NPR is reporting that over 200,000 subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions to The Washington Post after Jeff Bezos prevented the Editorial board from endorsing a candidate for the first time since 1980. This is how democracy dies; people fail to stand up to racists and dictators. Bezos is one of the richest men in the world; the paper should have been set up to weather this kind of thing in spite of his ownership.
Seriously, how hard would it be to set aside a half a billion dollars of that incredible fortune as an endowment for an independent press organization? Why are we consumed by the business-school idea that everything needs to pay for itself or turn a profit, like a business? What if they are just things we pay for that benefit the public?
Richard Benjamin, who now lives in a memory care unit at an assisted living facility, would look forward to the emails and texts, and especially to the ones thanking him for being a true American and patriot when he donated his money. This eventually led him to give about $80,000, leaving him tens of thousands of dollars in debt and his children angry at the campaigns who they say tricked their dad and took advantage of his compromised state of mind.
From CNN: Elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling political campaigns. I can confirm this practice firsthand. The day after Election Day, Jen and I are going to work the phones and shut the spigot off for her father.
Wow, I’ve never thought of this situation quite this way, but it totally makes sense: John Stoehr argues that Biden let the press corps define him and his campaign (He’s too old, he’s confused, etc.) by making it about vibes and not about substance. Kamala is not giving the Washington press corps unfettered access, engaging them if and when she chooses, thus refusing to let them define her the way they want to. And it’s driving them nuts.
Vibes are this press corps’ forte, not fact and substance. If fact and substance were its strength, there would have been a different reaction to The Disaster Debate during which Biden talked about policy and issues while Trump didn’t bother. Trump was incoherent and false, but he came off as confident and strong, and he came off that way, because the press corps’ forte isn’t fact and substance.
Now that she’s in the race, her campaign is being judicious and strategic about what she says to whom, and it’s working.
This is a democracy. Harris is obliged to talk to Americans. That’s the end of her moral and democratic obligation. She’s not obliged to talk to the press corps, as if it were a constituency.
President Biden offers three simple ways to reform the Supreme Court: a Constitutional amendment to clearly state that no person is above the law; an 18-year term limit for sitting justices, and a binding code of conduct. Simple, commonsense, and desperately needed.
In America, no one is above the law. In America, the people rule.
We were in the car on the way back from a lovely bayside brunch when an alert popped up through CarPlay from Jen’s brother, prompting us to look at the news. I can’t say I’m surprised. My anxiety has been ramping up over the last couple of months from a distant rumble to an almost deafening roar; it seems like every new thing I read about is another giant roadblock for my team or portent of doom for my country. It’s to the point now that I’m pausing making any long-term plans past the fall because I don’t know what’s going to happen and I don’t know how bad things are going to get. I stand against facism, xenophobia, racism, and oligarchy. The fact that one half of the country is nakedly, enthusiastically embracing these values is confusing and heartbreaking. I feel like the bad guys have all the money, attention, and momentum and I can’t do anything to stop them.
So, the verdict on AirPods Pro 2nd Generation: holy crap are these an order of magnitude better than the first gen. The noise cancelling alone is worlds better. I’m not used to the feature that listens to your voice and lowers the content of the audio you might be listening to, and there are some other bells and whistles I haven’t sorted out yet, but these are nice.
I’m headed into my GP for the first time next week in I-don’t-know-how-long for a general physical checkup; it’s been so long since I’ve seen him that he changed practices and is now in a different part of town. The goal here is to get an update on my regular bloodwork, with a focus on cholesterol (something they don’t check when I go in for cancer annuals). My blood pressure and heart rate have all remained low during the post-cancer phase but I want to make sure my heart is healthy and I’m not pouring grease in the pipes.
Theoretically I’ve got a new set of glasses coming from Warby Parker in a new frame style. There was some online confusion when I had to upload my pupillary distance information that got stuck, so I had to call and sort it out with someone online. They assured me the order had gone through, but I still have an order stuck in their cart on the website, so who knows? Update: it hadn’t gone through; a follow-up phonecall solved this.
This is the first big change I’ve made to a frame style in probably ten years or more, and I’m a little nervous. The frame size is larger than the ones I’ve been wearing which should give me some more distance for the progressive part of the lenses—and my reading prescription has changed so it’ll be good to get that updated. This is a little more of a distinguished professor/creative director look—I’ll share a picture when I get them.
I’ve been using a particular sticker vendor for probably six years now, and I was always very happy with their service, along with monthly promotions they’d run to do one-off shirt designs and other things that I found very handy. It was a surprise, then, when I got a promotional email from them last week where the founder expressed his support for Trump and added some tone deaf lying bullshit about respecting all people. He followed it up with another email a few days later claiming his staff had received death threats, which I would gather is further bullshit, as well as playing directly from the right-wing false victimhood playbook. Luckily, I’ve got another sticker/t-shirt vendor, and will be ending any association with his company.
This has been making the rounds, but not as loudly as the press’ continual hand-wringing over whether or not Biden is too old to serve: Robert Reich lays out the facts behind Project 2025, Trump’s plan to destroy the US Government and turn it—blatantly, nakedly—into an autocracy. It’s written by his people, for his people.
Hey! It’s not often I get to write about our little state being on the front lines of solid legislation, but here’s an example: Two bills were passed by the state over the weekend that limit companies’ ability to collect data on our kids, and the other limits their ability to get kids to spend more time online through dark patterns (autoplay, time-based awards, or spam). Lobbyists for big tech, of course, are unhappy:
“The bill’s goal is laudable…but its chosen means are unconstitutional by imposing prior restraints on online speech, erecting barriers to sharing and receiving constitutionally-protected speech…”
Big tech always trots out the First Amendment to paper over their predatory behavior; it always pegs the bullshit meter.
Bloomberg does a retrospective of ten different metrics that show while Biden’s popularity is low, he’s actually done very well for the U.S. since he’s been in office.
I’ve been reading a couple of stories about large American companies over the last couple of weeks and seeing some broad similarities repeating themselves.
Boeing, a successful company, merged with McDonnell-Douglas, a failing company, in 1997—and somehow the MDD leadership wound up running Boeing. They immediately changed from an engineering-led manufacturer to a company run by financiers chasing stock prices. They started outsourcing everything, quality dropped, and now their decades-old reputation has been torpedoed.
There’s a new article about Google out this week, in which the author pins down the exact day they decided to make their search worse in order to increase their ad revenue. The similarity: a guy formerly from Yahoo, who ran their search division into the ground for seven years, forced out the guy who built Google’s search into the powerhouse we remember, and kicked down the wall between search and ads. Have you enjoyed using Google search for the last five years? It’s a piece of shit.
Meanwhile, roughly half the country is primed to re-elect a grifter who uses inflated stock prices to prop up failing businesses and avoid paying taxes, because he’s “good at business” or something.