Tim Cook Wrote a Memo on the ‘Events in Minneapolis’
Jan. 28th, 2026 07:13 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
daringfireball_feedTim Cook, in a company-wide memo (first published by Mark Gurman):
Team,
I’m heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis, and my prayers and deepest sympathies are with the families, with the communities, and with everyone that’s been affected.This is a time for deescalation. I believe America is strongest when we live up to our highest ideals, when we treat everyone with dignity and respect no matter who they are or where they’re from, and when we embrace our shared humanity. This is something Apple has always advocated for. I had a good conversation with the president this week where I shared my views, and I appreciate his openness to engaging on issues that matter to us all.
I know this is very emotional and challenging for so many. I am proud of how deeply our teams care about the world beyond our walls. That empathy is one of Apple’s greatest strengths and it is something I believe we all cherish.
Thank you for all that you do.
Tim
“Events” is doing a lot of work there, to describe what has happened and is happening in Minneapolis.
Trump’s “openness” on this particular “issue” has been to replace Greg Bovino — the diminutive Himmler-cosplaying “commander at large” of Border Control, who insisted, adamantly, that real victims in Alex Pretti’s murder were the Border Control agents who shot him — with “border czar” Tom Homan, a man who took a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents in exchange for a promise to award them government contracts if Trump were reelected.
Cook took three days to not name Alex Pretti in his not public statement and 20 days to not name Renée Good in his not public statement. [...]
2020 Tim Cook on Apple’s homepage: “Right now, there is a pain deeply etched in the soul of our nation and in the hearts of millions. To stand together, we must stand up for one another, and recognize the fear, hurt, and outrage rightly provoked by the senseless killing of George Floyd and a much longer history of racism.”
Quite the different message (and medium — this time with nothing on Apple’s website, let alone their homepage) from 2020, for what I consider far more outrageous and alarming killings.
Meta’s Response to Reuters Report on ‘Romance AI Chatbots’ for Teenagers
Jan. 28th, 2026 04:02 pmdaringfireball_feedAndy Stone, VP of communications at Meta, responding, in a series of tweets on Twitter/X, to Jeff Horwitz’s report at Reuters yesterday, linked here last night, which claimed that “Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors”:
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh, @Reuters, @JeffHorwitz!
The documents you cite in the story itself contradict this headline.
The headline says “Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors”
But the story cites a document that says “Zuckerberg believed that AI companions should be blocked from engaging in sexually ‘explicit’ conversations” w young people.
Huh?!
After my post last night, a friend of mine, with a career of experience working in a large company, sent me this:
A word of caution. “Scumbag middle manager says CEO said” is not the same as “CEO said.”
I could believe Zuck shitcanned parental controls, but I am certain there are thousands of snakes inside that company who would lie about it to get what they want.
That’s a good and fair point, and I think it’s what Stone is trying to emphasize above. The New Mexico lawsuit filing doesn’t contain evidence that Zuckerberg nixed parental controls for teens engaging in chats with AI bots; it contains evidence that other (unnamed employees) claimed in internal discussions that Zuckerberg had nixed them. That is different.
But so let’s take Zuckerberg out of it personally. It’s still the case that Meta shipped these chatbots for teens to use. And the buck, presumably, stops at Zuck’s desk. Read Horwitz’s report from back in August, detailing a leaked internal document listing Meta’s content guidelines for generative AI chat.
Sidenote: Why in the world is Meta’s VP of comms doing this on Twitter/X, not Threads, which continues to grow?
Things
Jan. 28th, 2026 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vassFinished Evelyn Araluen's The Rot, which was, as mentioned last week, very good indeed.
Reading KC Davis' How To Keep House While Drowning and Victoria Goddard's Plum Duff.
Tech
Still working the phone side of my tech problems: prolonged backup of All The Things onto a different external drive. But I did also run Slay the Spire on my desktop once, just to confirm whether that would cause it to shut down: it did not. But of course it's less resource-hungry than Hollow Knight.
Garden
Three more ripe tomatoes. I tried to plant some basil, but it didn't survive the heat.
Cats
Ash's nose looking good. Both cats coping with the heat as well as can be expected, i.e. better than I am but still largely horizontal.
Nature
I am a delicate flower and do not like hot weather. This is a problem at this time of year. Slight understatement. But only slight. (My part of the state is not the worst-off. Our highs are low 40s, not high 40s. And I have aircon at home and don't have to go out. It's still bad, and I do have medical conditions that make me more sensitive to heat.)
Also I sustained mosquito bites on my arms while doing my nightly "try to keep the plants alive" water, and am very itchy, which at least has the advantage of being a small problem to grumble about without the undercurrent of constant dread.
