How America's largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump's war on the media: https://t.co/iLVtKRQycL pic.twitter.com/dMdSGellH3
— Deadspin (@Deadspin) March 31, 2018
This is astounding.
”Fake news” is not when someone in the media reports something that exposes your wrongdoings, as the president believes. But when a media conglomerate issues the exact same, scripted narratives with obvious political bias to local news stations to present to their audiences as independent stories, that is undeniably fake news.
Check this list to find out which of your local news stations are owned by Sinclair, and then never tune into their programming again.
Police literally opening fire on the free press. pic.twitter.com/g8RMImZLGr
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) May 30, 2020
Another absolutely egregious attack (physical and metaphorical) on the free press. Is this what makes America great?
This desecration of the constitution, starting with the shredding of 1A protections for the press, will be Trump’s legacy. Not gaudy gold skyscrapers.
It’s astonishing to see the constitution crumble before our eyes. We are clearly living in a police state where the freedom of the press matters less and less each day. At first it was just the president trying to delegitimize the media, but clearly the sentiment that journalists and reporters are “enemies of the state” has permeated the system to the lowest levels, down from the very top.
These cops look like mindless, robotic thugs. You can see it in their blank stares as Jimenez is explaining to them his status as a member of the press. They don’t care that he’s trying to comply with them, they’ve decided that they want to arrest him (presumably for the crime of being in public during a protest while black) and don’t know how to respond because he didn’t resist their request. So they just waited, confused for a minute, and then proceeded to arrest him anyway. Atrocious.
God save America.
Admittedly, it’s a bit bush league to make fun of someone’s name. But I find it incredibly fitting that the presumably tiny-cocked, white police officer who brutally murdered a handcuffed black man is called “Chauvin”.
For additional context, note that Chauvin has been involved in three other police shootings (in each case, the person he was shooting at was a person of color), and he had a dozen complaints lodged against him during his time with the Minneapolis Police Department.
From The American Heritage Dictionary:
Chauvinism (n):
Fits like a glove.
Four days after his execution of George Floyd, Derek Chauvin has (finally) been arrested and (insufficiently) charged with third degree murder and manslaughter. As of yet, Chauvin’s three accomplices have not been arrested.
If you aren’t outraged and disgusted by the lack of justice in this case, you are no patriot.
....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020
Hiding Trump’s tweet with an explanation that he broke the rules by “glorifying violence” is is certainly a better response than adding a little “get the facts about…” label to his bile. Hopefully Twitter will have the balls to keep enforcing their rules more forcefully*; the past few days do seem like steps in the right direction.
Taylor Swift’s response was certainly a bit more pointed than Twitter’s, however. Enjoy:
After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) May 29, 2020
I wonder if this plus her statement about Marsha Blackburn has resulted in Trump now liking her music 50% less?
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Akilah Hughes, host of Crooked Media’s daily news podcast “What A Day”, had a powerful, raw monologue about racism and police brutality that pointed out the disturbing tendency our society has to consume footage of black people being murdered as if it’s entertainment.
I found Akilah’s monologue to be very moving, and I think it’s important that we listen to black voices on subjects that deal with racial injustice. Check out the episode for yourself.
Lori Klausutis was not murdered, and it is supremely cruel and selfish for Trump to reopen her family’s wounds on the national stage. Read her widower’s letter to Twitter CEO and founder, Jack Dorsey. He clearly is not interested in politics here, he just wants to protect his wife’s memory. Twitter has a responsibility to do the right thing here: as Timothy Klausutis’ letter points out, Trump violated the Twitter Rules and Terms of Service. They should delete the tweets. Not just mark them as misleading. Anything shy of removing the tweets entirely is complacency on Twitter’s part.
As pointed out on Daring Fireball, when right wing publications are calling Trump out for being “vile and unworthy of his office”, you know things are getting slimy.
Singer/songwriter/musician Jon Steingard, the lead vocalist for Christian band Hawk Nelson (known for popular songs like “Drops In The Ocean”) posted a well written message on his Instagram explaining how he came to the realization that he no longer believed in god.
This is not a post l ever thought that I would write, but now I feel like I really need to. I've agonized over whether to say this publicly, and if so, how to do it, but I now feel that it's less important howI do it, and more important thatI do it. So here goes.
After growing up in a Christian home, being a pastor's kid, playing and singing in a Christian band, and having the word "Christian" in front of most of the things in my life - I am now finding thatI no longer believe in God.
