The Daily Parker

Even with Chicago's 1,642 judges on the ballot ("Shall NERDLY McSNOOD be retained as a circuit court judge in Cook County?"), I still got in and out of my polling place in about 15 minutes. It helped that the various bar associations only gave "not recommended" marks to two of them, which still left 1,640 little "yes" ovals to fill in.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...

• Republican pollster Rick Wilson, one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project, has a head-shaking Twitter thread warning everyone that You Know Who will probably announce his 2024 run before polls close tonight just to keep his narcissistic needs met.
• Author Stacy Schiff argues that the arguments John Hancock and Samuel Adams had in the 1770s define our politics today. (Would that make them the Isaac and Ishmael of American politics?)
• College Football and politics really, really shouldn't mix.
• Josh Marshall looks back wistfully on the stories TPM ran about alleged voter fraud in 2002 and finds nothing has changed except how much Republicans are lying about it. (Hint: they're lying more now.)
• National Geographic describes some archaeological finds that elucidate why the Western Roman Empire fell.
• The historic Belden-Stratford in Lincoln Park, which Parker and I passed every morning on his dawn relief trip to the park, is getting a multi-million-dollar rehab so the new landlord can offer $3,000-a-month studios and $8,000 three-bedrooms.
• Cranky Flier analyzes all 9,999 flight numbers for four major airlines to figure out some things about how their business models differ.
• Why is Maine building a $106 million highway that nobody wants? (The omnibus explanation seems on point.)
• John Scalzi lays out how Twitter's policy change around the "blue check" will make the notation worse than useless going forward.

Finally, Chicago gets a new brewery taproom on Thursday when Hop Butcher to the World opens in Half Acre's former Lincoln Avenue space, just over 2 km from my house. Cassie and I might find out on Saturday whether they let dogs in, assuming the forecast holds. (And there it is: a post that literally checks all the boxes for Daily Parker categories!)

So far I've managed to avoid getting soaked running lots of errands, but the cold front descending upon us has stirred things up anyway. Right now, O'Hare reports 48 km/h winds with gusts up to 65 km/h and a peak wind just before noon of 92 km/h from the south—directly across all 6 main runways there. Whee!

I sincerely hope no one tried to land in that.

This. Is. Amazing:

Chicago Public Media explains how they made it:

The viral video was shot earlier this summer, with the help of a Minneapolis-based production studio. With a “lean crew” of just three people, Sky Candy Studios paid a visit to the Windy City in late July, the company’s founder Michael Welsh said.

Over the course of a Saturday and a Sunday, Welsh piloted an FPV-style drone with a GoPro attached through the nooks and crannies of Wrigleyville. The “high-precision drone,” which weighs under 250 grams, is meant to cruise through tight spaces and wouldn’t do any damage if it were to bump into something — or someone, Welsh said.

“It’s incredibly small and safe and allows you to do these maneuvers that in the past you weren’t able to do with drones,” said Welsh, who initially started flying drones about 12 years ago when he was in the Army.

The final product includes five different videos that are stitched together “with some creative editing magic,” Welsh said. For each of the five videos, Welsh says they probably did about five takes, with a lot of prep and talking with the people who appear in the shots. Inside Murphy’s Bleachers, for example, they let patrons know a drone was coming through and they should ignore it. At first, Welsh said people can’t help but look at the camera flying by them, but by the third take “they’re kind of bored with it.”

And they did this all with a tiny 250-gram drone? Whoa.

Wow, yesterday went on a bit. From getting on the bus to Peoria to getting off the bus back in Chicago, I spent 18 hours and 20 minutes doing something connected with the Peoria Symphony's performance of Beethoven's 9th yesterday. I think it went quite well, and I expect they'll ask us back the next time they do a huge symphonic choral work.

Right now, Cassie has plotzed completely after two nights in boarding, and I need to figure out what I'm eating this week. So I'll post something more interesting later today.

In the meantime, enjoy this Saturday Night Live bit that will challenge even the most attentive English speakers throughout the former colonies:

I'm movin' out. A lovely young couple have offered to buy Inner Drive World Headquarters v5.0, and the rest of the place along with it. I've already gotten through the attorney-review period for IDTWHQ v6.0, so this means I'm now more likely than not to move house next month.

Which means I have even less time to read stuff like this:

• Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D) has withdrawn from the Daily Herald candidate forum after the Herald's publisher allowed a right-wing Republican group to use its mail permit for deceitful and misleading postal ads.
• New York Attorney General Letitia James's (D) lawsuit against the XPOTUS's company hits the XPOTUS where it hurts the most: his ego. And Matt Ford says the NYAG complaint shows "it's fraud all the way down."
• Mark Leibovich explains how the XPOTUS makes everyone around him look like an imbecile (possibly because he's always the biggest one in the room).
• John Scalzi can't help you with your writer's block.
• If you find an AI that responds to natural-language prompts, you can probably break it.

Finally, American Airlines plans to get rid of its First Class offerings, replacing them with high-tech Business Class and more premium coach seats. I'd better use my miles soon.

I do love traveling Saturday mid-days, because it's the quietest time at O'Hare. There was no line at the Pre-Check security gate, and I only have a backpack, so it took less than 3 minutes to clear TSA. Wonderful.

Unfortunately, every single economy parking space has a car in it. (I would have taken public transit but I had a meeting run until 12:30, with a 3pm flight. Couldn't risk the 90 minutes or so.)

In any event, my plane is here, it appears to be on time, and the latest weather is VFR the whole way. Next report from North Carolina.

So, what's going on today?

• Emma Green explains "how the Federalist Society won," which actually kept awake in the middle of the night on Tuesday.
• As a reminder that the true goal of the Federalist Society—and right-wing governments in general—is actually to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich, the Times explains how Alabama's criminal justice system essentially creates indentured servants from impoverished inmates.
• David Jolly, Christine Todd Whitman, and Andrew Yang have formed a centrist political party. I will watch this with interest. But the Onion might have the best take on it.
• John Pavlovitz states the obvious: actual Christians reject Christianism.
• Cranky Flier agrees that Spirit Airlines' board made the right choice going for JetBlue instead of Frontier.

Finally, I meant to post this earlier: Cassie, plotzed, after getting home from boarding Sunday night.

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.

I will definitely make time this weekend to drool over the recent photos from the James Webb Space Telescope. It's kind of sad that no living human will ever see anything outside our solar system, but we can dream, right?

Closer to home than the edge of the visible universe:

• Josh Marshall highlight's a reader's note explaining how the historic conservatism of the Executive Branch legal team won't work any more.
• The President's conservatism doesn't work either, as recent polls and Democratic-party frustration will show you.
• Eugene Robinson says Republican candidate for US Senate from Georgia,  former football player Herschel Walker, has a "combination of utter ignorance and total confidence, which challenges even that of the former president."
• David French declares flatly that our Constitution isn't working.
• Julia Ioffe explains how the Russian penal system (don't call it a "justice system") means bad news for everyone who enters it, especially people with political value like Brittney Griner.

Finally, an F/A-18 slid right off the deck of the USS Harry S Truman and into the Mediterranean, which will probably result in a short Navy career for at least one weather forecaster or helmsman.

In case you needed more things to read today:

• Have we become a nation of hostages?
• Impeach Justice Thomas (R) if you want, but that won't solve the real problem with the Court.
• European leaders will miss President Biden.
• Researchers can now explain how climate change affects your weather.
• Amtrak's plans to expand in the South might derail because of opposition from freight lines.
• British Airways has cancelled 10,000 flights through October because of staff shortages.

There are others, but I've still got a lot to do today.