The Daily Parker

Fortunately, I'm debugging a build process that takes 6 minutes each time, so I may be able to squeeze some of these in:

• Bruce Schneier reports on a new critical vulnerability in Windows that the NSA told Microsoft about. That's new.
• The New Yorker's Rebecca Mead takes a thoughtful (and only mildly snarky) look at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex withdrawing from royal life.
• In the same issue, John Cassidy examines the reasons behind our assassination of Qassem Suleimani.
• The Washington Post documents the "rare and bizarre ritual" by which the House transmitted the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
• The Atlantic's Emma Green comments on Elizabeth Warren's new argument on electability. (Note: I have contributed financially to Elizabeth Warren's Senatorial and Presidential campaigns.)
• Via Heirloom Books in Chicago, the Smithsonian Magazine discusses how archivist Greg Priore smuggled $8m worth of artifacts out of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh over a 25-year period.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation discusses the privacy-smashing way the U.S. Government has decided to send emails to people.
• The New York Times explains how Tiffany & Co. moved 114,000 gems without losing any.
• The Blommer Chocolate outlet store a few blocks from where I'm sitting will close next month after 30 years in business. The factory will remain open, however, so Chicago will still smell like chocolate every so often.
• Finally, Viking Cruises will bring a ship to Chicago in 2022.

Back to debugging Azure DevOps pipelines...

I had a lot going on at work today, so all I have left is a lame-ass "read these later" post:

• Cranky Flier wonders why Delta is Tweeting to individual passengers.
• James Fallows looks at Bob Garfield's latest book.
• Bruce Schneier says China isn't the problem in crappy 5G security.
• And John Scalzi has a new book coming out, which he'll sign if you pre-order.

I'd say "back to the mines," but I believe I have a date with Kristen Bell presently.

...as long as you aren't in Chicago:

Lake Shore Drive was being hammered with waves Saturday morning causing officials to shut down the bike path in some parts on the North and South sides.

Officer Michelle Tannehill, a spokeswoman for police, said the northbound path remains closed between Ohio Street and Fullerton Avenue as of 11:30 a.m. There also were reports of trouble on South Shore Drive in the northbound lanes from 7100 to 6700 South Shore Drive.

Still under a winter weather advisory until 3 a.m. Sunday, parts of Cook County along the shoreline were expecting winds to reach up to 50 mph as rain showers threaten to create slick conditions.

It gets better:

Those in and around Chicago can expect snow by Saturday night, but before then, a complex and messy storm will possibly bring freezing rain, thunderstorms, sleet and dangerously high lakefront waves into early Sunday, forecasters said.

A winter storm warning was in effect for McHenry and other outlying counties northwest and west of the city from 9 p.m. Friday until 3 a.m. Sunday, with snow as deep as 7 inches predicted in some areas. A winter weather advisory was in effect for Lake and Kane counties starting at 3 a.m. Saturday and for Cook, DuPage, Kendall and LaSalle counties, lasting until 6 a.m. Sunday.

Officials said the storm will start with rain and sleet. There may also be ice pellets, but it might not freeze all surfaces, which may cause patchy slick spots in the area. It is expected to snow after 5 p.m. Saturday and continue snowing till 1 a.m. Sunday, Friedlein said.

Tonight I'm hosting some fellow singers for madrigals and wine. (You read this blog and didn't realize I'm a nerd?) Fortunately I'm close to public transit. I hope I'm not stuck with too much extra cheese and wine; that would be tragic.

I finally got 7 minutes to watch this. I'm still crying. But in a good way, unlike the people in the room:

Enjoy.

Not that anything has happened lately...

• Now that we've all but declared war on Eastasia Iran, maybe we can remember for just a second how deadly accurate their missiles have gotten lately?
• Michelle Goldberg points out the obvious: we have arrived at the nightmare phase of President Trump's administration.
• Crain's notices craft beer sales have started to level off—possibly because people already drink about as much beer as they can hold—and says the sky is falling.
• Australia's unprecedented fires create their own weather, with some of them reaching 1,000°C.

Finally, the New York Times had a feature yesterday on new architecture for Antarctic research stations. Cool stuff (ah ha ha).

Yesterday I spent a few hours at the Begyle Brewery Taproom and read about half of Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea. I just finished it. It delighted me, and I think it might delight you.

So one book in two days? Maybe I can read 180 books this year? Not likely. A short novel by a playwright may not take a long time. But I'm only a third the way through Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, and I started that in June.

As marijuana sales became legal (-ish) in Illinois yesterday, budding demand became overwhelming demand even before the stores opened:

Weed shops around the state opened at 6 a.m. to throngs of people. Cars packed the streets of a light-industrial park in Mundelein, home to the state’s busiest dispensary, Rise, owned by Green Thumb Industries. It’s one of the few that’s open in the northern suburbs.

When CEO Ben Kovler arrived at 5:30 a.m., there were more than 500 people lined up in the parking lot. “Our first customer said he got here at 5 last night,” Kovler said. “It’s a bigger crowd than we expected. The tidal wave (around recreational cannabis) is real.”

The first sale in the state was recorded at Dispensary 33 on North Clark Street in Uptown.

Cresco said it sold more than 9,000 cannabis items to about 3,400 customers at its five shops around the state. The average ring was $135.

So that's a lot of tax revenue. Let's hope it stays high. I did not wait in line to buy weed yesterday and I'm unlikely to do so any time soon. But I'm glad people can relax when they relax now.

And if you don't know how, the Chicago Tribune published some tips.

We typically think of January 1st as the day things happen. But December 31st is often the day things end.

On 31 December 1999, two things ended at nearly the same time: the presidency in Russia of Boris Yeltsin, and the American control of the Panama Canal Zone.

Also twenty years ago, my company gave me a $1,200 bonus ($1,893 in 2019 dollars) and a $600 suite for two nights in midtown Manhattan because I volunteered to spend four hours at our data center on Park Avenue, just so that Management could say someone was at the data center on Park Avenue continuously from 6am on New Year's Eve until 6pm on New Year's Day. Since all of the applications I wrote or had responsibility for were less than two years old, literally nothing happened. Does this count as an anniversary? I suppose not.

And one hundred years ago, 31 December 1919 was the last day anyone could legally buy alcohol in the United States for 13 years, as the Volstead Act took effect at midnight on 1 January 1920.

I'm DD tonight, but I will still raise a glass of Champagne to toast these three events.

Photo by Harris & Ewing - Library of Congress, Public Domain, Link

Article the first: Stocks have continued going up relentlessly even though producer prices are also up, exports are way down, and wages have stagnated. This means, essentially, our economy is rent-seeking and not producing.

Article the second: President Trump's tariffs have hurt agriculture and commodities, caused job losses, and hit the most vulnerable people in Trump Country. They haven't helped the economy at all. Question: bugs or features?

Article the third: Michiko Katutani draws direct parallels between the "end of normal" of the 2010s and Richard Hofstadter's "paranoid style."

Article the fourth: The 2010s also had good-looking celebrities pushing (almost literal) snake oil on us, and people bought it up wholesale. Actors and other Dunning-Krueger sufferers made billions on imaginary health and wellness products that helped neither health nor wellness.

So as we go into the bottom of the 10s, this is America today. Can't wait to see the '20s on Wednesday when it's all better.

Every year at this time, it's important to talk about language skills. There is a tribe in the remotest part of the Amazon forest who, every December 25th, dance around a large pile of dirt, singing to it and telling it stories. This is because of a tragic mistranslation by a missionary centuries ago, who told them, "On this day the ton of sod was bored."