The Daily Parker

My old Surface decided it didn't trust its own drive this morning when I booted up in my downtown office. Instead of getting a new laptop, I had stumped for the $30 fee to buy another year of security patches for Windows 10. Well, the latest one changed the Bitlocker settings, requiring me to enter the recovery key...which I couldn't get to from my downtown office.

Fortunately I had the key at home and entered it manually without a problem, so the Surface has sprung back to life. I will have to replace it soon, too, if for no other reason than I was worried for most of the day that it was bricked.

It also means I just had to declare bankruptcy on most of my news emails when I finally got home. But that's probably better for my mental health anyway.

Also, final note: the next version of The Daily Parker is up and running in its dev/test environment. We're still weeks away from me publicizing the URL, but I am pretty stoked that it has a functioning UI with some actual blogging features.

If you've ever played Snakes & Ladders (Chutes & Ladders in the US) with a small child, or really any game with a small child, you have probably cheated. Of course you have; don't deny it. Everyone knows letting the kid win is often the only way to get out of playing again.

It turns out, Japan last week and the European Union this week both demonstrated mastery of that principle while negotiating "trade deals" with the world's largest toddler:

[I]f the US-EU trade relationship was more or less OK last year, why did Trump impose huge tariffs and leave many of them in place even after the so-called deal? Because he felt like it. You won’t get anywhere in understanding the trade war if you insist on believing that Trump’s tariffs are a response to any legitimate grievances. And he failed to gain any significant concessions, mainly because Europe was already behaving well and had nothing to concede.

So was the US-EU trade deal basically a nothingburger? No, it was a bad thing, but mainly for political reasons.

Two less discouraging aspects of what just happened: First, Trump appears to have backed down on the idea of treating European value-added taxes as an unfair barrier to U.S. exports (which they aren’t, but facts don’t matter here.) So that’s one potentially awful confrontation avoided, at least for now.

Second, if this trade deal was in part an attempt to drive Epstein from the top of the news, my sense of the news flow is that it has been a complete flop.

Still, if I were a European I’d be very angry at anything that even looks like Trump appeasement. The EU is an economic superpower, especially if it allies itself with the UK. It needs to start acting like it.

Oh, it will, I reckon. But for now, all the OAFPOTUS has done is to impose a 15% tariff on the United States in Europe and Japan.

Meanwhile:

• Dan Rather calls out the OAFPOTUS for (once more) enriching himself at taxpayer expense, and not just for spending $63 million on golf trips.
• Explaining to the Republican Party that we'll put down our guns when they put theirs down, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) warns that several large Blue states can also go full-Gerrymander, so maybe Texas should leave well enough alone.
• Crime has fallen dramatically in Chicago and other big cities across the US since 2020, and no one really knows why.
• Pro-Ukrainian hackers crippled Russian civil airline Aeroflot over the past weekend.
• Auto and traffic-safety writer Josh Max suggests that upping training and safety standards could reduce the 38,000 annual US traffic deaths, while ignoring the roles that road and city design play.
• The continued destruction of our environment under Republican administrations has led to the reddest districts in some places playing host to huge, noisy, climate-destroying AI data centers.
• On-premises Microsoft SharePoint Server installations suffered a catastrophic data breach in a zero-day attack starting Friday, which researchers say means any network with an on-site SPS instance exposed to the Internet must consider their user credentials compromised.

Finally, the New York Times has a look at Sesame Street's set design and how it has reflected changes in urban life over the last 56 years. "The show’s designers intentionally made the original set appear grungy, with garbage on the street, the brownstone spotted with soot and the color scheme appearing dull and muted. ... During a major redesign in the ’90s, the set introduced a new hotel and apartment building. The brownstone remained, and one of the show’s designers said it 'was meant to look like a survivor of gentrification.' After the show struck a deal to stream on HBO in 2015, the set appeared even shinier, newer and brighter." There's even a recycling bin next to Oscar's trash can. Sic transit, et cetera.

