, so they quickly try to make up another joke to bag a few more laughs, and the adults are forced to awkwardly go along with it when really the joke is a real stretch and doesn’t make much sense. Taylor should have stopped after “folklore,” we didn’t need “evermore.” In my opinion, it’s an overcrowding addition to a distinct era that was doing just fine with one album.

If she did write all of the songs on “folklore” and “evermore” at the same time, she sure did arrange them in a weird manner between the two albums. If that’s the case, I think this project would’ve been better off as one album with a side A and side B, with about 12 songs per side.

I keep coming back to the closure theme. It seems like such a missed opportunity. Toss out a handful of the songs and then maybe add one or two more that work with the theme, and you could’ve had a great album.

Rebecca Rubin, writing for Variety:

Warner Bros. executive Tom Ascheim has been promoted and will oversee the studio’s Harry Potter franchise and Wizarding World properties. Ascheim also serves as the president of kids, young adults and classics at Warners. He reports to WarnerMedia chief Ann Sarnoff.

As part of his new responsibilities, Ascheim acts as the chief representative of WarnerMedia in its relationship with author J.K. Rowling and her reps, agent Neil Blair and Blair Partnership Chief Creative Officer James McKnight. He will also be tasked with expanding the Wizarding World property for the studio’s various outlets and platform partners. The studio didn’t make any concrete plans for the future of Harry Potter in Thursday’s announcement.

Lauren Sarner, writing for The New York Post:

Warner Bros. and HBO Max released this killjoy joint statement: “There are no Harry Potter series in development at the studio or on the streaming platform.”

This announcement definitely carries some strong implications, even despite the fact that Warner Brothers has denied any current Harry Potter projects; they could definitely be contemplating something for the future that may not be in development yet. My guess is that they probably want to just wait a while before they announce anything, allowing more time for the outrage surrounding J.K. Rowling over her comments on biological sex and transgenderism to die down a bit before they announce a new project.

I’m super excited for the possibility of a Harry Potter show. It would be a delightful way to give fans fresh content for years to come, if they did seven seasons with roughly one episode per book chapter. But they could really go for a lot more than that: I could see ten seasons with 15-20 episodes each, if they start before book one and don’t equate one book to one season (which I think there’s a strong argument for). I think the best option for a Harry Potter television show would be a more in-depth dive into the books: break out of the tendency to focus on the story from Harry’s perspective, utilize plenty of flashbacks, expand on smaller story lines, etc. Show us scenes that we saw in the books but not the films, and even scenes that were implied in the books but not directly shown (e.g. Hagrid rescuing Harry from Godric’s Hollow, Hermione in the library spotting the basilisk through her mirror, Sirius escaping from Azkaban, Voldemort creating a Horcrux, etc.). Something like Game of Thrones would be great, but I don’t think it needs to be quite as dark or bloody.

They could also be considering more of a spinoff series that still takes place in the Wizarding World, perhaps a “Quidditch Through The Ages” adaptation following the Chudley Cannons (something in the vein of “Ted Lasso” could be fun, with that specific idea), or as mentioned on Mugglecast #498, a Grey’s Anatomy-style drama about the daily goings on at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, or maybe a political drama about the Minister of Magic. There are lots of possibilities for spinoffs, but given how spectacularly the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise is nose diving and the complete disaster that resulted in giving other authors creative control with “Cursed Child,” I think they’d be better off to stick to a more direct adaptation of the books, with J.K. Rowling heavily involved in creating content for the new scenes, but with someone else actually writing the screenplay.

The point of the stimulus checks is to help people who are in tough spots, and to keep people spending money so that the economy doesn’t stall and enter a downward spiral of layoffs → less spending → more layoffs → even less spending.

Many people are surprised to realize that our congressional leaders cut one specific group out of the stimulus bill with surgical precision. Anyone who was claimed as a dependent by their parents does not get a stimulus check of their own, and parents don’t get the extra stimulus for any children who are over the age of 16. This leaves a large group of people — primarily consisting of young adults (mainly college aged students) and those with disabilities who are unable to care for themselves — who get no help and whose parents receive no help for them.

