Strange Things Are Afoot At Morning Joe ▉

John Marshall, Talking Points Memo, writing about David Frum’s article in The Atlantic:

Let’s focus specifically on what David said. He was talking about drinking.

Defamation law is a curious thing. The ins and outs of it aren’t as predictable as you might think. There is pretty clear case law, for instance, which holds that calling someone a “Nazi” cannot be defamatory. It’s like calling someone a “big dummy head.” It’s just an opinion. By definition it can’t be defamatory.

Needless to say, I’m not a lawyer. And I’m definitely not YOUR lawyer. But I’m not pulling this stuff out of my hat. In my job I’ve had to work closely with very experienced First Amendment lawyers for many years. Accusing someone of being a drunk isn’t just different in the sense that it is a factual issue — it’s true or it’s not. It’s also something that can be professionally damaging. That elevates it in terms of reputational damage, which is what defamation and libel law are about. Someone with a reputation as an alcoholic might easily not get hired for jobs because they’re viewed as unreliable. It’s not just a matter of hurt feelings. The potential damage is tangible, even quantifiable.

The point is that defamation law isn’t always linear and commonsensical. Some things you’d think would be no-nos are fine and others that seem like locker room banter can be big no-nos.

Needless to say, under Sullivan this shouldn’t matter. Hegseth is a textbook public figure. The speech is in a clearly political context in which the First Amendment protections are strongest. And there’s lots of reporting on which David could base that remark.

I’m not a lawyer either but this tracks to me. If word gets out that someone’s a drunk and unhireable and it’s false that’s a problem. Even if it’s true, it’s still kind of a problem because it may not be apparent. Addicts are very good at hiding these things.

I was about to jump on Marshall until he pointed out that, really, there’s tons of reporting for Frum to base his remark. This isn’t some rumor, there are multiple sources for this. It’s all over cable news.

But it’s what Marshall says next that intrigues me. What I take as pure capitulation to Trump might not be that far off. It’s weird and frankly if those who know better than me say it’s weird, it’s fucking weird.

The point of going into all of this is that Trump specifically and the MAGA world generally has been putting everyone on notice for years that they’re going to flood the zone with lawsuits. So watch out, basically. And now with Trump coming back in, the assumption is that the threat jumps up dramatically.

So on first blush, this seems like hyper-caution over potential lawsuits. But there are a couple problems with that theory. The first is that MSNBC — or its now spun-off parent company — aren’t some tiny operation that could be sunk by a lawsuit. Perhaps Sullivan isn’t long for this world. But for now it’s the law. And it should make any potential suit manageable for a company of that size. But then there’s also the specific apology from Brzezinski. It seemed to be directed not at Hegseth but rather at Fox News. Here’s the relevant part.

The comment was a little too flippant for this moment that we’re in. We just want to make that comment as well. We want to make that clear. We have differences in coverage with Fox News, and that’s a good debate that we should have often, but right now I just want to say there’s a lot of good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth, and we will want to leave it at that.

Is Fox going to sue the show? Are they going to get into a morning ratings war with them? It’s weird isn’t it? You would have expected some comment like saying “we don’t know whether these allegations are true,” etc. But unless I’m missing something, this seems like wanting to keep the peace with Fox News — “a lot of good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth.”

I can’t really decode that at all. Not legally, or politically or journalistically.

Marshall raises the best point yet: MSNBC isn’t some low rent cable news channel like Newsmax or OAN. They have plenty of money and can withstand a potential lawsuit or or two. Again, this isn’t some rumor or something baseless that MSNBC is spewing that nobody else is talking about. Everyone is talking about it. We’re talking about someone up for Secretary of Defense and who quite literally, unless Trump pulls some authoritarian bullshit, is about to go through rigorous Senate hearings and all of this is going to come out anyway. So it’s not like this is the aforementioned defamation situation. I mean it’s sort of swipe at Fox in general but does this really rise to the level of defamation? For an entire organization?

Like Marshall, other than fear and capitulation to the Orange One, I got nothin. This is just fucking weird.