Cassie had a solid night of post-anesthesia sleep and woke up mostly refreshed. The cone still bums her out, and the surgery bill bums me out, but at least she's walking at close to her normal speed. She gets her stiches out—and her cone off—two weeks from today.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:

• Very stupid people have allowed measles, which we functionally eliminated from the US in 2000, to infect close to 1300 people this year.
• Jennifer Rubin argues that the Department of Homeland Security provides neither “freedom from danger” or “freedom from fear or anxiety,” i.e., security.
• Former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers is ashamed of the OAFPOTUS's tax bill and what it will do to the most vulnerable Americans.
• George Will praises former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel for holding the center against the loony left.
• Echoing my own thoughts, Stephanie Bai wants people to stop throwing blame around for this past weekend's Texas floods. (The blame for future disasters, however, falls squarely on the Republican Party.)
• Paul Krugman lauds victories over NIMBYs that are starting to revitalize building in urban areas.
• Cook County's practice of stealing people's homes for non-payment of property tax will likely cost us hundreds of millions of dollars once the class-action lawsuit gets going.
• Strava has once again lost control of its subscribers' location data, this time outing the Swedish prime minister's bodyguards, and thus the PM himself. Oops. (In fairness, it might be that the bodyguards themselves failed to protect the data by posting workouts publicly.)

Finally, lightning bugs appear to have made a small comeback in the Chicago area after a few years of reduced numbers. Educational campaigns have encouraged people to leave leaf litter undisturbed whenever possible, to allow the critters to breed safely. A mild winter and wet spring also helped a lot.

Cassie and I took a 7 km walk from sleep-away camp to Ribfest yesterday, which added up to 2½ hours of walkies including the rest of the day. Then we got some relaxing couch time in the evening. We don't get that many gorgeous weekend days in Chicago—perhaps 30 per year—so we had to take advantage of it.

Of course, it's Monday now, and all the things I ignored over the weekend still exist:

• Josh Marshall digs into the OAFPOTUS's attack on the state of California, noting that "all the federalizations [of the National Guard] during the Civil Rights Era were over the refusal of segregationist state governments to enforce federal law under court order. Trump’s argument is...[that] the President [has the right] to decide when a state government isn’t protecting or enforcing civil order to his liking and to intervene with federalized National Guard or the U.S. military to do it at the point of a bayonet. ... The crisis the administration insisted it needed to solve was a crisis of the administration’s creation."
• Philip Bump puts the encroaching fascism in broader context: "What’s important to remember about the fracture that emerged in Los Angeles over the weekend is that it came shortly after reports that President Donald Trump was seeking to block California from receiving certain federal funding. ... The point was that the Trump administration wanted to bring California to heel...."
• The Guardian highlights how Chicago has led the way in resisting the OAFPOTUS's xenophobic mass-deportation program, as part of our long history of respecting immigrant rights.
• Anne Applebaum looks at last week's election in Poland and feels a chill that "every election is now existential."
• Lisa Schwarzbaum, a former film critic for Entertainment Weekly, likens the OAFPOTUS's style of governing to Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom."
• Ezra Klein expresses surprise at who has objected the most to the recommendations in his recent book Abundance, and the left-wing emphasis on messaging: "Democrats aren’t struggling primarily because they choose the wrong messages. They’re struggling because they fail to solve problems. ... [Brandon] Johnson is the most proudly left-wing big-city mayor in the country. ... He’s also the least popular big-city mayor in the country and may well end up as the least popular mayor in Chicago’s history. Policy failure breeds political failure."
• Oh, by the way, Meta and Yandex have started to de-anonymize your Android device by abusing how your Internet browser works.

Finally, a community group on the Northwest Side has launched an effort to build a 5-km rails-to-trails plus greenway project to connect the Bloomingdale Trail with the North Branch Trail. This would create a direct connection between the southern flank of Lincoln Park and the Chicago Botanic Garden in suburban Glencoe. It's still early days, though. I'd love to see this in my lifetime. I'm also waiting for electrified railroads around Chicago, but this project would be a lot cheaper.

As Crash Davis said to Annie Savoy all those years ago: A player on a streak has to respect the streak. Well, I'm on a coding streak. This week, I've been coding up a storm for my day job, leaving little time to read all of today's stories:

• Despite (or perhaps because of) his obvious mental illness and dementia, the OAFPOTUS is really a predictable negotiator who our adversaries have figured out how to manipulate easily.
• Voters may not like the OAFPOTUS, but they don't like us either. Still, the OAFPOTUS has Republicans squirming more and more each day.
• Speaking of dislike, the Qatari airplane bribe is different because "morons understand it." (Morons and MAGA Republicans, Jennifer Rubin clarifies.)
• Oh, and the Republican tax bill will come down particularly hard on the same people, too.
• Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson (D) complains that he hasn't done enough to convince people he's doing a good job. Perhaps--and let me just suggest something wild here--like actually doing a good job?
• Google has rolled new security features for Android phones, which you should turn on.
• The first bridge linking Michigan Avenue across the Chicago River opened 105 years ago today.

