🎲 Malik Beasley’s Gambling Scandal Arrives At Worst Possible Time For Malik Beasley /// Defector

If the allegations against him turn out to be true, then the league will have to confront the meaning of a nine-year veteran who played a key role on Eastern Conference playoff teams over the past two seasons manipulating games. It’s hard to imagine the integrity of the NBA being more compromised than that.

I have a feeling these things are going to be popping up more and more. Too many people becoming millionaires before they are legally allowed to drink combined with the cockiness of thinking you can get away with things. While things have vastly improved in the last decade, pro athletes have often struggled with managing their money, often with people who don’t always have their best interest in their ear. Every instance that becomes proven must be met with a complete ban.

📱 Fairphone Has a New Plan to Get You to Care /// WIRED

In an ideal world, Fairphone wants their phones to be “the last phone that you’ll have to buy”—and they’ll try their darnedest to make sure you’ve the software and spare parts to make this happen. There’s no planned obsolescence here. None at all.

I’d love nothing more for Fairphone to be successful, but I just don’t see the market fit, especially for a product you are supposed to buy once. If we look at just the techie’s who’d be interested in modding and/or upgrading parts in their phone, how many of those folks don’t want to be on the latest and greatest? And how much of the market does Apple have when it comes to people who just want a simple phone? And now that European regulations are going to push phone makers to make phones more repairable, that last part of the market is no longer theirs exclusively.

🤖 Grammarly acquires AI email client Superhuman /// TechCrunch

Can’t say I saw this one coming… AI in email, especially in a work context, feels a bit weird, no? No one has any privacy concerns, especially now that they are for sure just going to be logging every single keystroke you make? Superhuman, Arc, Dia, they aren’t actual products, just skins over existing products and somehow we pretend like they are million dollar critical infrastructure to the Internet.

🖋️ Writing and Interacting /// Nerve Endings Firing Away

You shouldn’t feel the need to own every word you say. After all, it’s the knowledge that you gain from saying or hearing those words that is more important.

While I’m kind of going against the advice here, I completely agree with Pratik. We shouldn’t have to write a blogpost and send a linkback to have a conversation online. Like a post, send a reply, or better yet, reply by email if it’s an option. Let’s just be human. Nothing is forever so stop worrying about “owning” every word you type.

📨 June 30, 2025 /// Letters from an American

The last time the level of government spending was at that 8% of GDP was 1933, before the New Deal. In that year, after years of extraordinary corporate profits, the banking system had collapsed, the unemployment rate was nearly 25%, prices and productivity were plummeting, wages were cratering, factories had shut down, farmers were losing their land to foreclosure. Children worked in the fields and factories, elderly and disabled people ate from garbage cans, unregulated banks gambled away people’s money, and business owners treated their workers as they wished.

This whole letter from Heather is great. I pulled the above because it shows where we were and where we could end up. If you read further down in the piece you’ll see exactly where our deficit comes from (Republican tax cuts, duh) and how government spending has consistently been at 20% of GDP since the New Deal. Where do these idiots think the money comes from when someone uninsured gets rushed to the ER and can’t afford to pay?

🔗 Linkity Link

One of the links I came across from things to click, which is a clone of Clone.fyi, but better because Brad adds his own commentary to each link.

🖱️ things to click

Just stumbled across this blog and clicked through the entire 23 pages. Opened up way too many links that I need to check out now.

💬 Pirijan, Creator of Kinopio

Without juniors and interns a field has no future.

100%! And we are seeing the deterioration of these roles everywhere. Doing the menial junior level tasks is how people learn a job top to bottom. Pushing for AI to take those menial tasks, removes the education and pipelines, which will result in the next generation getting thrown in the deep end. Some will make it, but a lot more people will drown.

🤖 Rick Rubin collaborated with Anthropic to create The Way of Code /// kottke.org

Inspired by Laozi’s Dao De Jing, it’s Rubin’s take on intuitive programming.

This is weird to me. On the one hand, I hate AI. On the other, I get how Rick Rubin could see vibe coding as something similar to his own musical process as someone who doesn’t play an instrument or mix, etc. So to him, this is no different. He’s essentially a product manager who is okay with killing of the engineers. I wonder how he’d feel once AI can replace the sound mixer and engineers in the booth; would he be okay with giving that job to AI?

🛻 What is going on with the Tesla Robotaxi logo? /// Fast Company

“A good logo always tries to convey the brand promise,” says type designer and Hoefler & Co. founder Jonathan Hoefler. “And this one definitely foreshadows the tragic collisions ahead.”

Such a shoddy logo. It just looks like something a 13 year old would come up with in KidPix to put on a tough guy façade. Elon Musk so badly wants to be edgy and have people like him.

👮 ‘FuckLAPD.com’ Lets Anyone Use Facial Recognition to Instantly Identify Cops /// 404 Media

“We deserve to know who is shooting us in the face even when they have their badge covered up,” McDonald told me when I asked if the site was made in response to police violence during the LA protests against ICE that started earlier this month. “fucklapd.com is a response to the violence of the LAPD during the recent protests against the horrific ICE raids. And more broadly—the failure of the LAPD to accomplish anything useful with over $2B in funding each year.”

It doesn’t sound like it works for cops and ice agents wearing masks, but that’s what we need; fight fire with fire. It’s just insane these agents can wear masks, not identify themselves, and just throw people in the back a van; it’s gestapo shit.

