If South Dakota governor and unapologetic puppy-killer Kristi Noem (R, obviously) becomes the XPOTUS's running mate this year, the GOP will have outdone its own Doctor Evil mindset. And yet, that is not the worst thing happening in the world today:
- A California judge has ruled a recent state law requiring municipalities to undo discriminatory zoning laws unconstitutional, though it's not clear how long that ruling will stand.
- Do you own a GM car made in this decade? It may be spying on you, and sharing your driving history with your insurance company without your consent.
- After a non-profit group suggested merging the CTA, Metra, and Pace, the Illinois House has started the legislative process to do just that.
- Ezra Klein takes us through the history of the infamous Noe Valley public toilet in San Francisco, which took years to get through the planning process, increasing its cost at every step.
- Remember: public policy led to the proliferation of trucks masquerading as cars that endanger pedestrians, pollute neighborhoods, and generally look ugly.
Finally, Josh Marshall points out that while he (and I) support the basic aim of student protests against the Gaza war—Israel must stop killing people in Gaza—we do not support the groups organizing those protests at Columbia and other universities, almost all of which call for the destruction of the Jewish state. I'm also somewhat anxious about the normal propensity of young people to demand easy answers to complex questions becoming a democracy-ending problem later this year. I mean, if you think students are always on the right side of history, I need to direct your attention to China in 1966 and one or two other examples. Children don't do nuance.
American Airlines says my flight home has a 45-minute delay at the moment (though of course that could get worse). So I just spent 35 minutes walking in a big circle around the southwest corner of downtown San Diego. I don't think I'd ever live here, but I do enjoy the weather.
Meanwhile, as if I don't have too many things on my to-be-read shelf already, the New York Times book editor has released a list of the 22 funniest novels since Catch-22. Maybe someday I'll get to a few of them?
Anyway, I should be home with Cassie in about 11 hours. If she understood English and had any concept of "future," she'd be excited too.
I've got a little time before dinner, just enough to post this:
I didn't collect any snake bites, scorpion stings, or exploding cactuses, but I think I did get a nice sunburn. I'll find out tomorrow.
Given the weather and the fact that I'd been stuck in the conference hotel all day, I slipped out for a 4-kilometer walk around downtown San Diego this afternoon. It was perfectly clear and 20°C, but somehow I persevered.
I was exercising so I didn't take a lot of photos. But I have never seen a cruise ship up close before, so despite the mouse on the front, this impressed me:
That's the Disney Wonder. I will never go on that ship any more than I will get to go on the USS Carl Vinson, which is behind it to the left, and frankly even more impressive.
Then there was this sign, which shows that Little Italy will, in fact, take your shit:
And now, I have to demonstrate the product we've been working on for four years to a lot of other developers.
Another sprint has ended. My hope for a boring release has hit two snags: first, it looks like one of the test artifacts in the production environment that our build pipeline depends on has disappeared (easily fixed); and second, my doctor's treatment for this icky bronchitis I've had the past two weeks works great at the (temporary) expense of normal cognition. (Probably the cough syrup.)
Plus, Cassie and I have a houseguest:
But like my head, the rest of the world keeps spinning:
- A 3-judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that presidents do not have blanket immunity from prosecution, which the XPOTUS has vowed to appeal en banc and then to his hand-picked Supreme Court.
- The Republican Party got the border deal they asked for, but they refuse to pass it because the XPOTUS needs border chaos for his re-election campaign. Greg Sargent has even more about their own-goal.
- Los Angeles experienced record rainfall yesterday, with a whopping 104 mm of rain recorded downtown, smashing the old record of 65 mm set in 1927.
- Here in Chicago, we expect above-average temperatures to hang out for the rest of winter, possibly even hitting 16°C later this week.
- That means we won't get to see the winners of this year's snowplow-naming contest: Skilling It, CTRL-SALT-DELETE, Casimir Plowaski, Ernie Snowbanks, Mies van der Snow, and Bad, Bad Leroy Plow.
- Speaking of roads, the Sun-Times ran an essay today outlining the history of Chicago expressways (motorways), and what we lost when we built them.
And now, my production test pipeline has concluded successfully, so I will indeed have a boring release.
Walking Cassie to day camp took a lot longer than usual this morning because the freezing rain and near-freezing temperatures after a long cold snap laid a layer of ice over nearly every sidewalk and street in Chicago. She seemed very concerned about my ability to walk, and very disappointed that we didn't take our usual detour to the bagel place to get me some coffee and her a fresh dog treat.
The "wintry mix" has stopped and the temperature has risen all the way to 1.5°C at Inner Drive Technology World HQ, so the walk home may not suck as much as the walk there.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:
- The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has announced the nominees for 2023 Oscars, with Oppenheimer leading the pack and both Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie apparently snubbed for their work in Barbie.
- Politico takes a deep dive into the psyche of a New Hampshire primary voter who supports the XPOTUS, and finds that he's angry about everything, but he has no clear idea what he's angry about.
- The New York Times Political Memo lays out how the adolescent, schoolyard behavior of the XPOTUS towards Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R).
- Walter Shapiro bemoans the misleading and pointless political reporting covering the Republican presidential nomination.
- Ruth Marcus asks the same question I've been asking (in shocking agreement with some of my Republican friends): What the hell was Fani Willis thinking?
- David Zipper has "spent a lot of time thinking about American traffic safety messaging," and has decided that the new Federal recommendations against funny highway signs make sense.
- The city of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., a charming little town on the Monterey Peninsula where people have to go to the post office to get their mail, may soon get street addresses.
- Strong Towns describes in detail how the Texas Dept of Transportation prevents people from providing input into road projects, despite claiming to welcome it.
- Chicago-based United Airlines has started grumbling openly about Chicago-based Boeing's airplanes, stopping just short of suggesting they might buy an Airbus or two.
- Crain's has a look at how much the proposed Chicago real-estate transfer tax reform will save (or cost) home buyers in different price ranges. TL;dr: It will save money for transactions under $1 million.
- Do sleep aids work? Maybe, some of them, perhaps.
Finally, we might have gotten to Peak Rat Hole. Residents of the 1900 block of West Roscoe have gotten fed up with all the people coming to see the 30-year-old dead squirrel impression on their sidewalk. Perhaps the wedding took things too far?
Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: Fox Tale Fermentation Project, 120 E. Santa Clara St., San Jose, Calif.
Train line: Caltrain, San Jose Diridon
Time from Chicago: about 4½ hours by air
Distance from station: 1.5 km
I hadn't intended to visit Fox Tale, because a different brewery was closer to my hotel. But that brewery closed abruptly in November, though no one had updated its Google page. I'm glad I went to Fox Tale instead.
Owners Felipe Bravo and Wendy Neff don't just brew really unusual beers, they also ferment all kinds of foods. The menu has a list of fermented spreads you can put on an order of "just bread." I spread on some garlic-lemon hummus made from parsley oil and sunflower seeds that was truly tasty.
I also tried two beers. The Meadowtate, a rustic pale ale (5.2%) made from fir tips and Hallertau Blanc hops, had a lightly funky nose, tasted more like a lager than an ale, but had a complexity with notes I couldn't identify from the plants they added. The Super Sonic Bloom double-dry-hopped IPA (6.3%) had a really interesting, complex flavor, again with notes that eluded my vocabulary. I would try both them again.
I travel to the Bay Area a lot, as longtime readers know, so I will stop in Fox Tale again.
Beer garden? Sidewalk
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? No
Serves food? Yes
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes
I don't like getting up before dawn, even if it's 8am as far as my body cares. Except that getting up at 6am Pacific allowed me to get to SFO and through security in less than an hour. That's including showering, checking out of the hotel, catching the BART, and jumping on the airport tram. Cute hotel, too; I'll stay there again if I ever have to fly out of SFO at the ass crack of dawn.
Still an hour to boarding, though. I miss the days when I could get to an airport 45 minutes before departure without breaking a sweat. Though today, maybe I should have slept another half-hour.
Two Brews & Choos Extra Stops coming in the next few days. Plus, I hope, about 18 hours of sleep...
I just got back from a 35-minute walk around downtown San Jose, Calif., including a 1-km stretch of the Guadalupe River trail. My Garmin track gives you hints about how it went, particularly the 300 meters or so along the river under multiple overpasses including the California 87 freeway. And in fairness, it's sunny and 13°C, which doesn't suck for the first day of winter.
That said, this is the place where I joined the trail:
And this is the 87 underpass:
Not shown above, the homeless man launching large rocks onto the bike path, who only stopped when he finally made eye contact with me, which I didn't break until a support column broke it for me. And let me tell you, that eye contact had behind it every single one of my 30+ years of living in New York City and Chicago.
I mean, there are worse places to be homeless than in the Bay Area. But my 30-minute walk through multiple homeless encampments and god-awful car-centric urban infrastructure brought clarity to arguments I've read about California's housing and property-tax policies. For the most progressive state in the union, California has the worst land use. The Bay Area has a huge homeless population only in small part due to the weather. I walked past a 3-bedroom, 163 m² house 25 minutes from downtown San Jose last night, for sale at $1.8 million. A comparable house in my neighborhood would cost about $900k, and it's a 15-minute train ride to the Loop in one of the most walkable places in the world. (The $1.8-million house is just not walkable.)
One more thing. My Clipper Card has $3.05 on it, down from $20 yesterday because it took two trains to get from SFO Airport to San Jose (still much better than renting a car!). But I thought ahead, and set to auto-reload when it goes below $10. Did you know that it takes at least 24 hours to reload a Clipper Card? So I must ask the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, what the hell is the point of the auto-reload feature if it allows the Clipper Card to bottom out, forcing you to reload at a kiosk while waiting for the f****g auto-reload?
The MTC claims "[i]f you set up Auto-Reload for cash value, when your balance falls below $10, Clipper will automatically reload you card when you pay your next fare," but will it happen today? I guess I'll find out when I go to lunch later.
Unrelated: My Garmin watch said I got eight hours of "poor, non-restorative" sleep last night, and "you may feel more tired or irritable today." Nah, I'm fine.
Tomorrow I have a quick trip to the Bay Area to see family. I expect I will not only continue posting normally, but I will also research at least two Brews & Choos Special Stops while there. Exciting stuff.
And because we live in exciting times:
Finally, if you're in Chicago tonight around 6pm, tune into WFMT 98.7 FM. They're putting the Apollo Chorus performance at Holy Name Cathedral in their holiday preview. Cool! (And tickets are still available.)