The last few words of that sentence were hard to write. I still find myself wanting to soften thatstatement by wording it differently or less specifically - but it wouldn't be as true.
The process of getting to that sentence has been several years in the making. It didn't happen overnight or all of a sudden. It's been more like pulling on the threads of a sweater, and one day discovering that there was no more sweater left.
I have been terrified to be honest about this publicly for quite some time, because of all that I thought I would lose. I'm still scared, but I'm writing about this now for a few reasons.
Firstly, I simply can no longer avoid it. Processing this quietly felt right when I simply had doubts, but once they solidified into a genuine point of view, it began to feel dishonest not to talk about it.
Secondly, I have had private conversations with trusted friends about my doubts, and discovered to my absolute shock that they are shared by nearly every close friend my age who also grew up in the church. I am stunned by the number of people in visible positions within Christian circles that feel the same way as I do. Like me, they fear losing everything if they're open about it. I hope that my openness and transparency can be an encouragement to them, and to you, if you feel the same.
Thirdly, I've got a whole lot less to lose now. The band isn't playing shows or making new music at the moment, and we've all found other work and careers to focus on for the time being. In order to make sure I'm able to keep providing for my family, that had to be the case before I could be totally honest and that fact is one of the issues I have with the church and Christian culture in general.
So if you're someone who follows me because of Hawk Nelson, and my involvement in Christian music, you are probably thinking, "Wait - were you lying to me this whole time? Were you just pretending to be a Christian? What about all those songs you wrote? Did you mean those?"
The short answer is that I was not lying. I did believe those things at the time. I may have been pulling on the threads of the sweater, but there was still some sweater left back then.
So what did this sweater-thread-pulling process look like then? Ok let's get into it.
I grew up in a loving Christian home. My dad was a pastor (and still is), and as far back as I can remember, life was all about the church. It was our Community. It was our family.
It feels important to point out that church wasn't something we went to once a week - it was more like something we came home to as often as possible, after bravely venturing out into "the world" when necessary. It wasn't a part of our life. It was our life.
When you grow up in a community that holds a shared belief, and that shared belief is so incredibly central to everything, you simply adopt it. Everyone I was close to believed in God, accepted Jesus into their hearts, prayed for signs and wonders, and participated in church, youth groups, conferences, and ministry. So I did too.
I became interested in music, began playing and singing on worship teams, and started leading worship at church and youth events. Even then I remember being uncomfortable with certain things. Praying in public always felt like some kind of weird performance art. Emotional cries such as "Holy Spirit come fill this place" always felt clunky and awkward leaving my lips. A youth conference I attended encouraged every teen to sign a pledge that they would "date Jesus" for a year. It felt manipulative and unsettling to me. I didn't sign it.
I figured I was overthinking all these things. This was the beginning of my doubt, and I began to develop the reflex to simply push it down, and soldier on. After all - everyone I knew and loved believed in God, Jesus, and the Bible. So I felt it must be true.
At the age of 20 I joined Hawk Nelson and began touring with the band. It was a blast. Our music wasn't overtly "Christian", but as time went on we became more outspoken about our faith in our music. To be fair, I was one of the loudest voices pushing for that shift, because I believed it would lead to more success in the Christian music world.
When I became the lead singer and main songwriter in 2012, this shift was fully realized. We went from singing songs like "Bring 'Em Out" to songs like "Drops In The Ocean". Google the lyrics - the difference is not subtle.
Even through this shift, there were still many things about Christian culture that made me uncomfortable. In fact, the list was growing. There were things that just didn't make sense to me.
If God is all loving, and all powerful, why is there evil in the world? Can he not do anything about it? Does he choose not to? Is the evil in the world a result of his desire to give us free will? Ok then, what about famine and disease and floods and all the suffering that isn't caused by humans and our free will? If God is loving, why does he send people to hell?
My whole life people always said, "You have to go back to what the Bible says".
I found, however, that consulting and discussing the Bible didn't answer my questions, it only amplified them.
Why does God seem so pissed off in most of the Old Testament, and then all of a sudden he's a loving father in the New Testament? Why does he say not to kill, but then instruct Israel to turn around and kill men women and children to take the promised land? Why does God let Job suffer horrible things just to.. win a bet with Satan?! Why does he tell Abraham to kill his son (more killing again) and then basically say "just kidding! That was a test." Why does Jesus have to die for our sins (more killing again)? If God can do anything, can't he forgive without someone dying? I mean, my parents taught me to forgive people - nobody dies in that scenario.
