Pocket Realities

Poll: Most Americans say curbing gun violence is more important than gun rights | MPR News:

There’s a whole generation moving towards voting age that have 0 tolerance for ownership or open carry. If current owners don’t curb the expansionist tendencies of their representatives before that generation reaches demographic majority, expect to see a full ban of firearms coming.

Target pulls some LGBTQ+ merchandise from stores ahead of June Pride month after threats to workers | MPR News:

“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” Target said in a statement Tuesday. ”Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.”

Let me translate that – “We’re giving in to conservative terrorists instead of holding to support for the most vulnerale of our communities.”

Daring Fireball: Today Is the Launch of Max, and It Sucks Even More Than I Thought It Would:

This much moronity I expected. But it gets worse. As Judge documents, with the new app they’ve once again dropped tvOS’s excellent native video player for a custom video player that utterly sucks: “up next” support in the TV app is now broken or missing, HDR and frame-rate match are gone, the new video player doesn’t support the Siri remote’s jog support, no picture-in-picture, and no support for the wonderful “What did they just say?” feature (speak that to your Siri remote and the video jumps back 10 seconds or so and temporarily enables subtitles).

HBO Max was a really good tvOS app. Max is a poor one.

The built-in tvOS player is really good, and apps that use it get a great experience to wrap their own content discovery experience around. Dumping that, probably to exploit telemetry data, makes this a non-starter for me… Though I was already tapped out on “max” due to the direction they’re dumping CNN and platforming partnerships with a noted transphobic author.

Survey: Surprising to some, veterans are less likely to support extremism | MPR News:

The Pentagon continues to investigate the case of Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, accused of leaking sensitive intelligence. The military apparently missed signs that Teixeira was possibly stockpiling guns and preparing for a race war.

Last week Pentagon officials admitted that they only implemented one of six major recommendations to counter extremism in the ranks. And the recent guilty plea of an active duty Marine who broke into the capital on Jan. 6, 2021, gives the impression that veterans and some military fill the ranks of extremist groups in America.

But those individual cases give the wrong overall impression, according to a new nationwide survey of veterans by the RAND Corporation, a nonpartisan think tank.

“We found that support for extremist groups and also extremist ideologies were lower than what we see in representative surveys of the general public,” said Todd Helmus, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND.

Doesn’t actually surprise me – It’s not like they’re cops.

DeSantis got his governorship with help from a cast of shady characters:

DeSantis didn’t just go to Parnas for money; he also used him as a go-between for invitations to other potential wealthy donors and for advice on his campaign. The $50,000 contribution was just a small part of the total funds the foreign agent sent DeSantis’ way. Parnas and Furman were known to have given at least $400,000 to Republican candidates in Florida, most of it going through a Trump-aligned Super PAC. In addition, one of the fundraisers that Parnas arranged for DeSantis donated $115,000 to DeSantis’ 2018 campaign

Jerusalem: Journalists attacked as Israeli nationalists march in Old City – BBC News:

Thousands of Israeli nationalists have been marching into the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, with violence directed at media covering the event.
The flag parade is part of Israel’s Jerusalem Day, marking its capture of the east of the city in the 1967 war.
A group of marchers threw stones, sticks and bottles at Palestinian and foreign journalists at the Damascus Gate entrance.
They also cheered and chanted racist slogans, including “Death to Arabs”.
Far-right Israeli cabinet ministers have joined the procession. One of them, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, declared: “Jerusalem is ours for ever.”

Tiny Electronic Desktop Sculptures:

Daring Fireball: Proposed Name for GM’s Upcoming In-House Software Platform (You Know, the One That Isn’t Going to Support CarPlay): Edsel:

I don’t think the name fits… The Edsel was chock-full of cool moon-shot features that were not quite fully baked, and didn’t have engineering support to keep at it until they were good.

jwz: “Please Stand By – Jacking In…”:

Last night at the spooky goth club, someone handed me a floppy disk with a zine on it! I’m living the dream, you guys.