Nick Heer has a great post about the vapid coverage of vapid Elon Musk, but this bit from the end of Heer’s post struck me as the perfect Twitter bio for Musk:
words from the fingers of a dipshit
The Creator, 2023 - ★★★
I agree: it has its problems. Just one example: The phrase “hack everything” shouldn’t be uttered once in a serious movie, let alone two or three times, let alone by a real actor like Allison Janney.
But it has heart and if it doesn’t make you cry once or twice you’re evil.
Now that Spotify’s family plan costs $20/month I don’t have much incentive not to switch to YouTube Music, which comes with the YouTube Premium I’m already paying for. I’m also giving the Tidal 30-day trial a shot, but that would be $22/month for a family plan.
⌨️ A quick MS Word tip: Press control + shift + F9 to remove all hyperlinks in a selection of text. You may need to include the Fn or equivalent key if you're a keyboard nerd using several layers.
This is handy for work because while I'm writing briefs I like to keep the citations hyperlinked for easy reference/collaboration/discussion, but when it's time to file, those links usually go bye bye .
⌨️ A quick MS Word tip: Press control + shift + F9 to remove all hyperlinks in a selection of text. You may need to include the Fn or equivalent key if you're a keyboard nerd using several layers.
This is handy for work because while I'm writing briefs I like to keep the citations hyperlinked for easy reference/collaboration/discussion, but when it's time to file, those links usually go bye bye .
Alito's intellectual honesty
I’m in a weird headspace about the Supreme Court’s right wing wearing their partiality on their sleeves. I’m supposed to be mad about it, like lots of liberals. But I think it’s a kind of honesty and, in its hubris, exposes the vulnerabilities of the right’s more longterm jurisprudential projects.
(Takes a deep breath, hopes people read all the way through, or at least halfway through…)
Obviously, I’m talking about the most recent example, reported by Jodi Kantor at The New York Times:
Judicial experts said in interviews that the flag was a clear violation of ethics rules, which seek to avoid even the appearance of bias, and could sow doubt about Justice Alito’s impartiality in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot.
There have been several developments since I first started writing this post in mid-May when the upside flag story first broke. None of those developments changes my perspective. In fact, they all reinforce it. Anyway, to catch up and stay caught up on the Alito/flags stuff and all else SCOTUS, I recommend reading the work of John Fritze at CNN, Chris Geidner’s Law Dork, and the SCOTUS team at Slate.
I’m not as worked up about this one because it doesn’t involve direct or indirect financial incentives, or a spouse inserting themselves, however superfluously, into schemes resembling a coup. And it shouldn’t change the assumptions of anyone who has been paying attention to Alito for the past many years. Yes, it’s infuriating and concerning and beyond anything I would hope for our highest court. But it’s not a surprise.
Of course, I don’t believe he didn’t know about the flag hanging outside his house, or its meaning as a sign of solidarity with “stop the steal” whackos, and of course, blaming your spouse in the national press is… a choice, and of course “my neighbors were teasing me first” isn’t an appropriate reaction for a Supreme Court justice to the political speech of his neighbors, however performative and counterproductive that speech may be.
But the handwringing over this flag episode is based on the idea that anyone paying attention could take seriously the proposition that Alito lacks bias or could possibly be impartial in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot, or really any issue of importance to, eh, people of his political ilk. Impartial people, and people worried about at least appearing impartial, do not give the keynote speech at Federalist Society conventions.
(Nor do they inveigh wholeheartedly against a Constitution protective of the rights of all Americans, but that is beyond the scope of this post…)
Usually, this is where I would admit my own outsize portion of cynicism, and caution Dear Readers to consider this screed in that light, but this time I do the opposite: the fact is, the suggestion that Alito has any impartiality to preserve is, at this point, blatantly dishonest or an inadvertent admission of naïveté. As just one recent example, he openly treats the First Amendment as if it applies to conduct by private companies moderating their users' speech (it does not) and then has to be called out on it by Justice Kavanaugh.
Next, I’m going to say something (else?) people may not like, and that I may regret someday:
I actually appreciate Alito’s intellectual honesty, though query whether it’s deliberate or the result of too much rhetorical laziness to be more insidious about his intentions. Because there are more measured, insidious ways to drag the nation backward, under the guise of faith to the Constitution qua “history and tradition”, as close as posible to a time when people who looked like Alito, and me, for that matter, held all the power, and there was no immediate risk of having to share it.
