Kirk McElhearn

Just posted on Six Colors: Apple clears the decks ahead of its biggest announcement

In newspapers around the world, the report that Donald Trump raped Béatrice Keul in an Atlantic City hotel room commands huge headlines. In US corporate media, it isn't reported. Ask yourself why that might be. Here's the front page of today's Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich.

1. Not sure when a new, on-the-record rape allegation against a sitting president isn’t considered news — especially considering Trump was found liable by a jury in a similar case — but it was ignored by most mainstream media outlets

2. Details in today's Popular Information:

When I make a double batch of bread, I'm not very good at splitting my dough into two even-sized loaves.

I don't care about this sport, but I would think that any award from FIFA is tainted now. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

I get that the media is slow to catch up with things. I'm in the media, I am slow to catch up with things. But the week Reform's crowd looks like this, the BBC chooses _this week_ to go live to Farage's endless remarks on the budget; makes absolutely no sense

The Ebola outbreak in the DRC has now crossed 10,000 cases and is getting close to 5,000 deaths. It is a staggeringly large outbreak and it continues to grow rapidly, with 96 new cases in the last 24 hours alone. #IDsky 🧪 insp.cd/sitrep-n164-...

PhotoActive Podcast, Episode 219: Can a Strong Magnet Disrupt Your iPhone Camera? We’d never heard of this before, but it’s possible that a strong magnet -- like on an accessory that takes advantage of Apple’s MagSafe feature -- could mess with your iPhone’s camera, according to Engadget. We also…

I know there's a lot going on but I feel it should probably be more of an above-the-fold story that members of Congress released a thoroughly documented report directly accusing the president of the United States of being a serial rapist.

This guy is a Kennedy? An ignorant racist. By the way, Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian writer, won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature.

A 2025 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Omar Yaghi is the son of Palestinian refugees who grew up in Jordan. He just left the US to move to China after raising concerns about rising anti-immigrant sentiment, like the kind shown here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/china-than...

After Careful Thought, Teen Applies To College Where Family Donated Building https://theonion.com/after-careful-thought-teen-applies-to-college-where-fa-1819577078/

My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man.

NEW: The iPhone Duo screen-cracking issue is real. Apple hasn’t given stores or customer service representatives guidance but the company is investigating it. Several have personally sent me their images and stories of their new $2000 device breaking within hours. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

NEW: "Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s," per new House Judiciary Dem report. Report has new allegation that Trump raped a 24-year-old and then promised the victim a visa & NYU admission, demanding she stay quiet.

Based on its current trajectory, I expect Overcast to have more iPhone Duo users than iPhone Air users within a week… two, tops.

Young people have always complained that politicians don’t listen to them. If they vote, politicians will listen to them. If young people want change, then they must vote. This proves that it can work.  www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

Is just racism. That’s all they’ve got.

How do you feel about someone setting up an automated process that hammers restaurant-reservation websites to gain an advantage in booking a table? The NY Times thinks this is not only acceptable; it's a "killer task" for AI, worth paying $100/month. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/t...

This analyst's report from Apollo about AI uses the term "S&P 493" to refer to the "S&P 500 minus the Mag 7" - because if you take out the AI companies, the S&P 500 is tanking. www.apollo.com/wealth/insig...

This has all become so normalised and yet... this is not normal.

No, they were middle-aged men wearing powdered wigs, elaborately embroidered hostess jackets, silk hose, and shoes with enormous buckles and substantial heels. In other words, our Constitution was written and signed by drag queens.

Trump Unleashes Racist Tirade That should be the headline in every newspaper.

The Diplomat S4 was quite good. As always, it's a bit wordy and hard to follow. Anyone else see an echo of the time when Josh Lyman did a White House press briefing after CJ Craig had a root canal done? :-)

And they don’t know that it’s spelled with a “b.”

Wishlist now! Launching Tuesday, October 27th. store.steampowered.com/app/4922630/...

Americans have now spent $142 billion more on gasoline and diesel since March 1, enough to buy 361,000 homes at the September median price, enough to house over 900,000 people, due to the US war on Iran and other factors like limited output from Russia

All this talk of "Be Ready" and prepping and not once has the government advised making sure you have enough books in to last out a long emergency. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

"What's up with the gold? He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a cheesecake factory." Obama with zing from the top rope.

New York archdiocese to pay $800 million to over 1300 sex abuse victims

Oh, shit. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory” — Obama

Last call to apply to help us out at AuthorNation Live! in Las Vegas next month. In return for a *free* ticket worth $650 you'll have a couple of shifts helping answer questions and handing out swag. Interested? Email press@literatureandlatte.com by end 10.25 and tell us why you're a great pick.

We are so screwed...

Brian Eno and James Chance, New York City, 1978 by Julia Gordon

Eight months in, the decision to go to war with Iran is looking like the worst presidential decision since the last Republican president blundered into a needless Middle East war.

In addition to throttling StarLink and StarShield to allow his friend Vladimir Putin to strike Ukraine with ballistic missiles, the other thing Elon Musk does every day is sit at his keyboard and write slanderous things about James Talarico. He's utterly deranged.

JUST POSTED: A Russian energy giant has secretly moved to acquire a position in a massive Alaska gas project. Its part of talks between Witkoff/Kushner & Putin. But CEO of US company resigns after learning of Russian money in the project. A wowzer of a story. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...

Apparently UK folks are making fun of our first official recommendation to have a basic stock of light, water, food in case of a weather or power emergency? They’re only asking for 3 days! Many EU countries recommend 7d + the more you are supplied the more gov help can get to the more vulnerable.

This week I'm writing about how maddening it feels to hear people parrot “AI is just a tool” every damn day as a way to shut down conversation and stop us asking the difficult questions about what it’s really doing to us. thefuturehunter.substack.com/p/stop-telli...