The Daily Parker

The author (most notably of the generation-defining novel Generation X) wants Canada to follow the science and quit screwing over my generation:

People my age and younger got the leftovers – which is fine. AstraZeneca is a terrific vaccine, people! But people my age are used to leftovers. It’s the curse of being Gen X, and it’s not very often I ever discuss Gen X qua Gen X, but I think it’s called for here. For a generation that has grown up knowing their pensions will magically vanish the moment they retire, vaccine leftovers were yet more evidence that the statistical books never seem to balance in their favour and probably never will. When some provinces began turning off the AZ tap this week, I don’t think there was even one remotely surprised 50-year-old in the country.

The fact that the announcement of AZ’s removal from the medical landscape was driven by politics and ineptitude rather than science bugged me so much that I wrote my first ever comment on The Globe and Mail’s website (which counts as some sort of milestone in my life). It said: What? Vaccines are now suddenly magically à la carte? This whole thing is starting to feel like it’s being run by Grade 11 students doing a science project.

But Andrew Potter sees freedom in our generation getting ignored:

It is commonly argued that a generation is formed by the technological ecosystem in which it grows up, and while there’s obviously something to that, what is important for Gen X is not what our technology allowed us to do, but what it protected us from.

In particular, what we were protected from was surveillance. I don’t know a single person I grew up with who doesn’t thank their lucky stars that there were no cellphones with cameras around when we were growing up, that there was no Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or TikTok. I can’t imagine what it is like to grow up under the glaring distributed panopticon of social media, knowing that all your friends, everyone at your school, and even your parents are watching your every move, judging your every utterance.  

In retrospect, it is obvious that the Gen X obsession with authenticity was anxiety caused by the growing rumblings of a culture in transition. The old technological ecosystem that fuelled the counterculture was gone, but the new web-enabled environment that made authenticity irrelevant hadn’t quite yet arrived. Gen X was the last generation to possess genuine subcultures that were able to remain somewhat unmolested by the digital meat grinder.

That is why when you hear a Gen Xer talk about being the “latchkey” generation, they aren’t really complaining — they’re bragging. There’s another word for the neglect being described here, and that’s freedom.

I've watched that technological transformation from the inside, having had an online presence since 1986. My feeling: they're both right.

Long Island went from idyllic farmland to completely urbanized in 75 years, thanks in part to Robert Moses inability (or unwillingness) to comprehend that any form of transport existed except automobiles. Massive, car-driven development spread inexorably down the Northern and Southern State Parkways, and the Long Island Expressway, covering all those farms and forests with concrete and Walmarts. Even when I spent four years of college there in the early 1990s, one could still find open space east of Ronkonkoma.

Alas, in the past 17 years, all that open space has disappeared, and with it the Brood X cicadas:

Development, pesticide use and the presence of invasive species are destroying historic populations of Brood X cicadas, while climate change spurs bugs from different broods to come up years early, experts say. The disruption of these cycles means some places that were expecting cicadas this year will miss out, while others may be surprised by an unscheduled emergence.

Although these changes are likely happening across the cicadas’ range, they’re particularly visible on Long Island, said Chris Simon, a professor at the University of Connecticut who has been studying cicadas for over 40 years. Long Island was once New York’s last remaining stronghold of Brood X. But the population there has declined in recent decades, and was nearly absent during the last mass emergence in 2004. At the same time, some of the area’s Brood XIV cicadas — scheduled to come up four years from now — may make an early appearance this year instead.

In the past, Long Island has been the easternmost place that can lay claim to this eminent brood. As far back as 1902, New York’s state entomologist recorded Brood X cicadas in both Suffolk and Nassau counties, said Dr. Simon, who has been studying cicadas on Long Island for over 40 years. Their reign continued through 1987....

The brood was absent from more places where it was expected, including in the towns of Shirley and Oakdale, and made only a brief showing in other locations, such as Connetquot State Park, a 3,700-acre reserve south of the Long Island Expressway, said Dr. Simon. Steep declines like this often lead to a complete disappearance, she said — without strength in numbers, the whole population can be devoured.

This year, Dr. Simon and other researchers are encouraging people in and around Long Island to go searching for the insects, and to use an app, Cicada Safari, to report any findings. If they do show up, it will likely be in early June. But she is not optimistic. “I’m afraid that they’re going to be completely gone,” she said.

Chicago's Brood XIII should emerge in three years. I can't wait. At least here, we haven't destroyed their habitat as thoroughly as Nassau and Suffolk Counties have destroyed Brood X's.

Now that I'm more than two weeks past my second Pfizer jab, I'm heading to O'Hare tomorrow for the first time since January 2020. I remember back in September 2018 when I finally broke my longest-ever drought from flying of 221 days. Tomorrow will mark 481 days grounded.

But that's tomorrow. Today, I'm interested in the following:

• Mother Jones obtained leaked video showing the right-wing group Heritage Action for America bragging that it had essentially drafted all the voter-suppression bills going through state legislatures right now.
• Former presidential speechwriter James Fallows describes "how FDR changed political communication."
• Via Andrew Sullivan, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair warns that the Labour Party must reform if they want to win elections.
• Researchers discovered the nearly 2,000-year-old skeleton of a Roman soldier, who they believe was dispatched to Pompeii on a rescue mission in the aftermath of the 79 CE eruption of Mt Vesuvius.
• Bruce Schneier says that "ransomware is getting ugly," and pointed me to Brian Krebs' report on the Colonial Pipeline attack last week.

And finally, Chicago's endangered piping plovers Monty and Rose have laid three eggs. We should see baby piping plovers in about four weeks.