Finally, Ernie Smith, who also had a childhood pastime of reading maps for fun, examines why MapQuest became "the RC Cola" of mapping apps. Tl;dr: corporate mergers are never about product quality.

Happy May Day! In both the calendar and crashing-airplane senses!

We start with two reports about how the Clown Prince of X has taken control over so much government data that the concepts of "privacy" and "compartmentalization" seem quaint. First, from the Times:

Elon Musk may be stepping back from running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but his legacy there is already secured. DOGE is assembling a sprawling domestic surveillance system for the Trump administration — the likes of which we have never seen in the United States.

President Trump could soon have the tools to satisfy his many grievances by swiftly locating compromising information about his political opponents or anyone who simply annoys him. The administration has already declared that it plans to comb through tax records to find the addresses of immigrants it is investigating — a plan so morally and legally challenged, it prompted several top I.R.S. officials to quit in protest. Some federal workers have been told that DOGE is using artificial intelligence to sift through their communications to identify people who harbor anti-Musk or -Trump sentiment (and presumably punish or fire them).

What this amounts to is a stunningly fast reversal of our long history of siloing government data to prevent its misuse. In their first 100 days, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have knocked down the barriers that were intended to prevent them from creating dossiers on every U.S. resident. Now they seem to be building a defining feature of many authoritarian regimes: comprehensive files on everyone so they can punish those who protest.

And from The Atlantic:

But what can an American authoritarian, or his private-sector accomplices, do with all the government’s data, both alone and combined with data from the private sector? To answer this question, we spoke with former government officials who have spent time in these systems and who know what information these agencies collect and how it is stored.

To a person, these experts are alarmed about the possibilities for harm, graft, and abuse. Today, they argued, Trump is targeting law firms, but DOGE data could allow him to target individual Americans at scale. For instance, they described how the government, aside from providing benefits, is also a debt collector on all kinds of federal loans. Those who struggle to repay, they said, could be punished beyond what’s possible now, by having professional licenses revoked or having their wages or bank accounts frozen.

These data could also allow the government or, should they be shared, its private-sector allies to target big swaths of the population based on a supposed attribute or trait. Maybe you have information from background checks or health studies that allows you to punish people who have seen a therapist for mental illness. Or to terminate certain public benefits to anybody who has ever shown income above a particular threshold, claiming that they obviously don’t need public benefits because they once made a high salary. A pool of government data is especially powerful when combined with private-sector data, such as extremely comprehensive mobile-phone geolocation data. These actors could make inferences about actions, activities, or associates of almost anybody perceived as a government critic or dissident. These instances are hypothetical, but the government’s current use of combined data in service of deportations—and its refusal to offer credible evidence of wrongdoing for some of those deported—suggests that the administration is willing to use these data for its political aims.

This is what the Republican Party has bequeathed us. Because they never wanted to govern; they have always wanted to rule.

• With reports of a major scandal in which it appears Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) and his wife took money from Medicaid through a series of fronts, Josh Marshall sees how not investigating them could also corruptly benefit the OAFPOTUS.
• The Center for American Progress has a nice tool to see how many tens of thousands of people will lose health-care coverage in each Congressional district if the House passes its swingeing $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid.
• Krugman highlights a few stories that place the responsibility for the economy's imminent collapse squarely on the OAFPOTUS.
• Timothy Noah warns it's already happening in Seattle.
• A 120-year-old pavilion in Chicago's Jackson Park may finally get some TLC.

Finally, American Airlines plans to add flights to seven new destinations this fall, including (whee!) Sint Maarten. I haven't been to the island in 11 years and I've wanted to go back, but the frustrating schedule involving an early-morning flight from JFK or Miami made it inconvenient. But a non-stop from O'Hare? Oh, yeah.

Before I go through the stories from the last day about how we live in the stupidest timeline, here's a photo of the Milwaukee Intermodal Station I snapped heading to my return train on Friday:

Elsewhere in the stupidest timeline, where maximizing corruption is the defining goal of the Republican Party:

• James Fallows takes us through Harvard's big "fuck you" to the OAFPOTUS's demands that the university install minders in its HR and academic departments, as does Josh Marshall.
• Jennifer Rubin reminds everyone that a functioning center-left party opposing a rogue authoritarian party does not constitute "polarization."
• A memo from the Office of Management and Budget outlines the OAFPOTUS's plans to gut climate and weather research, bringing a fresh new anti-intellectual, anti-science mission to NOAA.
• Paul Krugman outlines how cuts to the IRS will enable the rich to steal even more from everyone else.
• A whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board says the DOGE children have enabled Russian hackers to gain access to NLRB data.
• Coders using large language models to write code have given attackers an enormous opportunity to introduce malicious code into your favorite apps through supply-chain attacks.

