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.
Given that no company walks away from European consumers voluntarily the phones are going to change and once they change for Europe the rest of the world will ask why theirs still do not.
At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.
The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.
It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.
The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.
This map required:
North and South Vietnam in it
All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated
Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)
Has Laos and Cambodia in it
Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it
So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'
I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.
Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.
The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.
The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc
At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"
My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond
good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map
“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”
Industrialist Henry Ford popularized the form, believing that Jews invented jazz as a plot to corrupt society and that this plot could be counteracted by returning America to dances and musical styles that he saw as traditional and white.
i traced the source in the linked wikipedia page to this paragraph in volume 3 of Ford's The International Jew Series:
“Many people have wondered whence come the waves upon waves of musical slush that invade decent homes and set the young people of this generation imitating the drivel of morons. Popular music is a Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.”
jazz does have strong and influential Jewish roots too (as would rock and roll later), it’s a wonderful cross cultural genre of American music and innovation! Jewish composers were integral to the form, wrote many of what are considered the “jazz standards”/the Great American Songbook, and added their own shape to it. Tin Pan Alley and klezmer would become essential pieces of that tradition, which eventually would also lead to development on Broadway and into popular music.
it’s just that deranged bigots like Ford saw that as perverse and corruptive rather than inspiring and meaningful.
Since the emergence of jazz in the late 19th century, Jews have helped shape the art form as musicians, bandleaders, songwriters, promoters, record label managers and more. Working alongside African Americans but often with fewer barriers to success, Jews helped jazz gain recognition as a uniquely American art form, symbolic of the melting pot’s potential and a pluralistic society. At the same time that Jews helped establish jazz as America’s art form, they also used it to shape the contours of American Jewish identity. Elements of jazz infiltrated some of America’s earliest secular Jewish music, formed the basis of numerous sacred works, and continue to influence the soundtrack of American Jewish life. As such, jazz has been an important site in which Jews have helped define what it means to be American, as well as Jewish.
Willie Smith at his Manhattan apartment. Photo by William P. Gottlieb. Barney Josephson opened Cafe Society in 1938, but the music he featur
Jews in jazz - Wikipedia
Jews have played a significant role in jazz, a music genre created and developed by African Americans. As jazz spread, it developed to encompass many different cultures, and the work of Jewish composers in Tin Pan Alley helped shape the many different sounds that jazz came to incorporate. Tunes by Jewish composers such as George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin and many others predominate among the 'Great American Songbook' compositions that have become jazz standards. Jazz musicians, besides playing renditions of the melodies, often deployed the chord changes of many of these songs to construct their own compositions.
Jazz music is a multicultural music, created and developed by African Americans using European instruments with Jewish Americans and others mixing in to further diversify the music. Jazz music was invented in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Originating in New Orleans, the music gained its momentum by getting a start in the red light districts. African Americans playing ragtime in the red light districts were the precursor to what was soon to become jazz. As World War I came to a close jazz started to enter the public arena. Two years later the prohibition of alcohol went into effect. This resulted in the creation of speakeasies, which allowed for jazz music to flourish.
Jewish American contributions
Jewish Americans were able to thrive in jazz because of the probationary whiteness that they were allotted at the time. George Bornstein wrote that African Americans were sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish American and vice versa. As disenfranchised minorities themselves, Jewish composers of popular music saw themselves as natural allies with African-Americans. This enabled them to make music that was promoted and heard as "black music".
In the 1920s and 1930s, George Gershwin and others deliberately minimized their Jewish identity at a time when Jews were not fully accepted as Americans, instead attempting to create musical version of an inclusive America. They saw their music as an example of an America without prejudice.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Mezz Mezzrow, Symphony Sid, Red Rodney, and Roz Cron experimented with black identity in various ways. Some contend that, in varying degrees, this was in order to "re-minoritize" Jewishness. Symphony Sid won several awards from black organizations, including an award for Disc Jockey of the Year presented to him in 1949 by the Global News Syndicate, for his "continuous promotion of negro artists".