The determination for who is viewed as a dependent and is therefor ineligible for a stimulus payment was made by the IRS based on the parent’s most recent tax filings, which was either for 2019’s taxes if they were prompt in filing, or 2018’s taxes if they hadn’t filed for 2019 by the time the stimulus checks were cut, which many hadn't. This means that when the stimulus checks went out this spring, they were using information about who to send them to that was outdated by anywhere from 3 months to nearly two years. This is a devastatingly porous structure. An individual could’ve flown the coop in the fall of 2018 and their parents could've claimed them as a dependent (since they lived at home for the first half of 2018). This means that by the time the checks were going out, this person could’ve been living independently and supporting themselves for nearly two years, and they would not receive the stimulus check, despite likely having mountains of student debt on top of the usual expenses of living by oneself. Furthermore, having only been out of school for a year or two, they would likely be one of the first employees to be let go when their employers need to lay off a few folks on account of the pandemic. So again, one of the most financially vulnerable groups of people, recent college students and recent graduates, were cut out of a stimulus program that would’ve benefitted them the most, and also would’ve benefitted the economy the most because they would’ve been the least likely to just throw the extra money into a savings account.

Then, with the second round of stimulus checks, they did the same thing again. It’s brutally unfair, and there’s absolutely no justification or explanation for it. It’s criminal, and young people should remember this when politicians ask for their votes.

Fortunately, it looks like President Biden’s proposed plan will include a full stimulus amount for ALL individuals claimed as dependents. Alicia Adamczyk, reporting for CNBC:

Unlike the last two relief measures, Biden’s plan includes payments for non-child dependents, including many college students and those with disabilities. It would also expand eligibility for those payments to mixed-status families in which one parent is an immigrant.

Nothing is set in stone yet and no bills have passed, but at least someone in the federal government has finally acknowledged this gaping hole in the previous stimulus packages.

When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice.

…

If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare it. Because being American is more than a pride we inherit; it’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

…

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

…

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised, but whole; benevolent, but bold; fierce and free.

…

We will rise from the gold-limned hills of the West. We will rise from the wind-swept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country our people diverse and dutiful will emerge battered and beautiful.

When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it—if only we’re brave enough to be it.

Given CopyrightBro’s founder’s history of employment with Apple, Inc., we are especially well equipped to serve and inform Apple product owners of the best practices to get the most out of their devices while protecting their privacy. This PSA, like many of our PSAs, is intended for people who use Apple products, and the advice contained herein is not applicable to Android devices or non-Apple PCs. If you have an iPhone or iPad, continue on:

That’s a bold, scary headline, we get it. Here’s what you need to know: there is an intentional design flaw present in Apple’s iCloud Backup system that can allow the government to spy on you and that can provide them with complete access to the full contents of your device. But it is fixable, and we’ll tell you how.

The first question, naturally, is “why is it an intentional flaw?” This is a good question, and the answer is that Apple doesn’t see it as a flaw. iCloud Backups exist to help everyday consumers who either aren’t concerned about privacy or aren’t very tech savvy by giving them a backup plan in case something happens to their device, so that they can just log into iCloud from a new device and recover all their data without missing a beat. It’s intended to be very easy for customers: they happen automatically, they’re turned on by default, and there’s really nothing you need to do, and if you forget your password, Apple can still help you access your data because they keep a spare key. However, this ease of use comes at a price: privacy. Because Apple does keep that key to help you recover your data if you lose your password, the data can never be totally safe. The keys Apple keeps are subject to government subpoenas, meaning the government could at any time force Apple to turn over your iCloud backups, which would provide them with a snapshot of everything on your device at the moment the backup was created.

While Apple wants to be able to help their customers in case they forget their passwords and sees the spare key as a feature, CopyrightBro sees it as a design flaw. We’ve been aware of this flaw for months now, but the reality was that it wasn’t really something that everyday people needed to worry about, so we didn’t warn our readers. However, following the terrorist attack at the U.S. Capitol, the facts on the ground have changed. In recent days, there have been a lot of conversations about domestic terrorism and how the government may adapt to face the challenge that white supremacists, Qanon, and other extremist groups pose to our nation, with a lot of speculation that authorities may seek to expand their power to surveil U.S. citizens to collect intelligence that could aid in the prevention of these types of attacks.

CopyrightBro stands firmly against any and all violent extremist groups, but we don’t believe the United States government needs any more tools to allow them to spy on law abiding U.S. citizens; with just a little bit of reform, we can remove some of the institutional racism that plagues our government agencies, allowing them to be much more effective at stopping far right extremism (or any other domestic terrorism threats) without invading everyone else's privacy.