🪟 In defense of the already-killed Tahoe beta 1 Finder icon /// Birchtree

Cards on the table, I’m a weirdo who actually liked the Finder icon in Tahoe developer beta 1. I think it looked great and was a proper reimagining of the icon I’d been staring at in my dock for the past few decades for the new design system in Tahoe.

I’m with Matt on this one. I can’t believe people are so opposed to change that flipping a color is such a travesty. And if we look at it from a pure design perspective, I think the original one fits better with the liquid glass motif.

💭 You think? /// Ben Tsai

I didn’t think the thoughts that would have produced those words in my brain. I think that matters.

100%. A common refrain is that the moment you try to teach something or put it to paper is when you realize how much you really know about the topic. With AI we are outsourcing the foundations of thinking and understanding.

👗 Anna Wintour, 75, Steps Down From Top Role at Vogue in Shock Move /// Daily Beast

She will stay on as global editorial director of Vogue, and as global chief content officer of Vogue parent company Condé Nast.

Wow! It’s finally happening! Maybe she’s just sticking around Condé Nast until they find her replacement, but if not, I don’t see this going well. Having that kind of oversight over your replacement makes it more difficult for them to make the job theirs.

📧 Why Derek Thompson Is Leaving The Atlantic For Substack /// THR

So Thompson will take his thoughts on abundance, culture, the NBA, technology and other topics to the platform, where he hopes he will have the freedom to express himself in away that he can’t at The Atlantic.

Going to opposite direction of Charlie Warzel, who launched a Substack a few years ago and then The Atlantic “bought it” when they made their newsletter push. It’ll be interesting to see how Thompson approaches it and if he sticks to it for the long run.

🤖 Judge Rules Training AI on Authors’ Books Is Legal But Pirating Them Is Not /// 404 Media

The complex decision is one of the first of its kind in a series of high-profile copyright lawsuits brought by authors and artists against AI companies, and it’s largely a very bad decision for authors, artists, writers, and web developers.

Forgot to mention this yesterday, but referenced it a couple posts ago around NVIDIA’s stock price. It’s wild that we are just going to allow this to happen. Making this legal is going to ruin so many industries. This is not equivalent to a library buying a book and loaning it out. It’s just not.

📸 Death of a Fantastic Machine /// kottke.org

Not gonna sugar-coat it: this video made me want to throw my phone in the ocean, destroy my TV, and log off the internet never to return. Oof.

If you didn’t watch this when Kottke posted it yesterday, you really should. I didn’t even realize NY Times was making short docs like this. It’s brilliant and depressing at the same time and makes me feel even more like we are on a giant downward slope.

🎙️ How to become a Substack Star with Emily Sundberg /// Channels

I was a huge Feed Me supporter from the pretty early days, but cancelled in early 2024 (I think—around the time of the rebrand). Emily always had a focus on NYC, but around that time, it felt like she was writing longer pieces dialed into the city and making the culture/marketing/branding/business links and commentary lower priority. Still, it was interesting to get her perspective on it here and how she views the newsletter and where she wants to take things.

🤖 Nvidia shares hit record high on renewed AI optimism /// FT

Not surprising given the court rulings today. It’s bonkers we are just going to let these machines digest everything to regurgitate poor assimilations of them with zero repercussions.

📱 The Trump Phone no longer promises it’s made in America /// The Verge

We figured that was unlikely to be true. And we were right: sometime in the last several days, the Trump Mobile site appears to have been scrubbed of all language indicating the phone is to be made in the USA.

Not that any of us are actually surprised. Grifters gonna grift after all.

🏀 ESPN’s NBA Finals Coverage Was A Pretty Rough Watch /// Defector

It’s as if the producers watched TNT’s program and concluded that having two guys who don’t really like or watch basketball yell at each other was the key to its success, rather than the chemistry and trust among its hosts.

Whole heartedly agree with all of this. ESPN was absolutely trash. Doris Burke is the only thing they have going for them. They better not screw up Inside the NBA next year.

☢️ Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say /// CNN

The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it.

Surprise, surprise, we wasted billions of dollars on bombs that achieve nothing except strike the ego of our big dumb president.

🍿 California Legislative Leaders Agree on $750 Million in Funding for Film and TV Credit /// Variety

The additional funding is projected to increase the number of film jobs supported by the program by 40-50%, according to the California Film Commission — or 4,400 to 5,500 jobs.

I think it’s great that they are working to reinvigorate a dying—but pivotal—industry, but I’d much rather see this money come from reductions in pay for the top end of CEOs and movie stars who are overpaid.

⌨️ How to build the best keyboard in the world /// The Verge

The build quality is astonishing, the Topre-style switches are better than Topre’s, the stabilizers are better than anyone’s, and the keyboard is beautiful and a joy to type on. The Seneca is a genuine technical accomplishment.

Holy. Crap. $3600?! Who wants to hire Humdrum Industries for 24 hours so I can snag one of these magnificent beauties. Still probably just going to pick-up an HHKB to replace my RealForce, but goddamn do I want this.

🪾 David Lynch’s Producer Says ‘Unrecorded Night’ Was “The Best Thing He Ever Did” /// World of Reel

And despite recent murmurs that the screenplay may eventually be published — possibly even novelized — nothing can replace the cinematic experience that could’ve been.

I know it could never be what Lynch imagined, but I so badly want Dern, Watts, and MacLachlan to find a director they like who is a bit earlier in their career—maybe Dream Scenario’s Kristoffer Borgli—and get this movie made.