Rob Fahrni

The United States Supreme Court continues to be a complete mess whose only job appears to be dismantling prior rulings and dialing our nation back a century.

Golden Hill Software: “I am excited to announce that Unread 3.0 is available now from the App Store. Unread 3.0 adds Unread Cloud, a new syncing and article retrieval system for Unread.”

John Brayton, the person behind Golden Hill, is a friend and competitor. Unread is a beautiful, highly functional, and very stable application. With the addition of Unread Cloud, John has taken Unread to the next level.

Checkout the Golden Hill Blog for more details on Unread Cloud. There’s some great content up there.

Of course I’d encourage you to use Stream as well as Unread.😃

The New Yorker: “Regardless of this detail, Hutchinson’s testimony appeared to strengthen the criminal case against Trump. One of her revelations was that, a few days before January 6th, Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, had explicitly warned that if Trump did go to Capitol Hill on January 6th he could potentially be implicated in the crimes of obstructing justice and obstructing the electoral count.”

Trump is a criminal. A poo spouting, lying, criminal, who’s a real threat to our democracy.

Swift.Org Developer Spotlight: “I learned Swift by porting Graphing Calculator’s core computer algebra system. It started as a learning exercise, then became a feasibility study. The pandemic played a role in that decision, as this became my pandemic shelter-in-place project. The refactoring could have been done in C++ and Objective-C++, but it would not have been as effective, nor as much fun.”

This is a really great read. The developer of Graphing Calculator walks us through his effort to port his old code base to a modern Swift/SwiftUI application, complete with AR features!

He also relays his SwiftUI experience.

“When SwiftUI works it is a nigh-magical delight, but when it behaves unexpectedly or when behavior outside the prescribed path is desired, it can be difficult to understand and work around its limitations.”

If you’re a developer take the time to read the post. I think you’ll enjoy it.

A 10-year-old girl is raped. The State forces her to remain pregnant and tells her to consider it an “opportunity.”

This isn’t Iran. This isn’t Gilead. This isn’t hypothetical.

This happened today in Ohio.

— Gavi Begtrup (@GaviBegtrup) July 1, 2022

Some states in our Beautiful Union have become Gilead. It’s pathetic, dangerous, and extremely cruel.

Also, whoever impregnated a 10-year old should be put down like a rabid dog. Rape and incest are one of those things that makes me angry enough to commit murder because it robs the victim of their soul. It’s worse than murder in my opinion. They’re alive and dead at the same time.

The Podcast Index: “The Podcast Index is here to preserve, protect and extend the open, independent podcasting ecosystem.”

This is something I believe the podcast ecosystem needs. An open podcast directory. I’ve even written about such a thing

The big question for me is, will indie podcast apps make use of it? I’m thinking of Castro and Overcast in particular. Both run their own directories, as well as other backend services, but The Podcast Index makes me wonder if they could replace their directories with this?

I’m sure it comes down to a matter of trust and control. I know it would be really difficult to make such a bold decision.

SFist: “California is pushing for green energy and wants to avoid blackouts, but giving PG&E $75 million to handle radioactive waste at Diablo Canyon may sound like a deal with the devil.”

I love California but she has her problems. It’s crazy expensive to live in the Golden State and continued drought coupled with fire creates monstrous problems to cope with.

PG&E doesn’t have the best reputation. Their lack of line maintenance has caused numerous fires in California, including the massive Camp Fire that killed 84 people in 2018.

Google is quietly coming to dominate the automaker OS market while Apple is showing Figma screenshots no one’s biting on https://t.co/mWNPyVIrbk

— nilay patel (@reckless) June 30, 2022

Apple announced and displayed a new version of CarPlay at WWDC 2022. Can they compete?

I also wonder if car manufacturers will have to pay Apple 30% of each car sale? 🥴

The Texas Tribune: “HOUSTON — Meeting at their first in-person convention since 2018, Texas Republicans on Saturday acted on a raft of resolutions and proposed platform changes to move their party even further to the right. They approved measures declaring that President Joe Biden ‘was not legitimately elected’ and rebuking Sen. John Cornyn for taking part in bipartisan gun talks. They also voted on a platform that declares homosexuality ‘an abnormal lifestyle choice’ and calls for Texas schoolchildren ‘to learn about the humanity of the preborn child.’”

Texas is getting more and more radical by the day. They may become the new Capitol of the next Civil War, at this rate. It wouldn’t surprise me if they started talking about secession again.

It’s gonna get really ugly in Texas I’m afraid.

Forbes: ”Congratulations state of Florida. You have successfully threatened the Special Olympics and forced them to drop a public health measure designed to protect people against Covid-19.”

