Linked List: October 27, 2017

Friday, 27 October 2017

Apple Says iPhone X Pre-Orders Are ‘Off the Charts’ 

Reuters:

“We can see from the initial response, customer demand is off the charts,” an Apple spokeswoman told Reuters.

“We’re working hard to get this revolutionary new product into the hands of every customer who wants one, as quickly as possible.”

I was up to order when it went live last night. My wife’s order went through with a delivery date of “November 17-24” after about 10 minutes of force-quitting/relaunching the iOS Apple Store app; my order went through a few minutes later, with delivery slipping to “December 5-11”.

Even today, though, orders are still only 5-6 weeks out. I was worried supply would be so tight that they’d be into January by now.

Extract From Plato’s Republic: On That Which Is Correct Politically 

Perfect little piece by Mark Paglia for McSweeney’s.

Private-Prison Giant, Resurgent in Trump Era, Gathers at President’s Resort 

Amy Brittain and Drew Harwell, reporting for The Washington Post:

In recent years, the private prison company GEO Group has held its annual leadership conference at venues near its Boca Raton headquarters. But this year, the company moved its gathering to a Miami-area golf resort owned by President Trump.

The event last week, during which executives and wardens gathered for four days of meetings, dinner receptions and golf outings at the luxurious 800-acre Trump National Doral, followed an intense effort by GEO Group to align itself with the president and his administration.

Sure, this is normal.

Girl With Cerebral Palsy Detained by Immigration Officials Cries for Help 

Melissa Chan, reporting for Time:

Rosamaria was being rushed to a hospital for emergency gall bladder surgery early Tuesday when she was stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint east of Laredo and detained. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents “escorted” Rosamaria to a Corpus Christi hospital to have her operation, the agency said in a statement. After becoming medically cleared, Rosamaria was taken to a federal facility for refugees in San Antonio on Wednesday and processed, officials said.

“She has been crying. She knows her mom is not there,” Galvez said.

Another story, by Yale senior Viviana Andazola Marquez, writing in The New York Times, “I Accidentally Turned My Dad In to Immigration Services”:

Most people can’t wait to turn 21 so that they can drink. For me, it was the day I could finally petition the government to change my dad’s immigration status. I filed the paperwork in February and believed it would be the beginning of sleeping easier at night, of not worrying about “la migra” every time the phone rang.

Eight months later, my father and I showed up at the immigration services office with our lawyer and notebooks full of supporting documents. The officer told us our petition should be approved, but not that day. We took this as an indication of another waiting period, but we remained upbeat: The officer told my father how to learn about his rights as a lawful permanent resident and acknowledged that he had paid the appropriate fees.

After the officer left the room several times, something changed in her demeanor, and the air in the room became thick with mounting uncertainty. She asked me to leave. I didn’t want to, so she turned to my father and asked him to tell me to leave. I told myself I was just being paranoid and walked outside. As I waited, three Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents came in and took custody of my dad.

When our lawyer reappeared, the look on his face told me everything I needed to know. The world felt ripped from under my feet.

ICE, under Trump, is a terrorist organization.