Current Events
Australia Day bringing out the racists. Some unmitigated arsehole threw a bomb at an Indigenous elder at one of the Survival Day protests. I didn't protest: couldn't manage the logistics of getting to a protest.
Watching the events in Minnesota and thinking of you all.
Court Filing Claims Zuckerberg Blocked Curbs at Meta on Sex-Talking Chatbots for Minors
Jan. 28th, 2026 12:17 amdaringfireball_feedJeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters:
Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg approved allowing minors to access AI chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents filed in a New Mexico state court case and made public Monday.
The lawsuit — brought by the state’s attorney general, Raul Torrez, and scheduled for trial next month — alleges that Meta “failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and sexual propositions delivered to children” on Facebook and Instagram. [...]
Messages between two employees from March of 2024 state that Zuckerberg had rejected creating parental controls for the chatbots, and that staffers were working on “Romance AI chatbots” that would be allowed for users under the age of 18. We “pushed hard for parental controls to turn GenAI off — but GenAI leadership pushed back stating Mark decision,” one employee wrote in that exchange.
Horwitz was with The Wall Street Journal for a long time; his is a byline worth paying attention to.
‘The Secret Fear of the Morally Depraved’
Jan. 27th, 2026 11:36 pmdaringfireball_feedAdam Serwer, reporting from the streets of Minneapolis for The Atlantic, “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong” (gift link):
The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive — because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.
‘A CEO, Captured’
Jan. 27th, 2026 11:06 pmdaringfireball_feedOm Malik:
Cook is not stupid. He is not evil. He is trapped. The iron clasp of market expectations has turned him into what he never meant to be: a man who goes to parties at the White House while nurses die.
In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Roy Bland captures a cynical, post-ideological, corrupt English society: “You scratch my conscience; I’ll drive your Jag.” You could say the same of today’s Silicon Valley. It used to believe it could change the world. Now it just hopes the world won’t change its stock price.
If I ever meet Tim Cook I’m going to ask him if Mike Tyson enjoyed the movie.
‘Aside From That, Mr. Cook, What Did You Think of the Movie?’
Jan. 27th, 2026 11:02 pmdaringfireball_feedMG Siegler:
Tim Cook is captured. There is simply no other explanation for his actions over the past year or so. But it perhaps culminated this weekend when Cook went to a special private showing of the documentary Melania at the White House. Yes, that Melania. That in and of itself would have probably been fine. I mean, it’s potentially problematic for a host of reasons that I’ll get to, but such is our world right now. Then one shot — a gunshot — turned attending that movie screening into a statement...
While Cook was enjoying his popcorn and champagne with the likes of Mike Tyson, Tony Robbins, and other “VIPs”, it was complete and utter chaos on the streets of Minnesota. Just hours earlier, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed by ICE agents. Maybe, just maybe, postpone the movie premiere?
‘Whatever’
Jan. 27th, 2026 10:48 pmdaringfireball_feedBen Terris, writing for New York Magazine:
Fred Trump died in 1999 at age 93. He had, Trump said, a “heart that couldn’t be stopped” with almost no health conditions to speak of throughout his long life. “He had one problem,” Trump said. “At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it?” He pointed to his forehead and looked to his press secretary for the word that escaped him.
“Alzheimer’s,” Leavitt said.
“Like an Alzheimer’s thing,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t have it.”
“Is it something you think about at all?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think about it at all. You know why?” he said. “Because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever.”
Clawdbot Is Now Moltbot
Jan. 27th, 2026 08:34 pmdaringfireball_feedFrom the footer on the project’s website:
Moltbot was formerly known as Clawdbot. Independent project, not affiliated with Anthropic.
Makes sense, to be honest, that Anthropic would object to naming it a homonym for Claude.
One additional followup to my post the other day. In his terrific introduction to ClawdMoltbot, Federico Viticci wrote:
I’ve been playing around with Clawdbot so much, I’ve burned through 180 million tokens on the Anthropic API (yikes), and I’ve had fewer and fewer conversations with the “regular” Claude and ChatGPT apps in the process.
Those tokens aren’t free. I asked Viticci just how much “yikes” cost, and he said around US$560 — using way more input than output tokens.
★ The Names They Call Themselves
Jan. 27th, 2026 06:12 pmdaringfireball_feedJonathan Rauch, writing for The Atlantic, “Yes, It’s Fascism” (gift link):
Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree on its definition. Italy’s original version differed from Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from Japan’s. [...]
When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.
Rauch goes on to describe that constellation clearly and copiously, with evidence. I agree, wholeheartedly, with his conclusion that “If, however, Trump is a fascist president, that does not mean that America is a fascist country.” The shoe fits, however tightly.
