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Now that the Calendar feature works, I spent an hour today writing a utility to count all the public blog posts by month, and to give me a cumulative count. It turns out, most of my posts exhorting big milestones, like the 5,000th or, more recently, the 9,000th, were off by a few weeks.

Exactly one year ago this hour, the worst administration in American history took office. One hopes they will always be the worst administration in history (though I can see some ways that becomes true for some pretty horrible reasons).

The three best takes I've seen so far on the OAFPOTUS hoping anything is more interesting to the public than his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein start with Josh Marshall: I don’t think there’s any actual reason we’re invading Venezuela or trying to decapitate its government or whatever we’re doing. I think there are two or three different factions in the government each pushing a very hostile policy toward Venezuela for differing reasons. Meanwhile, Trump thinks it’s cool and has a personal beef with...

Now that I've had a good night's sleep and the sun is out for the first time all year, I have the energy to start reading the news again. On January 2nd, most of the stories are about things that have changed since Wednesday: Chicago had 416 murders in 2025, the lowest number recorded since 1965 when the city had 620,000 (23%) more people. In 2025, the hottest temperature recorded at Inner Drive Technology WHQ was 34.3°C (93.7°F) on June 23rd; the coldest was -20°C (-4°F) January 21st. Officially at...

I remember 2025 like it was yesterday...and in that long-forgotten year: I posted 459 times on The Daily Parker, down 21 from 2024 and 41 from 2023. But the blog had it's 10,000th post sometime in August, which is something. I flew less in 2025 than in the previous three years, with only 7 flight segments totaling 8,371 flight miles. I didn't leave the US in 2025, about which I am sad. And I only visited five states: Tennessee,  Washington, Wisconsin, Texas, and California. Strangely, I didn't even make...

Cassie and I went out right at sunrise (7:14—two more weeks before the latest one of the winter on January 3rd) just as the temperature bottomed out at -10.5°C (13.1°F) after yesterday's cold front. Tomorrow will be above freezing, Sunday will be a bit below, and then Monday through the end of the year looks like it'll be above. And the forecast for Christmas Day is 11°C (52°F). Meanwhile, as I sip my second cup of tea, these stories made me want to go back to bed: As much as we want to ignore the...

Ah, December, when the easy cadence of weekly rehearsals becomes a frenzy of performances and, yes, more rehearsals. This is Messiah week, so I've already spent 8 hours of it in rehearsals or helping to set up for them. Tonight I've got the first of 4 Messiah performances over the next two weeks, plus yet another rehearsal, a church service, and a Christmas Eve service. Then, after Christmas, a bunch of us will be singing at the 50th anniversary party for a couple who have sung with us for longer than...

Between meetings and getting into the zone while fixing a bug, I worked straight through lunch and only got Cassie out around 4. So before my next meeting at 8pm, I've got a few minutes to catch up on all...this: Josh Marshall reflects on the 8 Democratic Senators (including one of mine, who is also the minority whip) making a deal with the Republicans, and says the next Congress must eliminate the paper filibuster and reform the Supreme Court. David Graham takes a more nuanced view. Krugman wants...

With the unusually late colors we have this autumn against the much earlier sunsets that started yesterday (before 4:30 pm from November 15th to December 31st, ugh!), things have remained tolerable. It will snow eventually; we'll have a freeze eventually; but for now, I'll just enjoy it. I didn't enjoy these things, though: Humans formed governments in the first place to feed people; the OAFPOTUS and his village of idiots have failed at that basic task. Architects who have looked at the paltry plans and...

Yesterday, I posted about author Hilary Layne's argument that the whole-language method supplanting phonics as the favored method of teaching reading to young children is the principal reason that late Millennials and Gen Z Americans have such difficulty understanding what they read. In the video that I embedded, she maintains that whole-language instruction led directly to teaching critical literacy rather than critical thinking, which in turn led to a generation and a half of American college...

The two biggest news stories of the past 24 hours are the government shutting down because Congress couldn't pass a spending bill by the end of fiscal year last night, and the pathetic attempted-fascist assembly of the United States' general and flag officers in Virginia yesterday. We'll take the dumber one first: Jennifer Rubin shakes her head in sadness, but not surprise. Matthew Yglesias has 17 thoughts about the shutdown, and Brian Beutler has 20, but how many thoughts does Rabbi Eliezer have? And...

I haven't regularly used an Apple product in over 30 years when my college newspaper used Mac Classics for compositing. Even by then, I didn't like Apple's closed architecture, having built at least one Windows box from scratch. If you agree with Freddie DeBoer, turns out my instincts were right: There exists, in the digital ether and in the physical world, a peculiar kind of human organization that has no name, no leader, and no stated charter, yet which operates with the ideological precision of the...

Just now on Facebook the first 15 things on my feed were: 4 posts from friends; 3 posts from groups I follow; and 8 posts from advertisers and accounts I don't follow. That, my friends, is enshittification. I remember when, not long ago, 8 posts would be from friends for every 2 that weren't. It's beginning to make Facebook unusable for me. Other things on the Internet have also enshittified to near uselessness, as these three stories attest. First, Vandenberg Coalition executive director Carrie...

Almost exactly 3 months ago, I needed to get something out of a storage locker, and reminded myself why I hated getting something out of the storage locker: I found the thing I wanted. And as long as I was there, I said to myself, why not grab a couple of these boxes to see if I need to keep them? And so, from (I think) June 9th until just this past Saturday, I brought home over 60 boxes of stuff going all the way back to [redacted], threw out or shredded about 15 boxes worth, reorganized everything...

