First and foremost, I want to point out that the shortcut I’m about to reference only works for people using Apple Music (right now, at least; if you have Spotify or something else, pressure them to add support for Apple’s Shortcuts app).

Basically, what I’ve done here is create a series of custom wallpapers using photographs that I took myself that I feel match the vibe of some of my favorite albums. I then created a shortcut to change the wallpaper to the corresponding image when a particular album plays using automations.

I posted about this on reddit a couple months ago. At the time it was just for Taylor Swift's ten albums, but I’ve since expanded it to others, and you can expand it as much as you like, to work for whichever albums you care about.

Step one: decide which albums you want to change your lock screen for. This is a very personal set of decisions, and I can’t decide for you. Choose an album, then find a photo from your photo library and make a Lock Screen that evokes the vibe of the album you’ve chosen.

Step two: set up a shortcut to tell your phone to switch the wallpaper automatically when a song plays. Here’s a link to a basic version of the shortcut made to work with ONE album/wallpaper set. If you want multiple, you’ll need to go into the guts of the shortcut and add a couple steps for each additional album you want to create a wallpaper for. For each additional album you want to change your Lock Screen for, add an “If” statement to the shortcut. Then tap the first item that says “Input” and select “Album”. Then, where it says “Condition”, tap “contains”. Then, where it says “text”, type the name of the album you’re referencing EXACTLY as it appears in the Music app (spelling, symbols, and capitalization matter). After you’ve added and set up the “If” statement, you need to add the “Switch Wallpaper” action. After adding this action, it will prompt you to select a wallpaper; choose the one you created to match the album you’re currently working on.

Step three: create an automation to run the shortcut automatically. Go to the Automations tab of the shortcut app, and tap “create new personal automation”. Then, when presented with trigger options, choose “App”, and then make sure “Is Open” AND “Is Closed” are both selected. Then, where it says “App”, tap “Choose”, and select some of your most frequently used apps. I selected about twenty of my most frequently used apps.

Step four: after you've set up the automation, you’ll want to prevent it from telling you it’s running, since it’ll happen any time you open or close your most used apps (all those notifications will get annoying pretty quickly). Go to the automation you just made in step three, then turn off the toggle for “Ask Before Running”, and then turn make sure then toggle for “Notify When Run” is also turned off.

And that’s it! Now, any time you open or close any of the apps you designated in step three, your phone will check to see what song is playing (if any), and will change your wallpaper to match the album the song belongs to.

Here’s a short video of the shortcut in action using Taylor Swift inspired wallpapers.

Shortcuts can be notoriously difficult to set up, so if you have any questions, feel free to reach out through our contact page for support!

I’ve just learned this: if you say the word “lumos” to Siri, she’ll turn on your flashlight!

(If you’re unfamiliar, “lumos” is the incantation for the spell in the Harry Potter Wizarding World that produces light from the tip of a witch or wizard’s wand.)

Talk about surprise and delight.

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.

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.

This is a mature topic, but we’re going to be straightforward. Practically everyone in America who’s older than like 13 and has an internet connection watches porn, lets not kid ourselves or feel ashamed about it; it’s normal.

Nicholas Kristof, from The New York Times:

[Pornhub] is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. […]

It is monetizing video compilations with titles like “Screaming Teen,” “Degraded Teen” and “Extreme Choking.” Look at a choking video and it may suggest also searching for “She Can’t Breathe.”

What Kristof has done here is hardly journalism, it’s conjecture. Just because he was able to dream up a list of shocking search terms does not necessarily mean that many (if any) of the results yielded by such searches actually contain depictions of the terms included in the query, an unfortunate fact that is so obvious, even he was forced to acknowledge it.

Pornhub is like YouTube in that it allows members of the public to post their own videos. A great majority of the 6.8 million new videos posted on the site each year probably involve consenting adults, but many depict child abuse and nonconsensual violence. Because it’s impossible to be sure whether a youth in a video is 14 or 18, neither Pornhub nor anyone else has a clear idea of how much content is illegal.