In the past few months, government officials have argued that we should get rid of end-to-end encryption altogether, but that is simply not feasible and it would put countless vital government and civilian systems in jeopardy of being exploited. Our society depends on some information being able to stay truly private, and we should not budge when it comes to protecting our right to digital privacy.

Given those pushes and the renewed interest among the intelligence community to increase surveillance of American citizens to prevent domestic terrorism, CopyrightBro feels that now is the proper time to warn our readers about this design flaw in the iCloud Backup system. Until Apple implements an option for customers to protect their backups with end-to-end encryption, knowing the risks of holding the only key to their data, iCloud Backups are simply too vulnerable to government overreach to be trusted. However, there are still iCloud tools you can use to protect the vast majority of your data in a manner that (while still not 100% secure in some cases) is much less susceptible to government surveillance.

This is what CopyrightBro recommends:

1. Go to Settings → [Your Name] → iCloud

2. Scroll down and tap “iCloud Backup,” then switch the toggle OFF.

3. Go back to the previous screen, and under the section called “Apps Using iCloud,” make sure all of the toggles here are switched ON, including “Messages.” These toggles control which of your data use iCloud to sync between devices, and are therefore preserved in iCloud. If you leave any of these switches off and you don’t have a backup, the data in that app won’t be saved if something were to happen to your device.

4. Tap “Manage Storage" near the top of the page, and then scan the list for any leftover backups. If you find one, tap on it, and then tap delete. You’ll likely have a couple, do this for each of them.

It’s unfortunate, but until such time as Apple introduces a truly private iCloud backup option, disabling it and instead relying on the iCloud syncing toggles is the best balance between privacy and protecting your data.

From a White House press release:

The National Garden will draw together and fix in the soil of a single place what Abraham Lincoln called “[t]he mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart.” In the peace and harmony of this vast outdoor park, visitors will come and learn the amazing stories of some of the greatest Americans who have ever lived. The National Garden will feature a roll call of heroes who deserve honor, recognition, and lasting tribute because of the battles they won, the ideas they championed, the diseases they cured, the lives they saved, the heights they achieved, and the hope they passed down to all of us — that united as one American people trusting in God, there is no challenge that cannot be overcome and no dream that is beyond our reach.

I actually like this idea a lot. It sucks that it was born out of racism, a white man’s desperate attempts to coddle his base full of white people who are uncomfortable with their shrinking privilege in a society that is waking up to the injustices that were for so long perpetuated by a white ruling class, but if we include a truly diverse cast of historical figures, from various backgrounds and various areas of achievement, this statue garden could be one of the best things to come out of a nightmare of a presidency. We all have both light and dark inside us; if done properly, this garden could be a place for nuanced conversations about the often-flawed human beings that made America what it is today.

Donald Trump’s presidency has been one of many firsts (most of them very negative), but the first that will live on in textbooks forever was penned in the annals of history today, as Donald J. Trump became the first president to ever be impeached twice.

This impeachment had bipartisan consensus, with the final vote being 232 in favor and 197 opposed.

In the wake of this historic impeachment, I want to address three audiences.

First, to the people who still support Donald Trump:

This impeachment was carried out swiftly by a bipartisan majority, in fact, it was the most bipartisan impeachment vote in the history of the United States. If you are still standing with Donald Trump, you are a racist, xenophobic, homophobic, ignorant bigot. At this point, you can longer support Donald Trump despite the horrible things he’s done; no, at this point, you are with him precisely because of those horrible things. Whether you realize it or not, people still enamored by Trump never truly cared about his “policies” or his alleged business acumen. Those who still support Donald Trump do so because he offered a perpetuation of a status quo that afforded them great comfort and privilege as a result of their race and their religious beliefs.

You are not a patriot if you care more about an orange conman who easily duped you into believing his lies than you care about the sanctity of democracy in the United States. You are a fool, and you have been fooled.

Secondly, to congressional Republicans:

Over the past week, many Republican leaders have made bad faith arguments and performed gold-medal-worthy mental-gymnastics routines to explain to themselves and their constituents as to why Donald Trump shouldn’t be impeached or held accountable for inciting the attack on the Capitol.

One of those arguments was that Donald Trump shouldn’t be impeached a second time because it would be too divisive at a time when the nation needs healing and unity. This is the biggest pile of dog shit I’ve ever heard. You can’t have unity without first getting closure for the transgressions that were committed. You can’t have healing before the wound has been stitched back together.