I don’t know which jerk in the MAGA crowd deserves the coveted Jerk of the Year Award but Ron DeSantis is definitely in the running. It’s pretty bad when you threaten the Special Olympics with a $27.5 million dollar fine for using common sense.

Florida is full or wonderful people coping with a cesspool of government corruption and self dealing. Well, of course it is. It’s a GOP stronghold.

Robert Reich: “Decades ago, America’s wealthy backed a Republican establishment that believed in fiscal conservatism, anti-communism, and constitutional democracy. But today’s billionaire class is pushing a radically anti-democratic agenda for America — backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting, and even questioning the value of democracy.”

Our slide toward the destruction of American Democracy is real and it sucks.

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

I’m shocked! Said no one ever. Musk is just another billionaire bro who gets off manipulating people and systems.

Real piece of work.

Lickability: “While there have always been many third-party iOS apps for Mastodon on the App Store, Eugen wanted us to create a native first-party application that showcased what’s unique about Mastodon while also focusing on bringing in entirely new users.”

This piece is a bit older but it’s worth mentioning if you’d like to move off Twitter to Mastodon. The Lickability built, native, iOS app is really nice.

Rolling Stone - Adam Rawnsley: “As of Tuesday, Truth Social hasn’t even submitted an Android app to Google to review for Play Store approval, an individual familiar with the matter and two Trumpworld sources with knowledge of the situation tell Rolling Stone.”

Trumps paranoia is real and his band of grifters and politicians aren’t serious people trying to do things the right way, like us regular people.

Bloomberg - Mark Gurman: “Apple Inc. delayed a plan to require workers to come back to the office three days a week, citing a resurgence in Covid-19 cases, marking the latest setback in its efforts to return to normal.”

Apple has lost some folks and others really don’t want to come back to the office.

It’s gonna be a challenge.

CNN - Marianne Garvey: “Ward, known for his work in “The Right Stuff,” “Short Cuts,” and numerous other films, died on May 8 at age 79.”

This death was a gut punch to me for some reason. I liked watching Fred Ward movies. My favorites are Tremors and Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Of course those weren’t mentioned in the article.

The Sun Gazette - John Lindt: “On May 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its 2022 almond forecast estimating the California almond crop will be 4% lower than 2021, meaning there will be about 100 million fewer pounds produced in the Golden State.”

I don’t think folks realize how much of the worlds fruits and vegetables come out of California’s San Joaquin Valley. It’s not L.A. it’s not San Francisco or any other well know California destination. It’s the poor part of California nobody pays attention to. It’s hot and dusty and full of hardworking migrants to deliver us the food we need to survive. Crops like Almonds are very popular, they also use a ton of water. The only other nut crop I know of that uses more water than Almonds is Walnuts.

Growing up in California’s San Joaquin Valley water was always an issue. But now? Now is way more extreme than those days and is only going to get worse due to climate change.

Harvard Business Review - Thomas Stackpole: “White created the website Web3 Is Going Just Great, a time line that tracks scams, hacks, rug pulls, collapses, shady dealings, and other examples of problems with Web3. HBR.org spoke to White over email about what people aren’t hearing about Web3, how blockchain could make internet harassment much worse, and why the whole project might be ‘an enormous grift that’s pouring lighter fluid on our already-smoldering planet.’”

Crypto coin values fell off a cliff shortly after this article appeared.

Check out Web3 Is Going Just Great it’s full of interesting reads.

Ten months ago today, the sitting President incited domestic terrorists who then breached the Capitol during which time he told them he loved them in front of everybody.

— rands (@rands) November 6, 2021

Of course we the people have zero power to do anything about it. Fortunately he left the White House but he’s still free to do whatever he wants and has wacko backers in the Halls of Congress pushing his fascist agenda.

We will have a king dictator in office if we cannot stop him and his ilk.

CNN: “The report also details an extraordinary three-hour meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump tried to win support for a plan to install as acting attorney general a loyalist, Jeffrey Clark, who he thought would help him overturn the 2020 election. In the end, the ex-President was talked out of the move after being told it would trigger mass Justice Department resignations."

If our country cannot arrest, try, and hopefully convict these people of crimes then we deserve to lose our republic and have Trump as dictator.

It’s unbelievable to me that nothing has been done, that Trump is telling his chronies to ignore subpoenas. We’re going to mess around and let our country fall to this man that causes only grief and destruction wherever he goes.

We have to rise up and war must be waged if the Justice Department refuses to take action and Trump is reelected in 2024. Especially if he refuses to leave office after his second term. Then war is inevitable.

Let’s not allow it to come to that. I’d rather see Trump and his associates imprisoned. It’s what they deserve and don’t pull that “We can’t jail a Presidet” bullshit with me. It’s time we did. Trump is dangerous.