This is a bit of good news for my weekend getaway:
Long-running weekend strikes on London's Night Tube have been suspended after the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union accepted a concession from London Underground about rotas.
The bodies have agreed to have a minimum number of drivers who prefer to work overnight on each line.
The RMT stressed the dispute was not resolved, and the situation would be reviewed in three months at the latest.
Ongoing weekend strike action began in January and was planned until December.
The union said the industrial action had been taken to "prevent the ripping up of staffing arrangements that would wreck the work-life balance of drivers".
The strikes have affected the Central, Jubilee, Northern, and Victoria lines, two of which figure prominently in my plans this week as I'm staying in Holborn and spending time in Gospel Oak/Camden Town.
I'm working a half-day in my company's London office to catch up on some things and to ensure my team back home get the current sprint off to a good start. But the weather is absolutely perfect, so I might not make it past my 3pm meeting...
Contra Daniel Burnham, I made only small plans. Tonight I'm returning to a friend's old haunts in Earls Court to give her an update. Tomorrow I'm having lunch with a colleague at an historic Greenwich pub, then either going for a (10-kilometer) walk or popping round a museum. Saturday will see another walk that ends, conveniently, at my favorite pub in London.
Updates as the situation warrants. Photos next week.
With an 8:30 international flight and great uncertainty in airport/airline operations these days, I thought it prudent to haul my ass out to a hotel by the airport last night.
Well, it worked, in that I got through O'Hare security less than an hour after waking up. I have plenty of time to sort through my email and load my Surface with some news.
On the other hand, I couldn't find a combination of pillows that I could tolerate, and only slept a bit more than 6 hours, so I can't call it a decisive win.
It looks like there are a lot of empty seats on the plane, so at least I didn't feel the need to check my bag. Depending on how I flex my strong dollars (£1 = $1.197 at this writing), I might have to check it on the way back, though.
Next report from my Ancestral Homeland in about 11 hours, if all goes well.
In just a few minutes I will take Cassie to boarding, then head up to Northwestern for a rehearsal (I'm in the chorus at Ravinia's upcoming performances of La Clemenza di Tito.) I'll then have to pack when I get home from rehearsal, then head to a hotel by O'Hare. Ah, how much fun is an 8:30 international flight!
As I'll have some time at the airport in the morning, and no time now, I want to queue these up for myself:
All right, I'm off. After I pack.
The Met Office has provisionally recorded the UK's first-ever above-40°C (104°F) temperature:
Heathrow's 12:50 BST report to ICAO put the temperature at 39°C, with a heat index of 37.1°C (98.9°F). Meanwhile, the city of Abadan, Iran, has hit 51°C (123.8°F), which I can scarcely imagine.
And yet, the forecast for my trip this week looks perfect: highs in the mid-20s, with possible sprinkles Friday morning.
Ain't she purdy?
I couldn't decide which shot or aspect ratio to use, so you get a bonus photo:
She looks especially fine today after having two baths over the weekend. (I may drink Lake Michigan water, but that doesn't mean I want it tracked all through my house.)
Last year's birthday photo is here.
The Met Office has declared that Gogerddan, Wales, has reached 35.3°C (95.5°F), the hottest temperature ever recorded in the country. Meanwhile, the London Broil continues:
Met Office Chief Meteorologist Neil Armstrong, said “The extreme temperatures that we have been forecasting are now beginning to build and it is likely that today we will see values reach into the high 30s, possibly challenging the UK record of 38.7°C set in July 2019.
“Even higher maximum temperatures will develop tomorrow with a 70% chance of somewhere in England exceeding 40°C. A value of this level would exceed the current UK record by 1.3°C or more. This is akin to a marathon runner shaving 20 minutes off of the current record.
“Nights are also likely to be exceptionally warm, especially in urban areas. This is likely to lead to widespread impacts on people and infrastructure. Therefore, it is important people plan for the heat and consider changing their routines. This level of heat can have adverse health effects.”