The OAFPOTUS met with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, yesterday. I can't overstate that Putin won on so many levels, from getting the OAFPOTUS to agree to meeting on US soil in the first place to getting the OAFPOTUS to stomp on a rake on international television right at the end of it. Let's start with the location. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin that most ICC signatories have said they will honor. We're not signatories, in part because...

Mathematician and satirist Tom Lehrer has died at the age of 97: Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born in Manhattan on April 9, 1928, one of two sons of James Lehrer, a successful tie manufacturer, and Alma (Waller) Lehrer. Young Tom was precocious, but his precocity had its limits. He took piano lessons from an early age, but balked at learning classical music and insisted on switching to a teacher who emphasized the Broadway show tunes he loved. In 1953, encouraged by friends, he produced an album. To his...

Historian Timothy Ryback, writing in The Atlantic, takes us through a short history of a not-so-long-ago German Chancellor's war with his country's apolitical civil service: A memorandum was circulated to all state civil servants demanding blind loyalty to the Hitler government. Anyone who did not feel they could support Hitler and his policies, [future war criminal Hermann] Göring added, should do the “honorable” thing and resign. The Berliner Morgenpost observed that Hitler was clearly working to...

On this day 100 years ago, John Scopes went on trial for the crime of teaching a “theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals:” On July 10, the Monkey Trial got underway, and within a few days hordes of spectators and reporters had descended on Dayton as preachers set up revival tents along the city’s main street to keep the faithful stirred up. Inside the Rhea County Courthouse, the defense...

Jamelle Bouie makes the point that, even though the OAFPOTUS is a narcissistic, infantile, horrible human being, his policies look exactly like those of most other Republican presidents: As nearly every commentator under the sun has observed for the past decade, Trump is unique — and to his critics, transgressive — in ways that defy traditional categorization. And yet, the most salient detail about Trump as an actual officeholder is that he is a Republican politician committed to the success of the...

The pilot and journalist, who wrote clear and readable articles and books about complex topics, has died at age 70: For 10 years running, from 1999 to 2008, his pieces were finalists for the National Magazine Award, and he won it twice: in 2007 for “Rules of Engagement,” about the killing of 24 unarmed civilians by U.S. Marines in 2005 in Haditha, Iraq; and in 2002 for “The Crash of EgyptAir 990,” about a flight that went down in the Atlantic Ocean in 1999 with the loss of all 217 people aboard. Mr....

Historian Timothy W Ryback outlines how the Chancellor of Germany used manufactured crises to take over the Bavarian State in 1933. If you hear an echo from the past coming from California this week, that may not be an accident: Adolf Hitler was a master of manufacturing public-security crises to advance his authoritarian agenda. The March 5 Reichstag elections delivered Hitler 44 percent of the electorate and with that a claim on political power at every level of government. The next day, 200,000...

The music legend has died at 82. Barenaked Ladies popped into my mind when I read the story. Meanwhile, I've got a meeting in 10 minutes, so let me also add just small note how the OAFPOTUS has affected Chicago. A friend of mine works for Northwestern University, and she is pissed off: In a message to the Northwestern community, the school’s leadership said the new measures would include a faculty and staff hiring freeze, reductions in academic budgets, and a “0% merit pool with no bonuses in lieu of...

First, there is no update on Cassie. She had a quick consult today, but they didn't schedule the actual diagnostics that she needs, so we'll go back first thing Tuesday. She does have a small mast cell tumor on her head, but the location makes her oncologist optimistic for treatment. I'll post again next week after the results come back from her spleen and lymph node aspirations. Meanwhile, in the real world, things lurch forward and backward as the OAFPOTUS's political trajectory slides by millimeters...

We've had a run of dreary, unseasonably cold weather that more closely resembles the end of March than the middle of May. I've been looking at this gloom all day: We may have some sun tomorrow afternoon through the weekend, but the forecast calls for continuous north winds and highs around 16°C—the normal high for April 23rd, not May 23rd. Summer officially starts in 10 days. It sure doesn't feel like it. Speaking of the gloomy and the retrograde: Former US judge and George HW Bush appointee J. Michael...

Sure, Brian De Palma had a great insight into what he called "the Chicago way," but not being from Chicago, he didn't grasp our true city motto: "Where's Mine?" The owners of 212 E. 141st Place in Dalton, a small house less than 2 kilometers from the Chicago city limits, are living up to the Chicago ideal. It turns out, the house just happens to be where Robert Prevost grew up. Prevost, who recently took the name Episcopus Romanus, Vicarius Iesu Christi, Successor principis apostolorum, Summus Pontifex...

As Crash Davis said to Annie Savoy all those years ago: A player on a streak has to respect the streak. Well, I'm on a coding streak. This week, I've been coding up a storm for my day job, leaving little time to read all of today's stories: Despite (or perhaps because of) his obvious mental illness and dementia, the OAFPOTUS is really a predictable negotiator who our adversaries have figured out how to manipulate easily. Voters may not like the OAFPOTUS, but they don't like us either. Still, the...

Cincinnati mayor Aftab Pureval (I) will face Republican Cory Bowman in the November election after the two won 83% and 13%, respectively, of yesterday's primary vote. Bowman is the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance, whose endorsement of Bowman appears to have led to Pureval's enormous vote total. When you're the least-popular vice president in history, no one wants your endorsement, dude. Also, today is the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender to the Allies in Reims, France. What that has...