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As If It Wasn’t Already Obvious That Morning Joe Is Scared Of Trump ▉

David Frum, writing about his appearance this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

I was invited onto MSNBC’s Morning Joe to talk from a studio in Washington, D.C., about an article I’d written on Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Before getting to the article, I was asked about the nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense—specifically about an NBC News report that his heavy drinking worried colleagues at Fox News and at the veterans organizations he’d headed. (A spokesman for the Trump transition told NBC, “These disgusting allegations are completely unfounded and false, and anyone peddling these defamatory lies to score political cheap shots is sickening.”)

I answered by reminding viewers of some history:

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush nominated John Tower, senator from Texas, for secretary of defense. Tower was a very considerable person, a real defense intellectual, someone who deeply understood defense, unlike the current nominee. It emerged that Tower had a drinking problem, and when he was drinking too much he would make himself a nuisance or worse to women around him. And for that reason, his nomination collapsed in 1989. You don’t want to think that our moral standards have declined so much that you can say: Let’s take all the drinking, all the sex-pesting, subtract any knowledge of defense, subtract any leadership, and there is your next secretary of defense for the 21st century.

I told this story in pungent terms. It’s cable TV, after all. And I introduced the discussion with a joke: “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.”

At the next ad break, a producer spoke into my ear. He objected to my comments about Fox and warned me not to repeat them. I said something noncommittal and got another round of warning. After the break, I was asked a follow-up question on a different topic, about President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son. I did not revert to the earlier discussion, not because I had been warned, but because I had said my piece. I was then told that I was excused from the studio chair. Shortly afterward, co-host Mika Brzezinski read an apology for my remarks.

While I, like Frum, appreciate the show’s attempt to bring a well informed discussion to a national audience as well as the tough spot the show itself is in given Trump’s want to realiate to any media that’s hostile to him, this is simply unacceptable. This is capitulation pure and simple. In a word: cowardice. It is not ok.

As for my own comments: You can decide for yourself whether I overstepped the proper limits of television discussion. But I also note that if I did misstep, well, my face was on the screen, my name was on the chyron, and anyone who took offense knows whom to blame.

First off, those comments are not overstepping. What Frum told was an anecdote to make an analogy between the fact that Hegseth has a drinking problem (to put it mildly) and what our standards should be and that someone who gets out of line when drinking should be below the standards of the position. It’s that simple.

Second, Frum actually has a spine to stand up for what’s right, unlike Joe and Mika. As he says, his face and name were on the screen, let the heat be on him.

It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease.

None of this is good. It’s ominous in the sense that at any moment Trump can just decide to shut down MSNBC so he’s already intimidated them into getting in line, lest they be persecuted. But this is also part of the way authoritarians take and maintain control. We were warned.

I’ll leave you with Frum’s closing words:

I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all.

The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too.

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XDefiant Shutting Down ▉

Mark Rubin, Executive Producer of XDefiant and former Call of Duty EP on his Twitter X account earlier today:

Hello XDefiant Fans,

I am unfortunately here today to announce that XDefiant will be shutting down.

Starting today (December 3, 2024), new downloads and player registrations will no longer be available. We will still release our Season 3 content in the near future (exact date TBD) and the servers will remain active until June 3, 2025. […]

A few years ago, Ubisoft and the SF Dev team embarked on a bold adventure to develop a new arcade shooter called XDefiant. It was from the start, an incredible challenge. Not only were we trying to shake up the genre by removing Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) while bringing back a more “old-school” arcade shooter experience, but we were also diving into the high-risk, high-reward realm of free-to-play. And for that I want to applaud not only the Dev team but also Ubisoft leadership for taking that chance!

Free-to-play, in particular, is a long journey. Many free-to-play games take a long time to find their footing and become profitable. It’s a long journey that Ubisoft and the teams working on the game were prepared to make until very recently. But unfortunately, the journey became too much to sensibly continue.

I am, of course, heartbroken to have to be writing this post. Yes, this game has been a personal passion for me for years and yes, I know that not all challenges lead to victory, but I also want to recognize all of the developers who are being affected by this closure. Each and every one of them is a real person with a real life separate from our own and they have all put so much of their own passion into making this game. And I hope that they can be proud of what they did achieve. I know that I will always be proud and grateful to have worked with such a great team! A team that really punched above its weight class.

