If there's one thing I'd hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Trump as president, it's that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it's exactly what they want. [...]

Many of my journalist colleagues have attempted to beat back the tide under banners like "fighting disinformation" and "accountability." While these efforts are admirable, the past few years have changed my own internal calculus. Thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt warned us that the point of this deluge is not to persuade, but to overwhelm and paralyze our capacity to act. More recently, researchers have found that the viral outrage disseminated on social media in response to these ridiculous claims actually reduces the effectiveness of collective action. The result is a media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.

To that end, the age of corporate social media has been a roaring success. [...]

So what is the alternative? If we log off, what exactly are we supposed to do instead? How are we supposed to get information without constantly raising our antennae into the noxious cumulonimbus cloud of social media?

It isn't quite as simple as "touch grass," but it also sort of is.

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UHC also wants the doctor to publicly apologize for the video and contact "any other media outlet" that has reported on the video and tell them she lied. The doctor is holding her ground against the insurer, and accused the company of "gaslighting and harassment."

On January 7, Dr. Elisabeth Potter [...] was in the middle of surgery when someone from United Healthcare called her office on the phone and demanded to talk to her. "I had to scrub out mid-surgery to call United, only to find that the person on the line didn't even have access to the patient's full medical information, despite the procedure already being pre-approved," she wrote under the video explaining the situation.

UHC was so upset about the video that it contacted Clare Locke, a Virginia-based defamation law firm to chase down the doc. [...] The first half of the six-page letter litigated the specifics of Potter's account. The second half focused on the virality of the video and the mean comments underneath it. "On TikTok alone the first video generated more than 4.8 million views, approximately 762,000 likes, and approximately 20,000 comments," the letter said. "Numerous comments, such as 'In Luigi we trust,' and 'Need more Luigi,' were posted in response to your false claims, attempting to justify the assassination of UnitedHealthcare's CEO Brian Thompson."

The letter also noted that people called for violence against UHC execs and employees. "For instance, one TikTok user commented 'We can keep taking out each CEO that steps up until they get it.' Another user commented 'guess someone else needs to be killed for them to get the point lol what in the world.'" [...]

So what does UHC want the doctor to do? "You must promptly correct the record by removing your videos, posting a public apology to UnitedHealthcare, and condemning threats of violence aimed at our client resulting from your posts," the letter said. It also wants Potter to contact Newsweek and other outlets that reported the story to ask them to remove the stories entirely. Something that Potter would have no power to do, even if she wanted to.

Potter is holding her ground. In her Instagram post sharing the letter, she doubled down. "I recently shared a video after I was asked to call United Healthcare from the operating room to answer administrative questions about the patient who was having surgery to treat breast cancer. Despite my efforts, they denied her stay," she said. "I had requested an overnight stay for medical reasons. This was not an error on my part."

Potter said that the letter contained "gaslighting and harassment" and that it had "strengthened [her] resolve."

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I think this is impossible, but I'll ask again anyway:

What I have:

An iOS 15.8.3 Shortcut Automation that does:

• When I get a message containing 'stop2end'
• Send 'STOP' to 'Sender'

What I want it to also do:

• Block caller 'Sender'
• Delete this conversation

Part 2:

How this currently works is, the message comes in, and the "Shortcut" banner notification pops up. If I do not click on that banner and then click 'Run' within 5 seconds, it just goes away forever and there is no way to tell it to re-fire.

This is not what I consider to be "automation". I want it to just run.

Doing all of this automation from Messages.app on macOS 14.7 would also be acceptable, but I suspect that would be even harder.

Previously.

Shopify says they only closed Kanye West's store because they thought he might not actually ship the Nazi t-shirts, not because they were Nazi t-shirts. Truly a principled stand.

In the message, which was posted on Shopify's Slack Tuesday morning, general counsel Jess Hertz said the swastika-emblazoned T-shirt listed for sale by West was "a stunt" and "not a good faith attempt to make money." [...]

Shopify instituted its acceptable use policy in August 2018, following criticism over its handling of right-wing groups using its platform to make money. The terms allow "space for all types of products, even the ones that we disagree with, but not for the kind of products intended to harm," CEO Tobi Lütke said in a blog post at the time. He had previously argued that Shopify should not withdraw services from merchants because "products are speech and we are pro free speech."

Like I keep saying:

Put yourself in this hypothetical. You own a company. It is a for-profit corporation, not a public utility. Today, you have to pick one of the two checkboxes that read,

☐ Be in business with actual Nazis;
☑ Do not be in business with actual Nazis.

In a world full of gray areas, that's pretty fucking charcoal.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.