I was raised to believe that the Bible was the perfect Word of God. Sure, it was written by human beings, but those people were divinely inspired - and we can consider the words they wrote to be the Word of God.
I began to have questions and doubts about that. It seemed like there were a lot of contradictions in the Bible that didn't make sense. I don't want to get too deep in the weeds here so l'lI leave the details for another time. Suffice it to say that when I began to believe that the Bible was simply a book written by people as flawed and imperfect as I am that was when my belief in God truly began to unravel.
During a vacation to Mexico with my wife's family, I had a revealing conversation with my father-in-law, who is also a pastor. Like my dad, he is a loving father. He is patient and sincere, and believes in God with all his heart.
I was asking about a verse in 1 Timothy that seems really oppressive of women. It indicates that women shouldn't be in church leadership, shouldn't teach men, and shouldn't wear their hair in braids. To me, that seemed less like the message of the loving God that most Christians believe in now, and more like the ideas that would have been present in the culture at the time... a male-dominated society where women were treated less like equals and more like property.
My father in law asked me if I had been reading the King James Version - because he felt that King James had put his own spin on a lot of things, and that version couldn't fully be trusted.
“You have to go back to the original Greek" he said.
This is something I've heard a lot over the years. I asked him, "So it sounds like you believe that modern translations can't fully be trusted, because they are human, flawed, and imperfect. I am simply taking that thought to its next natural conclusion - that the original Greek is also human, flawed, and imperfect, and also can't fully be trusted."
He replied, "Well, if you believe that, what do you have left?"
I said, "Exactly."
Once I found that I didn't believe the Bible was the perfect Word of God - it didn't take long to realize that I was no longer sure he was there at all. That thought terrified me. It sent me into a tailspin. The implications of that idea were absolutely massive.
I began to ask myself, "What now?"
Over the past year I've occasionally mentioned publicly my struggles with depression. This is what really kicked that off.
What do you do when the rug is pulled out from under your feet? When you find yourself no longer believing the thing at the core of how you see yourself and see the world? What do I teach my own children? If I'm honest about this, will all my Christian friends abandon me? Will this alienate me from my family? Will this leave me with nothing?
Those are the questions that led me into a very dark place for a while.
I feel like I've mostly emerged from that dark place now because I’ve discovered that life really does go on. I have trusted friends that know this about me, and love me anyways. My family is showing me incredible love and support, even though I know this grieves them. While I know I can no longer stand on stage and in good conscience sing songs like "Drops In The Ocean", I no longer fear losing my place in Christian music. I know this means giving it up voluntarily.
I'm ready to be transparent and open.
I think that "open" part is key.
I'm open to the idea that God is there. l'd prefer it if he was. I suspect if he is there, he is very different than what I was taught. I know my parents pray that God reveals himself to me. If he's there, I hope he does.
Until then - I feel like the best thing I can do is be honest.
Stepping away from belief in God has felt like a loss in some ways - but it's felt like freedom in others. Jess and I both always had this sense that we weren't doing enough of the things we were supposed to do as Christians. We didn't enjoy going to church. We didn't enjoy reading the Bible. We didn't enjoy praying. We didn't enjoy worship. It all felt like obligation, and our lack of enthusiasm about those things always made us feel like something was wrong with us.
Now I don't believe anything was wrong with us. We simply didn't believe and we were too afraid to admit that to ourselves. So in that sense, we have a tremendous sense of relief now.
I am hoping that writing this contributes to that relief. As I've processed these thoughts and feelings over the past year or so, Ive avoided writing online about matters of faith. I didn't want to pretend to believe anything I didn't believe - but I also didn't want to rock the boat.
I am not sure how much this will rock the boat. I don't know if this will surprise anyone. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that I've finally worked up the courage to tell my story. To share my deepest truth. And that feels like freedom too.
It's going to be 72 degrees here in San Diego today.The sun is shining. It's a beautiful day. No sweater needed.
It’s thorough and does a good job of summing up many of the concerns and unaddressable questions I personally dealt with, having also been raised in an obsessively Christian household and community.
What an absolutely staggering figure. It’s hard not to ask why the U.S. has had so many deaths while other developed countries haven’t.