And what they achieved is truly remarkable. The early response from players when XDefiant launched was amazing—we broke internal records for the fastest game to surpass 5 million users and in the end we had over 15 million players play our game! That is something to be extremely proud of, especially considering how tough this genre is. So, thank you to all of the developers who put their passion into making this game!

If there’s one thing, I hope we can all take away from this experience, it’s the importance of open, honest communication between developers and players. This “player-first” mentality along with respectful, non-toxic conversations between developers and players has been one of the standout differences that made XDefiant so special. From my very first post about XDefiant, this was the vision I wanted to champion, and I hope it leaves a positive mark on how the game industry treats its players and communities.

To our players, THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, I want to express my deepest gratitude for the incredible community that has grown around XDefiant. Your passion, creativity, and dedication have inspired us every step of the way.

With the utmost of love and respect,

Mark

It’s an unexpectedly sad day. This team really did try but as others have noted the game just had too many issues post launch, netcode being among the biggest. XDefiant really was the game I was hoping to main now that the content season for Modern Warfare 3 2023 was over and I could casually grind the rest of my camos and things and then just enjoy core TDM. I had planned to dive back into fighting games and more single player titles until XDefiant came along. I guess it’s back to that plan.

XDefiant was a fresh take not just on the FPS genre but on “hero shooters” in general. Hero Shooters aren’t something I usually enjoy but grounding it to the various Ubisoft franchises made it kind of accessible for me. I do think the choices of factions to ad in in seasons 1 and 2 were odd though. Why not do Assassin’s Creed early? I get the GSK and Highwaymen are probably well known, at least with the FPS crowd, but Assassin’s Creed is the much bigger title and honestly probably the only thing keeping Ubisoft afloat right now.

What’s especially frustrating about this is that, like Mark said, the team did remarkably well. One of the high points of this game was that for a game that was made from an engine that wasn’t made for shooters it played incredibly well. The team communicated with players constantly. There was no Skill or Engagement Based Match Making so games were organic. No background manipulation to artificially limit or boost you. Just a simple philosophy of “get good”, which is how I grew up playing online shooters and honestly how it should be. The battlepass seemed fair in that it progressed quickly and didn’t monopolize your time, making the game feel like a hobby as opposed to a job, which, again, is how it should be. As far as I’m concerned they did everything right.

At least we have until June to enjoy it and I, at least, plan to take advantage of that and enjoy it while it lasts.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger “Retires” ▉

Emma Smith, the Verge:

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired after over four decades at the company and stepped down from the board of directors effective December 1st, 2024. A report from Bloomberg says that after meeting with the board to discuss Intel’s progress in catching up with Nvidia and regaining lost market share, Gelsinger “was given the option to retire or be removed, and chose to announce the end of his career at Intel.”

Gelsinger rejoined Intel as CEO in February 2021, taking over from Bob Swan to turn around the already struggling chipmaker — an effort that hasn’t gone as planned. It’s largely missed out on the AI chip boom that fueled Nvidia’s rise, failed to launch new technology on schedule, struggled with recent CPU instability issues, and was skipped over as Microsoft’s launch partner for AI PCs.

It’s a shame to see Pat go as he was one of the engineers that had helped build Intel into the name it is today. The 80486 processor was amazing for it’s day and I actually had high hopes that he could trun the company around. Alder Lake (12th Gen) was a step in the right direction but Raptor Lake and it’s refresh were disappointments. So are the more current lineup of CPUs, especially Arrow Lake on the desktop.

It’s tough because I feel like Pat was given a really rough hand to play. When he came on board as CEO it was probably way too late to cancel 11th Gen Rocket Lake and the company was already heading towards dire straights. Add to this the disappointments that are 13th and 14th gen. I can see how these things add up.

Arrow Lake was supposed to be the beginning of a major core architecture change through Jim Keller’s Royal Core project, exploring things like Rentable Units, but that was cancelled and apparently broken out into smaller projects.