I won’t say that there are no videos on Pornhub that break the rules, nor will I say that it can’t be used by those who seek to spread such content, but “many” is doing a lot of work here.

Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation in a three-month period this year. Twitter closed 264,000 accountsin six months last year for engaging in sexual exploitation of children. By contrast, Pornhub notes that the Internet Watch Foundation, an England-based nonprofit that combats child sexual abuse imagery, reported only 118 instances of child sexual abuse imagery on its site over almost three years

A lot of work. I’ve spent my fair share of time on Pornhub, and I’ve never stumbled across any kiddy porn, but it’s really no wonder I haven’t, given that needle-in-a-haystack ratio.

Columnists are supposed to offer answers, but I struggle with solutions.

Your struggles are evident, Mr. Kristof.

If Pornhub curated videos more rigorously, the most offensive material might just move to the dark web or to websites in less regulated countries. Yet at least they would then not be normalized on a mainstream site.

More pressure and less impunity would help. We’re already seeing that limiting Section 230 immunity leads to better self-policing.

And call me a prude, but I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa.

I don’t see any neat solution. But aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: 1.) Allow only verified users to post videos. 2.) Prohibit downloads. 3.) Increase moderation.

These measures wouldn’t kill porn or much bother consumers of it

Given that Pornhub’s best content is user generated, and they just got rid of practically all of it in one fell swoop, I wouldn’t be so certain that this isn’t going to kill porn or bother consumers of it (it occurs to me that Kristof must not watch porn: perhaps he has a very strict wife, or maybe he has a fire-and-brimstone pastor whose sermons are a sufficient deterrent).

Again, I’m sure there is some number of videos on Pornhub that are illegal or unethical, but taking action without knowing how big a problem is (no matter the case) seems likely to inhibit one’s ability to respond effectively to address the issue without creating other problems. And that’s exactly what happened.

Jordan Valinsky, reporting for CNN Business:

The changes took the number of videos on the website from 13.5 million videos down to a little under 3 million. […]

"Due to the nature of our industry, people's preconceived notions of Pornhub's values and processes often differ from reality — but it is counterproductive to ignore the facts regarding a subject as serious as CSAM, " Pornhub said in a previous statement to CNN Business.

"We have zero tolerance for CSAM. Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating CSAM, and has instituted an industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community."

Pornhub sounds like they were scared for their life, and their reaction supports that assessment: they chose to go with the nuclear option. Rather than just hiring more moderators or looking into solutions like artificial intelligence to flag videos that could be against the rules, they removed nearly 80% of their content after being stiff armed by Kristof and the credit card networks.

Freedom of the press is important, so there’s not much we can do about reporting like this, other than dismiss it as flawed and take that into account when judging the credibility of future work from the journalists or publications involved. However, it’s clear that of the entities involved here, some of them are well overdue for some regulation, but Pornhub isn’t one of them. I hadn’t considered it much until this point, but it doesn’t take much attention to realize that credit card network companies weird enormous power, and they’ve just demonstrated that they’re willing to wield it to drive companies they don’t like out of business. The United States only has four major credit card networks (the aforementioned three, plus American Express), and while they’re independent companies, in a world where physical currency is becoming less and less relevant, it’s outrageous that four companies have gatekeeping roles over virtually ALL of the United States’ digital/electronic commerce.

Perhaps a lesser considered aspect of this move: it will cost lives. I don’t know how many, but I’m sure there are a number of people (mostly men ((see: the Coolidge effect)) but likely some women, as well) who have been refraining from hooking up with people, satiating their needs, consciously or unconsciously, by watching more porn. Getting rid of most of the biggest porn site’s best videos is going to leave those people a lot less satisfied, and more of them will go back to hooking up, likely spreading COVID in some cases. Granted, one on one encounters aren’t as risky massive church services or large thanksgiving gatherings, but this still a horribly timed move. At best, it demonstrates a lack of forethought; at worst, a lack of concern with the pandemic and a lack of respect for the lives of others, not only on the part of Pornhub for removing all the videos, but also on the part of the credit card networks and the New York Times journalist who started this snowball rolling down its hill, prudish Mr. Nicholas Kristof.

