This old background from the Brooklyn Nets website of the herringbone pattern of their court makes a great tablet wallpaper.

Griffey and his extra long front leg. 🐈

Full floof was on display this morning. 🐈

Griffey had his first hairball last night. My little guy is growing up so fast! 🐈

• ☕️ Japanese coffee chain reveals power of iOS 14 App Clips - iMore
• 🍿 Macaulay Culkin is Down With Scrubbing Donald Trump From ‘Home Alone 2’ - Okayplayer
• 🎶 Descendents Bid President Trump Farewell on ‘That’s the Breaks’ - Spin
• 🎶 System of a Down Elaborate on Their Reunion: ‘Never Call It Quits’ - Spin
• 🎶 D’Angelo Resurfaces with a Psychedelic Soul Masterclass - Okayplayer
• 🏛 Justice Department Filing Says “Strong Evidence” Capitol Rioters Intended to “Capture and Assassinate” Lawmakers - Slate
• 🏛 The case of the missing relief money - Axios
• 🏛 A guide to President Trump’s second impeachment trial - Axios

Your morning lap cat action. 🐈

While I wait for a tow truck to come get my mom’s car so I can give her a ride home, I decided to stare at clouds through my moon roof.

Russell Contreras, writing for Axios

Black and white school segregation has deepened toward pre-Civil Rights Movement-era numbers despite decades of strides.

This places Black students into school districts with fewer resources than white students — but in more diverse settings than in 1968, since the percentage of Latino and Asian American students has skyrocketed.

The whole piece is worth a read, but I don’t find any of it surprising. I know where I live, minorities have been largely cornered into the same part of town for the past two decades that I’ve lived here. Meanwhile, the new expansions to the city are vastly populated by whites. I’m not going to speak for everyone who moves to the suburbs, so race may or may not be a direct factor for those moves, but one thing I know is true is that Blacks often aren’t offered the same opportunities for jobs, bank loans, etc.. This directly effects their opportunities to move to these same neighborhoods, which often come with newer and better equipped schools (there’s two high schools currently being built on the edge of town in my city).

All of this goes to show the subliminal effects of white supremacy in this country. All of this is subtle to most people. It’s not as jarring as the images of the police with their knees on Black necks. But, it’s just as damaging. Until the social fabric of this country is significantly altered, significant change isn’t going to happen.

Flashback: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal,” the 1968 Kerner Commission report warned.

“What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

Indeed.

From Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced a set of major new projects as part of its $100 million Racial Equity and Justice Initiative (REJI) to help dismantle systemic barriers to opportunity and combat injustices faced by communities of color. These forward-looking and comprehensive efforts include the Propel Center, a first-of-its-kind global innovation and learning hub for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs); an Apple Developer Academy to support coding and tech education for students in Detroit; and venture capital funding for Black and Brown entrepreneurs.

I’m a believer the less you limit your talent pool, the better overall things become. This is a step in the right detection of diversifying the developer community, which can only help to bring some new great ideas into the fold. Kudos to Apple for this.

Good morning.

Paul Hammel, writing for omaha.com:

A day before the Capitol was stormed and ransacked, the fundraising arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association — of which Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson is a member — issued robocalls urging supporters of President Donald Trump to march to the Capitol and “stop the steal,” NBC News reported over the weekend.

Ope.

Vilius Petkauskas, writing forCyberNews

The scrape includes user profile data, user information, and which users had administration rights for specific groups within the social network. Twitter user @donk_enby, who first announced about the scrape, claims that over a million video URLs, some deleted and private, were taken. 

“These are original, unprocessed, raw files as uploaded to Parler with all associated metadata,” claims one of the authors.

Security researchers claim that the scrapped posts are linked to accounts that posted them, and some of the video and image data have geolocation information. That is said also to include data from Parler’s “Verified Citizens,” users of the network who verified their identity by uploading photographs of government-issued IDs, such as a driver’s license.

I’m not at all surprised by this. I’ve never used Parler, but I’ve heard many things structurally weren’t implemented well, including inconsistent success with photo and link posts and overall formatting. The service sounds half-baked to say the least.

Then there’s the fact Parler is funded by Rebekah Mercer, the same family who funded Cambridge Analytica. As John Gruber said back in November, “To say these people operate in bad faith is to give “bad faith” a bad name.”

Just a note: Eating at my place is kind of like eating from a New York City bodega. You may find a loose cat hair or two in the food. 🐈

9to5Mac, quoting CNET:

Parler Chief Executive John Matze posted on his service late Saturday that Amazon had informed him it would no longer host his service on its Amazon Web Services platform […]

“This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the marketplace,” Matze wrote, adding that his service had become “too successful too fast.” He didn’t initially address his platform’s comparatively lax moderation rules or its use by extremists ahead of the Capitol Hill riot. He also didn’t mention increasing concerns that social media apps, including Parler, were being used to organize another attack in the coming weeks.

Parler catered to a segment of America who they knew was problematic. They only have themselves to blame for this.

Your morning lap cat action. 🐈

I miss the simplicity of Path for social networking.

One thing about watching your team lose in the first round is you can watch the rest of the playoffs with no stress.

I’m pretty sure those citing Orwell’s 1984 are the ones Orwell warned us about.

Current home and lock screens. 📱

I love Carrot Weather!

Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny, writing for NBC News :

Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account on Friday, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.”

The president’s account was initially banned for 12 hours on Jan. 6 due to “severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy,” after he used the platform to tweet condemnation against Vice President Mike Pence as his supporters stormed the Capitol.

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company said in a tweet.

This should have happened years ago.

RIP Tommy Lasorda

Patrick Rhone on Rhoneisms:

This is who we are. The sooner we reckon with that the sooner we can get to the real question we should be asking; Is this who we want to continue to be?

Not I.

I’m a slow book reader, so it’s taking me a little bit to make my way through Common’s Let Love Have the Last Word. The title stays with me though. Think about it for a minute. What if that was your finishing thought with everything in your life. With how you treat others, with your political views, and with how you act towards your home here on Earth. Imagine that. Can you look at yourself and honestly say this is the path you’ve chosen? How different could things be? Think about it.

Let love have the last word.

Tonight’s therapy.