Linked List: June 19, 2020

Friday, 19 June 2020

‘Juneteenth and the Meaning of Freedom’ ★

Remarkable essay by Jelani Cobb for The New Yorker:

The fact that slaveholders extracted thirty additional months of uncompensated labor from people who had been bought, sold, and worked to exhaustion, like livestock, throughout their lives is cause for mourning, not celebration. In honoring that moment, we should recognize a moral at the heart of that day in Galveston and in the entirety of American life: there is a vast chasm between the concept of freedom inscribed on paper and the reality of freedom in our lives.

In that regard, Juneteenth exists as a counterpoint to the Fourth of July; the latter heralds the arrival of American ideals, the former stresses just how hard it has been to live up to them.

D.O.J. Attempts to Oust U.S. Attorney Who Investigated Trump Associates, With No Notice, Late on a Friday ★

Benjamin Weiser and William K. Rashbaum, reporting for The New York Times at 10:30pm on a Friday evening:

The Justice Department abruptly announced on Friday that it had replaced the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, the powerful federal prosecutor whose office sent President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to prison and who has been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

The announcement that Mr. Berman would be replaced was made with no notice by Attorney General William P. Barr, who said the president intended to nominate as Mr. Berman’s successor Jay Clayton, current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ben Rhodes:

We are so many miles further down to road to authoritarianism than our political and media culture can process.

Update: This all came as a surprise to Berman himself, who says he’s not resigning and isn’t going away:

I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was ‘stepping down’ as United States Attorney. I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position.

I’d make popcorn if this wasn’t so terrifying.

Regarding My Theory That, Masks or Not, No One Wants to Go to the Cinema ★

Screen Daily on New Zealand box office results:

Total cinema box office revenue for the week was NZ$553,347 ($356,000), a 60% increase on the previous week. However this represents just 17% of takings over the equivalent week in 2019, when the gross box office was NZ$3.3m ($2.1m).

Cinemas in New Zealand were cleared to reopen on May 14, with restrictions in place, but the government celebrated being free of coronavirus on June 8 and has lifted all lockdown measures on daily life, leaving only strict border controls in place. Since then, no new cases have been reported.

Via MaryAnn Johanson:

So, cinemas in New Zealand are open again at full capacity, and the country is basically COVID-19 free, so people should be confident that it’s safe to go to the movies… and almost no one is going. This does not bode well for virus-ridden US/UK.

Update: So I think the point here is multifold. First, the U.S. has to get COVID-19 transmission under control. We’ve done almost the opposite. But I think what New Zealand is showing is that even after a country can truly open up, when a country can literally say they’re COVID-free with a straight face, people who’ve been cooped up and isolated don’t want to go sit in a theater for hours. They want to go see family and friends. They want to be part of the world, not get away from the world for a few hours.

Chicago’s Wiener Circle ★

They’re here for us.

Kara Swisher: ‘Is It Finally Hammer Time for Apple and Its App Store?’ ★

Kara Swisher’s New York Times column on Apple’s rejection of Basecamp’s Hey app from the App Store is an outstanding overview of the whole dispute — accurate and fair. One central point that jumped out to me:

Yet Apple has also changed rules in ways that many developers find capricious and unfair and, more to the point, scary. While complaints have been raised for a long time about what Ben Thompson of Stratechery calls Apple’s “rent-seeking” practices, many developers do not want to speak out for fear of falling afoul of Apple and, worse, getting banned from its store.

But not Basecamp’s iconoclastic and outspoken founders, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, who took to Twitter and other media to complain loudly after the Hey.com app had been accepted by Apple and then flagged for being in violation of its rules last week. In practice, that means Hey.com cannot make crucial bug updates.

To say that “many developers do not want to speak out for fear of falling afoul of Apple” is an understatement. Almost none do. And one thing I’ve learned this week — mostly via private communication, because, again, they fear speaking out publicly — is that there are a lot of them. Without touching upon the question of who’s right and who’s wrong in the specific case of Basecamp’s Hey app, or the broader questions of what, if anything, ought to change in Apple’s App Store policies, an undeniable and important undercurrent to this story is that the business model policies of the App Store have resulted in a tremendous amount of resentment. This spans the entire gamut from one-person indies all the way up to the handful of large corporations that can be considered Apple’s peers or near-peers.

This resentment runs deep and is stunningly widespread. You have to trust me on the number of stories I’ve been told in confidence, just this week. Again, putting aside everything else — legal questions of antitrust and competition, ethical questions about what’s fair, procedural questions regarding what should change in the written and unwritten App Store rules, acknowledgement of all the undeniably great things about the App Store from the perspective of users and developers — this deep widespread resentment among developers large and small is a serious problem for Apple.

Even if you think Apple is doing nothing wrong, it’s not healthy or sustainable if the developers of a huge number of popular apps are only in the App Store because they feel they have to be there, not because they want to be there, and if they feel — justifiably or not — that Apple is taking advantage of their need to be there. Tim Cook rightly loves to cite Apple’s high customer satisfaction scores as a measure of success. I think if Apple measured developer satisfaction scores on the App Store, the results would be jarring.

Apple Closing 11 Reopened U.S. Stores as COVID-19 Spikes ★

Business Insider:

Apple will re-close 11 stores in the United States after coronavirus cases have spiked in some states across the country, the company announced Friday. […] The store closures will occur in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Arizona. Specifically, Apple is closing two stores in Florida, two stores in North Carolina, one store in South Carolina, and six stores in Arizona.

