The Daily Parker

These two things are not connected.

First, O'Hare officially hit 33.3°C (92°F) just after 4pm, breaking the previous record of 32.8°C set in 1962. I will now, reluctantly, turn on my air conditioning, as the temperature at Inner Drive  Technology World HQ is now 28.9°C, the warmest reading since August 27th. Also, closing the windows seems like a good idea with some epic thunderstorms due to hit in a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, someone had a really good morning:

I didn't supervise her well enough, however, so she got a bit enthusiastic:

And I had to apologize to her for buying a peanut butter jar with a smaller diameter than her snout.

I had a lot going on today, so I only have a couple of minutes to note these stories:

• Not only is the OAFPOTUS's "new" (actually quite well-used) Qatari Boeing 747-8 a huge bribe, it will cost taxpayers almost as much as one of the (actually) new VC-25B airplanes the Air Force is currently building, as it completely fails to meet any of the requirements for survivability and security. (“You might even ask why Qatar no longer wants the aircraft," former USAF acquisitions chief Andrew Hunter said. "And the answer may be that it’s too expensive for them to maintain.”)
• The Economist analyzes county-level data and finds that Republican areas are outperforming Democratic areas on a couple of measures—for now.
• Rolling Stone criticizes Ezra Klein's Abundance for playing into the oligarchs' plans, though I wonder if I'm reading the same book they did? (I'll have more to say when I finish the book.)
• Elaine Kamarck and William Galston, on the other hand, have some pretty good ideas about how the Democrats can get their mojo back, and "oligarchy" doesn't come up once. (For the record, I think Kamarck and Galston have a better take than Rolling Stone.)
• Times reporter Molly Young went to the "world's happiest country" in February and was not the world's happiest reporter.

Finally, a late-night club in Lincoln Park that the city closed down after shootings and other crime in 2017 will reopen at the end of May as a doggy day spa. Pup Social, at 2200 N. Ashland Ave., will offer off-leash play, a coworking lounge (presumably for humans), and a bar (also presumably for humans). The fees will start at $99 per month.

The Chicago Park District periodically burns conservation areas throughout the city because the prairie we built the city on evolved with fire. Last fall, they burned some of the prairie-reclamation areas in Winnemac Park, close to my house:

Here's the same area yesterday, clearly benefitting from the burn:

And just because everyone loves her, here's a photo of Cassie enjoying the random pats and treats she got at Spiteful Brewing about two hours after we passed through the park:

Happy Monday.

Not a lot to post today, as the weather is nearly perfect (for April) and I need a nap.

First, let's take a moment to acknowledge that the OAFPOTUS has the lowest approval rating (39%) of any president at the 100-day mark since polls began. That's quite an accomplishment. Until now, the record for lowest approval rating after 100 days was...well, the OAFPOTUS, at 42% in April 2017.

Second, how about this day? Cassie and I covered 6 kilometers around Uptown and Edgewater, including through Lakewood-Balmoral:

This is after Butters went home, which happened about 10 minutes after she decided that laying quietly in the sun was worth getting repeatedly smacked in the face by Cassie's tail:

That's par for Butters' course. She likes sleeping, after all. And she's one of the only dogs I've met who can throw shade in her sleep:

There you are, beagle photos as promised.

Taking 90 minutes to finish a novel this afternoon doesn't seem to have lessened my fatigue from the last couple of days. And now I'm off to a "friend-raiser" for an organization I've supported in the past.

As I'm also dogsitting Butters again, there's a good possibility that I'll have cute beagle photos tomorrow. For the next few hours, though, I need to smile and shake hands. I hope the passed apps are good...

Cassie and I are taking a moment after a visit to Horner Park, where she met a bunch of new friends:

Note that the woman in the photo is not the beagle's human, which the beagle finds irrelevant if she can get her snoot deeper into that bag.

We have stopped for a moment to enjoy a beer (Hazy Sunday IPA) and crack-soaked popcorn at Burning Bush near the park. I feel no urgency about anything at the moment. It's a good day.

Yesterday I had non-stop stuff from waking up until going to sleep. Today it's sunny and seasonably cool. In other words: as soon as I take a quick nap, I'm taking Cassie for a decent walk, then not doing anything productive until tomorrow.

Enjoy the weekend.

One of my work projects has a monthly release these days, so right now I'm watching a DevOps pipeline run through about 400 time-consuming integration tests before I release this month's update. That gives me some time to catch up on all this:

The New York Times has a long explanation of how the Clown Prince of X took over the federal bureaucracy.

• As I and others have warned for years, the OAFPOTUS has embarked on a truly unprecedented program of bribery and corruption that we may never recover from. For example, as Joyce Vance describes, the Clown Prince has cancelled a $2.4 billion Verizon contract to modernize our air-traffic control infrastructure and given it to...Starlink, which the Clown Prince owns.
• Radley Balko highlights the OAFPOTUS's "full-frontal assault on democracy" over a five-day period this month.
• Paul Krugman is shocked—shocked!—that all of the chaos from the administration has caused an economic slowdown that will only get worse.
• The Economist have published their 2024 global democracy index, which kept the US at "flawed democracy" and saw Bagnladesh plummet from there to "hybrid regime (lower half)."
• Yascha Mounk wants the US to end the requirement to have a prescription to buy glasses, and jokes that maybe DOGE can see to it.
• The Chicago Transit Authority plans to build a four-kilometer walking path with dog parks under the new Red/Purple trestle between Lawrence and Bryn Mawr.

All right, the build has finished, so I can now deploy. And for no reason other than I like it, here is a photo of Cassie watching TV with me last night:

Garmin periodically challenges its users to get active. About once a month they put out a distance challenge for walkers. This month, the challenge was to do a 4.8 km walk this weekend. Cassie and I just did that, as it turns out Jimmy's Pizza Cafe is conveniently 2.6 km away. It helps that we haven't had temperatures this warm (4.0°C) since just after 1pm on the 3rd.

Butters, however, did not like getting left behind. According to my security camera, she spent 18 minutes crying by the front door, took a quick stroll around my lower level, then went back to cry by the front door for another 10 minutes before going upstairs to cry in the living room. She gave up for a while, then returned to the front door for another 15 minutes, alternately crying and sitting quietly. I haven't watched the whole 54 minutes but I'd bet she was quiescent for less than 10.

I am sorry for my neighbors. Fortunately, the neighbor to the north is out of town. And frankly, the neighbors to the south have a 3-year-old boy who makes far more noise in the aggregate than any dogs I've ever owned (or looked after).

Tomorrow I'll go back to complaining about world events. Right now, I'm taking both dogs and my friend Kat's new book to Spiteful Brewing.

Butters, possibly traumatized by Cassie and me leaving her alone for almost half an hour yesterday, has decided to stake out my office:

Incidentally, this is what Cassie and I walked past in the local park yesterday:

We've had progressively warmer days since the temperature bottomed out Monday morning. We might even get above freezing today! I hope so, because I need a 5 km walk to meet a Garmin challenge this weekend. (Cassie will help with that; Butters, not so much.)