Mr. Kristof, if you don’t want to be seen as a prude, then don’t act like one. You are singlehandedly bringing about Pornhub’s downfall, for less than 200 confirmed instances of videos that break the rules. Seriously, go fuck yourself (in silence, without any porn).

Apple just released two new Pride edition Watch bands; a rainbow sport band and a more subtle Nike sport band that’s white with rainbow cutouts.

This is the first time Apple has released a multicolored sport band. I was curious how they managed to get the fluoroelastomer molds to produce a strap like this; turns out each band is handmade. Color me impressed.

You can pick one up here.

As if I needed a reason to hate either of them more than I already do.

Carole Baskin donating to @SenatorBurr's re-election campaign is the most "this week" development of this week.

Per a new @FEC filing: pic.twitter.com/LuKY4Lsoz6

— Dave Levinthal (@davelevinthal) April 14, 2020

I love this look for him.

I would all but guarantee that nobody reading this will ever need Apple’s newly released Mac Pro and its accompanying display. This is the type of science fiction-y stuff tech nerds drool over, and it’s a momentous moment in the history of technological advancements, so despite the fact that very, VERY few people actually need it, it’s just a really cool, mind numbingly powerful beast of a computer, and I want my readers to know that it exists and appreciate the marvel of computing that Apple has managed to pull off. It’s so crazy that I’ve opted to place this post under the “magical nonsense” category, in addition to the obviously applicable “technology” category.

This machine is truly groundbreaking. Just to put some things in perspective, most PCs these days have processors with two or four cores; in the Mac Pro, you can get up to twenty-eight. Most PCs shipping right now will have either two, four, eight, or sixteen gigabytes of RAM. The new Mac Pro? Up to 1,500 gigabytes of RAM. It’s hard to imagine anything this machine couldn’t handle with ease. The price is, of course, equally mind boggling: it starts at $5,999 and maxes out at $53,799.

The display that they’re selling alongside the new Mac Pro, the Pro Display XDR, is also extremely impressive. It blows pretty much all current displays out of the water when it comes to metrics like brightness, contrast, color accuracy, clarity, etc., including professional displays like those used by filmmakers that cost 8x the price.

Despite all the incredible things Apple has packed into these two products, they have gotten a lot of criticism for some of their decisions made in regards to the pricing of accessories, which I think are valid criticisms. The stand for the display is sold separately, and costs a whopping $999, which is inarguably nuts. The Mac Pro itself has the option of shipping with stainless steel feet or wheels, and if you opt for the wheels, it’ll cost you an additional $399, which is laughable. However, I don’t think it matters too much overall; this whole product is almost just an instance of Apple showing off, and very pricy accessories grab more attention; given the unbelievable machine they've created, I think we should let them show off a bit.

Good news: Kik is shutting down. If you don’t know what Kik is, all you need to know is that it’s a messaging app that was slightly popular a few years ago but is now used by practically nobody. You may be asking, “But Broc, why does this matter at all, let alone constitute good news?” Let me explain.

Now, I don’t know why this is the case, but for some reason there are a ton of trolls, bots, and pic collectors on the Grindr app (if you’re unfamiliar with Grindr, it’s an app for connoisseurs of freshly ground coffee). These trolls, bots, and pic collectors can sometimes be sneaky, but 99 times out of 100, they’re very easy to spot because they follow the same general conversation pattern, and that’s because they’re there to accomplish a task: to get you to waste your time and money on one of their pitiful scam websites where they’re promoting whatever happens to be the sketchy service du jour—one day it might be an incredible new male enhancement product, the next it could be a dating service for all of the sexy MILFs in your town who “NEED SEX NOW.” Very clickbait-y, you know the type.

