Jeet Heer:
By firing Comey, Trump has created the biggest political crisis in American politics since Watergate. The Democrats have very few weapons to wield against Trump right now, but they can continue to poke and prod him, using the ensuing controversy to rally opposition to Trump. American democracy is in real danger, and the Democrats now have a duty—one that transcends partisan politics—to make those stakes clear to the electorate.
Not suspicious at all
Missed that this also happened yesterday, before the Comey firing.
Senate Russia investigators have sent a request to the Treasury Department’s criminal investigation division for any information related to President Donald Trump, his top officials and his campaign aides, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee told CNN Tuesday.
There is, for me, a sort of porcupine defensiveness, with the tender meat of love underneath it, that goes up when I am asked to talk about my childhood.
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Oh man.
There is only one reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the decision to fire Comey: that there is grave wrongdoing at the center of the Russia scandal and that it implicates the President. As I write this, I have a difficult time believing that last sentence myself. But sometimes you have to step back from your assumptions and simply look at what the available evidence is telling you. It’s speaking clearly: the only reasonable explanation is that the President has something immense to hide and needs someone in charge of the FBI who he believes is loyal.
Amazon announced their long-rumoured Echo with a screen today and frankly I think this thing is a dog, but what do I know.
So this is basically… a smart TV for your kitchen? Is there any other room in the prototypical house for which this would be an appropriate arrangement of screens and speakers? In a living room a TV would probably be better, on a desk a computer would be better, and in a bedroom basically any one of tablet/laptop/TV would be better. My problem is I haven’t tried a normal Echo, and I gather it’s distinguished by an unusually effective voice service, so maybe if I got hooked on Alexa I’d want one of these.
There are plenty of rumours now of Apple getting into this game, and Phil Schiller spoke up saying he thought screenless smart speakers weren’t that useful. But I don’t think that means Apple is bringing out a smart speaker with a screen. I think it means they’ll bring out a smart speaker that will send stuff to your Apple devices that have screens, which is pretty much all of them. Apple needs to bring Siri up to the level of Alexa, integrate more smart home stuff with HomeKit, and make Siri something that is essentially ubiquitous in your home (could be the speaker, but the Watch gets you 90% there), and it could dominate this category right quick. Easier said than done, I guess.
Pretty good overview. My takeaway is that it’s unlikely to be anything other than impeachment, which would require Dem control of the House, and theoretically a supermajority in the Senate. This was kinda great though:
The White House maintains that it was unaware of any links to the Kremlin, and the details of the investigations are classified. But select members of Congress who oversee the intelligence agencies have access to the findings. Recently, one of them, Senator Mark Warner, of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, privately told friends that he puts the odds at two to one against Trump completing a full term.
The TV business is changing incredibly rapidly at this point.
Big data meets military psyops meets the far right.
Crazy, alarming story.
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The Republican health-care bill is an act of monstrous cruelty. It should stain those who supported it to the end of their days.
Restoring streetcar lines that were torn up in the 60s
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HBO is doubling down — no, quadrupling down — on its epic quest to replace Game of Thrones. The pay TV network is determined to find a way to continue the most popular series in the company’s history.
GRRM is involved with two of the four proposals.
microphone check, one two what is this
Yeah, it’s working on this end now. Now I have to figure out all the cross-posting crap.
Is this thing on? (I’m testing so-called microblogging)
Good theory; see the whole thread. (via)
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Didn’t realize this adaptation is run by a Breaking Bad writer, Moira Walley-Beckett.
With her TV series, Walley-Beckett is trying to solve a riddle: If everything about “Anne of Green Gables” is what prestige TV usually avoids, how do you adapt it in a way that is both sufficiently sophisticated and yet not a betrayal of the source material? Can Anne Shirley, the yummy pleasure who has flourished by cheerfully gliding above her trauma, be transformed into an almost-antiheroine who, in the fashion of contemporary television, has to grapple with her awful past directly? And can she do so whil