Adore

The European Union already forced Apple to abandon its proprietary charging port and adopt USB-C across its entire iPhone lineup. It just did something bigger. A new EU mandate requires every smartphone sold in Europe including Apple devices to feature a battery that can be replaced by the user without specialist tools, without voiding a warranty, and without sending the device to a manufacturer approved service center. Batteries must maintain a minimum capacity threshold after a set number of charge cycles and replacement parts must remain available for up to ten years after a model goes on sale.

The consumer electronics industry built its current business model around batteries that degrade, cannot be replaced at home, and create a natural upgrade cycle every two to three years. The EU just legislated that model out of existence in the world's largest regulatory market.

Apple, Samsung, and every other manufacturer now faces a choice between redesigning their devices for the European market or accepting that their current hardware architecture is no longer legally sellable there.

Yea, apparently I didn’t get that personality trait.

☝️ everyone heard what he said you fucking piece of shit!!!

Taken out of context.... GTFOH 🤡

Say what you will about Hunter Biden, he can talk in honesty, defend his lifestyle choices.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

🚨Meet Lyndsey Fifield — the far-right operative now accusing Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner of physical “intimidation.”

Fifield’s resumé reads like a who’s who of the conservative right: the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Action Network, Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign, and “Independent Women” — a group that’s openly supportive of Republican Senator Susan Collins, the very person Platner is running to unseat.

But here’s where it gets rich.

In 2019, Fifield wrote a glowing tribute to Brett Kavanaugh, describing Christine Blasey Ford’s r*pe allegations against him as a “desperate smear campaign” meant to stop his confirmation. She called it “ruthless” and “devastating” — to Kavanaugh.

Fast forward to 2024, and Fifield is now coming forward with her own allegations against a Democrat.

Republicans and their corporate media allies didn’t hesitate to quickly pump-out a series of uncritical articles following the report — wish-casting a “crisis” for Graham Platner (he’s still leading in the polls, by the way).

The same woman who told the world that Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser was running a smear campaign now expects Americans to take her word on faith.