As of today, many apps that are submitted for approval to be distributed through Apple’s App Store are required to support a new feature called Sign In With Apple. This is great news for you!

If you’re not familiar, Sign In With Apple is an excellent, user focused feature designed to make it easier to sign in to apps while protecting your privacy. Put simply, it’s a button that will allow you to quickly sign up for/sign in to apps with just a few taps, without having to remember a password or fill out long forms. It gives the application a very limited amount of information about you, including only a name (which you can change if you like) and an email address (which you can opt to disguise in case might later want to be able to easily revoke the app’s ability to email you).

As mentioned above, starting today, all apps that support other third party log in buttons — like the Facebook and Google sign in buttons — are now required to support Sign In With Apple as well, guaranteeing that users have a more private and secure alternative that affords them the same level of convenience. As it stands, Facebook and Google’s buttons are harmful because they set up a link between the tech giants and the app or website you’re using them to sign in to, creating a tunnel for an unfettered flow of your personal information between those entities and the apps, which can be used for targeted advertising and other user hostile practices.

If you have an Apple product*, I would strongly encourage you to start using Sign In With Apple. Not only is it safer and more private than the other third party sign in buttons, but it’s faster too, because you authenticate with Touch ID or Face ID rather than having to type in your Facebook or Google password with their respective sign in buttons.

If you ever need to manage the apps that you let use Sign In With Apple, you can do so on an iPhone or iPad by going to Settings → (Your Name) → Password & Security. You can also do this on a Mac under System Preferences → Apple ID → Password & Security, or on the Apple ID website.

*Note: if you haven’t already, you must first enable two-factor authentication to use Sign In With Apple. To do so on a iPhone or iPad, go to Settings → (Your Name) → Password & Security.

Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, and Michael Schwirtz, reporting for The New York Times:

American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops […]

Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.

The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step

We don’t need to make this about Obama, but can you imagine what would Republicans would (rightfully) be saying if they found out he’d known for months that Russia was paying the Taliban to kill American troops and did nothing to stop it? Where is the outrage?

There is no way to justify this. It is treason. It warrants impeachment, removal from office, and prosecution.

We’ve known that Trump doesn’t actually care about our servicemen and women (hail President Bone Spurs), but this is the most shocking and confronting example yet. He’s already been losing a ton of support within the military (if you know a service member, ask them what they think of Trump right now), and it could be a real turning point for many civilians in Trump’s base who genuinely care about supporting our troops.

Anyone who still supports Donald Trump doesn’t support our troops, they spit on their graves. After this, “Trump supporter” and “patriot” are mutually exclusive categories. Anyone still making excuses for this treasonous president should be ashamed of themselves, but they won’t be, because they’ve convinced themselves that maintaining the status quo of a white, racist, homophobic, xenophobic America led by an orange man with thirty or so rape accusations is of greater importance than the lives of those sworn to defend our nation and our constitution.

As we did last year, we’ll cover this up by platform/topic:

tvOS:

• They didn’t really say much about tvOS itself., but they did show off some cool new home features that work with Apple TV.

watchOS:

• The sleep tracking features look pretty nice (thought a bit overdue). You have to manually enable sleep mode every night, so that’s a bummer. Hopefully it’ll gain the ability to detect when you’re sleeping even if you forget.

• The new chronograph face is slick.

• For some reason, they removed Force Touch.

iOS:

•  The new home screen widgets and app library are all that I’d hoped for. I’m very excited for these changed, and they’ve breathed new life into my iPhone.

• The translate app is really neat, I just wish it supported more languages. I’m curious how well it could possibly work, given the shitty state of dictation and Siri.

• The Back Tap Accessibility feature is great.

• I’m very happy that the Siri UI is now less obtrusive. It makes using Siri feel better, even if she hasn’t improved in regards to speech recognition or intelligence.

• Incoming calls no longer hijack the entire screen. 🙌🏼

• The updates for the Messages app will be very nice once everyone’s upgraded. The ability to pin conversations is great, and the new controls and features within group messages will be great (name tagging and in line message threads!).

• We did get some good privacy features. The privacy cards in the App Store will be great, if people actually look at them (I know I will). It’s also really cool that you can now share a general location with an app rather than your precise location. I’m glad you can now restrict which specific photos in your photo library you give apps access to, rather than all or nothing.

• The Music app did get a refresh, but I’m not actually sure that it’s better. The library screen is unchanged.

• The Weather app now incorporates features from Dark Sky, a third party weather app that Apple acquired months ago. They’re using Dark Sky’s minute by minute precipitation predictions, and I’m hoping they incorporate precipitation notifications as well.

• No lockable photo album.

• No improvements to Siri’s speech recognition or intelligence.

• No updated Cash card.

iPadOS:

• The handwriting recognition is cool, and in my experience so far, it works very well.

• The lack of widget options on the iPad home screen is surprising and a little disappointing.

macOS:

• It’s nice that a lot of the iOS messages features are making their way to the Mac after several years.

• I’m glad control center is finally making an appearance.

• Is it just me, or do the redesigned buttons and apps look a lot more finger-friendly? It’s also interesting that most of the screenshots on the macOS Big Sur preview site lack cursors, except for two: in one of those it’s a standard arrow pointer, in the other, it’s a large translucent circle similar to the new iPadOS cursor. I’m not suggesting that they’re merging the platforms, but Apple recently realized that adding cursor support for the iPad didn’t take away from its standing as a touch-first device. I think they’re realizing that the opposite is true for the Mac: adding touch support doesn’t change the device’s nature, it just adds a bit of usability that’s really nice for some use cases.

  Apple Silicon:

• Apple announced that they’re going to start building their own processors for the Mac rather than using Intel processors. Apple’s A12Z chip used in the new iPad Pro (which is nearly identical to the two year old A12X) was able to run macOS and do some really heavy duty lifting without breaking a sweat. Just imagine what a custom Apple chip designed to run macOS will be able to do.

Privacy

• Safari tracking reports are very handy. The number of trackers that Safari has been able to identify and block in the two days I’ve been using iOS 14/iPadOS 14/macOS Big Sur are staggering. I hope people will look at these reports and question the long list of companies who are trying to follow them around the internet. (A quick example from my report: Safari blocked 44 trackers from Olive Garden’s website.)

• When an app wants to access your Local Network to find out what other devices are around you, a permission request will now pop up. Apps can use that information to learn the IP addresses of the devices (other phones, computers, TVs, routers, etc.) that belong to you and others you interact with so that they can send frighteningly specific targeted ads to those devices. There’s almost no reason to grant this permission: unless the app asking for it is an app that facilitates setup of other internet connected devices (like smart light bulbs, for example), you should say no. Amazon? No. Instagram? Nope. YouTube? Definitely not. Facebook? Hell no. Get in the habit of smashing that “don’t allow” button.

• Now, when an app accesses your clipboard, a little message pops up at the top to let you know. At first this seemed unnecessary to me, but the feature quickly outed TikTok for snooping on users (we’ve known that TikTok is a Chinese surveillance instrument — even the Navy and Army have banned the use of TikTok — I don’t know why anyone trusts them) by constantly checking to see what they had in their clipboard, regardless of whether they copied it from the TikTok app or not. They claimed it was to prevent spam (haha), and immediately disabled that function.

• Small dots now show up at the top of the screen to indicate when the microphone (orange dot) and camera (green dot) are being accessed. In time, I’m sure this will out a few apps, as well.

I’m very excited after this WWDC. I know I said I wasn’t particularly hyped up, but man, Apple didn’t disappoint this year. I can’t wait for more people to get their hands on the updates they announced; I’m having a ball with them.

Today, Verizon joined the credit card game by launching their Verizon Visa card.

Seriously, who the hell asked for this? It’s an obvious rip off of Apple Card (which was already a bad move, in my opinion), but from a company who is infinitely worse at customer service. And the APR starts at 21.74%. No thank you.

I’m not the first to point this out, but with watchOS 7, Apple decided to remove Force Touch from the Apple Watch. I’ve been using watchOS 7 for a little more than 24 hours, and I already miss Force Touch a lot.

The Apple Watch was the first device to feature a pressure sensitive touch option, and it made a lot of sense. The display is so tiny that Force Touch was able to solve a lot of problems by effectively doubling the screen real estate for on screen controls. I used it all the time: editing my watch faces, clearing notifications quickly, accessing controls in apps like messages and calendar; the list goes on. I don’t know why on earth they would remove support for it on devices that have hardware dedicated to it, but it’s safe to assume that future models wont have it (I’m really not okay with this, but maybe I’ll be able to make peace with it if it allows them to make the watch noticeably thinner or markedly improve battery life).

Some people have suggested that Force Touch wasn’t widely used on the Apple Watch, but I disagree. I think nearly everyone used it: it was the only way to change your watch face from the watch or clear all your notifications at once. People who say otherwise are likely associating Force Touch too closely with 3D Touch (basically the same thing, they just called it something different for the iPhone). The argument is that not enough people used them because they were difficult to discover, but there’s a diction between 3D Touch and Force Touch and I think that distinction matters: 3D Touch enabled neat shortcuts and features but was ultimately superfluous and unnecessary for navigating the iPhone, but Force Touch enabled some very important functions that couldn’t be accessed otherwise and was nearly essential for navigating the Apple Watch.