Finally, take a few minutes to read Chuck Marohn's Strong Towns series on how municipalities in the US and Canada routinely hide (or simply don't know) their long-term obligations so as to make building new infrastructure look like a better financial strategy than repairing existing infrastructure. I can tell you that you get no better view of the shitty state of American roads than riding a Divvy down almost any Chicago street, because Americans seem allergic to maintenance spending.

I know we need to put the fire out in Washington before we can fix anything else. But the long-term damage the OAFPOTUS continues to inflict on us will include more failing roads, bridges, and trains. So if you voted for him, you voted for the US becoming a third-world country in our lifetime.

Cassie and I found a 20-minute gap in the rain this morning so she could have a (slightly-delayed) walk. Since around 9 am, though, we've had variations on this:

Good thing I have all these heartwarming news stories to warm my heart:

• Dane County, Wis., Judge Susan Crawford beat Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel 55% to 45% for the vacant seat on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court, despite the $25 million the Clown Prince of X donated to Schimel's campaign. The CPOX himself drew laughs from people with IQs above 80 by claiming he didn't really try to buy the seat for the right-wing Schimel.
• Paul Krugman reminds the credulous that "there's no plan, secret or otherwise" behind the OAFPOTUS's tariffs. ("Does he really believe that Canada is a major source of fentanyl? Worse, does he believe that fentanyl smugglers pay tariffs?") Timothy Noah concurs.
• Scholar Larry Diamond lays out the ways we can get through the constitutional crisis the OAFPOTUS has created.
• A Federal judge has dismissed corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Johnson, but enjoined the US Attorney from threatening more charges. It's only a partial win for corruption in the US, but still a win.
• The Times looks at Brightline's success and asks, "What's so hard about building trains?" After pointing out that "in Florida, Brightline has proved that it can operate reliable, well-designed passenger trains that people want to ride," they fail to project that it will probably get bailed out at least once in the next 25 years by state and federal money.
• The Onion imbues the Chicago Transit Authority with "an unconscious fear of success manifesting through self-sabotage." They're not wrong.

Finally, Bruce Schneier and a colleague published a paper yesterday lauding "Rational Astrologies and Security." In the paper, the authors analyze beliefs like "Nobody every got fired for buying IBM" and "It's always been done this way" as rational, and how security professionals can use them. The timing of the paper's publication in no way affects the soundness of these conclusions, of course.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who you should remember as a Fox News presenter with no knowledge of the military, added Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat on the only-kind-of-secure messaging app Signal:

On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz.

Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”

A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”

I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.

Josh Marshall points out that these people using Signal instead of a secure channel likely means they are violating recordkeeping laws as well: "How many of President Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders are happening on these apps? It’s the obvious place for bribes, various kinds of criminal conduct, asking foreign governments to do dirty jobs, maybe against American citizens, that Trump doesn’t dare try himself."

Incompetent, malevolent, and corrupt. We have another 16 months of this crap before we can even get Congress back. Marvelous.

Even better: Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) pointed out that one of the members of the group chat was physically in Moscow at the time. It just keeps getting worse.

Before getting to the weather, I don't anticipate any quiet news days for the next couple of years, do you?

• Someone who owns at least 16 rooms and condos in the OAFPOTUS's Wabash Ave. building in downtown Chicago has sued, alleging that—wait for it—the organization running the building is bilking investors. I mean, how preposterous!
• Speaking of corruption flowing from the OAFPOTUS like toxic waste from a Union Carbide plant, Molly White mourns the end of SEC oversight of the crypto industry.
• Former US Representative Adam Kitzinger (R-IL), the last sane Republican, calls the "desperate, weak, and ultimately meaningless bluff" that the OAFPOTUS won't honor President Biden's pardons.
• James Fallows steps through the "correlation of forces" that defines the struggle between the OAFPOTUS and the Constitution.
• Jennifer Rubin interviews Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D), "a man refreshingly candid about his disgust with the current administration's policies and its lack of humane leadership."
• Yascha Mounk thinks "the World Happiness Report is a scam," just a pile of elite misinformation.
• A sophisticated supply-chain attack may have put 20,000 GitHub projects at risk of subtle but far-reaching security problems.

Finally, the snow that covered Chicago and parts north and west has indeed melted in the past few hours, even though we've barely gotten above 2°C: