The Daily Parker

It's entirely possible that I will have something to post about the OAFPOTUS's self-dealing almost every one of the next 1,417 days. One hopes not, however. I mean, we only have 608 more days until the next election!

Jeff Maurer starts today's update with his take on the laughable proposal for the United States Government to buy cryptocurrency:

The president wants to spend taxpayer dollars to buy fake non-money that Twitch streamers use to buy drugs. And he’s not limiting the government to the less-laughable cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin — if Bitcoin is Coca-Cola, Trump wants to also buy Jittery Jimmy’s High-Fructose Fizz Drink. Trump has mused that buying cryptocurrency could get the government out of debt, which sounds like the plan a degenerate gambler makes right before his body turns up in a New Jersey landfill.

This plan clearly benefits someone — the value of the cryptocurrencies Trump mentioned spiked after the announcement — but because cryptocurrencies are anonymous, we don’t know who got rich. It could be donors, foreign interests, or Trump family members — the only thing we know is that it was somebody terrible. Plus, someone placed a highly leveraged $200 million purchase right before Trump’s announcement, so there’s probably an old-timey insider trading scam happening alongside this Digital Age scam-of-the-future.

Another likely beneficiary is the guy who told Trump to do this: David Sacks. You may know Sacks as the ardent Trump backer and frequent repeater of Kremlin talking points whom Trump named as his “Crypto Czar”, with the “Czar” part really making sense given Sacks’ beliefs. Sacks says that he sold all of his cryptocurrency before Trump took office, but we can’t verify that, because crypto is anonymous. We do know that Sacks’ venture capital firm — the stake in which Sacks has not said that he sold — invests in a crypto fund whose top five holdings are exactly the five cryptocurrencies that Trump wants the government to buy. Sacks is a really lucky dude! It’s like if I was named Blog Czar and then got the government to buy a billion I Might Be Wrong subscriptions, and to be clear: President Trump, that offer is very much on the table.

Molly White also has a few things to say on the subject, with less satire and more technical expertise.

Given the raging corruption coming from the top of the party, is it any surprise that US Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has cozy relationships with the military contractors her committee regulates?

Meanwhile...

• The S&P 500 index of large stocks fell 2% yesterday and 3.5% over the last week as the OAFPOTUS started the stupidest trade war in history with our three biggest trading partners.
• Who could have guessed that China's and Russia's foreign-intelligence services have ramped up efforts to recruit US government workers, now that so many of them are legitimately disgruntled? Who indeed.
• American Airlines has cut hundreds of flights from its summer schedule because of the Clown Prince of X illegally firing thousands of government employees.
• Yascha Mounk does not completely understand the new world order yet, but it seems clear to him that we're in a truly historical transition.
• Paul Krugman interviews Nathan Tankus, an expert on the COBOL code that runs the Federal Reserve and Treasury.
• Charles Marohn is infuriated by the OAFPOTUS rescinding Federal approval for the New York City congestion pricing plan, even though he found flaws in its implementation.

Finally, I was pleased to see that Amazon and MGM Studios have started development of a TV series based on the first novel in Iain M Banks' Culture series, Consider Phlebas. It's a fun novel, and a good introduction to the series—which makes sense as it's the first one he wrote. I hope it gets to production.

One of my work projects has a monthly release these days, so right now I'm watching a DevOps pipeline run through about 400 time-consuming integration tests before I release this month's update. That gives me some time to catch up on all this:

The New York Times has a long explanation of how the Clown Prince of X took over the federal bureaucracy.

• As I and others have warned for years, the OAFPOTUS has embarked on a truly unprecedented program of bribery and corruption that we may never recover from. For example, as Joyce Vance describes, the Clown Prince has cancelled a $2.4 billion Verizon contract to modernize our air-traffic control infrastructure and given it to...Starlink, which the Clown Prince owns.
• Radley Balko highlights the OAFPOTUS's "full-frontal assault on democracy" over a five-day period this month.
• Paul Krugman is shocked—shocked!—that all of the chaos from the administration has caused an economic slowdown that will only get worse.
• The Economist have published their 2024 global democracy index, which kept the US at "flawed democracy" and saw Bagnladesh plummet from there to "hybrid regime (lower half)."
• Yascha Mounk wants the US to end the requirement to have a prescription to buy glasses, and jokes that maybe DOGE can see to it.
• The Chicago Transit Authority plans to build a four-kilometer walking path with dog parks under the new Red/Purple trestle between Lawrence and Bryn Mawr.

