The Guardian: “How the US has hidden its empire”

That was how the first draft of FDR’s speech went, too: it presented the event as a “bombing in Hawaii and the Philippines”. Yet Roosevelt toyed with that draft all day, adding things in pencil, crossing other bits out. At some point he deleted the prominent references to the Philippines.

Why did Roosevelt demote the Philippines? We don’t know, but it’s not hard to guess. Roosevelt was trying to tell a clear story: Japan had attacked the US. But he faced a problem. Were Japan’s targets considered “the United States”? Legally, they were indisputably US territory. But would the public see them that way? What if Roosevelt’s audience didn’t care that Japan had attacked the Philippines or Guam? Polls taken slightly before the attack show that few in the continental US supported a military defense of those remote territories.

Roosevelt no doubt noted that the Philippines and Guam, although technically part of the US, seemed foreign to many. Hawaii, by contrast, was more plausibly “American”. Although it was a territory rather than a state, it was closer to North America and significantly whiter than the others.

Daniel Immerwahr

Fascinating piece of history on the Unites States. On some level not much has changed in the eight decades since the start of the Second World War: the average American continues to care very little about events outside US borders – even outside the continental US. A more recent example was the lackluster support for Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017 – Puerto Rico is officially a commonwealth of the United States, the same statute the Philippines had during World War Two. And this attitude reflects in the foreign policy trend of retreating from international affairs, a growing isolationist sentiment that was partially responsible for the election of Donald Trump.

The Guardian: “The empty promises of Marie Kondo and the craze for minimalism”

In the 21st century, across the developed world, most of us do not need as much as we have. The average American household possesses more than 300,000 items. In the UK, one study found that children have on average 238 toys, but only play with 12 of them on a daily basis. We are addicted to accumulation. The minimalist lifestyle seems like a conscientious way of approaching the world now that we have realised that materialism, accelerating since the industrial revolution, is literally destroying the planet.

Yet my gut reaction to Kondo and the Minimalists was that it all seemed a little too convenient: just sort through your house or listen to a podcast, and happiness, satisfaction and peace of mind could all be yours. It was a blanket solution so vague that it could be applied to anyone and anything. You could use the Kondo method for your closet, your Facebook account or your boyfriend. Minimalism also seemed sometimes to be a form of individualism, an excuse to put yourself first by thinking, I shouldn’t have to deal with this person, place or thing because it doesn’t fit within my worldview. On an economic level, it was a commandment to live safely within your means versus pursuing dreamy aspirations or taking a leap of faith – not a particularly inspiring doctrine.

Kyle Chayka

I have never been particularly attracted to this sort of one-size-fits-all life philosophy, and this article makes a good case against it, exposing its shallow and unsatisfying aspects. I liked how it uses the iPhone design as a prime example of minimalism driven to the extreme, of its underlying dependency on society and the systems build over years to support it.

The Guardian: “Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly dirty fight for the right to dry your hands”

Public bathrooms offer three primary options to dry a pair of wet hands. First, there is the venerable crisp-pleated paper towel. Second, the old-style warm-air dryer: those indestructible metal carapaces that, through their snouts, breathe down upon our hands. And finally, the jet dryer sub-species of the sort Dyson makes, whose gale-force winds promise to shear away every drop of moisture rather than slowly evaporating it. In the quest to dominate the world’s restrooms, Campbell discovered, Dryer v Towel is a pitched contest of business strategy and public relations. Expect to be lied to a lot, Campbell told me. It’s almost like the cola wars. You have Pepsi v Coke, and you have hand dryers v paper towels.

The chief battleground for this duel is public hygiene. Science has tried and failed to come to a consensus about the hygienic superiority of one product over the other. Even so, the paper towel industry has funded or promoted a rash of studies claiming that hand dryers turn bathrooms into mosh pits of pathogens. These results almost always make news. Any sort of health scare is a gift to a journalist – an opportunity to write viral headlines such as “Hand dryers are blowing bacteria all over your hands” or “Hand Dryers are Germ-Flinging Bullshit”.

Samanth Subramanian

Nice overview of a mundane topic. There are numerous arguments for and against the two competing options, and unfortunately increasingly hard to cut through advertising and studies funded by each side to discredit the other to find impartial facts.

Financial Times: “Apple develops alternative to Google search”

In a little-noticed change to the latest version of the iPhone operating system, iOS 14, Apple has begun to show its own search results and link directly to websites when users type queries from its home screen.

