The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Something new, something old

A nearly-all-white Kenosha, Wis., jury acquitted Killer Smurf Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges today, which will have the immediate effect of turning Kenosha into a war zone, and the long-term effect of escalating violence at what would otherwise be peaceful protests nationwide. I haven't followed the case closely, though I do trust the sources I've read who say an acquittal would make sense under Wisconsin law. But I doubt that most people who haven't gone to law school will see it that way, or even care.

Also this morning, in a more positive vein: President Biden availed himself of the 25th Amendment while undergoing a routine colonoscopy, temporarily making Kamala Harris the first woman ever to hold the power of the presidency in this country. I don't know of another member or former member of the British Commonwealth that hasn't yet done this, and in all of those other countries, the women in question held permanent authority, not just power for an hour or two. In fact, the first one held absolute power from 1558 to 1603, without missing a beat. Still, it's a milestone.

The busy season

I've spent today alternately upgrading my code base for my real job to .NET 6.0, and preparing for the Apollo Chorus performances of Händel's Messiah on December 11th and 12th.

Cassie, for her part, enjoys when I work from home, even if we haven't spent a lot of time outside today because (a) I've had a lot to do and (b) it rained from 11am to just about now.

So, as I wait for the .NET 6 update to build and deploy on our dev/test CI/CD instance (I think I set the new environments on our app services correctly), I have a few things to read:

OK, the build has...well, crap. I didn't set the environment correctly after all.

Update: Fixed the build bit. And the rain stopped. But the test platform is the wrong version. FFS.

Update: Well, I have to pick something up from a store before 6, so I'll come back to this task later.

Update: Even though I've had 4 tiny commits of minor things that broke with the .NET 6 upgrade, this hasn't gone poorly. Kudos to Microsoft for providing a straightforward upgrade path.

Riches of embarrassment

Just a couple of eye-roll-worthy lunchtime links today:

What fun.

Fish stories

I reported on Friday that angler Jarrett Knize caught a 34 kg carp in the Humboldt Park Lagoon earlier this month. Block Club Chicago explains how the Fish of Unusual Size might have wound up there:

As for how the carp got there in the first place, Kevin Irons, assistant chief of fisheries for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, has a theory.

Irons, who managed the department’s carp program for a decade, said carp were accidentally introduced to the lagoon about 20 years ago. When a state-contracted fish hauler dumped a bunch of game fish in the lagoon for urban anglers like Knize, some carp found their way into the batch, he said.

Although it hasn’t been confirmed yet, officials think Knize caught one of those 20-year-old carp, Irons said. The department is still evaluating the fish, so its age hasn’t been confirmed.

Though carp are highly invasive, Knize’s catch doesn’t spell trouble for the lagoon, Irons said. A few carp won’t harm the lagoon — or any other ponds, for that matter — because carp only reproduce in flowing bodies of water like the Illinois River, he said.

That's still one hell of a goldfish.

Default judgement against Alex Jones

Few people in the history of broadcasting have managed the heights of soulless putrefaction that Alex Jones has achieved, and I'm including Father Coughlin and that German guy who opened the 1936 Olympic Games. Jones, I would argue, has even less moral fiber than those other two, because he does it all for profit, to such an extent that he would rather take a multi-million-dollar legal loss on the chin than reveal anything about how his broadcast business actually works:

Conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones, who claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a "giant hoax," was found liable Monday for damages in lawsuits brought by parents of children killed in the shooting.

Judge Barbara Bellis took the rare step of defaulting Jones in the defamation lawsuits for his and his company's “failure to produce critical material information that the plaintiffs needed to prove their claims.” The default means the judge found in favor of the parents and will hold a hearing on how much damages he should pay.

"While the families are grateful for the Court’s ruling, they remain focused on uncovering the truth," Chris Mattei, an attorney representing the families that sued Jones, said in a statement Monday.

"As the Court noted, Alex Jones and his companies have deliberately concealed evidence of the relationship between what they publish and how they make money. Mr. Jones was given every opportunity to comply but, when he chose instead to withhold evidence for more than two years, the Court was left with no choice but to rule as it did today. While today’s ruling is a legal victory, the battle to shed light on how deeply Mr. Jones has harmed these families continues."

A jury will be convened to decide how much Jones will pay Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, the parents of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, and Scarlett Lewis, the mother of slain 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, their lawyers at the Texas law firm Farrar & Ball said.

Noah and Jesse were two of the 20 first-graders killed when a gunman barged into the school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 and opened fire with a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle. Six school staffers were also killed.

Good. They'd never put me on that jury, but oh, wouldn't that be fun.

Hampshire and Gospel Oak

 Lunch yesterday, at the Iron Duke in Hampshire:

The place is so named because it's on the Duke of Wellington's estate. The current Duke lives just a few kilometers away in a somewhat modest house (at least according to Queen Victoria) whose driveway is 5 km long.

Walking to and from lunch looked like this:

I ended the day at the Southampton Arms as I typically do at least once when visiting the UK. Shortly after arriving and opening a packet of crisps, Marty here came over to investigate:

His attitude toward me shifted a bit when I wouldn't give him any:

I'm flying home this afternoon to my own dog and my own bed, two things I really miss.

Cashless

Just a quick observation: since I last visited London two years ago, almost every business I've encountered has gone cashless. Coffee shops, pubs, the Transport Museum, all cards-only. In 2019, most of the smaller places preferred cash.

No real consequences, other than not needing to withdraw Sterling so far this trip. When I get home and sync up Quicken, I expect I'll have a little work, but again, not a biggie.

It's alive! It's alive!

Just in time for my visit this week, a new report declares the River Thames no longer dead:

In 1858, sewage clogging London's Thames River caused a "Great Stink." A century later, parts of the famed waterway were declared biologically dead.

But the latest report on "The State of the Thames" is sounding a surprisingly optimistic note.

The river today is "home to myriad wildlife as diverse as London itself," Andrew Terry, the director of conservation and policy at the Zoological Society of London, writes in a forward to the report published Wednesday. Terry points to "reductions in pressures and improvements in key species and habitats."

The report highlights several promising trends. But it also cautions that work still needs to be done in other areas, and warns of the negative impact of climate change on the river, which is a major source of water for the city.

There is a possible fix on the horizon. London is currently building a "super sewer" project, which is called the Thames Tideway Tunnel and is due for completion in 2025.

"Once operational it will capture and store most of the millions of tonnes of raw sewage that currently overflow into the estuary," the report says.

I will not, however, go for a swim in the Thames on this trip.

The last bit interests me. In many ways, Europe surged ahead of the US technologically and socially in the last 50 years. Apparently, though, London is just now working on the equivalent of Chicago's Deep Tunnel, which we started in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, back home, Chicago resident Jarrett Knize caught a 33.9 kg carp in the Humboldt Park Lagoon on Sunday, which if certified will be the biggest carp ever caught in Illinois. The Humboldt Park Lagoon is about the size of the Serpentine in London's Hyde Park, and about as urban. No word from the possibly decade-old carp about how it got into the lagoon in the first place.