The Daily Parker

As I take a minute from banging away on C# code to savor my BBQ pork on rice from the local Chinese takeout, I have these to read:

• President Trump once again said the quiet part out loud, announcing he plans to gut fair-housing rules because otherwise they would "have...a devastating impact on these once thriving Suburban areas."
• The Supreme Court will hear arguments whether the House can have access to Robert Mueller's unredacted report—in the fall.
• Josh Marshall goes over the "ominous and harrowing" Covid-19 numbers from yesterday.
• Bruce Schneier discusses the security value of inefficiency.
• Summer in Illinois started warm and dry, and will continue to be.

And today's fortune cookie says: "Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst in bed."

Welp, it's July now, so we've completed half of 2020. (You can insert your own adverb there; I'll go with "only.")

A couple of things magically changed or got recorded at midnight, though. Among them:

• The Lake Michigan-Huron system finished its 6th consecutive month of record high water levels, with June 2020 levels a full meter over the long-term average.
• Illinois' minimum wage went up to $10 per hour, and Chicago's to $14. Both minima will increase by $1 per year until they reach $15.
• China has asserted total control over Hong Kong on the 23rd anniversary of the UK handing the island back.
• The Daily Parker had a record 576 posts in the 12 months ending yesterday, my third such record this year. June also was the 4th consecutive month where I posted more than 50 times, which is unprecedented.

And finally, I am now officially the President of the Apollo Chorus of Chicago. My first task: ensure that our annual fundraiser, Apollo After Hours, brings in the dough. More on that later.

Day 3 of flight testing didn't go as well as I'd hoped. The winds picked up a bit, so my little guy refused to ascend past 28 meters and at one point lost contact with my remote. I have a feeling that radio interference will make urban flying more challenging.

I did get a good look at the lake, though:

The weather forecast looks breezy today and tomorrow, calming a bit Saturday. And if it's calmer around 8pm tonight, I'll try to get some dusk shots of the city. Honestly, the weather interfering with testing the drone feels a bit like the fall of 1999 when weather delays kept pushing my private-pilot checkride back.

At least I didn't crash today. Yesterday I hit a shrub and a fence, the latter impact actually costing me a propeller blade. At least the yet-unnamed quadcopter didn't suffer worse damage.

The second-wettest spring in Chicago's history ended Sunday, clocking in at 427 mm of precipitation since March 1st. (The record was 445 mm set in 1983.)

Temperatures averaged just a bit above normal for the season, at 10.2°C (1.0°C above normal).

Today we might get a record high temperature. The forecast calls for 33°C, which would tie the record set in 1944.

Also, the Lake Michigan-Huron system finished its fifth straight month with record water levels, averaging about 930 mm above normal.

The Illinois State Climatologist office has more.

No larger message here. I just thought a post about the weather would be a good break from everything else.

I'm setting these aside to read after I race around my house closing windows in a few minutes:

• Midland, Mich., native Ben Mathis-Lilley examines why his home town flooded, and what could come next for it.
• National Geographic outlines how Covid-19 resembles other viral diseases, even though it seems to behave wierdly.
• Fox (who else? I mean, other than PornHub?) has a new show where 15 men compete to impregnate a 41-year-old woman. I am not making this up.
• Mel magazine says "America is officially in 'fuck it' mode."

I'm working on a longer-form entry bringing together some of the more serious books and essays I've read on our current situation.

I rode the El yesterday for the first time since March 15th, because I had to take my car in for service. (It's 100% fine.) This divided up my day so I had to scramble in the afternoon to finish a work task, while all these news stories piled up:

• Josh Marshall unmasks the PPE debate.
• Matthew Sitman explains "why the pandemic is driving conservative intellectuals [sic] mad."
• Michigan's Attorney General called the president "a petulant child," called Lake Huron "a big lake," and called the Upper Peninsula "a cold region."
• Who's interviewing for Vice President?
• In my neighborhood, the Chamber of Commerce and friends want to rethink what our business district will look like in a year. And the Trib asks restaurants what they might look like.
• Elsewhere in Chicago, sex workers have had to change their business models as well.
• AVWeb reports that Air France will retire its A380 fleet this year, instead of in 2022.
• Climate change will make last week's Chicago-area floods more common.
• James Bennett II, writing in McSweeney's, asks: what does your favorite requiem mass say about you? ("Cats, man.")

Finally, author and Ohio resident John Scalzi sums up why he won't rush back to restaurants when they reopen in his state next week:

My plan is to stay home for most of June and let other people run around and see how that works out for them. The best-case scenario is that I’m being overly paranoid for an extra month, in which case we can all laugh about it afterward. The worst case scenario, of course, is death and pain and a lot of people with confused about why ventilator tubes are stuck down their throats, or the throats of their loved ones, when they were assured this was all a liberal hoax, and then all of us back in our houses until September. Once again, I would be delighted to be proved overly paranoid.