100,000 dead Americans. One wrong president. pic.twitter.com/NTH4cT0Xum
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) May 27, 2020
There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
This has been a long time coming, and frankly, it’s too little too late.
While offering legitimate, fact based information to counter Trump’s lies is a good practice (essential, really; always cite your sources), nobody is going to read it. The articles they assembled in this case were dry and uninteresting. Plus, they only came from a handful of sources (namely CNN and The Washington Post) that most people who listen to Trump don’t take seriously, anyway.
Another issue with Twitter’s approach is that it’s too time consuming. Trump tweets dozens of times per day, and a lot of his tweets contain false/misleading information. It’s not feasible to construct a page like this every time. Instead, Twitter needs to start removing his false/misleading tweets altogether.
At the very least, the banners they attach to those tweets should be far less ambiguous. No more “get the facts about…”, instead, they should opt for “this tweet is fake news” or “he’s back on his usual bullshit”.
Predictably, the response to this has been less than tasteful.
First, Trump exploded on Twitter (shocker).
.@Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
Now, his administration has taken to targeting a single Twitter employee and throwing the force of their entire “hamfisted, vindictive, and cruel”* base toward attacking this individual.
Trump had a vitriolic reaction Wednesday morning to Twitter's decision to add fact-checking labels to some of his tweets for the first time, accusing Twitter and other tech companies of anti-conservative bias.
Now Trump allies and advisers have found a new target for their ire: Twitter's head of site integrity, Yoel Roth, who has tweeted harsh criticism of Trump in the past.
Roth's old tweets from 2016 and 2017 were resurfaced and shared widely on Wednesday, including a tweet calling Trump a "racist tangerine," a tweet decrying "ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE," and a tweet describing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as "a personality-free bag of farts." […]
Trump advisers are now presenting Roth's tweets as evidence of alleged anti-conservative bias across Twitter and other tech companies. Donald Trump Jr. slammed Roth on Twitter after Breitbart reported on his past tweets. On Fox News Wednesday morning, senior adviser Kellyanne Conway called Roth "horrible" and read his Twitter handle out loud on air.
What a disgraceful response.
Twitter won’t be taking any action against Roth for his tweets, and the company tells BuzzFeed News he was not responsible for the fact-checks. “No one person at Twitter is responsible for our policies or enforcement actions, and it’s unfortunate to see individual employees targeted for company decisions,” a Twitter spokesperson tells The Verge.
SpaceX spacesuits are designed for optimum functionality with Dragon pic.twitter.com/QW4DirDirx
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 27, 2020
Very impressive, very sleek. The suits look sick (they remind me of the Avengers’ suits from Endgame) and the cabin looks like the inside of a Tesla. This feels like the future.
Josh Centers, writing at The Prepared:
Of course, Apple isn’t the only company in the world that’s hurt its bottom line in an effort to stem the tide of COVID-19, but what makes Apple particularly interesting is its enormous cash stockpile: $207.6 billion as of Q1 2020.
What that pile of cash means is that Apple isn’t desperate. Unlike say, a restaurant with deep debt and thin margins, or a hair salon with the rent coming due and no income, Apple isn’t forced to risk spreading a plague to keep the doors open. It has the enviable position to hold off until it’s safe for both its employees and customers. […]
Apple, being a wildly successful business even in the worst economic conditions, can withstand a lot more pressure to re-open than any politician. While many governors are having their arms figuratively twisted by President Trump and angry protestors, no one will be calling for Tim Cook’s head until at least Apple’s Q2 earnings report, due on April 30, 2020. Even then, years of strong performance under Cook and his prior experience in dealing with shareholder uprisings will insulate him for a long time.
So for that reason, no matter what my governor says, I won’t consider stepping into a crowd until Apple gives the all-clear.
I’ve been using this index — albeit untitled — since early March when Apple announced that they were closing all of their stores worldwide (apart from mainland China). The announcement itself was almost unbelievable, and it came well before other companies. This was when the threat of COVID-19 really became serious for me. Having worked in Apple’s retail stores for years, I have a deep trust in their threat assessment teams, and I trust Apple’s leadership to use the information those teams provide to make the most responsible decisions for their customers and employees. It was clear at that point that we were facing something unprecedented. In hindsight, it’s was clear that at that if Apple knew about the true gravity of the threat at that point, then so did the government, and they were keeping us in the dark.
