The Daily Parker

I want to start with a speech on the floor of the French Senate three days ago, in which Claude Malhuret (LIRT-Allier) had this to say about the OAFPOTUS:

Washington has become the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a jester high on ketamine in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose higher tariffs on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

Malheureusement, il a bien raison. And his speech is worth reading (or hearing, si vous parlez français bien).

But that isn't all that happened in the last day or so. No, every day brings new revelations of stupidity and corruption in the new administration:

• James Fallows listened to the OAFPOTUS's address to Congress on Tuesday so you didn't have to, and found it...disturbing.
• The Clown Prince of X appears to have pressured the FAA into issuing a license for yesterday's launch of a SpaceX rocket that exploded just two weeks after another SpaceX rocket exploded. (You may call Musk a thuper-geniuth!)
• ProPublica does the math to demonstrate how the cuts the clowns have proposed at the Internal Revenue Service will actually cost more than they will save—forgetting for a moment that the point of those cuts is to make tax cheating less likely to get caught.
• Oh, and the clowns have illegally disbanded the committee that keeps your food safe from microbes.
• The Army Corps of Engineers admitted that the rushed release of water from Northern California reservoirs shortly after the OAFPOTUS took office simply wasted it, as everyone who can look at a map already guessed.
• The jobs report that the Bureau of Labor Statistics released today only encompassed data from the first three weeks of the administration, before they started illegally firing civil servants.

And now I will take a half-day of PTO and explore four new breweries in Bridgeport and Pilsen. If only the weather had cooperated.

Time got away from me this afternoon. I might read all this tomorrow morning:

• Nicholas Kristof says the Musk/OAFPOTUS administration prostrating to Russia will make the world more dangerous. So does Alex Shepard.
• Jennifer Rubin says that the Musk/OAFPOTUS administration will break the government, and therefore own it.
• Anne Applebaum decries Vice President JD Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference.
• Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced his retirement, now that he got everything he wanted.
• The Chicago City Council narrowly voted against lowering the city speed limit to 25 mph (40 km/h), despite evidence that more people will die.
• American Airlines is adding 22% more flights from O'Hare this summer. Yay!
• Hurricane, the most-decorated dog in the United States Secret Service, has died at age 15.

Finally, On Tour Brewing, a Brews & Choos Top 10 brewery, will close this spring. A new brewery and a resurrection of one of my favorite pre-pandemic bars, Links Tavern, will open in its place. Can't wait!

The US meeting with Russia and not Ukraine to discuss the fate of Ukraine seems unmistakably similar to the Molotov-Ribbentrop discussions in August 1939 that divvied up Poland between the Nazis and Stalin's Russia. The meeting in Riyadh between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov seems more focused on a colonial-style mineral extraction concession for the US than on Ukrainian sovereignty. This comes just days after Vice President JD Vance channeled UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (a known Nazi sympathizer) in a speech in Munich just before meeting with actual Nazis.

("'I never thought leopards would eat my face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."—Adrian Bott)

Meanwhile, back home:

• The State Department has decided to cancel most of its news subscriptions, because why would our diplomats need to know what's going on in the world?
• Fortunately (for now), the OAFPOTUS violently dismantling the US government's bureaucracy has gotten in the way of him dismantling the regulations that he claims to hate, further showing (a) how fundamentally stupid he is and (b) how it has nothing to do with regulations.
• Apparently jealous of the OAFPOTUS's successful raiding of public funds for his own benefit, Argentine president Javier Milei and his friends appear to have raked in close to $100 million in what looks like a classic memecoin rug-pull.
• The Chicago City Council may vote today on a proposal to borrow $830 m in an issue that would not pay back principal until 2045, a structure that (a) would result in a constant cash-flow to the private investors of something like $80 m per year and (b) cost the city $2 bn once we finally pay it all back. It would be the dumbest thing the city's government has done since the parking-meter scam.
• Researchers have determined that both work-from-home and return-to-office have drawbacks and benefits, and that mandating all of one or the other isn't great for any company. (But we knew that, even if some CEOs didn't.)
• Beware anyone asking you to send a code that you see on the screen; this is a device-code authentication attack, which is increasing in popularity among your finer criminals.