I have sympathy for the people who are all, the hell with this, I’ll risk getting sick, just let me out of my fucking apartment. I get where you’re coming from. You probably don’t actually know what you’re asking for. I hope that you never have to learn.

Note to Mr Scalzi: I hope to start The Last Emperox this week. I really do.

Since January 2019, Chicago has had only two months with above-average sunshine, and in both cases we only got 10% more than average. This year we're ticking along about 9% below, with no month since July 2019 getting above 50% of possible sunshine.

In other news:

• Former White House Butler Roosevelt Jerman, who served from 1957 to 2012, died of Covid-19 at age 91.
• One wonders, if the current White House had acted more propitiously, would Jerman have lived longer? Researchers suggest yes, if we'd locked down a week earlier, we would have 36,000 fewer Covid-19 deaths.
• The US saw 2.4 million more unemployment claims last week, bringing the national total to 39 million and Illinois' to 1 million.
• Ichan School of Medicine virologist Benjamen tenOever lays out how SARS-CoV-2 hijacks cellular machinery to suppress interferon production while boosting chemokines, which may explain why the virus is so damaging and hard to kill.
• President Trump "said the corrupt part out loud" in his threats to Michigan and Nevada yesterday, says Greg Sargent.
• Because it's 2020, and we haven't gotten through all the plagues yet, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts an above-average Atlantic hurricane season starting June 1st.
• What happens to cities that depend on giant cruise ships if the ships won't go there? (NB: Perfect time to visit Venice or Alaska right now, except for the virus.)
• Block Club Chicago lays out what could open if the state moves to Phase 3 of the "Restore Illinois" plan a week from tomorrow.
• Around the corner from where I lived until 2015, a condo association is suing the private school next door for fraud, alleging the Francis Parker School illegally attempted to take over the condominium board through straw-man condo purchases.
• The European Southern Observatory revealed evidence of planets forming around a nearby star.

Finally, having "walktails" with friends may be a thing, but because drinking alcohol on public streets in Chicago is prohibited by city ordinance, I cannot admit to ever doing this.

So far—and keep in mind, we're only 2/3 done with the month—Chicago has had more precipitation this May than in any previous May, with 216 mm total. It's interesting to note that 2019 and 2018 were also the wettest Mays ever, with 210 mm and 208 mm respectively.

In Northwest Michigan, the record rainfall caused a pair of dams to break, flooding the town of Midland under 2.75 m of water.

The Lake Michigan-Huron system continues at record levels for the fifth month in a row, with no sign of receding.

Welcome to the new normal.

Long day, with meetings until 8:45pm and the current sprint ending tomorrow at work, so I'll read most of these after the spring review:

• Tara Smith warns about the unholy alliance of anti-vaxers and Covid-19 quarantine protesters. Libby Watson calls it a "deranged civil religion."
• You think President Trump firing State Department Inspector General Steve Linick was about walking Mike Pompeo's dogs? Uh, no. It was about the $8 bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia that Linick was about to expose.
• Why is Trump going after Obama again? Jennifer Rubin has a theory. Even Attorney General Bill Barr, no ethical paragon he, shut down the idea of investigating Obama or Biden—probably for no other reason than it would not be good to have that precedent on the books next January.
• In his latest time capsule, James Fallows looks at the past week and can scarcely believe the 5 or 6 scandals that would have been top stories in any other year.
• After we got 200 mm of rain in the last 36 hours, the forecast calls for slightly drier and much warmer weather ahead. The Sears Tower remains without power, however, after police in boats had to rescue homeless people on Lower Wacker Drive. (“Two of the top 5 wettest May days ever were in the past 4 days – no wonder why the flooding is so bad, that is unreal,” [National Weather Service meteorologist Gino] Izzi said.)
• Cranky Flier analyzes Delta's 777 retirement plan.
• Anthony Paletta looks at "why airports die."

Finally, Sheffield, U.K., wildlife photographer Simon Dell built a Hobbiton for the local field mice. It's as adorable as it sounds.

Charlie Pierce, noting that "[p]eople with firearms forced the civil government of the state of Michigan to shut itself down," wants to know in what sense this isn't terrorism. In other fun weekend stories:

• The Illinois Dept. of Employment Security had a "glitch" in their unemployment claims processing app that exposed private information. I'm curious who wrote the software.
• Jared Kushner: evil and stupid.
• Speaking of evil and stupid, the president continues to downplay and undercount Covid-19 deaths because, let's face it, he's responsible for many of them.
• Chicago faces another $1bn budget hole next year.

And it's pouring, and will continue to do so for several more hours.