The Daily Parker

I spent 56 minutes trying to get ADT to change a single setting at my house, and it turned out, they changed the wrong setting. I will try again Friday, when I have time.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world:

• James Carville lays out a strategy for Vice President Kamala Harris to win the White House in *ulp* 62 days.
• Arizona officials continue to deal with the election-denier loony fringe despite (or maybe because of?) reality winning every time it's tested.
• A Federal judge in Rockford, Ill., has ruled that the Supreme Court's asinine, ahistorical, motivated reasoning in Bruen means that four schmucks from the suburbs can legally carry concealed guns on Chicago trains.
• A new report has come out that once again shows the US spends hundreds of billions too much on roadbuilding, and would benefit from removing highways instead of building them.
• A UK commission has found that all 72 deaths in the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire were preventable, likely leading to criminal actions in future.
• CVS has started using really stupid-annoying robots to prevent people loitering in front of their stores, a trend in retail that will obviously backfire.
• Lyft plans to sell parts of its public bike system (Divvy here in Chicago) to cut costs. Uh oh.
• An Illinois state government program can help you get solar power on your house.
• What's with this tunnel to nowhere in the North Carolina hills? I might have to check it out.

Finally, Slow Horses season 4 came out today, so at some point this evening I'll visit Slough House and get a dose of Jackson Lamb's sarcasm.

Before I bugger off to get at least a couple of daylight hours in this sunny, 22°C afternoon, here are the most interesting stories that popped up today:

• Two Boomer economists point out that the Boomers have made an art form of siphoning wealth from the younger generations, meaning we Gen Xers will have to work longer for lower Social Security (state pensions) payments. Typical.
• Chicago's meteorological summer was warmer and drier than normal, the 18th-warmest since 1871.
• Ravinia Brewing Company and Ravinia Festival have come to a settlement that requires the former to change its name, even though the neighborhood predates both of them.
• Police have finally identified a man who died on the Appalachian Trail in 1977.
• The wholesaler taking over the stores that Kroeger and Albertson's planned to divest in order to pass scrutiny for their merger thinks it got crappy stores in the bargain.

Finally, the Chicago White Sox have surpassed their team record for losses, going 31-108 through yesterday. If they lose 13 of the remaining 22 games—which would actually represent an improvement over their performance so far—they will surpass the 1962 New York Mets' record 120 losses in a season. For reasons passing understanding, they're still charging for tickets, with box seats going for $69 and some tickets as high as $309. They have lots of seats left, though, so maybe I'll just take the El down there this weekend to see the Athletics beat them?

A few weeks ago I planned a PTO day to take a 25 km walk tomorrow along the North Branch Trail with pizza at the end. (I'll do my annual marathon walk in October.) Sadly, the weather forecast bodes against it, with scattered thunderstorms and dewpoints over 22°C. But, since I've already got tomorrow off, and I have a solid PTO bank right now, I'll still take the day away from the office. And autumn begins Sunday.

Good thing, too, because the articles piled up this morning, and I haven't had time to finish yesterday's:

• Ruth Marcus indicts the Roberts court for its idiotic presidential immunity ruling, and how that required prosecutor Jack Smith to contort the new charges against the XPOTUS.
• Oh, goody: Mayor Brandon Johnson's 2025 budget for the City of Chicago will have nearly a $1 billion deficit.
• Despite having spent billions of euro to upgrade the scanners at major European airports, the EU will (temporarily) go back to a 100-mL limit for carry-on liquids on Sunday.
• Timothy Noah celebrates the mediocrity of late August.

Finally, Washington Post reporter Christine Mi spent 80 hours crossing the US on Amtrak this summer. I am envious. Also sad, because the equivalent trip in Europe would have taken less than half the time on newer rolling stock, and not burned a quarter of the Diesel.

American Airlines wants you to know what country you're in:

Next update from Seattle.

We have another glorious late-summer day in Chicago cool enough to sleep with the windows open. We still have 11 more days of summer, as the forecast reminds me, but I'll take a couple of days with 22°C sun and nights that go down to 15°C.

In other news:

• Psychologist Vince Greenwood cranks the alarms up to 11 after evaluating the XPOTUS against the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. (Tl;dr: Out of 40 points possible on the checklist, "the average score for individuals in a maximum-security prison setting is 22. ... [The cutoff] for to get formal diagnosis of psychopathy is 30. ... [The XPOTUS] receives a score of 33."
• From April, why does a malignant narcissist sell Bibles?
• Nina Burleigh reminds us about "the con at the core of the Republican Party."
• Paul Krugman endorses Vice President Kamala Harris's "solid center-left agenda."
• Author Michael Lewis has a few thoughts about Sam Bankman-Fried's criminal activities.

