The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Wednesday afternoon notes

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

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

A thought for your pennies?

I find it absolutely hilarious that the OAFPOTUS has resurrected a meme from the first season of The West Wing:

On Sunday night, Mr. Trump said he had ordered the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, to stop producing new pennies, a move that he said would help reduce unnecessary government spending.

“Let’s rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it’s a penny at a time,” he said in a post on Truth Social, adding that pennies “literally cost us more than 2 cents.”

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump has the power to do this. It is Congress, not the Treasury or the Federal Reserve, that authorizes the manufacture of the nation’s coins, according to the U.S. Mint.

Once again, he has trouble seeing that the laws are faithfully executed, but that's what the whole Administration is about. In this case, however, he is probably a stopped clock.

For those of you who missed out on The West Wing, here's the original:

Brews & Choos Project: five years in

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!

No good for any of us

Topping the link round-up this afternoon, my go-to brewery Spiteful fears for its business if it has to pay a 25% tariff on imported aluminum cans. If the OAFPOTUS drives Spiteful out of business for no fucking reason I will be quite put out.

In other news:

Other than the Neil Gaiman thing, which pains me deeply, this all goes to show that President Camacho will be a Republican.

OAFPOTUS blinks, Mexico wins today; Canada wins tomorrow? [Update: today!]

Demonstrating one more time that the OAFPOTUS is all hat and no cattle, the White House announced that it will "postpone" the crippling and needless tariffs he had threatened to impose on our second-biggest trading partner in exchange for...something Mexico would have done anyway. Avocados will continue to flow north, and dollars will continue to flow south.

Canada, meanwhile, has taken a more hardline position on the threat, which James Fallows calls "an international lesson in leadership." Perhaps Canada will agree to increased anti-coca-production efforts in exchange for the OAFPOTUS "pausing" the tariffs that it seems he never really intended to impose in the first place. Because of course he didn't.

The OAFPOTUS is a con man, and this was a grift, just like everything else he does. Or maybe, as Timothy Noah suggested, it's a simple protection racket.

Meanwhile:

And finally, the New Yorker has a cautionary tale about a real-estate deal that (quite literally) went sideways.

Update, 15:52 CST: Yeah, called it. Tariffs against Canada also paused, "in exchange" for Canada allocating 10,000 staff to policing the border—which I'm pretty sure they had already planned to do.

More meetings, more links in the bank

I had a delightful 2-hour lunch with a friend I've not seen in a while, after a morning of non-stop meetings. I also updated a piece of software that gets deployed tomorrow. I've got about 20 minutes now to jot down all of the things I hope to read later today:

Finally, singer Marianne Faithfull has died at 78. She will be missed.

The good, the bad, and the stupid

First: the good. My friend Kat Kruse has a new book of her short stories coming out. She let me read a couple of them, and I couldn't wait to pre-order the entire collection. I should get it on February 17th.

Still on the good things—or at least the things that don't seem so bad, considering:

Now for the bad:

And, of course, the stupid:

I might as well finish with a good thing. The temperature has gotten all the way up to 6.2°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ and 7.8°C at O'Hare. It was last this warm at WHQ on December 29th. If O'Hare can get up to 11.1°C, it will eke past December 27th.

Monarchist anachronisms from the White House

I had a thought about all the executive orders the OAFPOTUS signed Monday and Tuesday. Do they seem to anyone else like a King's Speech at the state opening of Parliament? Remember than an EO only directly affects the Executive Branch, and in many cases, still requires enabling legislation from the other end Pennsylvania Avenue.

I don't like how this reinforces the idea of the President as a monarch—something our founders explicitly said should never happen—but in terms of how an EO actually affects the world, it really could be read out by King Charles and have the same effect in the US.

In any event, it took less than 24 hours for a Federal judge to block the OAFPOTUS's executive order purporting to overturn the 14th Amendment, so our constitutional system hasn't completely collapsed yet.

In other news:

Finally, even though the high temperature today of -3.9°C happened right before sunrise and we're now scraping along at -7.6°C, and even though it hasn't been above freezing since before 8am Saturday, and even though tomorrow will be just as cold...it looks like we might get above freezing by noon this coming Saturday. I can't wait.

Only 1,460 days to go

Ah, ha ha. Ha.

Today is the first full day of the Once Again Felonious POTUS, who wound everyone up yesterday with a bunch of statements of intent (i.e., executive orders) guaranteed to get people paying attention to him again. Yawn.

But that isn't everything that happened in the last 24 hours:

Finally, while Chicago has almost no snow on the ground, which probably helped prevent the overnight temperature from going below -20°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ, the same weather system has already dumped more snow on the Gulf Coast cities of Mobile and Pensacola than they have ever recorded. Right now at Pensacola International, they have snow and -4°C temperatures. Climate change science didn't predict this specific event, but it did predict the weakening of the circumpolar jet stream that made this possible. This is not normal (temperatures in Fahrenheit):

Time for the weekend

So much to read...tomorrow morning, when I wake up:

Finally, Block Club Chicago wonders why coyotes seem to be everywhere right now? I have two explanations: first, because it's mating season; and second, because of confirmation bias. We had two coyote sightings in strange places last week, and people are seeing more coyotes in general because they want to get laid. So that leads to more articles on coyotes. QED.