The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Updates in the news

Two stories I mentioned previously have updates today:

As long as I've got five minutes before my next meeting, I also want to spike these two for reading later on:

  • William Langewische goes deep into the Proud Prophet war game in 1983 that demonstrated the frightening speed that a conventional war in Europe could escalate into total nuclear annihilation.
  • A bridge closure in Winnepeg, Man., has allowed the city to redirect some funds to other basic services that it struggles to pay for after years of sprawling infrastructure spending.

Time for my morning stand-up meeting.

Hilarity ensues

Chicago-based humor magazine The Onion has won the bankruptcy auction to acquire Alex Jones's InfoWars Media:

The Onion said that the bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.

The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview.

While the alliance between Everytown and The Onion may seem like an odd fit, the two organizations share an interest in curbing gun violence, said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown. Mr. Feinblatt said that mission was underscored with depressing regularity in the aftermath of mass shootings, when The Onion goes viral with its oft-shared headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”

The Onion, of course, spun the purchase in its own way:

Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic “panic” and growing steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses. With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.

No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.

As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.

Alex Jones, according to my social media feed, vowed to keep broadcasting until a court ordered him to stop.

Well played, Onion. Well played.

Death seems certain

McSweeney's channels Lovecraft—at Olive Garden:

Cheese Ravioli

A homogeneity characterized its flaxen cast. Bubbling sacks of slime upon a platter scorching. Beware! Doused in the pureed remains of a dozen orbic fruits, I feel my breath quicken and hands tremble as I pen its likeness as well as I might. My own mind conspires against me when presented with this frightful entrée. To dine? Or will my own visage mirror its sickly jaundice? I have touched with too much haste the vessel of Hades, a burn be my meal.

The Tour of Italy

A terse presentation of memories, three to be precise. A chicken, but unclucking. A plate of worms, wriggling in saucy terror. And then, horror unbounded, a cube of entombed layers coated in a crimson, comestible smear. Dreams fleeting and reborn, of monoliths—Pisa—floating mid-air and dripping gruel. A gurgling voice emerged from the deep, a chaos that did not speak a mortal tongue, a promise emitted: “Unlimahtated brrrrurdstihks!”

Meanwhile, over at the New Yorker, Dennard Dayle imagines a letter straight out of The Dark Forest:

Dear Citizen,

Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you’ve successfully contacted alien life. It’s not a dream—unimpeded by fear, you’ve accomplished what countless generations couldn’t. Impressive, considering fear’s role in survival. One could even say that you’ve achieved what they wouldn’t.

Take a bow. A hundred years from now, there will be a holiday named for you, observed across a changed galaxy: a day commemorating the moxie, intellect, and sheer luck needed to contact another world while knowing nothing about it.

You must wonder what comes next. After all, your imagination made this possible. Will there be media training? Your own office in low orbit? A well-deserved vacation? The answer is simple:

Liquidation.

I mean, they're not wrong...

Early afternoon roundup

Now that I've got a few weeks without travel, performances*, or work conferences, I can go back to not having enough time to read all the news that interests me. Like these stories:

Finally, Michelin has handed out its 2022 stars for Chicago. Nothing surprising on the list, but I now have four more restaurants to try.

* Except that I volunteered to help a church choir do five Messiah choruses on Easter Sunday, so I've got two extra rehearsals and a service in the next 12 days.

Bonus update: the fog this morning made St Boniface Cemetery especially spooky-looking when Cassie and I went out for her morning walk:

Let's talk turkey

Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle has some theories about cooking an entire bird for Thanksgiving:

The time is here again when millions of Americans anguish over a nearly impossible culinary task, in hopes of producing (by any objective measure) an insipid result.

I speak of roasting an entire turkey. This yearly project dates back many centuries, to an individual named Satan, who specializes in devising infernal tortures. Roasting a turkey involves placing an irregular form — meaty lobes, bony protrusions, fatty deposits, empty cavities — into a heated box with the mad dream of bringing all the parts to perfection simultaneously. Success is rarely attained outside the confines of a Norman Rockwell painting.

There is no “best” way to roast a turkey, any more than there is a “best” way to clean the gutters or check the smoke alarm batteries. Thanksgiving turkey is just another annual ordeal. No matter what preparation or temperature you choose, after a few hours all paths end at the same ho-hum. By the time you carve and serve it, it’s lukewarm to boot — just the way bacteria like it.

Now excuse me, I'm off to eat some turkey.

The NSA has a sense of humor

After Fox network blowhard Tucker Carlson whined that the National Security Agency, the US intelligence service tasked with spying on communications outside the US, had tapped his phones, the agency clapped back on Twitter:

TPM's Cristina Cabrera reports, "Carlson doubled down on his accusation shortly afterward on his program, saying the NSA’s statement 'an entire paragraph of lies written purely for the benefit of the intel community’s lackeys at CNN and MSNBC.'"

The NSA is just having a bit of sport with Carlson, but one can't know for sure. First, the NSA would never admit to spying on anyone. But second, even if the NSA were spying on him, wouldn't Carlson want to know which overseas friend of his would have attracted the agency's attention, and why?

In related news, the Manhattan District Attorney appears ready to charge the Trump Organization and its CFO with tax crimes tomorrow morning. Stay tuned!

Sure Happy It's Thursday, March 319th...

Lunchtime roundup:

Finally, the authors of The Impostor's Guide, a free ebook aimed at self-taught programmers, has a new series of videos about general computer-science topics that people like me didn't learn programming for fun while getting our history degrees.

The Economist's Bartleby column examines how Covid-19 lockdowns have "caused both good and bad changes of routine."

Stupid is as stupid does

Welcome to the (abbreviated) lunchtime roundup:

Finally, Julie Nolke for the fourth time explains the pandemic to her past self.

Lunchtime roundup

You have to see these photos of the dark Sears Tower against the Chicago skyline—a metaphor for 2020 bar none. Also:

And oh! My long-running unit test (1575.9 seconds) has finished. I can get up now.