You’ve also argued that Trump shouldn’t be impeached because doing so could further enrage his base, prompting them to organize additional attacks. The response to this point is simple: the United States does not negotiate with terrorists.

A common theme of all the arguments is that the attack was a spontaneous event that occurred independently of Donald Trump and his lackey’s incitement. It’s hard to believe that this wasn’t planned: since when do innocent citizens find themselves in violent riots, just happening to have zip tie hand cuffs in their backpacks? Give me a break. And apparently, you don’t consider phrases like “fight like hell,” “let’s have trial by combat” to be incitements of violence. If that’s the case, then you’re seriously calling into question your comprehension of the English language.

Finally, to everyone else:

Trumpism has been its own plague, which took in many new followers and steeped them in hatred and emboldened them to spread that hatred far and wide, from cowardly internet intolerance to physical violence at the U.S. Capitol. Without a doubt, Trumpism has been an immeasurably destructive force in American society, and going forward, we must chastise and shame anyone who subscribes to and promotes Donald Trump’s ideology. Trumpism is a social cancer, and we must treat it as such. Chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery are aggressive, damaging treatments to get rid of cancer that come with negative impacts for healthy tissue and organs, but they are effective. We will have to employ similarly aggressive tactics to rid our society of Trumpism, and those efforts may well have negative consequences for those of us trying to do good in society. We will have to have difficult conversations with our neighbors, and we may have to burn some bridges.

However, Donald Trump was also a symptom of the sweeping problems our country has never addressed. The racism and other intolerances that lie at the root of Trumpism are problems that have been with our country since it was in the womb, Donald Trump merely came along and rebranded them for his own personal gain. We have to have real conversations about topics like race and other intolerances. For a tolerant society to survive, the only thing they cannot tolerate is intolerance. Trumpism is a doctrine that is built on intolerance, and we must now undergo the painful process of purging Trumpism from our nation. We have to remove the cancer, the fascists. Then we can work toward unity and healing.

#EXCLUSIVE: @GayleKing spoke with @Apple CEO Tim Cook about the assault on the Capitol and what he thinks needs to happen next.

See more of @tim_cook's interview Wednesday on @CBSThisMorning when he'll announce a major new initiative, that's not a new product. pic.twitter.com/QPYyoDVFv7

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) January 12, 2021

I can’t quite imagine what this could be. There are a few things I think it could be, but none seem any more likely than the next.

King made it a point to clarify that Apple’s announcement is not necessarily related to Cook’s comments about holding Donald Trump accountable, and that this announcement/interview was already scheduled. It wouldn’t be like Apple to just whip something up in the days following the attack on the Capitol; this is something they’ve been working on for a while. That said, it did seem relevant enough that they made room in the interview for questions about what should happen to Trump and others who incited the insurrection, so that leads me to think this is something related to politics. Some people think it will be COVID related, but that just doesn’t seem likely to me. Apple has already done the contact tracing thing, and it was rather poorly received. I can’t think of much else they could do in that realm, especially things that would be more well-implemented.

If I’m correct that it will be more related to politics than COVID, there are a number of projects I would like for Apple to be working on that seem within their wheelhouse and could solve some of the problems with our politics. A search engine or social media network that actually values privacy and doesn’t lead people to misinformation would be great, but those both seem too close to “products”, even though they aren’t products in the physical-device sense.

If I had to guess what we’re going to see, I would say they’ll announce something along the lines of a software framework or program that is designed to spur citizens to take more initiative in shaping our politics. Maybe some sort of donation program, or a way to contact legislators and share feedback. Highly unlikely given the challenges of working with 50 different state governments, but what if they’d worked out a secure, verifiable platform for digital voting; that would be revolutionary and absolutely more exciting than any product they could announce.

Time will tell, but I’m very excited to hear what they’ve got to say.

UPDATED: 01/12/21, 23:30

From a statement by Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD) and his wife on the death of their son, Tommy:

Tommy Raskin had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind. He began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless ‘disease called depression,’ as Tabitha put it on Facebook over the weekend, a kind of relentless torture in the brain for him, and despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too, the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last for our dear boy, this young man of surpassing promise to our broken world.

On the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020, when hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people all over the world died alone in bed in the darkness from an invisible killer disease ravaging their bodies and minds, we also lost our dear, dear, beloved son, Hannah and Tabitha’s beloved irreplaceable brother, a radiant light in this broken world.