On Saturday, Donald Trump had his first campaign rally since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Before it even began, it was shrouded in controversy for a multitude of reasons. First of all, it’s pretty fucking stupid to plan a rally with tens of thousands of people in close proximity in the middle of a highly infectious global pandemic in a state where new cases are rising. Of course, the Trump administration’s response the COVID-19 has mostly been to ignore it, so this isn’t surprising. Secondly, they planned the administration on June 19th, a holiday that has been largely ignored, but which celebrates freedom by commemorating the day when slaves in Texas learned of their emancipation. They also planned the rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you don’t know anything about Tulsa, start here:

In the early 20th century, Tulsa was home to the "Black Wall Street", one of the most prosperous Black communities in the United States at the time. Located in the Greenwood neighborhood, it was the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre; it has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history", in which mobs of white Tulsans killed black Tulsans, looted and robbed the black community, and burned down homes and businesses. Sixteen hours of rioting on May 31 and June 1, 1921, was ended only when National Guardsmen were brought in by the Governor. An official report later claimed that 23 Black and 16 white citizens were killed, but other estimates suggest as many as 300 people died, most of them Black. Over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries, and an estimated 10,000 Black people were left homeless as 35 city blocks, composed of 1,256 residences, were destroyed by fire. Property damage was estimated at $1.8 million. Efforts to obtain reparations for survivors of the violence have been unsuccessful, but the events were re-examined by the city and state in the early 21st century, acknowledging the terrible actions that had taken place.

As per usual, Trump’s campaign is engaging is cruel, race baiting division tactics by holding a rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth. Oklahoma is a state Trump won by 36 points: there was absolutely no legitimate political reason for him to hold a rally here, this was done entirely out of malice, and his campaign clearly thought they could pass it off as a coincidence. They did eventually conceded to reschedule the rally for June 20th after being criticized for the decision.

On Twitter, the Trump campaign bragged about having given out over a million tickets, and many users pointed out that if that many Trump fans showed up, roughly 980,000 ticket holders we be stuck outside during the event because the venue, the Bank of Oklahoma Center arena, only seats about 20,000 people.

The time for the rally came, 1,000,000 fans however, did not. Not only did a million people not show up, they didn’t even get close to 20,000, with nearly the entire upper bowl of the BOK arena center completely vacant. As reported by The Hill, the Tulsa Fire Department has announced that roughly 6,000 people (supporters, event staff, paid actors, security, etc.) attended the event in total. Not a huge number when you consider how much Trump hyped the event up. It’s also been hilariously pointed out that even The Wiggles managed to sell out this venue, while Trump could hardly reach 33% capacity giving away free tickets.

Trump tweeted photos of the event that were taken from angles clearly intended to highlight the crowd, but even in his own photos, you can see the empty seats in the upper bowl.

Here’s a more honest view:

The Trump campaign said recently that over one million tickets were requested for the Tulsa rally, the first rally in months due to covid-19.

Trump proclaimed that there wouldn’t be an empty seat.

I’ll let this video inside the rally speak for itself. pic.twitter.com/se6er6j49m

— Elizabeth Thomas (@lizzkatherine_) June 20, 2020

I’m sure Brad Parscale and Tucker Carlson will come up with all sorts of crazy reasons why the event’s attendance was so low. They’re already blaming it on the coronavirus and liberal protestors blocking the entrances, but let’s consider that for a second. A bunch of Trump supporters don’t even believe in the coronavirus, and the ones who do have made it well known that they aren’t very worried about it. Also, there probably would’ve been crowds outside if these mythical protesters were preventing people from entering the BOK Center, but there weren’t. In fact, there were so few people outside that they canceled the address Trump had planned to give for all the fans who wouldn’t be able to get in once the venue reached capacity.

Trump claims to have a silent majority, but a more more accurate phrase may be “invisible majority“.

We’re adding a point to our COVID-19 scoreboard based on the fact that our president was stupid and arrogant enough to have a rally during a pandemic.

🇺🇸 United States: 0

🦠 COVID-19: 16

UPDATED: 7/9/20, 19:07

Apple’s WWDC kicks off on Monday, so it’s time for our annual wish list and predictions! This is always a fun time for the Apple nerds out there, and a much bigger deal for most regular people than they realize. Here are my thoughts about this year’s keynote, which is set for Monday, June 22nd, at 10AM (pacific time).