Louis Armstrong was willing to show his sympathy in an outspoken manner, going as far as being photographed wearing a Star of David necklace. Willie "The Lion" Smith grew up alongside Jewish Americans and later discovering he had a Jewish ancestor of his own, ultimately converting to the religion. The adoption of ideas and music wasn't solely one-directional; Black musicians also adopted Jewish music. Willie "The Lion" Smith, Slim Gaillard, Cab Calloway, and other black musicians played Jewish and Jewish themed songs.
In the 1930s, some Jewish musicians actively worked with black musicians at a time when such interactions were taboo. Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and others fought for integration. Concert promoter and record producer Norman Granz and Barney Josephson, who opened the first integrated night club Café Society, broke down barriers of segregation.
The 1927 film The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson is one example of how Jewish Americans were able to bring jazz, music that African Americans developed, and into popular culture. Ted Merwin wrote that the film was seen as a glorification of Jewish assimilation into American culture.
Benny Goodman was a vital Jewish American to the progression of jazz. Goodman was the leader of a racially integrated band named King of Swing. His jazz concert in the Carnegie Hall in 1938 was the first ever to be played there. The concert was described by Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music.". Another Jewish contemporary, Artie Shaw, like Goodman a superlative clarinetist, was also prominent in integrating his bands.
Shep Fields was also highly regarded throughout the nation as the conductor of his Rippling Rhythm "Sweet" big-band. His appearances and big band remote radio broadcasts from such landmark venues as Chicago's Palmer House, Broadway's Paramount Theater, the Copacabana nightclub[14] and the Starlight Roof at the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel entertained audiences with a uniquely elegant musical style which remained popular with audiences for nearly three decades from the 1930s until the late 1950s.
Many Jews became successful in the jazz industry through performing or promoting jazz music. Mike Gerber has written extensively on this, covering such figures as Barney Josephson, Irving Mills, Joe Glaser, Milt Gabler, Alfred Lion, Francis Wolff, Milt Gabler, Herman Lubinsky, Teddy Reig, Orrin Keepnews, Lester Koenig, Max and Lorraine Gordon, Norman Granz and George Wein. This raised accusations of exploitation of black musicians. These accusations were sometimes rooted in stereotypes.
"Jewish jazz" was an attempt to combine Jewish music and jazz into a new genre. It began in the 1930s with "Jewish Swing". It continued in the 1960s with albums by Shelly Manne and Terry Gibbs. It had a resurgence in the 1990s, with albums by John Zorn, Steven Bernstein, Paul Shapiro, and others. According to Charles Hersch, at its best Jewish jazz both affirmed Jewishness and revealed connections to African American culture.
Jewish women in jazz - Wikipedia
an addition to the Louis Armstrong story (bc unsurprisingly that Wiki article is not great, but gives a useful overview), he wore a Star of David in honor of the Karnofsky family, who helped raise him and encouraged him to pursue music as a child.
It is true. According to the trumpeters official biography, Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 4, 1901. He was rai
Why the famous jazz musician wore a Star of David.
From the Nashville Zoo’s fb page! Here’s the petition, please please please take a moment to add your name (even if you’re not from Nashville!). If you are from Tennessee, contact your representatives and make it clear that the people do not want this data center. This is an AZA accredited zoo which is home to several species of critically endangered animals, we NEED to protect it. Make your voice heard!
If you EVER think Anthony Head is anything less than an angel then you’d best remember that I have always been a huge fan of his and we’ve always had a little contact over the years and he heard I’d come out as Trans and was having a hard time and that I was kind of sad that the photos I had from conventions with him were of me with long hair and no binder and they were all signed to “Sarah” and so he invited me to spend the day with him at his farm and he picked me up from the station and we just hung out and had lunch and he insisted on paying and took loads of photos and had them printed on photo paper the same day so he could sign them to Jay, along with other photos of him as Giles and Uther and he literally spent five hours chatting with me and got all of the pronoun stuff right every time and then he dropped me off at the station, gave me a final massive hug, waved me through the ticket barrier and insisted I message him when I got home so he knew I got back safe. (More HERE)
People who are hard on yourselves: may I humbly offer you the 100 floors of frights philosophy?