Spring has gone on spring break this week, so while I find the weather pleasant and enjoyable, it still feels like mid-March. That makes it more palatable to remain indoors for lunch and catch up on these stories:

• Josh Marshall reminds us why, given today's anemic jobs report, listening to Larry Summers never ends well.
• David Brooks asks, "Could today’s version of America have been able to win World War II?" Tl;dr: Nope.
• George Conway III outlines Rudy Giuliani's legal troubles.
• Ted Koppel takes a look at "cancel culture" in the context of the past 40 years. Tl;dr: old practice, new name.
• Thanks to inside dealing, bad drafting, and the usual bullshit neighbors give each other, a 6-unit condo building in Wicker Park with 5 parking spaces has triggered a 3-year lawsuit over who can park in one of the spaces.

And finally, via Bruce Schneier, Australia has proposed starting cyber-security training in Kindergartens.

May 5th has some history, and not just about a relatively minor battle in Mexico that most Mexicans don't even remember.

For example, two hundred years ago today, Napoleon died and The Guardian was born. I never knew about that coincidence. TIL.

And this morning, Facebook's Oversight Board upheld the social-media company's ban on the XPOTUS, at least for the next six months.

Also TIL that my main programming language, C#, commands 7% of the Internet's mind-share, making it the 4th most-popular programming language. Python, at 30%, is the most popular, because its ease of use (and ease of writing the most godawful spaghetti code imaginable) makes it the preferred language of non-programmers.

I'm glad to see that one of my most-hated languages, Scala, continues its plummet, now even less popular than Visual Basic and and VBA, two languages that should have died during the GWB presidency.

Over the weekend, I stooped down to give Cassie some pats while she slept on her bed in my office, and realized I had a cache of turn-of-the-century computer games on a lower shelf. Among them I found SimCity 4, from 2003.

It turns out that SimCity 4, like many games from that era, relies on a thing called "SecuROM" which turned out to have sufficient security problems of its own that Microsoft decided not to support it in Windows 10. I didn't know this until I started researching why the game just...didn't work. When you find a support article that says "96 people have reported this problem" you at least know you're not alone.

So, following the advice in the support article, I opened a support case with Electronic Arts. We are now on a 24-hour cycle of them asking me to send back auto-generated codes to prove I'm an actual person with an actual copy of the SimCity 4 CD. This, after it took three rounds with their automated systems to set up a support account. The merry-go-round with their automated systems was irritating, but the 24-hour cycle time between emails just makes me laugh. I haven't actually taken the time 

After all that, I may actually play SimCity for the first time in 17 years at some point this month. I can't wait to see how a game designed for Pentium 4 processors and 256 MB of RAM performs on a Xeon 6C with 40 GB available...

The American news and information radio network turns 50 today:

It's been a turbulent time, with a deadly pandemic and a chaotic — sometimes violent — political climate. In the midst of all this, NPR is marking a milestone; on May 3, 2021, the network turns 50 years old.

On the same day, in 1971, we started holding up our microphone to America. Just outside our doors, on the streets of Washington, DC, one of the biggest antiwar protests in American history was taking place. NPR's story is that of a ragtag network — born in the era of the Vietnam War and Watergate — one that came of age during the explosion of the 24/7 news cycle.

They've made their first-ever broadcast available for streaming, too.

Sunday evening we had 4°C gloominess with gusty winds. Today we've got 28°C sunniness with gusty winds. We've also got a bunch of news stories to glance through while a build completes:

• The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued new guidance about the relative safety of various activities given vaccines and masks (see chart below).
• On this day 500 years ago, Ferdinand Magellan died when he got involved in an internecine dispute in the Philippines.
• Climate change will increase flood risks in places you might not expect, including (*ulp*) my own house.
• Ten Chicago restaurants made this year's Bib Gourmand list for the first time.

Cassie has plotzed on the sofa, probably from the heat and from spending all day yesterday at doggy day care.

And here's the CDC's latest chart:

The Census Bureau released the top-line population counts for the United States at 2pm Chicago time today:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that the 2020 Census shows the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2020, was 331,449,281.

The U.S. resident population represents the total number of people living in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The resident population increased by 22,703,743 or 7.4% from 308,745,538 in 2010.

The new resident population statistics for the United States, each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are available on census.gov. 

• The most populous state was California (39,538,223); the least populous was Wyoming (576,851).
• The state that gained the most numerically since the 2010 Census was Texas (up 3,999,944 to 29,145,505).
• The fastest-growing state since the 2010 Census was Utah (up 18.4% to 3,271,616).
• Puerto Rico's resident population was 3,285,874, down 11.8% from 3,725,789 in the 2010 Census.

Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, and for the first time ever, California, will each lose one seat in Congress. Montana gets a second seat, while Oregon, Florida, North Carolina, and Colorado pick up one more each, and Texas gets two more.

Now comes the plague of lawsuits in several states whose reapportionment had to wait until today...

Today is not only the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, it's also the 84th anniversary of the Nazi bombing of Guernica. Happy days, happy days.

In today's news, however:

• The European Union has announced it will allow fully-vaccinated travelers from the US to visit starting this summer.
• Chuck Geschke, who invented the portable document format (PDF) that we all know and love, died last week.
• The FAA revoked all of the certificates held by a 79-year-old flight instructor and aviation columnist after she (a) flew under a bridge and (b) allegedly turned off her transponder to hide this fact. Oopsi.
• Bruce Schneier starts his latest column with: "If you don’t have enough to worry about already, consider a world where AIs are hackers."
• Texas prosecutors dropped the felony embezzlement charge against a woman who had failed to return a VHS copy of "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" to her local video store...in 1999.
• Chicago city attorneys have sued a northwest Indiana gun store for being the source of dozens of firearms used by criminals in Chicago.

I will now get lunch. And since it's 17°C right now (as opposed to yesterday's 5°C), I may eat it outside.