Happy May Day! In both the calendar and crashing-airplane senses! We start with two reports about how the Clown Prince of X has taken control over so much government data that the concepts of "privacy" and "compartmentalization" seem quaint. First, from the Times: Elon Musk may be stepping back from running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but his legacy there is already secured. DOGE is assembling a sprawling domestic surveillance system for the Trump administration — the likes of...

Michael Tomasky takes the educated-elite-leftist view that, somehow, the OAFPOTUS actually bamboozled 77 million voters—twice: How many times did Trump say he’d end that war on the first day of his presidency? It had to have been hundreds. I saw a lot of those clips on cable news over the weekend, as you may have. He did not mean it figuratively. You know, in the way people will say, “I’ll change that from day one,” and you know they don’t literally mean day one, but they do mean fast. But that isn’t...

If you're old enough, you may remember the show Moonlighting, which ran from March 1985 until May 1989 on ABC. And if you remember Moonlighting, you may remember this bit from the first season finale that aired 40 years ago today: Later today we'll return to our ongoing existential horror. But let's pause and remember what it was like to watch that scene unfold on broadcast television with no way to play it back until it finished recording on tape.

After our gorgeous weather Sunday and Monday, yesterday's cool-down disappointed me a bit. But we have clear-ish skies and lots of sun, which apparently will persist until Friday night. I'm also pleased to report that we will probably have a good view of tomorrow night's eclipse, which should be spectacular. I'll even plan to get up at 1:30 to see totality. Elsewhere in the world, the OAFPOTUS continues to explore the outer limits of stupidity (or is it frontotemporal dementia?): No one has any idea...

I got some bad news this morning: my dentist, John C McArthur, announced his retirement as of March 17th. I started going to Dr McArthur in 1974. In fact, I was one of his first patients after he took over the practice from his father—who was, in turn, the dentist my mother, uncle, and grandparents started going to in 1958. So my family has a long, long history going to his Hubbard Woods office. I mean, 13 presidents long. I'm going to miss going up there. Moreover, I have never had a cavity. So I would...

A longtime Daily Parker reader asked this about yesterday's post: "The Daily Parker costs $4.87 per day" -- I'm really hoping that's a misprint, because that's almost $150 a month, which is ten times what I pay for my web hosting package which comes with unlimited domains, a full email service (IMAP+SMTP over TLS), click-to-install WordPress and MySQL database creation, SSH access to the back-end Linux machine, and excellent customer support. Also -- and I *really* hate to say this to a fellow IT...

The Weather Now gazetteer import has gotten to the Ps (Pakistan) with 11,445,567 places imported and 10,890,186 indexed. (The indexer runs every three hours.) I'll have a bunch of statistics about the database when the import finishes, probably later tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. I'm especially pleased with the import software I wrote, and with Azure Cosmos DB. They're churning through batches of about 30 files at a time and importing places at around 10,000 per minute. Meanwhile, in the...

Punzun Ltd. (an Illinois corporation doing business as Inner Drive Technology) turns 25 today! I set up the corporation before I moved back to Illinois from New York, so that I could take either a contract or full-time job when I got here. I can scarcely believe I've been back nearly 25 years. And 25 years ago—this was months before Bush v Gore, remember—I would not have believed that these would be the news stories I'd care about in 2025: The unelected winger specifically tasked with destroying our...

Chicago got a few millimeters of ice last night, which made my 15-minute walk from my house to Cassie's day camp into a 24-minute walk. The poor girl could not understand my difficulty, but she also can't count all four of her paws, so we work with what we have. Fortunately the temperature has gotten above freezing and promises to stay there at least until late tonight. Elsewhere in the world: Josh Marshall proposes a taxonomy of the Administration's forces of destruction. Part of that destruction...

This will be a bit ranty, but I'm super pissed off at far-left ideologues in the US right now. Since right after the October 7th attack, hordes of children at elite American colleges have protested Israel's response. These kids came out as anti-Israel mere days after Hamas killed or kidnapped 1,200 civilians in a surprise attack on lightly-defended farms near the border. That is, they didn't wait for Israel actually to invade Gaza before calling for Israel to accept the murder of 1,000 of its citizens...

Wednesday night saw the worst air-transport crash in the US in 19 years. The National Transportation Safety Board won't have a preliminary report until at least March 1st, but that didn't stop the OAFPOTUS from blaming everyone he doesn't like for it: In the aftermath of the deadly collision between a jetliner and a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan National Airport, Trump held an extraordinary news conference during which he speculated on the cause of the accident. At length, he attacked former...

First: the good. My friend Kat Kruse has a new book of her short stories coming out. She let me read a couple of them, and I couldn't wait to pre-order the entire collection. I should get it on February 17th. Still on the good things—or at least the things that don't seem so bad, considering: The Guardian has a reflection on Seoul removing the Cheonggyecheon Expressway in 2005 to expose the historic stream that the highway previously covered. Margaret Renkl praises the coyotes that live with us in our...

I don't necessarily agree with everything Nate Silver wrote in his analysis from last week, but he makes a some excellent points: Biden hadn’t delivered the complete repudiation of Trump that polls — showing a massive 8.4-point popular vote lead — had been projecting. That’s why the election took four long days to call. Biden’s popular vote (4.5 points) and Electoral College (306-222) margins had been perfectly solid, and the migration of Georgia and Arizona into the blue column had enhanced its visual...