Thinking about this as I’m writing it, perhaps whoever is in charge of Intel next should give Keller a call. He’s worked at Apple, Tesla, and AMD and arguable saved AMD with the Zen series of processors.

Could Apple Circumvent Trumps Stupid Tariffs? ▉

From TechPowerUp:

TSMC has reportedly initiated production of Apple’s last-generation A16 Bionic processors at its newly constructed Fab 21 in Arizona. This development comes significantly earlier than anticipated, with the facility’s full-scale production initially scheduled for 2025. According to insights from industry expert Tim Culpan, the Arizona plant is already churning out a modest but noteworthy quantity of A16 Bionic chips. These processors are being manufactured using TSMC’s NP4 4 nm semiconductor node.

I had meant to link to this back in September but was dealing with some site issues and didn’t. Now I’ve found it again as I’m clearing out some old tabs and thought it relevant given the election last week.

If Apple can get at least some of their SoCs made here in the States, they may be able to make a case to the incoming Trump administration that they are at least making some things here and thus may be able to get exemptions to any proposed tariffs that might be imposed on electronics and/or chips being imported. If so, it’ll at least keep Apple’s prices stable. The problem is the A16 mentioned in the article is from the iPhone 15, not even the iPhone 15 Pro. I’m not sure if any of the 3 nm A series SoCs currently shipping in the iPhone 16 will be made in Arizona any time soon. This might extend to the M series SoCs as well.

That said I am so not looking forward to $2000 graphics cards again because a majority of my fellow Americans clearly failed basic high school economics and have absolutely no idea how tariffs actually work.

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2024 M4 Mac Mini Teardown Shows Just How Mini It Is ▉

The Mac Mini to me has always ben an impressive machine in that Apple has always been able to pack so much computer into such a tiny box. As much as I love my Macbook Pro, the Mini will always be my favorite. One of the interesting things about the Mini is that, for whatever reason, Apple lets users get away with making modifications. On my 2018 Mini they brought back the ability to upgrade the RAM, which I did. It seems on this one we might be able to upgrade the SSD. It’s not confirmed but iFixit has a short on YouTube channel where they say they were able to do it.

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“In Defeat: Defiance.” ▉

Bill Kristol, The Bulwark:

The American people have made a disastrous choice. And they have done so decisively, and with their eyes wide open.

Donald J. Trump will be our next president, elected with a majority of the popular vote, likely winning both more votes and more states than he did in his two previous elections. After everything—after his chaotic presidency, after January 6th, after the last year in which the mask was increasingly off, and no attempt was made to hide the extremism of the agenda or the ugliness of the appeal—the American people liked what they saw. At a minimum, they were willing to accept what they saw.

And Trump was running against a competent candidate who ran a good campaign to the center and bested him in a debate, with a strong economy. Yet Trump prevailed, pulling off one of the most remarkable comebacks in American political history. Trump boasted last night, “We’ve achieved the most incredible political thing,” and he’s not altogether wrong. […]

So: We can lament our situation. We can analyze how we got here. We can try to learn lessons from what has happened. We have to do all these things.

But we can’t only do those things. As Churchill put it: “In Defeat: Defiance.” We’ll have to keep our nerve and our principles against all the pressure to abandon them. We’ll have to fight politically and to resist lawfully. We’ll have to do our best to limit the damage from Trump. And we’ll have to lay the groundwork for future recovery.

To do all this, we’ll have to constitute a strong opposition and a loyal opposition, loyal to the Declaration and the Constitution, loyal to the past achievements and future promise of this nation, loyal to what America has been and should be.

And we’ll have to have the fortitude to say, ‘Yes, at times a majority of the American people can be wrong.’ That they were wrong on November 5, 2024. That vox populi is not vox Dei.

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Now What? ▉

David Frum, The Atlantic:

Donald Trump has won, and will become president for the second time. Those who voted for him will now celebrate their victory. The rest of us need to prepare to live in a different America: a country where millions of our fellow citizens voted for a president who knowingly promotes hatred and division; who lies—blatantly, shamelessly—every time he appears in public; who plotted to overturn an election in 2020 and, had he not won, was planning to try again in 2024.

