Linked List: June 30, 2026

Tuesday, 30 June 2026

Gnome is a deceptively clever animated GIF app by Lex Friedman:

The truest thing about animated GIFs is that they are a critical pillar of modern human communication, and yet getting one into a Slack message or an iMessage thread or an email reply usually requires opening a browser, navigating to a website, searching, right-clicking, copying, switching back, pasting, and apologizing for the delay. By then the moment has passed, and the joke is dead, and what was the point of any of this, really?

Gnome lives in your Mac’s menubar. You hit a keyboard shortcut. A little search window appears. You type what you’re looking for — weird al, shrug, nailed it, that’s a paddlin’ — and a grid of GIFs appears. Click the one you want. It’s now on your clipboard. Paste it wherever you were typing. Joke saved. World improved.

That’s really the whole app. It does exactly that, and it gets out of the way. No account. No sign-in. No newsletter. Just GIFs, faster.

When Friedman launched Gnome last month, it was Mac-only. Since then he’s already added an iOS version, and they sync/coordinate nicely. And if you have a local folder of GIFs, you can connect that to Gnome and it’ll show results from your personal curated library before those from Gnome’s online partner Klipy. You share the same local library on Mac and iOS, provided you choose a folder in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or similar. The iOS version of Gnome offers an extension for Apple’s Messages app and an optional system-wide keyboard. On the Mac, you can disable the menu bar icon and just run Gnome like a regular app (if, like me, the last thing you need is another status icon in your menu bar).

It’s a really simple app with a deceptive amount of craft and attention to detail. I can’t say I send all that many animated GIFs, but Gnome is so nice it makes me want to send more. I dig it. $7 one-time payment on the web, or $8 in the App Store, and if you buy it on the web you can unlock it on iOS, and vice-versa.

Supreme Court Agrees to Review Apple’s Petition Regarding Civil Contempt Finding in ‘Apple v. Epic Games’ ★

Speaking of the Supreme Court’s end-of-term rulings, they today agreed to grant certiorari to Apple’s petition from last month, ordering:

APPLE INC. V. EPIC GAMES, INC.
The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted limited to Question 1 presented by the petition.

Question 1 regarded the civil contempt finding — basically, whether Apple could be held in contempt for violating the spirit of the injunction by charging a commission on external payments when the letter of the injunction said nothing forbidding commissions on payments. Question 2 raised by Apple regarded the scope of the injunction — arguing that even if the contempt finding were upheld, that it should apply only to Epic, not to all developers in the U.S. App Store.

(I decided against mentioning it in my article last month, “The Fonts of the U.S. Federal Courts”, but in stark contrast to the handsomeness and dignity with which their decisions are typeset (in Century Schoolbook), the Court’s daily orders are, inexplicably, set in Lucida Sans Typewriter.)

Supreme Court Upholds Birthright Citizenship in 6-3 Decision ★

Josh Marshall, writing at TPM (gift link):

As you’ve seen, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of birthright citizenship by a 6 — or perhaps 5½ — vote margin. See Kate Riga’s report on the majority decision and Josh Kovensky’s piece on the dissenters’ goal of doing away with birthright citizenship. I repeat my point from yesterday which is that the occasional non-corrupt decision doesn’t make the Court any less corrupt or in need of reform. In this case, in a sane world, the dissents from Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas would on their own be sufficient basis for impeachment and removal from office. One might as well believe or pretend to believe that the federal senate is unconstitutional despite its being unambiguously written into the structure of the document itself. The level of abuse of power that is the basis of these dissents can only be seen as criminal in nature and grows from the culture of corruption and impunity that now reigns on the Court.

The 14th Amendment starts:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The idea that the plain meaning of the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment was even debatable would have been laughable just 15 years ago. And, hopefully, soon, will be laughable again. It’s like arguing that the clear language of the 19th Amendment doesn’t guarantee women the right to vote. It’s a farce that this case even went to the Supreme Court, let alone that these three mooks dissented. (Alito and Thomas are lost causes; they’d vote for a Fourth Reich. Gorsuch I’m a little surprised by.) Needless to say, it’s rather unnerving that the majority required two — or one-and-a-half, depending on how you view Kavanaugh’s odd partial concurrence — votes from justices Trump put on the Court.