Conversations with these accounts generally go like this: they introduce themselves with some funny remark or otherwise interesting statement, and then send you just enough slightly blurry photos of a decently attractive person to gain your confidence. They’ll likely also ask you to send photos of yourself in return—the images they ask for range from seemingly benign (like a photo of your face) to more private (like photos of your.. um, beans). This is when it goes south: after collecting your photos (or before, if you refuse to send any) they proceed to feed you some bullshit excuse about how the app doesn’t seem to be working properly, so that you’ll think it’s reasonable when, a few moments later, they ask you to use the Kik app to communicate with them instead. Now, Grindr can be pretty buggy at times, and users often decide to communicate on other platforms (like iMessage or Snapchat) to avoid the bugs, so to someone who isn’t familiar with the scams these trolls are trying to pull, this may seem like a reasonable request.

You’re probably wondering why they bother with Kik—it’s a fair question. The only apparent reason for this is that, to their credit, Grindr has far more stringent terms than Kik which dictate what users are allowed to send to each other, so while sending links on Grindr would quickly result in their account being banned, sending those links doesn’t cause a fuss on Kik.

You may also wonder why they would want to collect photos from you: the more photos of attractive people they collect, the more photos of attractive people they have to lure in new victims. This is especially problematic because they’re redistributing sensitive photos without permission. By chance, it’s possible that a bot may even send you photos of your OWN beans; I can tell you from personal experience that this is not a fun time, because you know that if they’ve accidentally made it back to you, plenty of other people have seen and been taking credit for that photo of your beautiful beans along the way, and aside from making you feel violated, it’s just not fair to take credit for work that isn’t your own.

This annoyance isn’t Kik’s fault, but it’s satisfying nonetheless that it will soon be brought to a grinding halt. It’s been a long time coming, but I’m glad that the next time one of these fake profiles asks me to message them on Kik, I can inform them that Kik no longer exists, and tell them to promptly go grow some beans of their own.

UPDATE: 10/20/19, 17:30;

Kik has announced that they will not be shutting down their messaging service as a result of an acquisition by MediaLab. So, damn. Hopefully the new management team will pull through on their promises to fight spam, and make it harder for people to be taken advantage of on their platform.

The United States Treasury has two requirements for putting someone’s image on U.S. currency:

1. The individual must have a well known place in American history.

2. The individual must be deceased.

Given that Taylor Swift has had one of the most successful musical careers ever, the first requirement has clearly been satisfied. In regards to the second requirement — we all know that she can’t come to the phone right now, and we all know why.

I believe this memorialization of the old Taylor is appropriate. I made this near the beginning of the reputation era, and I’m still quite proud of it.

To be sure, there was a certain amount of situational homosexuality that occurred among the all-male crews of buccaneer ships back in the golden age of piracy, much like there is in modern-day prisons and professional wrestling organizations. But it's not as though those super grizzled, hyper-masculine throat-slitting machines engaged in same-sex coupling, right? It's a fiercely divisive subject even today, so 400 years ago it must have been absolute insanity to even suggest two men getting married, much less two pirates.

On the contrary, some historians claim that the original "Pirates of the Caribbean" (pirate crews who docked, traded, and intermittently lived in port towns in the West Indies during the 17th century) had entire communities where homosexual couples were considered perfectly acceptable.

You see, pirates had a form of civil partnership called matelotage, a marriage-like institution wherein two male pirates shared all of their ... OK, we need to think of another word for "booty" here -- let's go with "loot." Additionally, each would name the other as his sole inheritor. While this makes a good I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry kind of economic sense, in as much as it was essentially the only kind of financial security a pirate could hope for, some commentators argue that these relationships were also romantic in nature, possibly because matelots could routinely be observed having sex with each other.

Dudes have always been boning each other, but this is fascinating and definitely more progressive than I would have expected for 14th century seafarers. These arrangements between matelots makes you consider the origins of the stereotypically pirate-y word “matey.”

This story is basically an erotica-style alternate ending for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I generally don’t care for fan fiction at all—I think it’s a very overrated medium. I read this because I wanted a laugh and I love the guy who wrote it (Andrew Sims, a longtime leader of the Harry Potter fandom and host of MuggleCast, one of my favorite podcasts), and for better or for worse, it seems more like canon than the actual ending of CC. It is undeniably smutty at some points (hey, if that’s what you’re into, go for it), but when it’s not being E.L. James-y, it’s actually pretty charming.