Ah, ha ha. Ha. Today is the first full day of the Once Again Felonious POTUS, who wound everyone up yesterday with a bunch of statements of intent (i.e., executive orders) guaranteed to get people paying attention to him again. Yawn. But that isn't everything that happened in the last 24 hours: Jonathan Last argues that maybe the OAFPOTUS just doesn't like Americans. Jennifer Rubin reminds everyone to remain vigilant that the OAFPOTUS's mangling of the English language has consequences. Jeff Maurer is...

We woke up this morning to frigid -17°C air (with sun though!), with an official overnight low of -19°C at O'Hare. We get cold like this almost every year; in fact, it got down to -23°C just 371 days ago. No, the record low temperature for this day was also the coldest temperature ever recorded in Chicago, on Sunday 20 January 1985: -32°C. It was so cold that morning that my high school cancelled classes the next day—the only time they did so in my four years there. Chicago historian John R Schmidt also...

Today marks the middle of winter, when fewer days remain in the (meteorological) season than have passed. Good thing, too: yesterday we had temperatures that looked happy on a graph but felt miserable in real life, and the forecast for Sunday night into Monday will be even worse—as in, a low of -20°C going "up" to -14°C. Fun!. (Yesterday's graph:) Elsewhere in the world: Israel and Hamas have reached a cease-fire agreement, with the US and Qatar signing off. OAFPOTUS Defense Secretary nominee, former...

Cassie and I survived our 20-minute, -8°C walk a few minutes ago. For some reason I feel like I need a nap. Meanwhile: James Fallows remembers his old boss Jimmy Carter, and puts his presidency in perspective for the younger generations. Paul Krugman reminds the Republican Party that California contributes more to the country's GDP than any other state, so maybe cut the crap threatening to withhold disaster relief? ProPublica goes "inside the movement to redirect billions of taxpayer dollars to private...

We've gotten about 4 cm of snow so far today, with more coming down until this evening. Cassie loves it; I have mixed feelings. At least the temperature has gone up a bit, getting up to -0.6°C for the first time since around this time on Monday. Elsewhere: Federal Judge Aileen Cannon (R-SDFL) got overruled again, this time after her corrupt effort to block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on January 6th. George Will bemoans Congress ceding so much of its authority to the office of...

Once again, in the aftermath of the OAFPOTUS's demented press conference yesterday, I need to remind everyone to ignore what he says and watch what he does. He's not as harmless as the guy at the end of the bar who everyone avoids talking to, but he's just as idiotic. Meanwhile, in the real world: Block Club Chicago interviewed Mayor Brandon Johnson in the wake of the City Council barely passing his 2025 budget by a vote of 27-23. Perry Bacon Jr. blames President Biden's overconfidence for the failures...

In case you weren't frustrated enough: Paul Krugman outlines all the ways Republicans are trying to enrich themselves at your expense by privatizing everything. Jeff Atwood worries that we may lose sight of the American Dream. Author Paul Theroux warns that expatriation has its own set of challenges. Charles Marohn believes that flooding the market with cheap homes in every neighborhood can end homelessness and reduce housing costs for everyone else. And finally, a new report says that Chicago has the...

Item the first: Weather Now got an update today. Under the hood, it got its annual .NET version refresh (to .NET 9), and some code-quality improvements. But I also added a fun new feature called "Weather Score."  This gives a 0-to-100 point value to each weather report, showing at a glance where the best and worst weather is. A perfect day (by my definition) is 22°C with a 10°C dewpoint, light winds, mostly-clear skies, and no precipitation. The weather at O'Hare right now is not, however, perfect, and...

Despite getting back to a relative normal in 2023, 2024 seemed to revert back to how things went in 2020—just without the pandemic. Statistically, though, things remained steady, for the most part: I posted 480 times on The Daily Parker, 20 fewer than in 2023 and 17 below the long-term median. January and July had the most posts (48) and April and December the fewest (34). The mean of 40.0 was slightly lower than the long-term mean (41.34), with a standard deviation of 5.12, reflecting a mixed posting...

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...

First, Andrew Sullivan makes a very good, nuanced point about President Biden pardoning his son: A consensus of sorts has emerged among historians. Little abuses of power in the Roman system slowly multiplied, as rival factions exploited loopholes, or made minor adjustments, for short-term advantages. And so, for example, the term-limits of consuls — once strictly limited to two years in order to keep power dispersed — were gradually extended after the first breach, which set a precedent for further...

Hotel to terminal, 7 minutes (Lyft); through security, 10 minutes. Boarding in an hour. Now I just need the coffee to work its magic... I'm also tickled that the ex-POTUS will now be called the Once And Future POTUS. At least for a couple of months. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world: Andrew Sullivan doesn't like the outcome of the election any more than I do, but he nonetheless praises "the energizing clarity of democracy." Robert Wright lays out of plan for "fighting [the OAFPOTUS] mindfully." Molly...

You've heard the expression "crossing the Rubicon," but you may not know the history. In the Roman Republic, the Rubicon marked the border of Italy (read: the Home Counties/Eastern Seaboard), where it was illegal to garrison troops. In 49 BCE, Julius Caesar ran out of lawful ways to—wait for it—avoid prosecution for corruption stemming from his first term as Consul, and the Senate denied him the governorship of Cisalpine Gallus (read: the Midlands/the Midwest) which would have also granted him immunity....

