Make the Trump administration object. Make them defend the indefensible — in public. Make clear why the apps were removed from the app stores and force Musk — and Trump, if he chooses — to argue that those things are A-OK by them. In court.

Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic (gift link), on the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection and the first year of the second Trump presidency:

We have been watching indecency triumph in the public sphere on and off for more than 10 years now, since the moment Trump insulted John McCain’s war record. For reasons that are quite possibly too unbearable to contemplate, a large group of American voters was not repulsed by such slander — they were actually aroused by it — and our politics have not been the same. Much has been said, including by me, about Trump’s narcissism, his autocratic inclinations, his disconnection from reality, but not nearly enough has been said about his fundamental indecency, the characteristic that undergirds everything he says and does.

Ben Cohen, writing last week for The Wall Street Journal (gift link): One rainy day 40 years ago, Moylan was headed to a meeting across Ford’s campus and hopped in a company car. When he saw the fuel tank was nearly empty, he stopped at a gas pump. What happened next is ...

Kalley Huang and Tripp Mickle, writing for The New York Times (gift link): Threading the needle between adding new bells and whistles to Apple’s products while watching the bottom line has defined the careful, low-profile style of Mr. Ternus, who joined Apple in 2001. He...

Apple Newsroom: Today, Apple and Chase announced that Chase will become the new issuer of Apple Card, with an expected transition in approximately 24 months. Apple Card users can continue to enjoy the award-winning experience of Apple Card, which includes up to 3 percen...

The ACLU:

Taking photographs and video of things that are plainly visible in public spaces is a constitutional right — and that includes police and other government officials carrying out their duties.

However, there is a widespread, continuing pattern of law enforcement officers ordering people to stop taking photographs or video in public places and harassing, detaining, and arresting those who fail to comply.

Here’s their advice on what to say and do if you are stopped or detained for taking photographs or video.

Also, as good a time as ever for one of my periodic reminders to remember how to hard-lock your iPhone to temporarily disable Face ID: press and hold the side button and either one of the volume buttons at the same time for a few seconds.

Caroline Haskins, writing for Wired (News+ link, in case Wired’s paywall blocks you): Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is being used to flood X with thousands of sexualized images of adults and apparent minors wearing minimal clothing. Some of this content appears to not only...

Maybe “next year” meant “next next year”?

(They’re still accepting $100 deposits for pre-orders.)

Caitlin Callenson’s courage in the face of insane danger is just remarkable.

This 2021 post from Jason Fried is a good chaser to his “The Big Regression” this week (which I linked to yesterday): Much of the tension in product development and interface design comes from trying to balance the obvious, the easy, and the possible. Figuring out which ...

Howard Oakley, writing at The Eclectic Light Company macOS Tahoe’s visual interface: Fits largely rectangular contents into windows with excessively rounded corners. Enlarges controls without any functional benefit. Results in app icons being more uniform, thus less di...

Jim Nielsen: It’s extra noise to me. It’s not that I think menu items should never have icons. I think they can be incredibly useful (more on that below). It’s more that I don’t like the idea of “give each menu item an icon” being the default approach. This posture lend...

Jason Fried: My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby. It’s new construction. No one has lived in it yet. It’s amped up with state of the art systems. You know, the ones with touchscreens of various sizes, IoT appliances, and...

The Financial Times has a nice illustrated guide to the leadership team at Twitter/X, where things are going about as you’d expect.

Welcome to Philadelphia, Donnie Baseball.

This essay from UI critic Nikita Prokopov is just devastatingly good. If you’ve looked at MacOS 26 Tahoe, you’re surely appalled by the new UI guideline that recommends putting icons next to every single menu item. Prokopov argues — with copious screenshot illustrations ever...

The only way Pickle could sound *more* like a cult would be if their “employees” (are any of them actually getting paid?) all shaved their heads and wore Hare Krishna-style robes.

Starting the new year with more clarity around your money is easier with Copilot Money — now available across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Web.

Copilot Money brings all your spending, budgets, investments, and net worth into one organized dashboard, with intelligent categorization and insights that help you stay on track without spreadsheets or app-hopping. Designed to feel calm and intuitive, Copilot makes it easy to understand your finances across all your devices.

Copilot is offering DF readers two months free with code DARING, plus 26% off your first year for a limited time, available through this link.

What a great site (and Bluesky account) this is. Just what it says on the tin: all the scenarios for how the NFL playoff seedings can shake out, presented very plainly but clearly. The old-school World Wide Web still has a beating heart.

My thanks to Listen Later for sponsoring this week at DF. Listen Later is a super simple, super useful service that turns articles into podcast episodes. When you sign up, you get a custom email address to send articles to; every article you forward to your Listen Later addr...

Matthew Dowd, in a long, devastatingly careful post on Twitter/X: If they’re suggesting their waveguide displays are bright enough and vibrant enough to see clearly in direct sunlight, that would be yet another innovation they’ve discovered that every other player in the...

I just love the chutzpah of these guys. They started with a good minimal launch product and are back two years later with what looks like a *much* better idea for a phone keyboard accessory. But they’re also now making their own whole goddamn phone.

A look back at Apple’s 2025, with special guest Rene Ritchie.

Sponsored by:

• Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free breakfast for 1 year, with code talkshow50off.
• Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow.

Matthew Walther, in an opinion piece last week for The New York Times (gift link): MAGA’s internal culture has always rewarded theatrical confrontation over achievement. Boorishness commands attention, and boors mistake attention for leverage. Pseudo-martyrdom becomes an...

After posting a link to the Computer History Museum’s release of the Photoshop 1.0 source code last week, I spent some time paging through the original Photoshop manuals. I found a screenshot of the dialog box where you entered your serial number, and posted it to Mastodon, ...

Emily Delaney, at McSweeney’s:

Okay, now you’re getting upset. You’re getting upset despite the fact that we have strict rules against getting upset at this Hertz location. But tell me, honestly, when you reserved a rental car through Hertz, you thought… what? That we were going to set aside a special little car just for you? Seriously? Oh my god.

(Via Kottke.)

Jason Pargin is — well, to my tastes — a master of the TikTok video format. This one is so good, and ends with a mic-drop closing line.

Ruffin Prevost, writing at The New York Times: As everyone filed out, I repeated, in English, some of the priest’s comments to my guide, Keiko Hatada, who taught English for 30 years and has led custom tours of Tokyo for the past decade. I wanted to make sure I had under...

Bobby Allyn, reporting three weeks ago for NPR: The developer of ICEBlock, an iPhone app that anonymously tracks the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, has sued the Trump administration for free speech violations after Apple removed the service from ...

Kubrick on the Icarus myth.