Wish List:

• Fix the atrocious Apple Music app. Get rid of the useless Browse, For You, and Radio tabs at the bottom, and replace them with Playlists, Artists, and Albums. Work in better sorting. Streamline the search feature. [recycled from last year’s list]

• It is HIGH TIME for some Siri improvements. We have been waiting and watching for years, every year expecting this to be the keynote where Apple rolls out a badass new Siri. They’ve teased us a few times with things like Siri suggestions and other minor voice improvements, but at the end of the day, I don’t give a shit about having Siri tell me hockey scores.  I’m talking Iron Man-style, JARVIS-level intelligence. I know that Apple is behind the curve on this as a result of their focus on privacy, but they’ve gotta figure out a way to at least get Siri up to speed with the Google Assistant. [recycled from last year’s list]

  Please. Please, please. Puhleeeaaaazeee. PLEASE. PLEASE make this the year that Siri gets a major boost. I would honestly be completely content, nay, happy, if this were the only change they announce this year. It’s so overdue. Siri was the first voice assistant on the scene, and now she’s in last place for speed, accuracy, and general capabilities. There’s so much potential here to make a truly intelligent voice assistant that would really set the iPhone apart from its competitors.

• I doubt Apple will ever implement this because it would be de facto acknowledging the fact that people use their iPhones to take nudes, but a locked photo album is also overdue.

• New privacy features are always welcome. They didn’t disappoint last year, but a VPN or a social network would still be great.

• iPadOS 14 has the potential to send my MacBook packing, if it’s upgraded as it deserves to be. The iPad Pro Magic Keyboard already has me reaching for my iPad more than I reach for my Mac, but there are some relatively basic everyday workflows (word processing, desktop class browsing, etc.) that are still just easier on the Mac. If they can use iPadOS 14 to make some of those processes even marginally easier, it will make the iPad a much more powerful platform and a truly viable option for people in the market for a new laptop.

• In my opinion, macOS just deserves some bug fixes and attention to detail.

• As I mentioned in my Apple Card review, I would really like for them to expand the capability of the Cash card to function more like a typical checking account.

• I would really like for them to revamp the Apple Watch UI in a meaningful way, and finally give the side button a distinct, useful role in controlling the device. [recycled from last year’s list]

Predictions

• Some people are speculating that we’ll see some new hardware at this year’s keynote. It wouldn’t surprise me to see an upgraded iMac, but I’m not holding my breath for anything brand new like the rumored, tile-like tracking devices (supposedly to be named “AirTags”).

• I predict that Apple will, once again, disappoint me by leaving the Music app practically untouched. [recycled from last year’s list]

• It seems like this may be the year that iOS finally allows for some basic widgets to be permanently affixed on the home screen, and a moderate rethinking of how the home screen functions.

• I feel sure that we’ll see the Apple Watch move more into the category of health/fitness device. Sleep tracking, finally?

• This isn’t an original prediction by any means, but it seems clear that Apple will announce that they’re moving on from using Intel processors in the Mac and begin the transition to their own, Apple designed ARM chips.

I said this last year as well, but this WWDC doesn’t feel particularly exciting. Maybe it’s because so much else is going on in the world, or maybe it’s because Apple’s most exciting platforms are reaching maturity and are now only getting incremental software updates. In any case, lower expectations going in means that there’s a higher likelihood of them surprising us with cool new stuff.

Ashley Cullins, reporting for The Hollywood Reporter:

Tucker Carlson doesn't have an obligation to investigate the truth of statements before making them on his show, and his audience doesn't expect him to report facts, a lawyer for Fox News told a New York federal judge on Wednesday. […]

Fox News' attorney Erin Murphy argued that […] a reasonable viewer would know [Carlson’s] show offers "provocative things that will help [them] think harder," as opposed to straight news.

"What we’re talking about here, it’s not the front page of The New York Times," said Murphy. “It’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, which is a commentary show.”

It’s always fun to see lawyers forced into corners where the safest legal route is to acknowledge the ugly truths about the companies they work for.

Sounds like Trump is gonna have to make a hard pivot to OANN, now that his longtime favorite network has more or less admitted to serving up fake news.

The final episode of “Defending Jacob”, one of the latest TV+ shows, was released a few weeks ago. If you’re unfamiliar with the premise, Apple describes it as follows:

[The] series unfolds around a shocking crime that rocks a small Massachusetts town and one family in particular, forcing an assistant district attorney to choose between his sworn duty to uphold justice and his unconditional love for his son.

I really enjoyed the show. I found it very engaging, and each week I found myself looking forward to the next episode being released. The story itself was well written, and the show was very well produced.

The cast was terrific. There’s absolutely nothing not to love about Chris Evans. I thought Jaeden Martell’s performance was particularly strong, and he really nailed portraying a likable but reserved character with depth and conviction (poor choice of words). Michelle Dockery’s character felt a little too scripted in the first episode, but her performance soon felt every bit as genuine as her co-stars. And Cherry Jones was brilliant, as usual.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I would definitely recommend you check it out.

Spoiler Warning ⚠️

I’m not a huge fan of ambiguous endings, but speculation can be fun. There are two characters who can be reasonably suspected of being the murderer. Jacob sort of confessed but he was clearly scared and arguably under duress, so who’s to say if he was telling the truth? Leonard Patz absolutely confessed, but he was absolutely under duress, so again, who’s to say he was telling the truth?

There’s plenty incriminating evidence to suggest that Jacob is guilty, most of all the story he posted on “The Cut Up Room”. But as Joanna points out, the story he wrote didn’t have any details that weren’t already public knowledge: you wouldn’t have to have been the murderer to write the story, just a bit twisted in the head, maybe as a result of having been bullied by the kid who was killed. I didn’t find the whole knife debacle incriminating — plenty of teenage boys have knives, in the south at least — but Jacob’s fingerprint on Ben’s sweater was a different story. It isn’t proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but it certainly doesn’t look good. There’s not too much left to discuss in Jacob’s case, because they devoted eight episodes to it.

However, there’s a lot of room for further speculation in the case of Leonard Patz. There is evidence to suggest that he killed Ben, and the fact that he himself was murdered doesn’t exculpate him. There’s no explanation of why he had photos of Ben on his phone. His proximity to the scene of the crime on the morning of Ben’s murder is also difficult to write off. Not to mention that there’s a record of Patz being attracted to adolescent guys who fit the same physical profile as Ben Rifkin. Of course, it could’ve been a coincidence that Ben was killed in the park where Leonard walks in the mornings, and there’s no record of Leonard being aggressive or dangerous towards Matt McGrath (Leonard’s only “victim”*). It’s also worth pointing out that the photos Leonard had of Ben weren’t crime scene photos — as with the story Jacob wrote, while it doesn’t look good, you wouldn’t have to have been the murderer to have those photos — they easily could’ve been images Ben had posted on social media. In all honesty, I felt bad for Leonard pretty much the entire time because I truly don’t think he killed Ben, and if that’s the case, then he was harassed, scapegoated, defamed, and brutally murdered because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, his only crime having been copping a feel of a consenting fifteen year old’s package through his shorts.

All in all, the story was certainly thought provoking. I don’t really see how there could be a second season, unless they want to pull Jacob out of his coma (yes, it literally ends with him in a coma; very soap opera-y) and do the whole thing again with a different murder victim (which they very nearly repeated in this season).

*I use quotes around the word “victim” in this sentence not because I question the legitimacy of Matt McGrath’s accusation against Leonard Patz, but because I don’t consider him a victim, and I don’t think he considers himself a victim, either. Matt was clearly sexually active and knew what was going on, and he solicited a transaction with Leonard. That doesn’t make it legal — the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16 and Matt was 15 at the time — but still, it’s hard for me to see Matt as a victim when he had the agency to make Leonard an offer in the first place.

Ali Breland, reporting for Mother Jones:

The fact that the upside red triangle has been an explicit piece of deadly Nazi iconography for seven decades hasn’t deterred Trump’s 2020 campaign from using them in Facebook ads. This week, the campaign started running a series of ads, disparaging Antifa demonstrators and featuring a large, bright red, upside-down triangle. Antifa, is of course, short for anti-fascist. The red triangle was sewn on uniforms of people interned in concentration camps, including anti-fascist political prisoners. Millions of Soviet and Western anti-fascist soldiers died defeating Nazism, including hundreds of thousands of Americans.

“Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem. They are DESTROYING our cities and rioting—it’s absolute madness,” reads one 2020 Trump ad featuring the symbol.

In case you don’t understand the parallels, refer to this chart used by the Third Reich. It specifies which badges should be afixed to the uniforms of concentration camp prisoners to denote the nature of their crimes against the reich. For those of you who haven’t recently brushed up on your German history and German language skills, the word “politisch” in the first column of the chart above the red symbols refers to political prisoners. Political prisoners included a variety of people, including anti-fascists, socialists, communists, and others who were critical of Hitler’s regime.

Image from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, available at https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/classification-system-in-nazi-concentration-camps

The President of the United States is campaigning for reelection using a Nazi concentration camp symbol.

Nazis used the red triangle to mark political prisoners and people who rescued Jews.

Trump & the RNC are using it to smear millions of protestors.

Their masks are off. pic.twitter.com/UzmzDaRBup

— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) June 18, 2020

The similarities are not subtle. The Trump campaign is growing more brazen in their fascism by the day.

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said the company “removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate. Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”

In the name of giving credit where it’s due, this is one rare example of Facebook doing the right thing by removing the ads. (You should still #deletefacebook, though.) It’s worth pointing out that Facebook’s decision to remove these ads highlights just how egregious they were, given Facebook’s tendency to let Trump get away with things.

See also: my thesis paper, which explores the experiences of men who bore the pink triangle in Nazi concentration camps.

Stacey who has been a cop for 15 yrs went to @McDonalds She paid for it in advance and this is how she gets treated for being a cop😢😡 Come on America. We are better than this. pic.twitter.com/IcudsNfVLY

— 🌷🇺🇸Ann🇺🇸🌷🐇 (@tkag2020_ann) June 17, 2020

If a gun wielding police officer can have this much anxiety over whether or not they‘ll be able to defend themselves against a McMuffin that may have been spat in without provocation, just imagine how nervous black people must feel when they’re pulled over by a gun wielding cop that may execute them without provocation.

If you’re a police officer and your response to the current state of affairs in this country is to seek pity on social media by (a) posting a video of yourself crying over your McDonald’s drive thru experience and asking people to be nicer to you, or (b) posting a video announcing that you’re resigning because you can’t take a little bit of scrutiny to make sure you don’t abuse innocent black people, the I would suspect that lack empathy to such an absurd degree that a psychiatrist would probably like to study you. It goes without saying that you have no business carrying a badge, much less a firearm. You should resign.

If you’re not a police officer and your response to the current state of affairs is to flock to social media to share and boost videos like the ones above, and spread other nonsense about how “it’s just a few bad apples” and “more white people are killed by police than black people” you’re either openly racist, or you’re too ignorant to realize that you’re a racist. We have established that there is a deep, systemic problem with policing in America, and more people have realized that fact in the past few weeks than ever before. Just because you’ve always “backed the blue” before doesn’t mean it’s too late to open your eyes to the reality that is the abusive nature of policing in the United States.

Ed Kilgore, reporting for The Intelligencer:

In a sweeping and consequential 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the workplace anti-discrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banning discrimination on grounds of sex protect LGBTQ employees.

In Bostock v. Clayton County, Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for himself, Chief Justice Roberts, and the Court’s four liberals (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan).

From the opinion penned by Gorsuch:

Sometimes small gestures can have unexpected consequences. Major initiatives practically guarantee them. In our time, few pieces of federal legislation rank in significance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There, in Title VII, Congress outlawed discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.

Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s con-sequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.

Few facts are needed to appreciate the legal question we face. Each of the three cases before us started the same way: An employer fired a long-time employee shortly after the employee revealed that he or she is homosexual or transgender—and allegedly for no reason other than the employee’s homosexuality or transgender status.

Gerald Bostock worked for Clayton County, Georgia, as achild welfare advocate. Under his leadership, the county won national awards for its work. After a decade with the county, Mr. Bostock began participating in a gay recreational softball league. Not long after that, influential members of the community allegedly made disparaging comments about Mr. Bostock’s sexual orientation and participation in the league. Soon, he was fired for conduct “unbecoming” a county employee.

Donald Zarda worked as a skydiving instructor at Altitude Express in New York. After several seasons with the company, Mr. Zarda mentioned that he was gay and, days later, was fired.

Aimee Stephens worked at R. G. & G. R. Harris Funeral Homes in Garden City, Michigan. When she got the job, Ms. Stephens presented as a male. But two years into her service with the company, she began treatment for despair and loneliness. Ultimately, clinicians diagnosed her with gender dysphoria and recommended that she begin living as a woman. In her sixth year with the company, Ms. Stephens wrote a letter to her employer explaining that she planned to “live and work full-time as a woman” after she returned from an upcoming vacation. The funeral home fired her before she left, telling her “this is not going to work out.”

[…]

Some of those who supported adding language to Title VII to ban sex discrimination may have hoped it would derail the entire Civil Rights Act. Yet, contrary to those intentions, the bill became law. Since then, Title VII’s effects have unfolded with far-reaching consequences, some likely beyond what many in Congress or elsewhere expected. But none of this helps decide today’s cases. Ours is a s-ciety of written laws. Judges are not free to overlook plain statutory commands on the strength of nothing more than suppositions about intentions or guesswork about expectations. In Title VII, Congress adopted broad language making it illegal for an employer to rely on an employee’s sex when deciding to fire that employee. We do not hesitate to recognize today a necessary consequence of that legislative choice: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law.

This is a truly historic ruling, and I hope everyone can appreciate the gravity of this moment, particularly for those of us who find ourselves attracted to members of the same sex, as well as others who don’t identify as the gender associated with their biological sex.

I’m particularly glad to see Justice Gorsuch on the right side of history. I’d imagine his ruling feels like as much of a slap in the face to conservative religious bigots and homophobic Trump supporters as it feels like an unexpected, resounding victory for those fighting for equality under the law.

For your records: dissenting justices include three straight men, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh (who still likes beer).

UPDATED: 06/15/20, 17:00

Judd Legum in Popular Information:

Several companies that have publicly embraced the Black Lives Matter movement are among the largest corporate contributors to [shitbag racist] Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR).

Quick digression: it’s absolutely rich that one of our nation’s premier shitbag racist senators has the last name “Cotton”.

Cotton has positioned himself to the right of Trump on criminal justice issues. He was one of a handful of Senators to oppose the First Step Act, a modest piece of bipartisan legislation aimed at narrowing racial disparities in federal sentencing. […] The United States has the world's largest — and disproportionately Black — prison population. But Cotton argues America has an "under-incarceration problem."

Time and again, Cotton has shown little regard for Black Americans. He has a 6% rating from the NAACP. And yet, some of the corporations embracing the Black Lives Matter protests in U.S. cities have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Cotton's campaigns.

The list of corporations and their contributions to Cotton:

• Bank of America — $15,000

• Wells Fargo — $15,000

• Walmart — $18,500

• AT&T — $21,000

• Coca Cola — $2,500

• PriceWaterhouseCoopers — $22,500

Do with that information what you will, discerning readers.

Whether it’s Black Lives Matter, Gay Pride, or some other social cause, it’s time that we start making companies put their money where their mouths are. It would be regressive for us to allow them to keep up this habit of only caring when they can make a PR move for social clout.

Celebrating #Pride with the LGBTQ+ community and their allies this month and every month 🌈 ⁣
(🎨: by @ramzymasri) pic.twitter.com/pENmTaQB0h

— Nickelodeon (@Nickelodeon) June 13, 2020

This wasn’t really that surprising.

Annie Linskey and Josh Dawsey, reporting for The Washington Post:

Seeking a city willing to allow a large-scale event amid the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans have tentatively settled on Jacksonville, Fla. […]

The highly unusual decision to seek an alternative location for the convention’s marquee events […] stems from Trump’s desire to accept his party’s nomination before an enormous crowd. […]

“I don’t want to be sitting in a place that’s 50 percent empty,” Trump told Gov. Roy Cooper (D) late last month in a phone conversation about the convention, according to two people familiar with the call, who, like others for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personal conversations and planning.

“We can’t do social distancing,” Trump said on the call.

As I said two weeks ago:

See ya. 👋🏼

Check out CopyrightBro’s COVID-19 coverage roundup.

The acronym “RINO” is short for “Republican In Name Only” and is a term used against Republican politicians who aren’t considered “Republican” enough by those who have bought into Trumpism. Lately, the list of accused RINOs has been growing at a staggering rate, with some very high profile names being added to the list.

The following is a list of Republican presidents, politicians, and officials who have denounced Donald Trump’s actions on the grounds of unconstitutional behavior and/or announced thier intentions to support Joe Biden in the 2020 general election.

• George H. W. Bush, President

• George W. Bush, President

• John McCain, Senator, 2008 Republican Presidential Candidate

• Mitt Romney, Senator, 2012 Republican Presidential Candidate

• Colin Powell, Bush Administration Secretary of State

• Jim Mattis, Trump Administration Secretary of Defense

• Mark Esper, Trump Administration Secretary of Defense

It takes an incredible amount of mental flexibility and a complete lack of moral rigidity to convince oneself that all of those people must have been brainwashed by the “lame stream media” and abandoned their long held conservative beliefs just to spite Donald Trump.

UPDATED: 06/08/20, 15:57

From Wikipedia:

The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.

The paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

Today it was discovered that Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington D.C. has renamed a section of 16th Street in front of the White House “Black Lives Matters Plaza” and had “BLACK LIVES MATTER” painted on the street in 50-foot letters.

The section of 16th street in front of the White House is now officially “Black Lives Matter Plaza”. pic.twitter.com/bbJgAYE35b

— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) June 5, 2020

#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/OQg6977n5r

— Muriel Bowser #StayHomeDC (@MurielBowser) June 5, 2020

I hope that paint is permanent; this street will become iconic.

I’m sure this is a real eyesore for Trump and his racist followers, but for anyone with a conscience, it’s a beautiful symbol of determination and hope.

✊🏼✊🏾✊🏿

From an opinion piece by Paul Krugman for The New York Times:

Donald Trump isn’t Richard Nixon — he’s much, much worse. And America 2020 isn’t America 1970: We’re a better nation in many ways, but our democracy is far more fragile thanks to the utter corruption of the Republican Party. […] The Trump-Nixon comparisons are obvious. Like Nixon, Trump has exploited white backlash for political gain. Like Nixon, Trump evidently believes that laws apply only to the little people.

These guys have a few interesting parallels, including their utilization of concepts and dog whistles like the “silent majority” and “law and order”, but their divergences are also stark and worthy of recognition.

Nixon, however, doesn’t seem to have been a coward. Amid mass demonstrations, he didn’t cower in the MAGAbunker, venturing out only after his minions had gassed peaceful protesters and driven them out of Lafayette Park. Instead, he went out to talk to protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. His behavior was a bit weird, but it wasn’t craven.

And while his political strategy was cynical and ruthless, Nixon was a smart, hard-working man who took the job of being president seriously.

His policy legacy was surprisingly positive — in particular, he did more than any other president, before or since, to protect the environment. Before Watergate took him down he was working on a plan to expand health insurance coverage that in many ways anticipated Obamacare.

A Republican who didn’t burn tires and thought people should have access to healthcare? Must’ve been a communist plant.

So Trump is no Nixon. And the country he’s trying to dominate — his favorite word — is very different, too. […]

A majority of Americans are willing to acknowledge that racism is real and see it as a problem, which represents huge moral progress. Nixon’s “silent majority” is now a noisy minority.

At the time, Nixon’s silent majority was basically code for “white people who all agree that they’re better than everyone else”. Now, Trump’s silent majority is actually a noisy minority of white people who pretend that they don’t think they’re better than everyone else, but make arguments in bad faith that prop up systemic racism and facilitate the preservation of the status quo that makes them feel comfortable because it affords them a disproportionate amount of social power.

But it’s a very dangerous minority. While we are, as I said, in many ways a better nation than we were, we’re also a nation in which the rule of law and democratic values are very much under siege.

At this point it’s alarmingly easy to see how the United States could follow the path already taken by Hungary, becoming a democracy on paper but an authoritarian one-party state in practice. And I’m not talking about the distant future: It could happen this year, if Trump wins re-election — or even, potentially, if he loses but refuses to accept the results.

Unfortunately, the way the electoral college is designed, it allows for the ballots of such a minority to have disproportional sway.

And the reason democracy is threatened in a way it never was under Nixon is not simply that Trump is a worse human being than Nixon ever was; it is the fact that he has so many enablers.

Trump’s authoritarian instincts, his admiration for and envy of foreign strongmen, his desire to militarize law enforcement have long been obvious.

To paraphrase the hosts of a political (though admittedly left-biased) podcast I enjoy, countries don’t typically enthusiastically adopt fascism on principle, it’s something they stumble into. The road to authoritarianism is a slippery slope, and I’m afraid that Lady Liberty has one foot on that slope and the other on a skateboard.

These things wouldn’t matter so much, however, if the Republican Party were still the institution it was in the 1970s — a big tent with room for a variety of views, represented in the Senate by many people with real principles. These were people willing to remove a president, even if he was a Republican, when he betrayed his oath of office.

The modern G.O.P., however, is nothing like that. Many of its leading figures — people like Senator Tom Cotton — are every bit as authoritarian and anti-democratic as Trump himself.

The rest, with hardly any exceptions, are loyal apparatchiks, intimidated into obedience by an angry base. This base gets its information from Fox and Facebook and basically lives in an alternate reality, in which protesters demonstrating peacefully against police brutality are actually a radical horde that will begin a violent insurrection any minute now.

The point is that today’s Republican Party wouldn’t object to a Trumpian power grab, even if it amounted to a military coup. On the contrary, the party would cheer it on.

Nixon isn’t the only unsavory politician with whom Trump has some unfortunate similarities.

UPDATED: 7/15/20, 23:43

Just days after the current Secretary of Defense Mark Esper spoke out against Trump’s handling of the protests in Washington D.C. and around the country, one of his predecessors has joined the fray, issuing a scathing criticism of Trump’s actions.

I have watched this week's unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words "Equal Justice Under Law" are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand — one that all of us should be able to get behind. […]

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that "America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat." […]

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that "The Nazi slogan for destroying us ... was 'Divide and Conquer.' Our American answer is 'In Union there is Strength.'" […]

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. […]

We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.

So I guess Jim Mattis has been brainwashed and is now a super lib? Or he’s bitter that Trump fired him? Stay tuned for the display of mental gymnastics by the GOP as they try to rationalize this one without considering that maybe Trump himself could be the problem.