That web search capability marks an important advance in Apple’s in-house development and could form the foundation of a fuller attack on Google, according to several people in the industry.

The Silicon Valley company is notoriously secretive about its internal projects, but the move adds to growing evidence that it is working to build a rival to Google’s search engine.

Two and a half years ago, Apple poached Google’s head of search, John Giannandrea. The hire was ostensibly to boost its artificial intelligence capabilities and its Siri virtual assistant, but also brought eight years of experience running the world’s most popular search engine.

Tim Bradshaw & Patrick McGee

Unsurprising, considering recent antitrust actions by the US government, and a rumor that has been circulated for years. The evidence so far is rather weak in my opinion.

MacRumors: “MagSafe Charger only charges at Full 15W Speeds with Apple’s 20W Power Adapter”

YouTuber Aaron Zollo of Zollotech tested several first and third-party power adapter options with the iPhone 12 Pro and a MagSafe charger using a meter to measure actual power output. Paired with the 20W power adapter that Apple offers, the MagSafe Charger successfully hit 15W, but no other chargers that he tested provided the same speeds.

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For maximum charging speeds with the MagSafe Charger and an iPhone 12 or 12 Pro, Apple’s 20W power adapter is required, and older power adapter options won’t work as well. Third-party companies will need to come out with new chargers that use the particular power profile that Apple is using to provide the optimum amount of power before a third-party charger will be able to provide the full 15W with the MagSafe Charger.

Juli Clover

Apple products in 2020: you need a flowchart and expert advice to decide which power adapter to buy.

The Washington Post: “Gruesome details emerge in beheading of French teacher who showed students Muhammad cartoons”

As further details emerged, the incident reignited some of the most explosive debates in the French national lexicon: the value of free expression in a country that, unlike the United States, does abide by hate-speech laws, and the place of Islam in a nominally secular but post-colonial society in which Muslims are among the largest minority groups.

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Paty’s decision to show these drawings to teenage children raised eyebrows, with some Muslim parents complaining to the school’s leadership, French media reported. One of the offended parents took his dispute to social media, which is probably how the suspect — who had no known ties to the school or to that parental dispute — learned of the issue, authorities suggested.

But according to some parents, Paty had also tried to be as sensitive as possible to offensive potential of the images he wanted to discuss.

Nordine Chaouadi, a parent of a 13-year-old in Paty’s class, told Agence France-Presse that he had allowed Muslim students to leave the classroom during the discussion.

At no point did he want to be disrespectful — that’s what my son told me, he said.

James McAuley

Horrendous and shocking murder, recalling the Charlie Hebdo attack five years ago, an attack both on free speech and on secular institutions.

The Guardian: “Why Israel is quietly cosying up to Gulf monarchies”

The original impetus for these developing relationships between Israel and the Gulf states was a mutual distaste for Barack Obama. In the early years of the Arab spring, he infuriated the Saudis and the UAE, and alarmed Israel, by abandoning Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, and then voiced support for the popular uprising in Syria and called for Bashar al-Assad to resign. In 2015, when the US-led nuclear agreement was signed with Iran, it was vehemently opposed by Israel and most Gulf states. That September, Russia’s military intervention in Syria marked the beginning of the end of the crisis for Assad. Tehran’s steadfast support for its ally in Damascus, and its backing of Hezbollah in Lebanon – Iran’s “axis of resistance” – was regarded with identical disgust in Jerusalem, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

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One former UAE diplomat told me that the threat from Iran today had a unifying effect comparable to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which led to a previously unacceptable US military presence in Saudi Arabia. If it wasn’t for the Palestinian issue, the ex-diplomat said, this relationship with Israel would be very public, and it would be very welcome, because we need their military equipment and technology.

Jamal al-Suwaidi, the founder of the government-backed Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, put it more bluntly: The Palestinian cause is no longer at the forefront of Arabs’ interests, as it used to be for long decades; it has sharply lost priority in light of the challenges, threats and problems that face countries of the region. Similarly, he added, the question of Israel was not comparable to the threats posed … by Iran, Hezbollah and terrorist groups.

Ian Black

Fascinating changes in the dynamics of Middle East politics. It began covertly during the Obama presidency and continued under Trump, who has encouraged and embraced the authoritarian leaders in the region. With a mutual enemy in Iran, an unreliable ally in the United States, and shared tendencies towards dictatorship and neglecting the interests of the people they rule, a rapprochement between Israel and the Gulf monarchies is not the most surprising development in global politics.