This is the first time we have forecast 40°C in the UK. The current record high temperature in the UK is 38.7°C, which was reached at Cambridge Botanic Garden on 25 July in 2019.
Weather forecast models are run numerous times to help us quantify the likelihood of a particular event occurring and estimate the uncertainty which is always present in weather forecasting to some degree. Some models are now producing a 70% chance of maximum temperatures in excess of 40°C in isolated parts of the UK for the start of next week. Mid, to high, 30s Celsius will be seen more widely with a 95% chance we will exceed the current record.
At this writing, Heathrow and London City both report 36.0°C (96.8°F). They still have more livable weather than the world's hot spot right now: Abadan, Iran, reports 50°C (122°F), but its 6°C dewpoint and 8% humidity make it feel like a much cooler 45.6°C (114.7°F).
I arrive around 22:15 BST Wednesday, when temperatures should be closer to 22°C (74°F), which is still a very warm summer day in London.
To Cassie's great joy, we went back to the Montrose Beach DFA this afternoon:
She is now asleep on the couch, where I expect she will remain until dinner time, which is imminent.
Writing in The New Yorker last week, Corey Robin argues that the violent and authoritarian world-view of Justice Thomas (R) has much more internal consistency than we on the left usually ascribe to it, but that doesn't make it better:
Thomas’s argument against substantive due process is more than doctrinal. It’s political. In a speech before the Federalist Society and the Manhattan Institute which he gave in his second year on the Court, Thomas linked a broad reading of the due-process clause, with its ever-expanding list of “unenumerated” rights, to a liberal “rights revolution” that has undermined traditional authority and generated a culture of permissiveness and passivity. That revolution, which began with the New Deal and peaked in the nineteen-sixties, established the welfare state, weakened criminal law, and promulgated sexual freedom. The result has been personal dissipation and widespread disorder. Workers lose their incentive to labor. Men abandon wives and children. Criminals roam and rule the streets.
Liberals often claim that there is something hypocritical, if not perverse, about conservatives enshrining the right to bear arms without enshrining the right to abortion. Conservatives have an easy response: one right is found in the Constitution, both as tradition and text; the other is not. That’s what Justice Samuel Alito argues in Dobbs and in his concurrence, the day before, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., et al. v. Bruen, which struck down part of New York’s concealed-carry law.
Bodily autonomy is so foundational to contemporary understandings of freedom, however, that it’s hard to imagine a reason for denying it to women other than the fact that they are women. The fetish for guns, meanwhile, can seem like little more than a transposition of America’s white settler past onto its white suburban present....
Today’s felt absence of physical security is the culmination of a decades-long war against social welfare. In the face of a state that won’t do anything about climate change, economic inequality, personal debt, voting rights, and women’s rights, it’s no wonder that an increasing portion of the population, across all races, genders, and beliefs, have determined that the best way to protect themselves, and their families, is by getting a gun. A society with no rights, no freedoms, except for those you claim yourself—this was always Thomas’s vision of the world. Now, for many Americans, it is the only one available.
To sum up our current state of affairs: it might have helped the United States if politicians on the left had taken seriously the worries that many of us expressed about the right's march to power. A minority dedicated to controlling the majority can succeed for a long, long time, until it wrecks the foundations of the society too much to survive. Just ask South Africa how that can go.
I went to a Cubs game today for the first time since 6 June 2019, mainly because they have made a quest of finding imaginative ways to lose.
Today they lost because of a new rule imported from kickball, where they put a man on second base at the start of extra innings. They want the game to end sooner, you see, but with the wind blowing in like this:
Then you get a 1-1 ballgame going into the 11th. The next run will win the game, because hitting really sucks with a 20-knot wind coming from center field. And the next run—shown on the scoreboard above—did win the game. That, and some lousy Cubs hitting.
I still had fun, but I really would have preferred the Cubs win instead of the Mutts.