The Daily Parker

House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) lost the first procedural vote to prevent a second vote aimed at kicking him out of the Speaker's chair, which will probably result in him getting re-elected in a few days. The Republicans in Congress simply have no one else who can get 218 votes for Speaker. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) would get 214, but no Republican would ever vote for him. And my party's caucus have absolutely no interest in helping the Romper Room side of the aisle get its own house in order.

Fun times, fun times.

In other news:

• Former US Representative Bob Inglis (R-SC) wants his party to grow up. Of course, he's (a) writing in (b) the New York Times, so there's little danger of the children currently running his party to read it.
• The US Supreme Court has the opportunity this term to undo a century of regulation, thrusting us back into the early Industrial Age and making life miserable for everyone in the country who doesn't have billionaire friends.
• Live attendance at performing arts events in Chicago has dropped 59% from pre-pandemic levels, which we in the Apollo Chorus have noted and do not like one bit.
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency will test the national alert system starting at 2:20 pm EDT tomorrow, most likely scaring the bejezus out of a sizeable portion of the Boomer generation.
• Chivas Bros. announced a plan to build a new distillery on Islay, which would be the 12th operating on the small island in the Western Hebrides. Seriously: the island is almost exactly the same size as the city of Chicago (620 km²) but with almost exactly 1,000th the population (3,000), and it will have twelve distilleries by 2026.
• A bar three blocks from my house bet everyone's drinks bill that the Chicago Bears would win their game against Kansas City on Sunday. They lost. In fact, the Bears are now the only major-league sports team in the United States that hasn't won since Elon Musk took over Twitter.

Finally, next week the western hemisphere will see an annular solar eclipse, so named because the moon won't completely cover it, leaving a ring (or annulus) of fire around it. Chicago will get to about 45% coverage, with maximum darkness around noon. Next April, however, we get a total solar eclipse, with the path of totality passing just a couple hundred kilometers south of us.

The storm predicted to drop 100 mm of snow on Chicago yesterday missed us completely. That made my Brews & Choos research a lot more pleasant, though I did tromp all over the place in heavy boots that I apparently didn't need. Of course, had I not worn them, I would now be writing about my cold, wet socks.

So while I'm getting two reviews together for later this week, go ahead and read this:

• Illinois had the 18th warmest and 17th wettest winter on record, including the state's 6th warmest January, with temperatures well over 3°C above normal.
• The warm winter has kept ice formation in the Great Lakes at record-low levels, increasing the chances of a warm summer.
• Madison Savedra digs into how US Rep. Jesús Garcia (D-Ill.) dropped from first to fourth place in Tuesday's election between early polling and the vote.
• An agreement between the Chicago and Illinois Departments of Transportation will let Chicago add pedestrian and cyclist safety features on state roads that the car-loving state engineers would otherwise not allow—the first set in my own ward.
• Xochitl Gonzalez fears that the proposed New York City Rat Czar has already lost the war—even before being hired. But as David A. Graham points out in the same magazine, big cities are ungovernable.
• Molly White posted 24-minute video presentation debunking the central claims of cryptocurrency advocates.
• Aging barrels of Jack Daniel's whiskey are feeding a dark fungal growth throughout Lincoln County, Tenn.

Finally, author John Scalzi celebrates the 25th anniversary of his domain name scalzi.com, exactly one month before I registered my own. But as I will point out again in a couple of posts later this spring, The Daily Parker started (as braverman.org) well before his blog. Still, 25 years is a long time for a domain to have a single owner.

We get one or two every year. The National Weather Service predicts that by Friday morning, Chicago will have heavy snowfall and gale-force winds, just what everyone wants two days before Christmas. By Saturday afternoon we'll have clear skies—and -15°C temperatures with 400 mm of snow on the ground. Whee!

We get to share our misery with a sizeable portion of the country as the bomb cyclone develops over the next three days. At least, once its gone and we have a clear evening Saturday or Sunday, we can see all five of the naked-eye planets just after sunset.

Meanwhile, I'm about to start my team's Sprint 75 Review, the last one of 2022, which contains a few goodies we put off because we spent most of our time on client requests. We have a strange habit of doing what paying customers know they want before we add the things they don't know they want.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world:

• David Zipper points out that Clear has built a business around privatizing a US Government service, which makes things worse for everyone.
• Sorry, time and water are the only things that cure a hangover.
• New York Magazine examines the earth-shaking scandal of "Nepo Babies."
• Just a few kilometers from here, a local residents organization managed to save all 29 mature trees that the Department of Water Management "needed" to cut down to replace a 100-year-old sewer.

Finally, director James Cameron ended all debate about whether Jack and Rose could both have survived in Titanic: "Cameron maintains that Jack simply had to die, telling The Sun that 'if I had to make the raft smaller, it would have been smaller.'" Because the story, you see, required it.

It's 14°C right now, going down to -3°C tonight. Then it's back up to 8°C on Friday. Because why wouldn't the beginning of winter feel like April?

While you ponder that, read this:

• Tom Nichols warns that the authoritarian right may have lost the plot recently, but not for long.
• Patty Davis thinks that ignoring the XPOTUS will make him go away. That's cute.
• The Republicans have asked loser Blake Masters to explain why they lost.
• United Airlines and American Airlines have moved away from small regional jets to 737s and A320s, freeing up landing slots at O'Hare.
• Want to help the environment? Wash your clothes in cold water, and only when they're dirty.
• Jill Lepore wants me to read Mick Herron's spy novels. Good thing he was already on my list.
• A French historian worked with a cryptography team to crack the diplomatic code Charles V used in the 16th century.

Finally, Whisky Advocate has a good explainer taking the water of life from barrels in Scotland to the glass in your American kitchen.

The snow has finally stopped for, we think, a couple of days, and the city has cleared most of the streets already. (Thank you, Mike Bilandic.) What else happened today?

• The James Webb Space Telescope reached Lagrange-2 this afternoon, and will now settle into a "halo orbit" that will hold it about 1.46 million km from Earth. (It's still traveling at 200 m/s, which gets you from Madison to Peterson in about a minute.)
• Lord Agnew (Con.), the minister responsible for policing Covid fraud in the UK, resigned from government this morning, citing the government's inability to actually police Covid fraud. (Watch his resignation speech and observe the steam coming out of his ears.)
• Here in Chicago, our own alleged Covid fraudsters got a visit from the FBI today.
• Michael Tomasky makes a case for impeaching Justice Clarence Thomas over his refusal to recuse himself in several cases despite many apparent conflicts of interest.
• Fiona Hill follows her interview with Julia Ioffe last week with an op-ed in the Times explaining how Russian president Vladimir Putin has the US "right where he wants it."
• New evidence suggests that moderate drinking, while not necessarily dangerous, is nonetheless not actually beneficial.
• The stock market continued what now looks like a correction as both the S&P 500 and DJIA gave up over 10% of their peak gains in the last two weeks on today's 4% drop.

Finally, Weber Grills apologized today for its really unfortunate timing last week, when it emailed thousands of customers a recipe for BBQ meat loaf—on the day singer Meat Loaf died.

I just started Sprint 52 in my day job, after working right up to the last possible minute yesterday to (unsuccessfully) finish one more story before ending Sprint 51. Then I went to a 3-hour movie that you absolutely must see.

Consequently a few things have backed up over at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters.

Before I get into that, take a look at this:

That 17.1°C reading at IDTWHQ comes in a shade lower than the official reading at O'Hare of 17.8°, which ties the record high maximum set in 1971. The forecast says it'll hang out here for a few hours before gale-force winds drive the temperature down to more seasonal levels overnight. I've even opened a few windows.

So what else is new?

• Carving out exceptions to filibusters in the US Senate? Not new.
• The intractability of the US Senate in general? Not new.
• The size of the US House of Representatives, which we could change at any time? Not new.
• Boris Johnson not believing rules apply to him? Not new.
• Disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's ethics problems? Not new.
• The "metaverse" idea? Not new (says the guy who first imagined it).
• Candidates to run Chicago's tourism board? Not just not new; not any.

So what really is new?

• The Log4j zero-day exploit is pretty new, and pretty serious.
• The rash of tornados, including an EF5 monster that spun for 300 kilometers in Kentucky in December is really new, and even more serious.
• Pittsburgh switching over to dark-sky streetlights over the next 5 years is new, and pretty cool.
• Most of the buildings around Orleans and Kinzie in the River North area of Chicago are new, but not pretty or cool.
• Getting whisky delivered to your house is new-ish in most places and will be new in others pretty soon.

But Sprint 52 at my office, that's incredibly new, and I must go back to it.

I was pretty busy today, with most of my brain trying to figure out how to re-architect something that I didn't realize needed it until recently. So a few things piled up in my inbox:

• David Corn is reporting that US Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has basically halted his party's own progress to, well, progress, threatened to leave the Democratic Party if he didn't get his way.
• Part of the President's agenda includes starting to build a 320 km/h rail line from New York to Boston that includes a tunnel under the Long Island Sound. That would bring the US up to the level of technology enjoyed in Europe 20 years ago.
• Europe may bring back the Trans-Europe Express trains that could almost entirely replace short-haul flights within the continent.
• Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) tried to talk sense into her party about the January insurrection, but as predicted, it had no effect whatsoever.
• What brought about the current labor shortage? Ask a psychologist.
• The US intelligence services have started to get serious about Havana Syndrome.
• Last winter proved we can vanquish influenza, but only if we want to.
• Thieves scammed Amazon out of $1.5 million by stealing rental textbooks.
• Rolls-Royce successfully tested an aircraft engine that runs entirely on biofuel.

And finally, Whisky Advocate has four recipes that balance whisky and Luxardo Maraschino cherries. I plan to try them all, but not in one sitting.

Actually, I'm ecstatic that a cold front blew in off the lake yesterday afternoon, dropping the temperature from 30°C to 20°C in about two hours. We went from teh warmest September 27th in 34 years to...autumn. Finally, some decent sleepin' weather!

Meanwhile:

• The former head of the Chicago chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, a vocal anti-vaxxer, has wound up in the ICU with Covid. (This is the current union leader, who has been suspended without pay for insubordination.)
• Murders in the entire US went up 30% in 2020, perhaps because people did not take well to all the crazy in the world.
• Paul Krugman has had it with the "Rip Van Winkle caucus:" "some Democrats seem to have formed their perceptions about both economics and politics during the Clinton years and haven’t updated their views since."
• Why does the Supreme Court have such bad press lately? Maybe because they have such bad communication skills.
• The Great Chicago Fire, 150 years ago next Friday, destroyed 17,450 buildings but spared these six.
• Sociologist Ellen Lamont points out that an equal (hetero) marriage requires equal dating first.
• It turns out that big, ugly McMansions don't sell in any economy.
• The CTA Red Line modernization project will employ a 90-meter crane when workers start building the mainline supports in a couple months.

And though the article could use an editor, Whisky Advocate has a short bit on Aaron Sorkin's love of whisky in his movies.

Whisky Advocate finally lays out something I've wondered about: which single malts go into which blends?

“Cardhu’s at the heart of Johnnie Walker,” says Emma Walker, one of 12 master blenders that work on Johnnie Walker. “Cardhu was always a blender’s favorite,” she adds. “It was essential to Johnnie Walker. They always created high-quality spirit and it became a partnership even before Cardhu joined the Johnnie Walker family.”

Owned by Diageo, Cardhu Distillery is just one of the global corporation’s 29 whisky-producing distilleries in Scotland alone. This gives the Johnnie Walker blending team a vast library of stocks to work with.

For fans of single malt scotch, being able to identify the single malts that make up a blend is a fun endeavor that is sure to bring new appreciation for the craft of blending.

That's true, and in some cases it works inductively. Like, where does 90% of Caol Ila's output wind up?

If anyone forgot to get me a birthday present last week, Whisky Advocate has a suggestion for you:

Many of us consider an 18 year old scotch a treat, and regard a well-aged 25 or 30 year old expression as an indulgent luxury. These are mere youngsters compared to the new Gordon & MacPhail Generations 80 year old distilled at Glenlivet Distillery. Matured for eight decades, this whisky spans the term of office of 15 U.S. presidents. It was approaching 50 years old when President George H.W. Bush took the oath of office, making him the last sitting president to be older than the whisky, and from Biden back to Clinton, none of the last five presidents were even born when this cask was filled. It’s a Speyside single malt disgorged from a sherry butt filled on February 3, 1940, which extends Gordon & MacPhail’s unbroken run of releasing the world’s oldest whisky, a record the company has held since the launch of the Generations series in 2010.

Gordon & MacPhail will release 250 crystal decanters globally, although the price remains a closely guarded secret ahead of the auction of decanter no. 1 as part of a Generations package going under the hammer at Sotheby’s, Hong Kong on October 7. Proceeds from this single lot will benefit Scottish rewilding charity Trees for Life, whose work involves restoring areas of Caledonian forest habitat to the Scottish Highlands. The winning bidder will receive decanter no. 1 with a set of matching glasses, the framed cask end of the Generations 80 year old Cask no. 340, a signed lithograph of Sir David Adjaye’s original design sketches for Generations, and a whisky tasting with Sir David to celebrate the winner’s new ownership of the whisky. That event will be hosted in London by Stephen Rankin, who is Gordon & MacPhail’s director of prestige and the great-grandson of John Urquhart, who took ownership of the business in 1915.

An example of the previous release, a 75-year-old whisky bottled in 2015, sold at auction last September for a mere £16,000.