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By undercutting the gravitas white supremacists are trying to accrue, humorous counterprotests may blunt the events’ usefulness for recruitment. Brawling with bandanna-clad antifas may seem romantic to some disaffected young men, but being mocked by clowns? Probably not so much.

Which brings us to Charlottesville, and the far right rallies that will surely follow. To those wondering how to respond, Dr. Stephan says that “nonviolent movements succeed because they invite mass participation.” Humor can do that; violence less so.

The broader issue, in her view, is this: Why do oppressive regimes and movements invest so much in fomenting violence? (Think of our president and his talent for dividing the country and generating chaos.) Because violence and discord help their cause. So why would you, she asks, “do what the oppressor wants you to do?”

This is a good idea. I support the mocking of morons.

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It will require a struggle to make America reality-based again. Fight the good fight in your private life. You needn’t get into an argument with the stranger at Chipotle who claims that George Soros and Uber are plotting to make his muscle car illegal—but do not give acquaintances and friends and family members free passes. If you have children or grandchildren, teach them to distinguish between true and untrue as fiercely as you do between right and wrong and between wise and foolish. We need to adopt new protocols for information-media hygiene. Would you feed your kids a half-eaten casserole a stranger handed you on the bus, or give them medicine you got from some lady at the gym? And fight the good fight in the public sphere. One main task, of course, is to contain the worst tendencies of Trumpism, and cut off its political-economic fuel supply, so that fantasy and lies don’t turn it into something much worse than just nasty, oafish, reality-show pseudo-conservatism. Progress is not inevitable, but it’s not impossible, either.

A fascinating historical perspective of how we got to where we are today by Kurt Andersen writing for The Atlantic. Andersen focuses on how the counterculture movements of the ’60s morphed into a widespread belief in conspiracy theories adopted and expounded on by the right. Long, but well worth the time.

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You don’t have to pretend to be a family to be courteous Or kind. Or protective. All those values can be expressed even better in principles, policies, and, most importantly, actions

I’ve worked with companies that do this, and it always felt… weird. I didn’t want to have a family, I just wanted to do great work for an organization with a mutually beneficial arrangement That’s not to say that you can’t form close bonds with those you work with, or have a deep appreciation for the company you work for, but it can never, and should never, take the place of your actual family.

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So, I managed to download within the three day window during which the infection was unknown, managed to hit the one download mirror that was compromised, managed to run it and breeze right through an in-retrospect-sketchy authentication dialog, without stopping to wonder why HandBrake would need admin privileges, or why it would suddenly need them when it hadn’t before. I also likely bypassed the Gatekeeper warning without even thinking about it, because I run a handful of apps that are still not signed by their developers. And that was that, my Mac was completely, entirely compromised in 3 seconds or less.

This is how you handle a compromise in your systems. Full transparency, an explanation of how it happened, how they are handling the issue, and how their customers can stay safe. Panic, once again, doing the right thing.

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We — Manton Reece and Brent Simmons — have noticed that JSON has become the developers’ choice for APIs, and that developers will often go out of their way to avoid XML. JSON is simpler to read and write, and it’s less prone to bugs. So we developed JSON Feed, a format similar to RSS and Atom but in JSON. It reflects the lessons learned from our years of work reading and publishing feeds.

I guess I’ll know it’s time to leave my favorite news reader when this format is adopted by Daring Fireball but not supported by NetNewsWire.

• Update: That didn’t take long.

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Amazon has officially unveiled its latest Echo product: a touchscreen device with built-in Alexa called the Echo Show. The device was extensively leaked this week, but is now available to preorder from Amazon for $229.99.

I’m interested in where this is going.

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Indeed in this case, where unroll.me is owned by an analytics service, it appears that the entire purpose for the service is to get access to user email data for monetization. So apparently Unroll.me, with access to its user email accounts, collected their Lyft receipts, anonymized them, and sold them to Uber. I’m pretty sure people signing up for unroll.me don’t expect that to happen.

David reinforces a point that we have heard so often it’s become cliché, “if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product”. Shortly after reading this post I saw a recommendation for Readdle’s free Spark mail client. I’ve given it a try in the past, but it didn’t suit me. After reading the privacy policy, I think I should probably go back in and properly delete my accounts. From what I can tell, Spark:

• Several analytics packages:

We use third party services, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics and Amplitude, to collect and analyze how you use Spark. These services may collect information about you and your usage of Spark in accordance with their respective privacy policies.

• Uses my primary email address to send me spam:

We might use that email address to reach out to you periodically with information about features, updates, announcements or to request your feedback.

• Stores my email username and password on their servers:

Where OAuth is not supported we keep your account username and password on our secure servers.

• Downloads my email to their servers:

We then use the authorization provided to download your emails to our virtual servers and push to your device.

Readdle goes on to explain that they primarily use the email headers to send push notifications for new mail, that they do not sell your information to third parties, and that you can unsubscribe to emails at any time. Readdle makes some great apps, ones that I use quite a bit, but I wish they’d reconsider using server-side processing for Spark. If they worked out a way to do what they needed to do on-device, Spark would be a much more attractive option for my email.

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The advantage to using Linode is that since it’s a virtual server, rather than a VPN service, I’m completely in charge of the setup and configuration of the VPN server. Again, this isn’t foolproof, because my traffic is only encrypted between my Mac and the Linode server, meaning that if Linode decided it wanted to track my outbound traffic, then I’d be in much the same boat as before. (Essentially, Linode becomes my de facto ISP.) Given, however, that Linode’s main business is hosting, and that they have their own pretty strong privacy policy, I’m not particularly concerned on that point. But, again, that’s subject to the vagaries of business.

In reference to my previous post on the subject, this is the only method of using a VPN for privacy that I can recommend.

Apple is currently hard at work on a “completely rethought” Mac Pro, with a modular design that can accommodate high-end CPUs and big honking hot-running GPUs, and which should make it easier for Apple to update with new components on a regular basis. They’re also working on Apple-branded pro displays to go with them.

For those of us who make their living on their Mac, this is fantastic news. I might never buy a Mac Pro¹, but I’ll still reap the benefits of Apple’s development and focus on Mac hardware and software. This is a message to the community that Apple hasn’t lost it’s mind; the Mac is still going strong.

What I will plan on buying is a new Apple display. My current Dell 4K display is ok, but after being spoiled by the Thunderbolt Display I had on my desk at the previous gig, this Dell feels like a big step back. No built in iSight camera, no built in speakers, too many wires, and that ugly Dell logo on the front. It’s a beautiful screen, and I need that for the number of hours I spend looking at text every day, but it’s all the rest of it, that overall Apple experience, that I’m missing.

I’ll be interested to hear what Marco has to say this evening on ATP. He has, at least to my mind, been the biggest skeptic and nay-sayer within the community when it comes to future prospects for the Mac. Of course, that’s nothing new. Mac enthusiasts have been hearing that their favorite computer is just about to die for literally decades. Yet here we are.

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Jack Kerouac spent the summer of 1956 manning a fire tower on Washington’s Desolation Peak, in the northern Cascades. He didn’t do much writing there, apparently, despite being alone with pencil and paper. But he stayed for 63 days. The views were good.

Maybe this is what I need to finish my NaNoWriMo project.