All right, the build has finished, so I can now deploy. And for no reason other than I like it, here is a photo of Cassie watching TV with me last night:

The Weather Now gazetteer import has gotten to the Ps (Pakistan) with 11,445,567 places imported and 10,890,186 indexed. (The indexer runs every three hours.) I'll have a bunch of statistics about the database when the import finishes, probably later tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. I'm especially pleased with the import software I wrote, and with Azure Cosmos DB. They're churning through batches of about 30 files at a time and importing places at around 10,000 per minute.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:

• The OAFPOTUS will likely get nowhere with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for the same reasons no one else has: Putin doesn't negotiate in good faith.
• Former US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman explains how Hungarian president Viktor Orbán and his allies have enriched themselves at the country's expense, as a warning about what is starting to happen over here.
• French president Emmanuel Macron had to correct the OAFPOTUS more than once in a press conference yesterday that I'm sure one of them remembered and the other did not.
• Clown Prince Elon Musk stepped on a rake over the weekend in part because his prank email to every Federal worker could very likely cause some Justice Department lawyers to face sanctions.
• James Fallows explains how Musk's Maoist vandalism of the US Government will have catastrophic consequences in aviation sooner rather than later.
• Will the known charlatan Dr Mehmet Oz truly divest himself from his financial interests in Medicare- and Medicaid-related companies now that he's been tapped to head the Federal agency that runs both? Ah, ha ha, ha. How droll.
• Chicago Public Media has come out as strongly as they can against Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's proposed $830 million bond sale. (I mentioned the bond sale last week.)
• According to Newsweek, a poll found Johnson's approval rating at 6.6%, lower than Rod Blagojevich's approval when the legislature removed him from office in 2009. (A Daily Parker reader joked that Johnson is now less popular than chlamydia.)
• Medium-term inflation expectations in the US have surged to levels we haven't seen this century, prompting Paul Krugman to ask why the markets don't seem to care (hint: Upton Sinclair).
• Craft distilleries in Illinois have their hopes pinned on a bill making its way through the state legislature that would remove restrictions on how they can operate tasting rooms. I'm also hoping the bill passes.

Finally, in February 1852, a man calling himself David Kennison died in Chicago. He had clamed to be 115 years old, participated in the Boston Tea Party, and hobnobbed with the great and good in the early days of the Republic. And in the proud tradition of people giving undue acclaim to total charlatans, the entire city turned out for his funeral—173 years ago yesterday.

Garmin periodically challenges its users to get active. About once a month they put out a distance challenge for walkers. This month, the challenge was to do a 4.8 km walk this weekend. Cassie and I just did that, as it turns out Jimmy's Pizza Cafe is conveniently 2.6 km away. It helps that we haven't had temperatures this warm (4.0°C) since just after 1pm on the 3rd.

Butters, however, did not like getting left behind. According to my security camera, she spent 18 minutes crying by the front door, took a quick stroll around my lower level, then went back to cry by the front door for another 10 minutes before going upstairs to cry in the living room. She gave up for a while, then returned to the front door for another 15 minutes, alternately crying and sitting quietly. I haven't watched the whole 54 minutes but I'd bet she was quiescent for less than 10.

I am sorry for my neighbors. Fortunately, the neighbor to the north is out of town. And frankly, the neighbors to the south have a 3-year-old boy who makes far more noise in the aggregate than any dogs I've ever owned (or looked after).

Tomorrow I'll go back to complaining about world events. Right now, I'm taking both dogs and my friend Kat's new book to Spiteful Brewing.

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.

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:

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!

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:

• Timothy Noah reads Jean Piaget to learn more about the OAFPOTUS's "infantile incapacity to grasp the mechanics of cause and effect," suggesting that his reasoning is more transductive, like a 3-year old's ("taking a nap causes the afternoon" ~=~ "DEI causes plane crashes").
• Aaron Blake says "it's complicated" whether the OAFPOTUS completely caved to Canada and Mexico earlier this week, despite the "deals" with those nations having already been worked out by the Biden Administration, while Ruth Marcus calls the era that began on January 20th "the most damaging first two weeks in presidential history."
• Margaret Renkl reminds everyone that the Republican plan to destroy public schooling so those people won't get basic education continues apace.
• Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has issued an order to align transit funding with marriage and birth rates, which will help places that don't actually have transit and hurt places like Chicago and New York.
• A woman has sued author Neil Gaiman for sexual assault, alleging serial abuse that occurred in New Zealand while she was his live-in nanny.

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