Finally, one of my least-favorite Brews & Choos stops has threatened planned to open a new brewpub in Irving Park. Crust Brewing in Rosemont wants to bring the same hellish experience to the former Leader Bar at 3000 W Irving Park Rd. Yes, this is a B&C-qualifying location, but no, I won't review it until I run out of other things to review.

I'm just noting a few things and moving on with my day:

• Pilot Project Brewing has announced plans for a second brewery/taproom in Wrigleyville, just 500 meters from the Addison Red Line station.
• Google Maps turned 20 four days ago, and The Guardian has a history of how it began.
• Microsoft will be retiring the (11-year-old) database APIs that this build of The Daily Parker uses, so watch this space for news about a brand new Daily Parker experience this fall!

I'm planning to wrap up a new release of Weather Now this evening, too. I'll post snow photos when I do.

As we end the work-week, we can start our weekend with these little nuggets of horror and amusement:

• The UK Home Office has demanded that Apple create a back door into its cloud storage system to allow the UK government to snoop on everyone's content worldwide, which, if I correctly understand Apple's ADP architecture, is technically impossible.
• ProPublica has compiled a list of the people Elon Musk has enlisted to capture the government of the United States. Paul Krugman calls Musk's efforts an "attempted autogolpe."
• Gen-Z writer Olivia Julianna doesn't think the OAFPOTUS is exceptional—he's what the entire generation has known all their lives.
• The NTSB has released its final report on the fatal CTA Yellow Line accident in November 2023, largely exonerating the train's driver and finding a CTA decision to disable automatic braking as one of the probable causes.
• Kate Wagner takes a look at Neuschwanstein Castle and sees an 1870s version of the McMansions she's crusaded against for years.

Finally, Chicago has only gotten 251 mm of snowfall this season, just 3 mm more than the record-lowest 1920-21 season and only 26% of our normal 975 mm. Granted, we still have three more weeks of winter, but nothing in the forecast suggests we'll get a significant snowfall before March 1st. We may get 10 mm or so Saturday night, depending on when the temperature falls below freezing, but the 10-day forecast doesn't have a lot of precipitation in it. I hope we get some good rainfall this spring, though.

Five years ago this evening, I hopped a Milwaukee District North Line train after work for Glenview, and walked about 1.3 km to Macushla Brewing at Lake and Waukegan. The Brews & Choos Project had begun.

Since then, I've visited 118 breweries, distilleries, and meaderies in Chicago and another 10 while traveling. Sadly, 20 of the places I've visited have closed. (Let me revise that: sadly, 17 of them have closed, and happily, 3 others have closed.) I visited 25 places in the first month of the project, going all the way to the end of the Union Pacific West line on 7 March 2020. But then the pandemic halted the project for months, until everyone figured out that being outside in warm air was less risky than staying cooped up at home. By mid-2021, I'd resumed a steady pace and had taken at least one trip on every Metra line except the North Central Service, which had to wait until 25 August 2023.

In July 2023 I revised the criteria slightly to bring a few places outside Chicago into the project, primarily because Amtrak can get you to Milwaukee faster than the Union Pacific Northwest Line can get you to Woodstock.

I've used a simple rating system: would I go back? For 72 of the 118 Chicago-area places that are still open, I said yes; for 16, I said Maybe; and for just 10—including the second place I visited on 7 February 2020, Ten Ninety Brewing—I said No. I also started a Top 10 list in 2022.

I also have reported three other criteria that I hold dear: whether the place allows dogs (65), how easily one can avoid televisions (67), and whether the place has outdoor seating (92).

Starting today, I'm revising the rating system. In addition to the Yes-Maybe-No recommendation on each review, I'll be adding a star rating. As much as I liked the 81 places worldwide I rated "Would Go Back," there are differences. And not all of the "No" places are as bad as Crust Brewing in Rosemont. I know star ratings are boring, but with 184 places on the list and hundreds more within walking distance of trains throughout the world, it needs more precision.

So watch for a revised Brews List and Choos Map, and a concerted effort over the next six weeks to visit Bridgeport and Bronzeville, two areas of the city I've neglected.

Finally, I'm happy to report that that Macushla remains open, and continues to brew innovative beers like the HollaPeno Jalapeño IPA, which my Brews & Choos buddy would probably love.