I filled out my ballot yesterday and will deliver it to one of Chicago's early-voting drop-offs today or Monday. Other than a couple of "no" votes for judicial retention (a bizarre ritual we go through in Illinois), I voted pretty much as you would expect. I even voted for a couple of Republicans! (Just not for any office that could cause damage to the city or country.) Meanwhile, the world continues to turn: Matt Yglesias makes "a positive case for Kamala Harris:" "[A]fter eight tumultuous years...

The History Channel sends me a newsletter every morning listing a bunch of things that happened "this day in history." Today we had a bunch of anniversaries: 30 years ago, Pulp Fiction debuted. 47 years ago, Anita Bryant got a much-deserved pie in the face. 60 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., won the Nobel Peace Prize, the same day Nikita Khrushchev got deposed. 80 years ago, German General Erwin Rommel committed suicide rather than face trial for his role in the plot to assassinate Hitler in June...

I had a busy Friday and a busier Saturday, so I just got to these this morning: The entire Chicago Public Schools board resigned Friday in the latest salvo in the fight between Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. The Supreme Court rejected two emergency applications from polluters who want to continue polluting while their cases work through the system. Brett Stephens looks back at a year of increasing anti-Semitism disguised as "anti-Zionism." (This is exactly why I'm reading...

Last night, the Chicago White Sox lost their 120th game of the season, tying the record set by the New York Mets in 1962: With their fifth consecutive defeat and 23rd in the last 28 games, the Sox fell to 36-120 to tie the expansion 1962 Mets’ record for most losses in the modern era and break the 2003 Tigers’ AL-record 119 losses. Rookie right-hander Sean Burke pitched six innings of one-run ball with eight strikeouts, and Korey Lee also homered to give Burke a 2-1 lead, but the Padres (90-66) rallied...

The intersection of my vacation next week and my group's usual work-from-home schedule means I won't come back to my office for two weeks. Other than saving a few bucks on Metra this month, I'm also getting just a bit more time with Cassie before I leave her for a week. I've also just finished an invasive refactoring of our product's unit tests, so while those are running I either stare out my window or read all these things: Yes, Virginia (and Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina)...

The hot, humid weather we've had for the past couple of weeks has finally broken. I'm in the Loop today, and spent a good 20 minutes outside reading, and would have stayed longer, except I got a little chilly. I dressed today more for the 24°C at home and less for the cooler, breezier air this close to the lake. Elsewhere in the world: I was waiting for Russia expert Julia Ioffe to weigh in on last week's hostage release. The Chicago White Sox failed to set the all-time record for most consecutive...

This shit amused me: The Chicago White Sox have tied the American League record of 21 consecutive losses, with the MLB all-time record of 23 a distinct and shitty possibility. CrowdStrike has taken enough of Delta Airlines' shit, thank you. In addition to all the other shit that Hurricane Debby turned up over the weekend, the storm flushed 25 kilos of cocaine onto a Florida beach. Apparently, this happens all the time. Finally, Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the Dave Matthews Band tour bus...

As you may have seen below, yesterday I went out to Kankakee on a $15 round-trip Amtrak ticket to visit Knack Brewing for the Brews & Choos Project. Not only did the brewery surprise me—I mean, just look at it on Google Street View—but the city had a lot more going on than I anticipated. I've been through Kankakee a bunch of times, and maybe even pulled off I-57 on some trip to Champaign or St Louis. I've even landed at IKK once, in March 2002, getting checked out in a Piper Warrior. But until...

The Climate Prediction Center's 6-10 day temperature outlook has generally good news for the upper Midwest, including Chicago: I wouldn't want to be in New Orleans next week, but that's true most weeks of the year even without this forecast. While we weather the summer, the news just keeps coming: The XPOTUS lied about what caused the one-hour delay before he took the stage at Wednesday's National Association of Black Journalists conference, as one would guess, because the truth was he didn't want to be...

One of the many stories that piqued my interest this morning included a rant by the anti-Sorkin himself: Armando Iannucci, creator of Veep and The Thick of It, does not like how "politics has become so much like entertainment that the first thing we do to make sense of the moment is to test it against a sitcom." (He also implies that Liz Truss, and not Kamala Harris, most embodies the character of Selina Meyer.) Former President Obama has endorsed Vice President Harris. John Scalzi received a press...

What a consequential 24 hours we've had. After President Biden's historical withdrawal from the 2024 election, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. So far, dozens of other elected Democrats have followed, including Illinois governor JB Pritzker just this morning. And because the Vice President is already on the campaign, according to Federal election rules, she can use the entire $96 million campaign fund—and in fact she's already filed with the Federal Election Commission to do so. In other words...

The New York Times reports that President Biden has withdrawn from the 2024 election: After three weeks of often angry refusals to step aside, Mr. Biden finally yielded to a torrent of devastating polls, urgent pleas from Democratic lawmakers and clear signs that donors were no longer willing to pay for him to continue. Mr. Biden said he will not resign the presidency, and intends to finish out his term even as he leaves it to others to try and defeat Mr. Trump. Over the next several months, the...

The G7, meeting today in Washington, strongly rebuked the Israeli government's illegal seizure of Palestinian land: We, the G7 Foreign Ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the High Representative of the EU, join the UN and the European Union in condemning the announcement by Finance Minister of Israel Smotrich that five outposts are to be legalised in the West Bank. We also reject the decision by the Government of Israel to declare...

We've had stories of people clinging to power long past their ability to wield it for as long as we've had stories. Today, though, I want to take note of three people who held on so long, they wound up undoing much of what they'd accomplished in their lifetimes: Paul von Hindenburg, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and now possibly Joe Biden. Germans largely loved and respected Hindenburg, in part because he came very close to winning the First World War as supreme commander of the Central Powers. The loss of that...