Recall Josh Centers’s idea of an “Apple Store Index” as a gauge of where it’s actually safe to reopen retail businesses.

‘It Really Does Feel like the U.S. Has Given Up’ ★

Rick Noack, reporting for The Washington Post:

As coronavirus cases surge in states across the South and West of the United States, health experts in countries with falling case numbers are watching with a growing sense of alarm and disbelief, with many wondering why virus-stricken U.S. states continue to reopen and why the advice of scientists is often ignored.

“It really does feel like the U.S. has given up,” said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand — a country that has confirmed only three new cases over the last three weeks and where citizens have now largely returned to their pre-coronavirus routines.

“I can’t imagine what it must be like having to go to work knowing it’s unsafe,” Wiles said of the U.S.-wide economic reopening. “It’s hard to see how this ends. There are just going to be more and more people infected, and more and more deaths. It’s heartbreaking.” […]

Some European health experts fear that the rising U.S. caseloads are rooted in a White House response that has at times deviated from the conclusions of leading scientists. […] Whereas the U.S. response to the crisis has at times appeared disconnected from American scientists’ publicly available findings, U.S. researchers’ conclusions informed the actions of foreign governments.

This cagey “at times” nonsense is just a nonsensical attempt to appear above the U.S. political fray. There’s no maybe or “at times” about it — the explanation is entirely and obviously the result of President Trump. The U.S. political response is disconnected from American scientists’ publicly available findings.

Jeet Heer:

I don’t think people realize what a tragedy this is, how many lives it will cost, how many people will unnecessarily have chronic health problems for the rest of their lives because of this, and how it will damage America for decades to come.

AMC Theatres Plans to Reopen in July But Won’t Require Masks, Cowardly Fearing Rightwing Nuts More Than the Spread of COVID-19 ★

Brent Lang, Variety:

AMC will not mandate that all guests wear masks, although employees will be required to do so. Nor will AMC perform temperature checks on customers, though it will monitor its employees’ temperatures and have them undergo screenings to check for signs of coronavirus. The situation will be different in states and cities that require residents to wear a mask when they’re in public, but Aron said that AMC was wary of wading into a public health issue that has become politicized.

“We did not want to be drawn into a political controversy,” said Aron. “We thought it might be counterproductive if we forced mask wearing on those people who believe strongly that it is not necessary. We think that the vast majority of AMC guests will be wearing masks. When I go to an AMC feature, I will certainly be wearing a mask and leading by example.”

The cowardice and stupidity here are just jaw-dropping.

Any business reopening post-quarantine must base their mask policy either on science or politics. A policy based on science would mandate masks for all customers. There’s simply no dispute about that.

A policy based on politics could go either way. You can piss off the “fuck your science, I’m not wearing a mask” nuts, or you can piss off those on the side of epidemiological science. There is no middle ground — one way or the other you’re going to piss off one group. It’s cowardly and stupid, to me, to go with the know-nothings. It’s preposterous for Adam Aron to attempt to couch this decision as trying to avoid politics — politics is the only possible reason for not mandating masks. Whereas a mandatory mask policy can be truthfully explained apolitically: just tell everyone that your policy is based on the recommendations of the CDC. Then it’s out of your hands as the theater chain and in the hands of scientific experts.

But maybe this is good business? Maybe the only people willing to go to movie theaters here in the U.S. — where COVID-19 transmission remains far from under control — are the sort of people who think face masks are unnecessary or useless? I’ll admit that regardless of whether masks are mandatory, there’s no way I’d go to a movie theater next month. But I don’t see how Adam Aron looks his own employees in the eye with this policy.

Update: Sanity and science prevail:

AMC Theatres, the largest cinema chain in the U.S., announced it is reversing course and will require all movie-goers to wear masks as they gear up to reopen next month after coronavirus pandemic closures. […] AMC CEO and president Adam Aron said the revised guidelines on masks were made in response hearing “an intense and immediate outcry from our customers.”

How the Apple Watch Ejects Water ★

Fun video from the aptly named Slow Mo Guys.

‘Bolton Shockingly Reveals Everything We Already Knew About Trump‘ ★

Windsor Mann, writing for The Week:

According to excerpts of Bolton’s memoir published by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, Trump thought Finland was part of Russia, didn’t know Britain has nuclear weapons, talks about himself rather than listens during intelligence briefings, thought it would be “cool” to invade Venezuela, expressed a desire to execute journalists, supported China’s concentration camps, and sought its government’s help in getting himself re-elected by orienting trade negotiations for his own political benefit.

These revelations elicit a dual response: “Holy shit!” and “This does not surprise me at all.” Reading the excerpts, we learn new details about what we already know: Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s doing it for himself. New facts about Trump confirm old truths about him, namely that he shouldn’t be president.

That about sums it up. Well, and this.

Phil Schiller Talks to Matthew Panzarino on Hey’s App Store Rejection ★

Matthew Panzarino, writing at TechCrunch:

In a brief call today about Basecamp’s Hey email app from the iOS App Store, Apple’s Phil Schiller told me that there would currently be no changes to its rules that would allow the app to continue to be offered.

“Sitting here today, there’s not any changes to the rules that we are considering,” Schiller said. “There are many things that they could do to make the app work within the rules that we have. We would love for them to do that.”

Read through to the end for Apple’s letter to Hey, reiterating why Apple doesn’t think Hey complies with the App Store guidelines.

As Panzarino says, “So for now, no thawing.”