The Daily Parker

The Library of Congress has named Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and 24 other films to the National Film Registry this week. A quick view of the list tells me I've only seen 5 of them, so I need to start watching more movies.

In other news:

• Former Chicago mayor and outgoing US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel suggests some ways the Democratic Party can get back in the saddle.
• The Chicago City Council finally passed its 2025 budget, a $17.3 bn mess that only got 27 out of 50 votes, and then only because it doesn't have a property tax increase. And we're still paying for police tort settlements out of the general fund instead of the police pension fund, where they should come from.
• Chicago's Christkindlmarket in Daley Center Plaza has been named "the most overcrowded holiday market in the US," in part because the overflow Christkindlmarket at Wrigley Field got cancelled this year due to a single hockey game next week.

Finally, Illinois could, if it wanted to, redirect $1.5 billion in Federal highway funds to mass-transit projects in the Chicago area under President Biden's 2021 Covid relief plan. Unfortunately, a lot of the state would prefer to build more useless highways, so this probably won't happen.

We have warm (10°C) windy (24 knot gusts) weather in Chicago right now, and even have some sun peeking out from the clouds, making it feel a lot more like late March than mid-December. Winds are blowing elsewhere in the world, too:

• The German government collapsed today after Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in the Bundestag.
• People think the OAFPOTUS transition team are doing a great job for the simple reason that most people don't follow this kind of thing.
• Josh Marshall points out that it makes logical sense that huge corporations would sell out their news divisions in what he calls "the great fluffening" ahead of the OAFPOTUS re-taking office, though it does mean that corruption has already gotten to 1870s levels again.
• Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland (Lib.—University-Rosedale) has resigned in spectacular fashion just hours before the government's fall economic statement, causing embarrassment to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
• LetsEncrypt has rolled out a new service that can update your TLS certificates every 6 days. This means, if your site has a breach, the attackers can do far less damage than they might if they had 90 days to do it.
• Amtrak's $400 million renovation of Chicago's Union Station will begin early next year, with new platforms, new waiting rooms, and many smaller improvements.
• Small towns with deep-sea ports have lost their patience with the ever-larger cruise ships that stop by from time to time.

Finally, the Washington Post says I read 628 stories this year on 22 different topics. That's less than 2 a day. I really need to step up my game.

Before I link to anything else, I want to share Ray Delahanty's latest CityNerd video that explores "rural cosplaying." I'll skip directly to the punchline; you should watch the whole thing for more context:

Elsewhere,

• Josh Marshall implores people, one more time, stop giving the OAFPOTUS head space when he says dumb shit.
• Fareed Zakaria marvels at how weak Russia has become.
• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) continues the long tradition of high-ego, low-skill politicians completely failing at their jobs.
• ProPublica exposes UnitedHealthcare's internal process to lower its own costs (read: increase its profits) by systematically failing autistic children.
• Forget pipelines and fracking; data centers specializing in crypto mining have become the biggest threats to the environment.
• In March, Transport for London will raise Tube fares about 5%, for example raising the daily cap on zone 1-2 fares from £8.50 to £8.90.

There is some good news today, though. In the last 6½ hours, the temperature at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters rose almost 9°C (15°F), to an almost-balmy -3.5°C. The forecast says it'll keep rising another 12°C or so through Sunday. So our first cold snap of the winter appears to be behind us.

My, we've had a busy day:

• President Biden commuted the sentences of 1,500 Federal inmates in the largest single-day clemency in American history. Two of them stole millions in massive frauds against Illinois citizens. Josh Marshall doesn't see much clemency.
• Charles Sykes worries that neither major US political party has a clue how to fix our education systems (plural).
• Legalized sports betting has shifted billions from small punters to large corporations, which is why it was illegal for so long.
• Charles Blow muses about making friends after 50.
• Despite freaking out the usual car-besotted subjects, a plan to extend a protected bike lane in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Ill., will actually add parking spaces.
• A downtown Chicago office building constructed in 1928 will become 252 apartments under a plan that received City Council approval yesterday.

Finally, paleobiologists have narrowed the range of Neandertal-Sapiens interbreeding down to a period that peaked 47,000 years ago. Cue the jokes, starting with: "Who knew yo mama was that old?"

Two stories I mentioned previously have updates today:

• After a Federal judge in Oregon and a state judge in Washington rejected the Albertsons-Kroger merger, Albertsons has filed suit against Kroger for breach of contract in the failed deal.
• A Federal bankruptcy judge in Houston has rejected the Onion's acquisition of Infowars in the estate dissolution of Alex Jones, citing a lack of transparency in the process.

As long as I've got five minutes before my next meeting, I also want to spike these two for reading later on:

• William Langewische goes deep into the Proud Prophet war game in 1983 that demonstrated the frightening speed that a conventional war in Europe could escalate into total nuclear annihilation.
• A bridge closure in Winnepeg, Man., has allowed the city to redirect some funds to other basic services that it struggles to pay for after years of sprawling infrastructure spending.

Time for my morning stand-up meeting.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post ran an interactive feature showing you the walkability of your neighborhood, in average minutes of travel time (by any method) to get things you need. They divided most metro areas into 200-meter hexagons and evaluated three criteria.

My current hexagon comes in at 8.2 minutes. The one I lived in a decade ago, in Lincoln Park, is at 5.2 minutes. The best scores of places I've lived in are Brooklyn (4.8 minutes) and Chicago's Near North Side (4.2 minutes). The specific part of the specific suburb where I grew up is the only bit of the town that shows up as blue, with a score of 13.6 minutes.

I could play with this for hours.

Incidentally, the absolute worst place I ever had the pleasure of living was Mason, Ohio, on a project in late 2010. Mason is so bad, in fact, that the Post interactive map doesn't even attempt to measure it.

The US Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow provides me with a long-awaited opportunity to clean out the closet under my stairs so an orphan kid more boxes will have room to stay there. I also may finish the Iain Banks novel I started two weeks ago, thereby finishing The Culture. (Don't worry, I have over 100 books on my to-be-read bookshelf; I'll find something else to read.)

Meanwhile:

• Even though I, personally, haven't got the time to get exercised about the OAFPOTUS's ridiculous threat to impose crippling (to us) tariffs on our three biggest trading partners, Mexico's president Claudia Sheinbaum used our own government's data to call bullshit on his claim that Mexico hasn't done enough to stop the flow of drugs into the US: "Tragically, it is in our country that lives are lost to the violence resulting from meeting the drug demand in yours."
• The UK will start requiring all visitors (even in transit) to register with their new Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme as of January 8th—similar to how the US ESTA program has worked for the last 16 years.
• Evanston, Ill., my home town, wants to protect bicyclists on one of its busiest streets, which of course has a bunch of stores panicking. (Note to the merchants: bike lanes don't hurt business, and in fact they encourage more foot traffic.)
• John Scalzi mourns the loss of Schwan's Home Delivery and it's bagel dogs.

Finally, as I mentioned nearly five years ago, today's date is a palindrome if you happen to study astronomy. The Julian Day number as of 6am CDT/12:00 UTC today is 2460642. Happy nerdy palindrome day!

This morning's stand-up meeting begins in a moment, at the only time of day that works for my Seattle-Chicago-UK team (8am/10am/4pm respectively). After, I have these queued up:

• EJ Dionne lists some bright spots for progressives in the late election, and points out that we have won the issues that the Right no longer talks about. But actor Joel Gray warns us that Cabaret isn't as far from where we are as we'd like.
• Robert Wright says Pete Hesgeth has an Islam problem that disqualifies him for taking over the Dept of Defense.
• Charles Marohn has moved off Xitter*, "but not for the reasons you might think."
• The Chicago Transit Authority is heading for billion-dollar losses by 2031 if it can't secure new funding sources—or cut costs.

Finally, a new paper found something I've long suspected: small amounts of alcohol actually do help you speak a foreign language better. (Large amounts do not.)

* The X in "Xitter" is pronounced "sh," as in Xi Jinping.

The weather doesn't seem that great for a planned 15-kilometer walk through Logan Square and Avondale to visit a couple of stragglers on the Brews & Choos Project. We've got 4°C under a low overcast, but only light winds and no precipitation forecast until Monday night. My Brews & Choos buddy drew up a route starting from the east end of the 606 Trail and winding up (possibly) at Jimmy's Pizza Cafe.

Also, I've joined BlueSky, because it's like Xitter without the xit. The Times explains how you, too, can join. (Cassie also has an account, of course.)

My 4-minute train to Clybourn leaves in 45 minutes, so I want to save a few things for later reading:

• Josh Marshall says: "There’s plenty of time for theorizing and message testing. But the first thing to do is to oppose. Less arguing, more doing."
• After Pro Publica reported on the deaths of two women due to Georgia's religiously-motivated anti-abortion laws, Georgia disbanded its Maternal Mortality Committee, embarrassing not only the Republican-led government in the state but also every ostrich at the Atlanta Zoo.
• Blue Man Group has announced it will close its Chicago run on January 5th after 30 years at the Briar Street Theater.
• The Chicago Tribune, once more reminding me why I need to just give up my subscription, raised a hue and cry that "Lake Michigan water levels drop to lowest in years" without providing the context that the lake level is just 40 millimeters below its long-term average. Oh the humanity!
• Molly White spends 30 minutes explaining how crypto charlatans spent unbelievable sums to get their favored stooges elected, and largely succeeded.

Finally, NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day this morning has a diptych of the Earth, one side from Saturn and the other side from Mercury. What makes it even more interesting is that both photos were taken 19 July 2013, making it the first time the Earth was photographed simultaneously from two other worlds in the solar system.

I mentioned yesterday that the gingko and maple trees in my neighborhood have held onto their leaves for much longer than usual. Yesterday's snowfall melted overnight, as predicted, but we did get below freezing for about 4 hours yesterday. And yet these two genii of trees just won't let go:

The City of Chicago has had to extend the street sweeping schedule to ensure that they'll have sweepers on task when all those leaves finally do fall off. I will, of course, keep everyone updated on this tense stand-off between Gaia and the Dept of Streets & Sanitation.