onfocus

"As senior Defense Department leaders have noted, 'there’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election.' Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory. Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic."

The fact that all living former defense secretaries felt the need to send this warning is chilling.

Today in Tabs was THE newsletter before newsletters knew how to newsletter. Five years later we still have tabs to ignore and Rusty is going to summarize them for us again. This is a big get for Substack in the email newsletter platform wars. Subscribe now while email is still an open platform!

So it turns out I subscribe to ~30 Substack newsletters and their new inbox tool is helpful. You can also add arbitrary RSS feeds into the mix if you want, but with no organization tools you probably aren't going to use this as a full-time feed reader. Neat though!

Facebook has spent much of the past four years kowtowing to conservatives, treating right-wing news outlets with kid gloves even as they flouted its rules and spread disinformation, while bending over backward to avoid offending the Trump administration.

What if the real value Zuckerberg bought with his fealty was the friends he made along the way?

"Legal efforts by Trump and his allies filed in states he lost have been stunningly unsuccessful — one minor win compared with more than 50 losses in state and federal courts at both the trial and appellate levels."

[jazz hands] The Aristocrats!

Nice explanation of why CSS is different from other types of programming. It's a positive feature of the Web that we don't have the same control as the printed page. (I keep telling myself.)

"The U.S. president is trying to steal the election, and, crucially, his party either tacitly approves or is pretending not to see it. This is a particularly dangerous combination, and makes it much more than just typical Trumpian bluster or norm shattering."

We need to call a coup attempt what it is, even if it’s shoddy. A stupid attempted robbery is still a crime.

"...another 222 GOP members of the House and Senate — nearly 90 percent of all Republicans serving in Congress — will simply not say who won the election."

It’s a whole Republican party problem, not a few bad actors problem. Also why we’re seeing no covid relief.

"The study concluded that 'lifting [eviction] moratoriums amounted to an estimated 433,700 excess cases and 10,700 excess deaths' between March 13 and September 3. The infections and fatalities occurred across '27 states that lifted eviction moratoriums' during the study period."

This is what our entire national conversation should be right now. Where is congress?

"And yet if there’s a lesson of the past four years, it’s that thoughtfulness and craftsmanship only got the company about 10 percent as far as Microsoft did by copy-pasting Slack’s basic design."

Casey Newton on Salesforce buying Slack and the realities of enterprise software. I’m really rooting for Slack—it is truly joyful software. I think Casey misses the ways Slack might transform Salesforce.

"Seven out of 50 video clusters the researchers identified are deemed 'situational' music. This designation doesn't operate under the standard concept of genres but rather the context in which the music takes place. This includes relaxation music like 'Ambient/Chillout,' 'Sounds of Nature,' and the ASMR-affiliated 'Hair Dryer Sound.' The paper concludes that situational music, sometimes deemed trivial by musicologists, is growing in popularity."

One great aspect of the Internet is that old (or new!) niche media can find its audience. This ambient music is my jam, glad I found it. [via waxy via mefi]

"The countercultural movement’s pursuit of peace, love and understanding was a worthy goal. This time around, let’s make sure our quests for self-transformation and world-transformation are aligned."

My friend Stuart on the need for new ethics around mental health treatment with newly legal psychedelics.