Stay tuned for more Brews & Choos!

We've gotten about 4 cm of snow so far today, with more coming down until this evening. Cassie loves it; I have mixed feelings. At least the temperature has gone up a bit, getting up to -0.6°C for the first time since around this time on Monday.

Elsewhere:

• Federal Judge Aileen Cannon (R-SDFL) got overruled again, this time after her corrupt effort to block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on January 6th.
• George Will bemoans Congress ceding so much of its authority to the office of the President, especially given who will take that office in ten days.
• Just three corrupt Chicago cops will cost the city almost $34 million in settlements, making me wonder why we don't pay those settlements out of the police pension fund.
• Pamela Paul objects to historians opining about politics, which is actually one of the things they've always done.
• Five years after the pandemic began, we still haven't gotten back in the habit of being out in public, according to Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.

Finally, Maplewood Brewing has started expanding its Logan Square taproom into the other half of the building it occupies. I don't get there often, but I enjoy going back. Can't wait to see what their restaurant looks like when it's done. I also need to get to Cherry Circle Room or the CAA Drawing Room soon, as it looks like the management transition from Land & Sea to Boka may change some things.

Welcome to a revisit to #5 on the Brews and Choos project.

Distillery: 28 Mile Vodka, 454 Sheridan Rd., Highwood, Ill.
Train line: Metra Union Pacific North, Highwood
Time from Chicago (Ogilvie): 52 minutes, zone 4
Distance from station: 300 m

After Amtrak effectively cancelled our day trip to Milwaukee on Friday and meeting a third friend up there, my Brews & Choos buddy and I met the other friend in Highwood instead. We ultimately met up at Broken Tee Brewing, but we had an hour to kill while the third friend drove down from Wisconsin, so we went to 28 Mile Vodka.

I'm happy to report that Brews & Choos stop #5 is still going strong, with some innovative drinks and new spirits. I had a flight of two gins and two bourbons; my B&CB had a smoky Old Fashioned that we both thought was dangerously delicious.

Also of note was the manager's kindness letting us in an hour before opening to get out of the gloomy drizzle. He admitted that the distillery's website shows a 3pm opening time, but for the winter they actually open at 4pm.

The kitchen opened right as we were leaving to meet our third friend, so we didn't try anything on the menu. We wanted to. And perhaps we will in the near future.

28 Mile Vodka remains a "Would Go Back" Brews & Choos stop.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? None
Serves food? Yes, elevated
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

I had planned to go to Milwaukee for a quick day trip yesterday to further the Brews & Choos Project. Two friends were going to meet me at the Public Market, then go to two breweries and a distillery in the five hours between trains.

Alas, after everyone had boarded the 1:05 Hiawatha, Amtrak got all of us off the train and cancelled it because of—no kidding—a flat wheel. We could have gone on the (now-overcrowded) 3:05, but we just decided to forget it and meet one of the friends up in Highwood.

So I'll have a revisited Brews & Choos review of 28 Mile Vodka later this weekend, but no reviews of Milwaukee breweries until next year.

Because Christmas came on a Wednesday*, and my entire UK-based team have buggered off until Monday in some cases and January 6th in others, I'm off for the long weekend. Tomorrow my Brews & Choos buddy and I will hit three places in Milwaukee, which turns out to be closer to downtown Chicago by train than a few stations on the Union Pacific North and Northwest lines.

Meanwhile, read some of these:

• John Adams had some nuanced and deep thoughts about aristocracy and oligarchy that we should keep in mind as the OAFPOTUS forms his cabinet of billionaires, for billionaires.
• Despite my recurring reminder not to give the OAFPOTUS's verbal flatulence any mind at all, Krugman dismantles the argument that nations gain from conquest in the post-industrial age.
• New research adds weight to the theory that our ancestors were prey, not predators, with implications for understanding how we react to threats.
• Krebs is warning about a new scam that uses Google Forms to convince you that the attack is really an official Google security action.

Enjoy the weekend. I'll have three Brews & Choos Reviews up before the end of the year, plus the 2025 sunrise chart for Chicago.

* That was also The Daily Parker's 9,500th post since the "modern" blog began in November 2005.