Above all, we must learn to live in an America where an overwhelming number of our fellow citizens have chosen a president who holds the most fundamental values and traditions of our democracy, our Constitution, even our military in contempt. Over the past decade, opinion polls have showed Americans’ faith in their institutions waning. But no opinion poll could make this shift in values any clearer than this vote. As a result of this election, the United States will become a different kind of country.

This was a clear and decisive election. In some ways, that’s a good thing because if they break it they own it.

Last night before the results came in I was nauseously optimistic. Donald Trump has a habit of over performing on election day even if he’s never really polled higher than 48%. What makes last night more of a gut punch than 2016 is that in 2016 we knew it would be bad but we hoped it wouldn’t be. That he would learn the office and what’s appropriate and what wasn’t. In 2024, we know exactly who he is. His first term was disastrous and I expect this one, with no one who knows better around to tell him “no”, to be even worse. Every bit of social progress we’ve made over the last 50 years about to be eroded.

I get it. Democracy is messy. This isn’t a disagreement on how to govern anymore. This is becoming a different country than the one I grew up in.

My generation was raised on the belief that America could always be counted upon to do the right thing, even if belatedly: reject the isolationism of America First and join the fight against Nazism; fund the Marshall Plan to stop communism; extend the promise of democracy to all people, without regard to race or sex. But maybe that belief was true only for a specific period, a unique moment. There were many chapters of history in which America did the wrong thing for years or decades. Maybe we are living through such a period now.

Or maybe the truth is that democracy is always a close-run thing, always in contention. If so, then we too must—as people in other failing democracies have learned to do—find new ways to champion wobbling institutions and threatened ideas. For supporters of the American experiment in liberal democracy, our only hope is education, organization, and the creation of a coalition of people dedicated to defending the spirit of the Constitution, the ideals of the Founders, the dream of freedom. More concretely: public civic-education campaigns to replace the lessons no longer taught in schools; teams of lawyers who can fight for the rule of law in courts; grassroots organizing, especially in rural and small-town America; citizens and journalists working to expose and fight the enormous wave of kleptocracy and corruption that will now engulf our political system.

Many of those shattered by this result will be tempted to withdraw into passivity—or recoil into performative radicalism. Reject both. We should focus, instead, on how to win back to the cause of liberal democracy a sufficient number of those Americans who voted for a candidate who denigrated this nation’s institutions and ideals.

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Kamala Harris Attended A Punk Show ▉

Eddie Fu at Consequence of Sound:

Vice President Kamala Harris is known for being a hip-hop, soul, and jazz fan, but now we know she has dabbled in punk rock on at least one occasion. In a recent interview with EFE, Harris’ younger cousin Sharada Balachandran Orihuela recalled the two of them attending a Bad Religion show in the early 2000s.

Orihuela’s father, Gopalan Balachandran, is Harris’ uncle on her mother’s side, meaning they share the same Indian grandparents. While growing up between Mexico and India, Orihuela became a big fan of Bad Religion but never went to one of their concerts.

This all changed when Orihuela moved to Oakland, California in 2001 to attend college. Orihuela went to live with her aunt (and Harris’ mother) Shyamala, allowing her to bond with her older cousin.

At the time, Harris was an assistant district attorney in San Francisco, but the future Democratic presidential nominee still put forth the effort to make Orihuela feel at home. “She was like a big sister to me,” Orihuela told EFE.

I’d be very curious to hear what she thought of the band. Bad Religion is a band that you can appreciate on the surface but being well read in things like philosophy and political philosophy gives their lyrics so much more depth when you understand what’s being said underneath. I’d suspect that, since she was assistant district attorney at the time, she was very well read in at least some of these areas.

This also speaks to her character. The fact that she took her niece to a show that was completely out of her depth tells me that she actually is a caring person and someone who cares more about others than herself. Contrast that to the asshole she’s running against.

I hope she ends up using one of their songs at a campaign event. Unlikely but you never know.

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