In the SNL David S. Pumpkins sketch, a couple is on a ride called "100 Floors of Frights," where they see a different scare on each floor, and at one point they complain about many of those floors being lame. And then Kenan Thompson delivers this line of deep philosophical wisdom: "Hey look—it's 100 floors of frights, they not all gonna be winners."
My husband and I use this line all the time to give ourselves grace. For instance, I'm a good cook, but when I make a dinner that doesn't turn out well, I will literally say out loud, "It's 100 floors of frights—they're not all gonna be winners," or just "Look it's 100 floors of frights."
It just means when you do a thing a whole lot, there's bound to be some instances that are bad. You don't have to be good at the thing 100% of the time. You can't be good 100% of the time. Some of the 100 floors are gonna suck. It doesn't negate your skill at creating the rest of the 100 floors.
You can use this for anything: art you make, performances, school assignments, days at work, outfits, sex sessions, literally anything that you are too hard on yourself about when it doesn't go great. Listen to Kenan Thompson and remember that it's impossible for them all to be winners, and that's okay.
given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
“make yourselves impossible to ignore. 10,000 signatures on twitter is a lot but 10 unique personal emails is enough to derail an entire council session.”
I was in a city council meeting last week about defunding the police and one of the council members mentioned multiple times that she’d been inundated with calls and emails all that day saying to defund the police.
[ID: Two screenshots of a twitter thread by alex flanigan, anti-fascist @Coff33Detective from June 12, 2020 beginning at 11:25 AM that reads: hi! i work in local government and community management, and i’m here to tell you a secret: it is like, really, really easy to overwhelm the people who work in your local government. especially right now. especially on things they can actionably do or impact.
you may not know this, but i bet your city or town or municipality has a website. i bet that website has some contact forms or email addresses on it. i bet you can use them to put together a message in about 5 minutes! i bet it’s almost as easy as signing a national petition.
which is to say: i’m noticing, like most other people, that the national level discussion on really important and long overdue issues is flagging. but the internet and news cycle is not the only battleground, and you will be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to—
—fight those battles at home, on your own turf, with much more immediate impact, and they are so, so important.
I am begging you: make my job, and the jobs of people like me, difficult right now. flood us with demands. make yourselves impossible to ignore. 10,000 signatures on twitter is a lot but 10 unique personal emails is enough to derail an entire council session. End ID]
I’ve been a city council observer with the League of Women Voters for nearly a year, and I have witnessed the following:
A few guys voicing their anxiety about speeding on a street where their children play and suggesting a radar speed sign. Despite catching all of two meetings where this was mentioned, I walked back home one day and–yep–there was a radar speed sign up.
A persistent force of 3-5ish loud residents coming to zoning and council meetings because they did not want a drive through style restaurant moving into a particular area where there were already major issues with traffic congestion and safety. This eventually resulted in a Chik-fil-a having its planning proposal shot down by council such that the lot is now likely to house an Aldi. I am getting low cost groceries instead of bigotry chicken in my neighborhood because of a D&D party’s worth of regular speakers.
A turnout of residents shouting down an attempt to reduce the amount of funding for the community Juneteenth celebration until Council backed down. One meeting. Roughly a dozen people + their kids speaking about the significance of the holiday. The celebration ended up having its full funding restored.
In my experience, it is incredibly easy to bully local politicians and get some sort of results, especially in small municipalities. If you have something that you want to see happen at the local level, seriously try to contact your local officials and see what you can make happen.
kaledo-art
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
romaincrisis