History and tradition, indeed.
TenBlueLinks.org shows you how to make Google’s old school, AI-free search filter, called, and this is true, Google Web, the default.
I’m not a fan of Chrome on iOS, or anywhere really, so I added the &udm=14 suffix to the Google action I use in Drafts and shared it to the Drafts directory.
🪶 This is only my opinion, but it is one I strongly hold: Tom Bombadil is equal parts omnipotence and ADHD.
🪶 This is only my opinion, but it is one I strongly hold: Tom Bombadil (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil) is equal parts omnipotence and ADHD.
My Neighbor Totoro, 1988 - ★★★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
We watched this with the kids for Mother’s Day and they loved it. We were worried some of the characters would look scary to their Disney sensibilities, and at first they probably did, but the kids acclimated quickly and fell in love with Totoro. I can’t wait to watch more Miyazaki with them.
🔗 Apple Will Revamp Siri to Catch Up to Its Chatbot Competitors
Tripp Mickle, Brian X. Chen and Cade Metz report at The New York Times that:
The decision came after the executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT. The product’s use of generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry, create computer code and answer complex questions, made Siri look antiquated, said two people familiar with the company’s work, who didn’t have permission to speak publicly.
Apple can’t be serious here. My earliest IFTTT recipes made Siri look antiquated. Siri has been, to put it as politely as Siri deserves, trash for years. The user experience of the earliest Echo Auto was head and shoulders above Siri. If you need a reminder set, Siri will work more often than not. But that’s been its only viable use case since release.
Apple has been marketing off of machine learning since 2018 and probably earlier, so it’s just bonkers that they didn’t decide to scrap Siri at least that long ago and turn their machine learning resources toward something better.
🔗 Does the Statute of Limitations Ever Apply in Legal Malpractice?
Hey look, my employer has a blog about the kind of work I do, and I wrote a thing for it.
I wore transitions (™️?) lenses for a year and half in my late thirties and no one close to me loved me enough to punch me in the face and force me to replace them. I’m not saying I don’t take responsibility, or that I’m not loved at all, just maybe not enough.
😠 Google’s connected speakers and hubs are actually useful (unlike Alexa and Siri…), but it’s *really* hard when you’re super angry about something and have to mumble “Hey Google …” through gritted teeth. Just let us change the wake phrase.
(Yes I know some devices/command combinations don’t require a wake phrase but who has time to learn which)
😠 Google’s connected speakers and hubs are actually useful (unlike Alexa and Siri…), but it’s really hard when you’re super angry about something and have to mumble “Hey Google …” through gritted teeth. Just let us change the wake phrase.
(Yes I know some devices/command combinations don’t require a wake phrase but who has time to learn which)
🔗 Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book | Books | The Guardian
I’m not quoting from the review or her memoir because Noem is deplorable, and because, somehow, it’s worse than the headline suggests.
When people tell you who they are, believe them.
😠 If your iPhone on iOS 17 becomes unresponsive, be warned:
You may lose that day’s photos (https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1apdktl/a_couple_of_photos_gone_after_iphone/) if you decide to force a reboot (https://support.apple.com/en-us/116940) before getting them off the phone.
This happened to me today. I lost three photos of my son being cuter than any other son in the world.
😠 If your iPhone on iOS 17 becomes unresponsive, be warned:
You may lose that day’s photos if you decide to force a reboot before getting them off the phone.
This happened to me today. I lost three photos of my son being cuter than any other son in the world.
🔗 Some legal malpractice cases are bogus, and many are defensible. But some are, well, not, which is apparently how State Bar Court Judge Yvette D. Roland in California viewed the misconduct proceedings against John Eastman, the now-disbarred architect of the 2020 fake electors nonsense. https://www.mediaite.com/politics/just-in-ex-trump-election-lawyer-john-eastman-has-been-disbarred/
PDF: https://joeross.me/uploads/2024/sbc-23-o-30029decisiontrial.pdf
🔗 Some legal malpractice cases are bogus, and many are defensible. But some are, well, not, which is apparently how State Bar Court Judge Yvette D. Roland in California viewed the misconduct proceedings against John Eastman, the now-disbarred architect of the 2020 fake electors nonsense. (PDF)
🔗 Manton Reece - An update on the pricing update
Micro.blog is such a great value. Like omg.lol, Micro.blog is a positive community built by people who didn’t see exactly what they wanted on the web, so they decided to make it.