I’ve written before on the contentious relationship between privacy advocates and law enforcement agencies, who are all the time encroaching further upon your personal privacy. Be sure to check out this article on defending yourself with a strong passcode.
Recently it was reported by NBC News that Grayshift, the company responsible for developing the atrocity that is the GrayKey device (used to unlock citizens’ iPhones via brute force passcode attempts [learn how to protect your device here]), has developed software they call HideUI, which is malware designed to trick people into unlocking their devices for police officers.
In order for this feature to work, law enforcement officials must install the covert software and then set up a scenario to put a seized device back into the hands of the suspect, said the people familiar with the system. […] For example, a law enforcement official could tell the suspect they can call their lawyer or take some phone numbers off the device. Once the suspect has done this, even if they lock their phone again, Hide UI will have stored the passcode in a text file that can be extracted the next time the phone is plugged into the GrayKey device. Law enforcement can then use the passcode to unlock the phone and extract all the data stored on it.
If law enforcement takes your phone out of your sight for even a second, assume they’ve installed HideUI on it. Consider it a complete loss, and buy a new one. If they give it back to you for any reason, refuse to unlock it. Throw it in a lake. Do not trust them or the device.
Furthermore, many courts have determined that while they can compel people to provide biometric data like fingerprints or their face to unlock a device (in line with precedents that allow them to compel you to provide DNA or hand writing samples), they generally cannot force you to provide an alphanumeric passcode to unlock the device because it is considered self-incrimination and a violation of your fifth amendment rights. You may be wondering why it even matters if they can still force you to unlock your device with your fingerprint or face. But, there’s one little tip you can use to ensure that your device can ONLY be unlocked by your passcode. If you turn your phone off before allowing law enforcement to take it, it will require a passcode when it’s turned back on. You can also disable biometric authentication in just two seconds by holding your phone’s volume button and power button at the same time.
This is why HideUI is dangerous: in many cases, law enforcement knows that they’d be unable to access your device lawfully, so they resort to shady tactics to trick you into giving them the master key, your passcode.
I strongly doubt any of my readers are criminals nor likely to be arrested for any reason, but as the government continues its encroachment upon our liberties, it’s important to remember our rights, and use the tools available to us to protect them from infringement. Use a strong passcode. Make sure your device is locked with biometric authentication disabled (via the side button/volume button trick) before allowing law enforcement physical access to your device. And don’t trust your phone if they take it out of your sight.
Jeff Zeleny, reporting for CNN:
The President's fixation on the convention burst into public view on Monday as he fired off a Memorial Day tweet with a threat to move the GOP gathering out of North Carolina unless Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, could "guarantee" that he would open the arena to full capacity. Trump has accused Cooper of "playing politics" with reopening the state's economy.
Cooper insists he is taking a measured approach rooted in data and science that will determine how North Carolina revives its economy in hopes of preventing a summertime spike in coronavirus cases.
This can only be good news. North Carolina is as purple as it’s ever been, and losing the Republican convention could make the difference, which could in turn decide the whole election. Not to mention the fact that losing the convention could allow enough apathy in the state’s republican electorate to affect the down ballot races. Thom Tillis’s (our near universally disliked senator, whose approval rating is sitting at about 26%) seat is up for grabs, and Governor Cooper is up for re-election as well.
See ya. 👋🏼
I’ve been using the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro for about two weeks now. I wanted to give my opinions time to mature, but my impressions from the first hour using it have only been confirmed with further use. This accessory is a game changer, and it’s made using my iPad more fun.
The Magic Keyboard costs $300 or $350, depending on which size iPad you have, which is a lot for a keyboard case. However, it’s a pretty damn good keyboard case. The design quality is terrific: while it is a bit heavy, it’s remarkably sturdy and the magnets that attach the iPad are almost unbelievably strong. The keyboard itself is nice, but I do find myself hitting the wrong keys more frequently than I do on my Mac, for some reason. The Magic Keyboard’s trackpad is a delight to use, and the way Apple has implemented cursor support on the iPad makes it clear that they spent a lot of time thinking about how to do it well.