He left us this farewell note on New Year’s Eve day: “Please forgive me. My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.”

This is absolutely gut wrenching.

The fact that Raskin had to experience the Capitol siege the day after his son’s funeral is just unconscionable. And for him to still be working at this point, doing interviews and holding his colleagues accountable, is nothing shy of heroic.

I hope his family is able to find as much solace as they can amidst these impossibly difficult events, and may Tommy truly rest in peace.

Tony Romm and Rachel Lerman, reporting for The Washington Post:

Amazon suspended the pro-Trump social network Parler from its Web-hosting service this weekend, a move that threatens to darken the site indefinitely after its users glorified the recent riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Describing Parler merely as a “pro-Trump social network” is a bit rosy, let’s not get it twisted. From racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, and white supremacy, to outright calls for and plans to commit physical violence and anti-democratic terrorism/insurrection like what we saw at the U.S. Capitol, hate speech and vitriol are omnipresent and essential elements of the Parler experience. It is/was a home and a breeding ground for Nazis and Proud Boys.

The e-commerce and Web-hosting giant said Parler had violated its terms of service given its inadequate content-moderation practices, adding in a letter that it would implement its punishment just before midnight Pacific time Monday.

The move by Amazon Web Services, or AWS, marks the latest and most crippling blow for the pro-Trump social network, which has emerged as a haven for conservative users who have fled more mainstream Silicon Valley sites that crack down on harmful, viral falsehoods online. Earlier this week, Apple and Google removed Parler’s app from their stores for smartphone downloads, similarly citing concerns that posts on Parler could contribute to violence.

Parler’s whole schtick was that they were going to be an unmoderated online space for free speech, but they have never been the beacon of free speech they claimed to be. The free speech cover was a thin veneer for an operation intended to provide a Wild West environment for Trump’s base to drive one another closer and closer to the edge of complete delusion and radicalization.

Private companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google have absolutely no constitutional obligation to provide their services to companies who violate their rules or whose values they disagree with. Facebook and Twitter have no obligation to allow users who incite violence and inspire coups to enjoy their platforms. Publishers have no obligation to publish books by seditious senators. It is not censorship and it is not a violation of Parler’s or anyone else’s first amendment rights, it’s the free market at work. Parler, immediately upon its launch, became an infinite cesspool of hatred. Since hate speech is not protected by the first amendment, it’s important to understand that not only can private companies refuse to do business with them, but even if it were Congress that had banned Parler, it still wouldn’t be an infringement of anyone’s first amendment rights. However, that’s exactly what Republicans have tried to assert.

Over the past few days, the far right has gotten a small taste of the social justice they deserve for the first time as the big tech companies have finally stood up to them, one by one. Faced with this incomprehensible reality where their actions have actual consequences, far right mouthpieces from Capitol Hill to trailer parks have been left spluttering, the only semi-coherent talking point they’ve been able to stitch together is that the radical left and big tech have teamed up to cancel and deplatform conservatives. Your dime-a-dozen Trumpers are embarrassing themselves by advertising their primitive understandings of “freedom of speech,” while their Republican elected officials CONTNUE to mislead those very same idiots by perpetuating misinformation about what type of speech the first amendment actually protects and from whom. Cynical assholes Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have learned no lessons. They deserve to be expelled from the Senate and they deserve to be shamed publicly, never to be taken seriously again.

Bringing things full circle, Parler was funded by the Mercer family, who were directly involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal that unethically collected mountains of personal data from American voters’ Facebook pages and used it to build profiles of them, which were then used to send them highly targeted ads designed to influence how they voted. Most people familiar with the Cambridge Analytica scandal know that the Trump campaign paid them to help target and turn out persuadable voters in key precincts of swing states, but most people don’t know that before Cambridge Analytica was hired by the Trump campaign (which was only after Trump won the nomination) they had previously been helping none other than Ted Cruz who, with their help and despite his perpetual “I just shit the bed” face, went from the bottom of the list of serious contenders to the last man standing before Trump ultimately clenched the nomination.

Hopefully Parler won’t find another company willing to host their site for any amount of money, but if Republicans are good at anything, it’s finding others whose morality is trumped by their greed.

I was going to title this article “Rest-in-Peace, Parler,” but after 0.5 seconds of consideration, it occurred to me that that would be far too kind a sentiment for the greedy, ill-intentioned assholes at Parler.