Finally, our biggest eyebrow-raise today: a ridiculous mansion in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood covers 2,300 m² (25,000 ft²) across eight residential lots cost about $85 million to build and went on sale at $50 million back in 2016. The family who built it finally just sold it to a yet-unknown buyer for $15.25 million. I remember when they built it, because Parker and I would walk past the construction site every so often. I can't help but shake my head. But I guess if you can lose $70 million on your house after only 15 years, you probably didn't need the money anyway.

The Democratic National Convention opened today here in Chicago, so naturally that's the main topic in today's lunchtime roundup:

• I can barely wait until Thursday when I get to see the sparkling-clean O'Hare CTA station, freshened up for the convention.
• The DNC projected fun messages onto the XPOTUS's eponymous Tower from their hotel across the river. (No comment from the XPOTUS.)
• Vice President Kamala Harris continues to climb in the polls as people come to realize that she's the real deal and the XPOTUS can't deal.
• Ezra Klein highlights one thing the XPOTUS did well: he "turned the Democratic Party into a pitiless machine" that wins elections.
• James Fallows really wishes the press would cover the issues Americans want covered, especially that the big media outlets would report on the XPOTUS's obvious cognitive decline.

Well, that about covers it, until later this afternoon at least. I may have to walk Cassie a couple more times because it's 24°C and sunny, which we don't get a lot in August.

Last weekend, California governor Gavin Newsom (D) announced that the San Francisco-San Jose heavy commuter rail line had entered the late 19th century (in a good way):

On Thursday, the California High-Speed Rail Authority named its new CEO, Ian Choudri – and today, Choudri joined Governor Gavin Newsom in San Francisco to help celebrate the debut of Caltrain’s new electrified train fleet that will transform rail service in the Bay Area and play a key role in California’s high-speed rail system.

The electrification project and electric trains were supported by more than $1.3 billion in state funding, including more than $700 million from high-speed rail, and will serve as the Bay Area’s connection to California high-speed rail. Caltrain’s electrification and high-speed rail are key projects as part of Governor Newsom’s build more, faster infrastructure agenda.

The Peninsula Corridor Electrification Project converts the Caltrain corridor between San Francisco and San Jose from diesel to an electric service that reduces emissions and enhances capacity. It also equips the corridor to accommodate future California High Speed Rail service. Caltrain estimates that corridor electrification will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 250,000 tons annually, equivalent to taking 55,000 cars off the roads.

The trains look suspiciously like Germany's. (Hmm, I wonder why? Though CalTrain's sets come from Salt Lake City.)

Governor Newsom seems to think that electrified heavy rail somehow puts the Bay Area ahead of the Western World. Streetsblog SF corrects the record:

It was hard not to snicker. As should be obvious to anyone who's spent time in Europe, Asia, or even New Jersey—or anybody familiar with California's rail history—there's nothing innovative or pioneering about Caltrain electrification.

The truth is, running wires over trains so they go faster and don't pollute is just boring, meat-and-potatoes transportation.

There were also electric trains between the Bay Area and Sacramento. There was electric service throughout Marin. And of course there was the famous Red Car electric rail system throughout Los Angeles. But unlike in the Northeast and Europe, nearly all of California's electric rails of old were ripped out and replaced with highways. Today, it's generally accepted that destroying these railroads was a colossal act of civic vandalism.

California should build on what it has accomplished with Caltrain, but state leaders don't need to pretend that it's "pioneering." They also don't need to mess around with unproven technology and distractions such as hydrogen trains and hyperloops. Humanity solved short-to-medium-distance intercity transportation in 1879 when Germany's Ernst Werner von Siemens invented the electric train. Rail electrification using overhead wire is mature, proven technology that just works.

The entire project cost about $1.8 billion, showing that it could cost not much more to electrify the tracks outside my house. (San Francisco to San Jose is about 66 km, while Chicago to Kenosha is 83 km—but Waukegan is 20 km closer.)

Maybe someday we'll electrify Chicago's commuter trains. Of the 785 km Metra operates, the Metra Electric line already has 51 km of fully-electric right of way, and the Rock Island district will start running battery-powered train sets in four years. Meanwhile, I'll keep watching the 40-year-old F40PH locomotives pulling the 65-year-old carriages past my house. (At least we'll get new ones...someday, maybe even this decade.)

