Other than getting a little rained on this morning, I've had a pretty good day. But that didn't leave a lot of time to catch up on any of these before I started a deployment just now:
- Heather Cox Richardson examines US history through the lens of a never-ending conflict between "two Americas, one based in religious zeal, mythology, and inequality; and one grounded in rule of the people and the pursuit of equality."
- Josh Marshall ponders the difficulty of covering the XPOTUS's increasingly ghastly behavior in the "both-sides" journalism world we inhabit.
- James Fallows zooms out to look at the framing decisions that journalists and their publishers make that inhibit our understanding of the world. Like, for example, looking at the soon-to-be 4th time Republicans in Congress have shut down the Federal government and blaming all of Washington.
- Fallows also called attention to Amna Nawaz's recent interview with authoritarian Turkish president Recep Erdogan in which she kept her cool and her focus and he...didn't.
- Speaking of the impending Republican torching of the US Government (again), Krugman looks at the two clown shows in the party, but wonders why "everyone says that with the rise of MAGA, the G.O.P. has been taken over by populists. So why is the Republican Party’s economic ideology so elitist and antipopulist?"
- The Supreme Court has once again told the Alabama legislature that it can't draw legislative maps that disenfranchise most of its black citizens. Which, given the state's history, just seems so unlike them.
- The Federal Trade Commission and 17 US States have sued Amazon for a host of antitrust violations. “A single company, Amazon, has seized control over much of the online retail economy,” said the lawsuit.
- Monica Hesse dredges all the sympathy and understanding she can muster for XPOTUS attorney Cassidy Hutchinson's memoir. NB: Hutchinson is 27, which means I am way overdue for starting my own memoir.
- Chicago Sun-Times columnist David Roeder complains that the CTA's planned Red Line extension to 130th Street doesn't take advantage of the existing commuter rail lines that already serve the far south side, but forgets (even as he acknowledges) that Metra and the CTA have entirely different missions and serve different communities. Of course we need new regional transport policies; but that doesn't mean the 130th St extension is bad.
- Software producer Signal, who make the Signal private messaging app, have said they will leave the UK if the Government passes a "safety" bill that gives GCHQ a back door into the app.
- Molly White shakes her head as the mainstream press comes to terms with something she's been saying for years now: NFTs have always been worthless. Oh, and crypto scored two $200-million thefts this week alone, which could be a new record, though this year has already seen $7.1 trillion of crypto thefts, hacks, scams, and other disasters.
- After almost 20 years and a the removal of much of an abandoned hospital in my neighboorhood, the city will finally build the park it promised in 2017.
Finally, I rarely read classical music reviews as scathing as Lawrence Johnson's evisceration of the Lyric Opera's Flying Dutchman opening night last Friday. Yikes.
Welcome to stop #87 on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: Nick & Ivy Brewing, 1026 S. State St., Lockport
Train line: Heritage Corridor, Lockport
Time from Chicago: 47 minutes
Distance from station: 400 m
Nik & Ivy is directly across the stroad from Lock & Mule, which could not have been more convenient on Saturday. In fact, I took the above photo from just outside Lock & Mule while I contemplated how I was going to frogger over there after brunch.
I liked the place, and traffic on Rte 176 was light enough (and the weather lovely enough) to sit outside.
On the left: the Locktoberfest Märzen (5.9%) a very malty and light but solid and unusually strong example of the style. Second from left: Dellwood West Coast IPA (6%), a bit lighter than I expected, but very drinkable with nice fruit notes and Citra hops. Second from right: Snoasis Vanilla Porter (5.7%), which had a huge vanilla nose but less vanilla flavor than I had worried about, instead giving me big, rich toffee notes with a vanilla finish. Yum. Finally, on the right: Twist Cone Cacao Stout (13%), a very strong beer that essentially turned the two pint equivalents of the day into three. But wow, it had huge chocolate, vanilla, and coffee flavors, with a creamy finish, and I could not taste the alcohol. I would love this for dessert after a steak some day this fall.
I very much appreciate Metra providing six extra trains on Saturdays this fall to visit a part of the area I rarely explore. Perhaps in October I'll make a longer day of it, with repeat visits to some of the places I've liked along the route.
Beer garden? Sidewalk seating
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? No, BYO
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes
Welcome to stop #86 on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: Lock & Mule by Tangled Roots, 1025 S. State St., Lockport
Train line: Heritage Corridor, Lockport
Time from Chicago: 47 minutes
Distance from station: 400 m
Metra has special brewery trains on Saturdays this fall, making a quick trip to Lockport a lot easier than it would be during the week. (Just go back to my review of Imperial Oak in Willow Springs for a longer explanation of that pain.) So yesterday, as promised, I visited the two breweries right by the Lockport Metra station. I started at Lock & Mule because they have brunch.
Nothing like a chicken waffle to start a Brews & Choos review. NB: I did not finish it. There's a waffle under the chicken, bacon, and egg there, which was just too much food.
I had a flight after the food. First, the 108 Double Stitch Lager (4.5%), a clean, crisp, malty summer beer with a nice finish. Next, the Honest Haze IPA (7%) gave me some banana and mango notes with a nice, not-too-hoppy balance; delicious. The Devil's Paint Box IPA (6.66%) started nicely bitter with, again, a great balance of malt flavors and a little citrus; nice. Finally, the Dobroy Nochi Stout (10%) started with a lovely nose, continued with coffee and chocolate notes, and ended with a silky, long finish; very nice.
Overall, it was worth the trip. And next time I hope to explore the historic city of Lockport a little more.
Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? Yes
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes
Google Chrome is patiently letting me know that there's a "New Chrome available," so in order to avoid losing all my open tabs, I will list them here:
Finally, XKCD traces the evolution of most Americans' thoughts about urban planning and transport policy, once they start having any. I feel seen!
My Garmin Venu 3 continues to impress me. First, its navigation accuracy averages within less than 2 meters, meaning you can see on my activity tracks when I dip into an alley to drop off Cassie's latest offering.
Second, its battery life rocks. I'm charging it right now after it last got to 100% around noon last Friday. When I connected its charger 45 minutes ago it had dwindled to 7%. That equates to just over 15 percentage points per day, or a full discharge in 6½ days. My old Venu 2 could barely manage 48 hours towards the end. This is with full GPS/Glonass/Galileo tracking on walks and pulse O2 measurement overnight. I'll do a long (20 km) walk soon to see how much it burns when tracking activities.
Perhaps that'll be this weekend. Saturday, weather permitting, I plan to take the special Heritage Corridor Brewery Train (not making this up) to visit the two breweries in Lockport. Sunday, weather permitting, I plan to do nothing of value.
Another Tuesday, another collection of head-shaking news stories one might expect in the waning days of an empire:
Closer to home, the old candy-making laboratory on the 13th floor of the historic Marshal Field building has come back to life, 24 years after the the last Frango mint was produced there. (Note to readers who speak Portuguese: no one checked a Portuguese dictionary before naming the candy.)
We're having quite a string of really nice days. Yesterday's rain moved on in the early afternoon allowing Cassie and me to get a good half-hour walk in while the adobo bubbled in the slow cooker. (It was great! Needed a little more vinegar and less water in the pot though.)
We headed home from Spiteful just before sunset:
And then someone passed out on the couch next to me:
I wish I could sleep anywhere like that.
Three hours later, I've got Weather Now's Netatmo code integrated with the Function App that controls all of the automated background functions of the application. I now have to move the adobo to phases two and three (browning, starting the slow cook), then take Cassie out.
I might actually deploy this today. Except that I discovered that a decision I made about how the site would store weather at the start of the re-write in 2020 means the simplest thing that works requires me to change Netatmo's data into a METAR. Not difficult, but also not the most elegant solution.
Someday I might even import the entire gazetteer into Weather Now 5, too...
I have three goals today, to take advantage of the gray rainy weather. First, another stab at adobo, this time with a little less vinegar, fewer peppercorns, and a skosh* more sugar. It's marinating right now, so in about three hours, I'll brown the pork belly and then slow-cook it in my Instapot for another three hours or so.
Goal #2: Finish coding and deploy the update to Weather Now to use data from my Netatmo devices. Finally, I'll have actual IDTWHQ weather!
Goal #3: See if it's possible to build an Azure pipeline to deploy a 16-year-old .NET 4.8 application to an App Service. This is the first of several steps to get a very old client application to stay alive for another five or so years after Microsoft kills Cloud Services (classic) next August. Because the UI uses ASP.NET Web Forms, I can't upgrade it to .NET 7, which means I may have to write custom code to do things that .NET 7 provides out of the box. There is a possibility that I may even have to re-write the UI in Blazor, which no one—not me, not the client, not the users—wants at all.
All righty then, time to get coding. And in 6½ hours, adobo!
* TIL how the word is actually spelled, and why.
IDTWHQ almost made it to 22°C this afternoon, with a low dewpoint, sunny skies, and a lake breeze. In other words, perfect. Of course, the sun sets just after 7pm tonight, fully an hour earlier than it did five weeks ago...but that's autumn for you.
Not everything in the world went perfectly today, of course:
- House Speaker and noted invertebrate Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) continues to survive as third in line to the Presidency even though his unhinged back bench keeps forcing him to do stupid things, like start an impeachment inquiry on literally zero evidence.
- Alex Shephard actually sees this as a good thing for Democrats, as the "clown show" comes just as the House needs to pass a spending bill or the government will, once again, shut down.
- Meanwhile, satirist Andy Borowitz jokes that House Republicans "demand Biden tell them why they are impeaching him."
- Back in Chicago, it turns out only 9.6% of the city's waste got recycled in 2022, compared with 20% in New York and 80% in San Francisco.
- On Monday, Illinois becomes the first state in the union to eliminate cash bail.
Finally, our moderate drought continues in Illinois, but so far most agriculture seems unaffected. A dry autumn usually means a colorful one, so maybe we'll stay just under normal rainfall long enough to repeat last autumn's amazing display?