Yes, President Biden is old, but he doesn't want to recreate the world of Victor Hugo. The Republican Party does, and this morning, they showed how they'll do it. The debate last night did not fill me with joy, as it showed my guy looking like the 82-year-old great-grandfather he is, and showed the convicted-felon other guy looking like the 78-year-old con artist he is. I may come back to this train wreck for democracy later today, but for now, I'd rather focus on why the President's geriatric...

I've got a performance this evening that requires being on-site at the venue for most of the day. So in a few minutes I'll take two dogs to boarding (the houseguest is another performer's dog), get packed, an start heading to a hockey rink in another city. Fun! If I'm supremely lucky, I'll get back home before the storm. Since I also have to travel to the venue, I'll have time to read a few of these: Jamelle Bouie warns that the convicted-felon XPOTUS has even less preparation for a possible second term...

As I mentioned after lunch, a lot of other things crossed my desk today than just wasted sushi: Politico reports the results of its latest poll, which, contra many pundits, shows a marked decline in the convicted felon XPOTUS's popularity following his 34 felony convictions. NPR describes what it's like living through a 50°C day in Delhi, India. Fully 83% of the union representing WBEZ-FM and Chicago Sun-Times employees voted "no confidence" in Chicago Public Media CEO Matt Moog. New York Magazine...

Cassie and I just got back from a short walk around the block. We did a 45-minute walk at 7:15, when we both could still tolerate the temperature, but just now my backyard thermometer shows a temperature of 33.1°C with a dewpoint of 23.3°C, which gives us a heat index of 38.5°C (101.4°F). Honestly, I prefer winter to this. The National Weather Service predicts the heat wave could extend through the week. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world: John Heilemann asks, why do we give a crap about who the...

Seventy-five years ago today, George Orwell published 1984, a horrifying novel that gets closer to reality every day. Also on 8 June 1949, the FBI released a report naming acting stars and filmmakers "communists," kicking off a horrifying chapter in American history that gets closer to coming back every day. And yesterday, NASA astronaut Bill Anders died in a plane crash. You may not know who Anders was, but you've seen the photo he took on Christmas Eve 1968: By NASA/Bill Anders (Link) Public Domain...

I usually spend the first day or two of a sprint researching and testing out approaches before I start the real coding effort. Since one of my stories this sprint requires me to refactor a fairly important feature—an effort I think will take me all of next week—I decided to read up on something today and have wound up in a rabbit hole. Naturally, that means a few interesting stories have piled up: The Presidential Greatness Project released its annual list of, well, presidents, putting Lincoln at the...

Today my real job wraps up Sprint 109, an unexciting milestone that I hope has an unexciting deployment. I think in 109 sprints we've only had 3 or 4 exciting deployments, not counting the first production deployment, which always terrifies the dev team and always reminds them of what they left out of the Runbook. The staging pipelines have already started churning, and if they uncover anything, the Dev pipelines might also run, so I've lined up a collection of stories from the last 24 hours to keep me...

The Ohio Feeder runs about 2 kilometers from Chicago's River North nightlife area to the Kennedy Expressway (I-90/94). As former Milwaukee mayor John Norquist told Streetsblog on Friday, just like San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway and Seoul's Cheonggyecheon, we need to remove the Ohio Feeder: Swapping the expressway extension for a surface-level boulevard would be an obvious choice to make this part of town safer, more efficient, more environmentally friendly, more vibrant – and more profitable....

I'm mostly exhausted from this week of performing and rehearsing, and I still have another concert tomorrow afternoon. Plus, a certain gray fuzzball and I have a deep need to take advantage of the 22°C sunny afternoon to visit a certain dog park. (I also want to have a certain pizza slice near the certain dog park, but that's not certain.) Joking aside, today is the 54th anniversary of the Ohio National Guard killing 4 innocent kids at Kent State University. As one of the projects on my way to getting a...

I'll lead off today with real-estate notices about two houses just hitting the market. In Kenilworth, the house featured at the end of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles can be yours for about $2.6 million. If you'd prefer something with a bit more mystique, the Webster Ave. building where Henry Darger lived for 40 years, now a single-family house, will also soon hit the market for $2.6 million. (That house is less than 300 meters from where my chorus rehearses.) In other news: Tina Nguyen warns about the...

The Chicago Dept of Transportation this morning removed and (they claim) preserved the "Chicago Rat Hole" on the 1900 West block of Roscoe St. in the North Center neighborhood. I admit, I never saw the Rat Hole in the flesh (so to speak), but I feel its absence all the same. Moving on: Three Republican Arizona state representatives voted with all 29 Democrats to repeal the state's 1864 abortion ban; the repeal now goes to the Arizona Senate. Monica Hesse reminds people who say it's sexist to advocate...

I'm heading off to a Euchre tournament in a bit. I haven't played cards with actual, live people in quite some time, so I just hope to end up in the middle of the pack. Or one perfect lay-down loner... A guy can dream. When I get home, I might have the time and attention span to read these: John Grinspan looks at the similarities and crucial differences between the upcoming election and the election of 1892. Andy Borowitz jokes about the latest of Robert F Kennedy's conspiracy theories: that his own...