But there’s a problem that’s been gnawing at me ever since the 2.0 Trump Administration began. The entire premise of Rauch’s essay — the issue he changed his mind about — is that it’s contentious to describe people, let alone an entire political party or government, as “fascist” or “Nazi”. With only the most extremist exceptions, it’s a broad cultural value — a shared global value, not merely an American or western one — that the Nazis and Fascists were abominable. Also, they were losers, and their complete and total destruction was celebrated around the world. Hitler shot himself, hiding in a dingy filthy bunker. Mussolini was summarily executed and his body strung up in a public square in Milan. Hirohito surrendered unconditionally and lived his remaining days in quiet shame and infamy. No matter how apt the definition of fascist fits the Trump regime, they themselves reject the term, as they do not see themselves as being on the wrong side, and the definition of fascism is that it’s wrong. And they (exemplified by Trump himself) have a deep-seated psychological aversion to being seen as losers, even when it is as plain to see as the sun that they have lost — and no one denies that the Fascists and Nazis lost, bigly.
We call Benito Mussolini’s regime “fascist” because he coined the term. His political movement was literally named the Fascist Party. There was no debate whether Hitler and his regime were Nazis because that was their name. “Fascist” and “Nazi” weren’t slurs that were applied to them by their political or military opponents. That’s what they called themselves, and their names became universally recognized slurs because the actions and beliefs of the Fascists and Nazis were universally recognized as reprehensible and evil. And because they lost.
Our goal should not be to make fascist or Nazi apply to Trump’s movement, no matter how well those rhetorical gloves fit his short-fingered disgustingly bruised hands. Don’t call Trump “Hitler”. Instead, work until “Trump” becomes a new end state of Godwin’s Law.
The job won’t be done, this era of madness will not end, until we make the names they call themselves universally acknowledged slurs.
“MAGA” and “Trumpist”, for sure. “Republican”, perhaps. Make those names shameful, deservedly, now, and there will be no need to apply the shameful names of hateful anti-democratic illiberal failed nationalist movements from a century ago. We need to assert this rhetoric with urgency, make their names shameful, lest the slur become our name — “American”.
Navlinks Issue With Custom Override
Jan. 27th, 2026 12:45 pmwishfulfilled posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
style_systemThe code I'm using in my theme layer is this:
What It’s Like to Get Undressed by Grok
Jan. 27th, 2026 03:07 pmdaringfireball_feedElla Chakarian, writing for Rolling Stone (News+):
On a recent Saturday afternoon, Kendall Mayes was mindlessly scrolling on X when she noticed an unsettling trend surface on her feed. Users were prompting Grok, the platform’s built-in AI feature, to “nudify” women’s images. Mayes, a 25-year-old media professional from Texas who uses X to post photos with her friends and keep up with news, didn’t think it would happen to her — until it did.
“Put her in a tight clear transparent bikini,” an X user ordered the bot under a photo that Mayes posted from when she was 20. Grok complied, replacing her white shirt with a clear bikini top. The waistband of her jeans and black belt dissolved into thin, translucent strings. The see-through top made the upper half of her body look realistically naked.
Hiding behind an anonymous profile, the user’s page was filled with similar images of women, digitally and nonconsensually altered and sexualized. Mayes wanted to cuss the faceless user out, but decided to simply block the account. She hoped that would be the end of it. Soon, however, her comments became littered with more images of herself in clear bikinis and skin-tight latex bodysuits. Mayes says that all of the requests came from anonymous profiles that also targeted other women. Though some users have had their accounts suspended, as of publication, some of the images of Mayes are still up on X.
And:
Emma, a content creator, was at the grocery store when she saw the notifications of people asking Grok to undress her images. [...] Numbness washed over Emma when the images finally loaded on her timeline. A selfie of her holding a cat had been transformed into a nude. The cat was removed from the photo, Emma says, and her upper body was made naked.
Emma immediately made her account private and reported the images. In an email response reviewed by Rolling Stone, X User Support asked her to upload an image of her government-issued ID so they could look into the report, but Emma responded that she didn’t feel comfortable doing so. [...] In our call, she checked to see if some of the image edits she was aware of were still up on X. They were. “Oh, my God,” she says, letting out a defeated sigh. “It has 15,000 views. Oh, that’s so sad.”
This fun app is available, free of charge, on the App Store, which means you know it’s safe and approved by Apple. Get it today.
The Talk Show: ‘A Mitigated Disaster’
Jan. 27th, 2026 01:32 amdaringfireball_feedDaniel Jalkut returns to the show so we can both vent about MacOS 26 Tahoe.
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