Meanwhile, on September 21st, I'll take a 320-km/h train built in the last 10 years. I'm so tired of waiting for my country to get out of the 1950s. CalTrain's electrification is encouraging.

Jennifer Rubin adds her voice to the growing chorus warning that the XPOTUS doesn't seem to have even a full Euchre deck:

Trump seems unable to handle reality. His opponent is beating him by multiple metrics, especially crowd size. In response, he posted several obvious lies on Truth Social, claiming that “nobody was there” and that photos and video of Vice President Kamala Harris’s crowds were AI-generated (our own reporters were eyewitnesses to the event).

Trump might be conditioning voters for another “Stop the Steal.” But then again, he might be just losing it.

A glitch-plagued X interview (unable to start for 45 minutes) with Elon Musk, owner of the social media site, only made things worse. People on social media reflected shock at hearing him slur and ramble his way through a softball interview. His obsession with President Joe Biden, who is no longer running, sounds like Trump cannot cope with his actual opponents. A much less alarming performance in the debate effectively ended President Biden’s campaign.

Had the media been conscientiously covering Trump, the public would understand these bizarre outings as part of his noticeable cognitive decline. Trump’s sporadic appearances on the trail alone should be grist for the cable news shows. When they do discuss his mental state, it is often in the context of horserace politics.

Josh Marshall fumes that most major news outlets haven't covered this disaster nearly as thoroughly as they discussed Hillary's emails:

[E]lite media continues to focus on Trump’s recent antics as an extended tantrum or flawed strategy when it is much more appropriately seen as a mental and cognitive state which is manifestly unfit for holding public office. Trump is also not morally fit for office. But that’s different, and that’s always been the case. The normal rejoinder is that Trump’s mental fitness is sort of irrelevant since most of us already know that and his supporters don’t care. Those conclusions are mostly true as far as it goes. But it represents a failure of journalistic logic which is remarkably widespread in media today. Put simply, that reasoning is mainly above the pay grade of journalism. It’s not the job of journalism to adjust the editorial choices or insights of daily news coverage based on driving electoral or public opinion outcomes. It’s to cover the news. There’s no single way to cover the news and no single, objective version of what constitutes the news. But that reasoning about impact is not an appropriate one and it is deeply damaging to journalism in myriad ways.

We have 81 days until this deranged, kinda-dumb geezer could get re-elected to the presidency.

As I wait for a build pipeline to run, I'm reading these:

• Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus argues that the recent Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity doesn't shield the XPOTUS from the most serious charges he faces.
• Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a professor of Thai politics, sees recent events in Thailand as heralds of the coming end of the monarchy's control.
• Why do people just stop dating?

Finally, author John Scalzi doesn't want you to idolize authors—especially not him:

Enjoy the art creative people do. Enjoy the experience of them in the mediated version of them you get online and elsewhere, if such is your joy. But remember that the art is from the artist, not the artist themselves, and the version of their life you see is usually just the version they choose to show. There is so much you don’t see, and so much you’re not meant to see. At the end of the day, you don’t have all the information about who they are that you would need to make them your idol, or someone you might choose to, in some significant way, pattern some fraction of your life on. And anyway creative people aren’t any better at life than anyone else.

Looks like the build is almost done...

I have painters painting and I'm coding code today, so I'm just noting a couple of interesting stories for later:

• The New York Times explains how the warming climate could send seven systems over the tipping point into unrecoverable damage.
• Bloomberg CityLab climbs through the $80 million effort to make Chicago's Merchandise Mart last another 90 years.
• National governments trying to protect their own railroads have derailed private cross-EU night-train service, hurting passengers.
• The City of Chicago could have to pay over $100 million to the thieves who stole our parking meters in what continues to be the stupidest, and possibly most corrupt, municipal contract in the city's history.

Finally, a pilot ferried a Cessna 172 from Merced, Calif., to Honolulu in 17½ hours last Tuesday, a feat that I would categorize as "stupid risky" rather than "brave." I have a policy never to fly beyond gliding range in a plane with one engine, which means even around Chicago I don't fly more than a few kilometers off shore. Sure, a Cessna 172 can easily get from Chicago to Grand Rapids on a standard load of fuel, but why on earth would you risk ditching even 10 km offshore. This guy flew over 2,000 km from the nearest shore. And it wasn't his first time.