Former US Senator Joe Lieberman (D, maybe?–CT) and Al Gore's running mate in 2000 has died: Joseph I. Lieberman, the doggedly independent four-term U.S. senator from Connecticut who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, becoming the first Jewish candidate on the national ticket of a major party, died March 27 in New York City. He was 82. The cause was complications from a fall, his family said in a statement. Mr. Lieberman viewed himself as a centrist Democrat, solidly in his party’s...

A friend posted on Facebook that Billy Joel's album Glass Houses came out 44 years ago today. That means it's as far behind us as the 1936 Olympics was from Billy Joel at the time. A horrifying pun war followed, but that has nothing to do with the horrifying fact that people have known "You May Be Right" for 44 years. And speaking of things that happened a long time ago, it turns out the President's memory is just fine, thank you, despite what Republican Special Prosecutor Robert K Hur said in his...

For Reasons, we have the dress rehearsal for our Saturday performance on Saturday. That means poor Cassie will likely go ten hours crossing her paws between the time I have to leave and when I'm likely to get back. Fortunately, she should be exhausted by then. Tonight's dress rehearsal for our Sunday performance won't put her out as much, thanks to Dog Delivery from my doggy day care. Still, I'd rather have a quiet evening at home than a 3-hour rehearsal and an hour-long car trip home... Meanwhile, in...

I'll have more and better-finished photos when I return to Chicago. Here are three quick phone edits from today. The Neue Rathaus in Marienplatz, near my hotel: The main gate to the prisoner camp at Dachau: The main road in the Dachau prison camp: That was not a fun visit, but it was necessary.

The weather forecast for Munich doesn't look horrible, but doesn't look all that great either, at least until Saturday. So I'll probably do more indoorsy things Thursday and Friday, though I have tentatively decided to visit Dachau on Thursday, rain or not. You know, to start my trip in such a way that nothing else could possibly be worse. Meanwhile, I've added these to yesterday's crop of stories to read at the airport: Deciding to be "stabbed, to live to see another day," the Republican-controlled...

In light of the report from special counsel Robert Hur that James Fallows calls "tendentious," Republican pollster and Lincoln Project member Stuart Stephens wonders why Democrats don't crow more loudly about all that President Biden has actually accomplished: A plea to my Democratic friends: It’s time to start calling Joe Biden a great president. Not a good one. Not a better choice than Donald Trump. Joe Biden is a historically great president. Say it with passion backed by the conviction that it’s...

Fifty years ago today, Mel Brooks inflicted upon the world a comedic masterpiece that no one will ever surpass: Blazing Saddles. No one will ever surpass it, of course, because most of the funniest jokes in the movie shock and offend people even more today than when it came out. But that was the point: Brooks and co-writer Richard Pryor skewered everyone in the film. Even the jokes that got mangled by the studio (the "it's twoo" scene originally ended with Bart saying, "baby, that's my elbow") still...

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...

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. When I first visited London in 1992, a bobby at Victoria Station explained that they didn't have bins there because "they tend to explode." I supported President Clinton in brokering the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, and I was in a pub in Killarney in July 2005 watching the telly with the silent crowd there as Sinn Féin put down their guns for good. So while today's news would have shocked me in 1992, I'm merely surprised in 2024: Northern Ireland’s devolved government...

A few months ago a Chicago Parking Enforcement Agent (PEA) tried to give me a ticket while I was paying for the parking spot online. I kept calm and polite, but I firmly explained that writing a ticket before I'd even finished entering the parking zone in the payment app might not survive the appeal. Yesterday I got another parking ticket at 9:02pm in a spot that has free parking from 9pm to 9am. The ticket actually said "parking expired and driver not walking back from meter." Note that the parking app...

The computer I'm using to write this post turns 8 years old on April 6th. It has served me well, living through thousands of Daily Parker posts, two house moves, terabytes of photographs, and only one blown hard drive. So I have finally broken down and ordered a new one: a Dell Precision 3460 that will sit on my desk instead of under it, and will run Windows 11 with TPM 2.0 instead of warning me that it doesn't have the right hardware to get the latest OS. The new computer will have an 13th Gen Intel...

Ctrl+W closes the active browser window, you see. I meant to type the word "Wade" in italics but somehow hit the Ctrl key instead of the Shift key. There may be some irony there. Possibly the warmth has addled my brain? It's just gone above freezing for the first time since the wee hours of January 13th. It's also gloomy and gray, but those things go together. Anyway: Today is the 51st anniversary of the US Supreme Court's decision in Roe v Wade. Michael Tomasky wants to know why the press seem to...

Twenty years ago today, former Vermont governor Howard Dean (D) showed enthusiasm for his 3rd-place finish in the Iowa Caucuses in a way he came to regret: Conventional wisdom says that this scream tanked (see what I did there?*) his campaign, but really, Dean never had the momentum or following needed to win the nomination. Plus, President Bush had taken us to war with the Taliban in Afghanistan and with common sense in Iraq, so war hero John Kerry looked like the best person to challenge him. I can't...

My socials today have a lot of chatter about the weather, understandably as we're now in our fourth day below -15°C. And yet I have vivid memories of 20 January 1985 when we hit the coldest temperature ever recorded in Chicago, -32°C. The fact that winters have gotten noticeably milder since the 1970s doesn't really matter during our annual Arctic blast. Sure, we had the coldest winter ever just 10 years ago, but the 3rd and 5th coldest were 1977-78 and 1978-79, respectively. I remember the snow coming...