For a long time, Apple has been positioning the iPad (especially the iPad Pro line) as a laptop replacement, but the iPad hasn’t really been good enough at computer-y things for me to recommend people buy one for that purpose. The Magic Keyboard doesn’t fix all of the problems it has, but it gets the iPad a lot closer to truly being a viable laptop replacement. Before this accessory, I might’ve suggested that 5-10% of people should get an iPad instead of a laptop as their next daily driver, among them would be children under 12, old people, and those whose computer use and general tech know how maxes out around email and social media. With the Magic Keyboard, that number of folks I’d recommend an iPad for jumps to around 40%. It’s still not great for everyone as a primary machine, and there are a lot of things that the iPad can do that are still just better on a Mac, but for a new chunk of people, I think this could be a good fit.
Of course, after you consider the price of an iPad Pro plus the Magic Keyboard (the 11” setup costs $1100 and the 12.9” setup costs $1350), you’re well within range of a MacBook Air, so it’s a difficult argument to make. But the iPad does have a few advantages: a MacBook Air can’t separate its display from its base, you can’t interact with the display via touch, and the Apple Pencil (sold separately for an additional $130) is a great tool for creatives. However, Macs have their own advantages, from longer battery life to a more mature and capable operating system. For example, if you wanted to crank up a professional photo editing app and touch up a photo on a MacBook Air, it may be a little slow, but you could do it. On an iPad, you’ll be hamstrung by the availability of good photo editing apps and their less robust, touch-first UI design.
In any case, the point of this article isn’t to serve as an assessment whether the iPad can finally replace your laptop, because that metric is different for everyone. The point of this article is to say that the Magic Keyboard is a terrific product (even though it’s one for which Apple charges a particularly high price), and everything about it is better than its competition. If you think you’d like an iPad with a keyboard, you’ll love the Magic Keyboard.
A recent post on Daring Fireball about an article from Financial Times highlights a few remarkable quotes I want to boost. Be sure to check out the DF post and the original article as well, though.
This video of Trump saying “if we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.
Don’t miss: This video of Sarah Cooper making fun of Trump.
This quote from a Trump confidant:
These quotes:
The United States currently has 1.6 million cases of COVID-19, and 97,708 deaths.
🇺🇸 United States: 0
🦠 COVID-19: 14
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.
If you’re wondering what Obamagate is, you’re not alone. Fortunately, the answer is quite simple. Obamagate is a manufactured distraction to keep people’s attention off of Trump’s awful response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Essentially, Trump fired off a bunch of tweets last weekend talking about something he called “Obamagate”. It boils down to a bunch of baseless accusations of criminal activity against Barack Obama, none of which have any basis in reality. The accusations are also somehow related to Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Advisor (who was fired by Trump after Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI). Apparently, it was:
The biggest political crime in American history, by far! https://t.co/m5nPdUHt4u
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2020
Yet, when asked, Trump himself couldn’t name any specific crimes, or even describe the crux of his manufactured scandal. His tweets are honestly pretty hilarious, in a disappointing, old person-with-dementia sort of way.
Anyway, what you need to know is this: Obamagate is complete bullshit. This Washington Post piece by Aaron Blake debunks it further if you want to really get into the weeds, but honestly, don’t waste your time. We need to be focusing on expanding our COVID-19 testing capacity so that we can get our economy back up and running, not playing Trump’s games. This is so obviously a distraction that I think it warrants a point being awarded to COVID-19 on our response scoreboard.
🇺🇸 United States: 0
🦠 COVID-19: 13
Mitchell Broussard for MacRumors:
Facebook today announced that it has acquired the popular GIF sharing platform GIPHY. […]
The sum of the GIPHY acquisition by Facebook is reportedly around $400 million, according to Axios.
Terrific. It’s curious though, isn’t it? Why would Facebook pay $400M to acquire a service that just sends gifs?
Of course Giphy is going to retain its own brand. If they renamed it to “Facebook Tracking Pixels”, usage might drop off. Think about all the messaging apps that don’t offer Facebook integration for security/privacy reasons […], where Giphy images appear. You know, like Apple’s Messages. Well, now Facebook has tracking pixels in them.
Ah, that’s why. Not sure what tracking pixels are? Spoiler alert, they’re bad news. A lot of emails have them as well, and you should do what you can to avoid them.
Check out this great gif keyboard, aptly named “GIF Keyboard”.
I bought a copy of Anonymous’s “A Warning” several months ago, but just got around to finishing it last week. It offers a very insightful look at the Trump White House from the perspective of a lifelong Republican in Trump’s administration, and it provides a lot of context and understanding for those of us on the outside trying to make sense of what we hear coming from (and reported about) the Trump administration.
I would highly recommend giving it a read before November.