Marshall wrote a great explainer about this back in April (also a gift link):

Birthright citizenship is the unambiguous and certain law of the land. It is also good policy. What is less appreciated is that it undergirds the entire citizenship system in the United States, a country that keeps very, very little record of who is and isn’t a citizen in the first place. The only people who really have any clear record of their citizenship are naturalized citizens. You or I who were born in the U.S. might appear to have those. We have a passport or maybe some other document that you can only have as a citizen. But that is almost always because we said we were a citizen or we provided some document that only had any significance on the basis of birthright citizenship. Usually, of course, that’s a birth certificate. That’s where the factual conversation ends. It is the lynchpin that makes the entire U.S. citizenship system work in the absence of really any record keeping. [...]

Quite apart from the constitutional and civic merits, the whole fabric of U.S. citizenship falls apart without the anchor of birthright citizenship.

The only proof that I’m a U.S. citizen is that I was born here. My birth certificate names my parents but doesn’t say anything about their citizenship. Likewise with their birth certificates. That’s how citizenship in this most remarkable of nations works.

Three Players From the Japanese Men’s National Team vs. 100 School Children ★

I know there’s been a lot of exciting World Cup action this week, but this 2018 clip from Japan is the best soccer video I’ve seen in a long while.

CMA Consultation on Mobile App Steering and NFC Access ★

The UK Competition and Markets Authority:

‘Steering’ — the ability for developers to engage with customers about off‑platform options — is currently banned by Apple and restricted by Google in the UK. Lifting these constraints would allow developers to bypass mandatory fees set by platforms.

The CMA’s consultation includes principles to ensure that the fees Apple and Google charge for steering are fair and reasonable. Using an evidence-based framework, the CMA would expect steering fees to be lower than current app store charges, with savings passed onto UK customers or invested back into the developers’ businesses to support future innovation.

Japan’s MSCA is a good model for this.

U.K. Regulator Considers Requiring App Store to Allow Steering to the Web, and iOS NFC to Be Open ★

Sam Tabahriti, reporting for Reuters:

Britain’s competition regulator on Tuesday proposed allowing app developers to steer users to alternative payment options outside Apple and Alphabet’s Google app stores to cut fees and boost competition. The Competition and Markets Authority said the proposals would remove restrictions that currently prevent UK developers from directing users to off-platform payment options, which are banned by Apple and restricted by Google.

The watchdog said any fees charged by two of the world’s largest technology companies for allowing such “steering” would need to be fair and reasonable, and should be lower than current app store commissions, with savings passed on to consumers or reinvested in innovation.

How does one mandate that the savings be passed on to consumers? You may recall that last year Apple published a study — that it commissioned itself — suggesting otherwise. I wrote in December:

This all comes back to the argument that Apple’s App Store commission inflates prices. A recent Apple-funded (and Apple-promoted) study suggests this is not true — that with lower commissions mandated by the DMA, prices paid by consumers stayed the same and the difference went to the developers. That’s good if you’re a developer, but it’s not the argument being made by these consumer advocate groups.

That said, I pointed out just the other day that Tiimo, a to-do app that Apple just named as the iPhone app of the year in the 2025 App Awards, charges about 20 percent less for subscriptions on its website compared to its in-app subscriptions. An Apple-funded, Apple-promoted study showing that the App Store’s commissions don’t raise prices ought to be taken with a few grains of salt.

Requiring Apple to allow apps to steer users to the web to make payments is, I’ve long argued, sensible regulation. I’ve also long argued that Apple has been obstinate in disallowing it. If in-app payments — through Apple’s system — can’t compete with out-of-app payments on the web, something is wrong with IAP. But it’s wrong to assume that payments outside IAP will result in lower prices and better policies for users. IAP subscriptions are easy to cancel and listed all in one place. Web subscriptions are often notoriously difficult to cancel and manage.

Back to Reuters:

The CMA said it was also considering requiring Apple to open up access to its near-field communication technology, which is used for contactless payments, potentially allowing developers to offer payment services within their own iOS apps. This could enable UK fintech companies to build alternatives to Apple’s wallet, including account-to-account payments and emerging technologies such as digital currencies, the CMA said.

Even more so than opening up third-party in-app payment processing, this seems like something only “fintech” companies are asking for. For users I think the only result will be a loss of interoperability and increase in confusion. Users get one Wallet app today, with all their credit, debit, and loyalty cards, and all their tickets for things like events and travel. A scenario where each credit card company, airline, and event/ticketing company can mandate the installation of their own app, with access to the iPhone’s NFC, does not strike me as a good outcome.