A small collection: The CTA's Yellow Line has resumed service seven weeks after a train hit a stopped snowplow near the Howard station. Europe needs more trains, so they're building them. Scholars examining some personal effects from a 17th-century shipwreck have some new answers and some new questions. A coalition of landlords and real estate companies doesn't want a referendum on the Cook County ballot that could levy a one-time tax on the sale of million-dollar properties. Finally, in her column on...

It was a busy day, so I didn't have a lot of time to write a substantial post. I did want to highlight Nate Cohn's comparison of President Biden's situation going into the 2024 election and another guy who did a pretty good job in his first term: Harry Truman was the only president besides Joe Biden to oversee an economy with inflation over 7 percent while unemployment stayed under 4 percent and G.D.P. growth kept climbing. Voters weren’t overjoyed then, either. Instead, they saw Mr. Truman as...

Though my "to-be-read" bookshelf has over 100 volumes on it, at least two of which I've meant to read since the 1980s, the first book I started in 2024 turned out to be Cory Doctorow's The Lost Cause, which I bought because of the author's post on John Scalzi's blog back in November. That is not what I'm reading today at lunch, though. No, I'm reading a selection of things the mainstream media published in the last day: Economic historian Guido Alfani examines the data on the richest people to live...

Last year continued the trend of getting back to normal after 2020, and with one nice exception came a lot closer to long-term bog standard normal than 2022. I posted 500 times on The Daily Parker, 13 more than in 2022 and only 6 below the long-term median. January, May, and August had the most posts (45) and February, as usual, the least (37). The mean of 41.67 was actually slightly higher than the long-term mean (41.23), with a standard deviation of 2.54, which may be the lowest (i.e., most consistent...

The "Lost Cause" mythology of certain good ol' boys in the Republican Party deliberately obfuscates the real causes of the US Civil War, as Brynn Tannehill describes in a well-written Twitter thread: When Haley refused to say that the root cause of the Civil War, it pulled back the curtain a bit on an ugly truth: the American south has successfully waged a campaign to obfuscate history for over 100 years, to the point where they use their own supply. Facts up front: The US Civil War started when Lincoln...

As I wait for my rice to cook and my adobo to finish cooking, I'm plunging through an unusually large number of very small changes to a codebase recommended by one of my tools. And while waiting for the CI to run just now, I lined these up for tomorrow morning: Michael Tomasky calls former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has left the House and scampered back to California, "the most incompetent House Speaker of all time." (No argument from me.) Former GOP strategist, lawyer, and generally sane...

I can't yet tell that sunsets have gotten any later in the past two weeks, though I can tell that sunrises are still getting later. But one day, about three weeks from now, I'll look out my office window at this hour, and notice it hasn't gotten completely dark yet. Alas, that day is not this day. Elsewhere in the darkening world: Mike Godwin, the person who postulated Godwin's Law, believes that invoking it as regards the XPOTUS is not at all losing the argument: "You could say the ‘vermin’ remark or...

I just realized that my short complaint about the cold front that came through Saturday was The Daily Parker's 9,000th post since it re-launched as a modern, continuous blog on 13 November 2005. (I still maintain that it was a blog from its inception on 13 May 1998, but the term "blog" hadn't been coined yet.) In the "modern" era, I've written a mean 495 and a median 505 posts per year, with a standard deviation of 66.3 (1.36, 1.4, and 0.27 per day, respectively). For the 12 months ending November 30th...

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has died. Of course every news outlet has an obituary, but Spencer Ackerman's in Rolling Stone pretty much nails it—"it" being a nail in Kissinger's coffin: Measuring purely by confirmed kills, the worst mass murderer ever executed by the United States was the white-supremacist terrorist Timothy McVeigh. On April 19, 1995, McVeigh detonated a massive bomb at the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children. McVeigh, who in...

I guess not all of the stories I read at lunchtime depressed me, but...well, you decide: Writing in the Atlantic, Rogé Karma weaves together the threads of white backlash to civil rights laws, the Democratic Party's cultural elitism, and a series of global crises, to explain why the US uniquely among its peer nations has made such a hash of the post-1970s economy. Georgetown public policy professor George P. Moynihan, who studies government bureaucracies, lays out how the XPOTUS intends to destroy the...

I'm setting this to post overnight so I can read these things tomorrow morning: President Biden published an op-ed in Saturday's Washington Post, laying out the necessary steps for ending the Gaza war, with the nuance, sensitivity, and command of the facts we should expect from any President. Robert Wright lays out the history of Hamas, with particular emphasis on how American and Israeli meddling shaped it into the awful group of people it has become. Josh Marshall points out that "the day after" the...

Ah, Tricky Dick, you were far worse than a crook: For context, Woodward and Bernstein had only just started investigating Watergate, and he still hadn't gotten us out of Vietnam. But good thing he reassured us he didn't do anything illegal.

I hope to make the 17:10 train this evening, so I'll just note some things I want to read later: Monica Hesse can't help making fun of the dude-bros in the US Senate who think they're still in middle school. Guess which party they're in? Julia Ioffe interviews National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Last night I finished Jake Berman's The Lost Subways of North America, and this morning I read Veronica Esposito's (positive) review for The Guardian. I recommend this book too. The New Republic interviews...

Despite the XPOTUS publicly declaring himself a fascist (again), the world has other things going on: Josh Marshall plots out how House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) knows he has to pass a budget that Democrats can stomach, but because he still has to placate the extreme right wing of his party, he's pretending he can pass something else. And the clown show continues. The US Supreme Court has published their new ethics rules, which look a lot like a subset of the rules the rest of the Federal courts have...

I closed a 3-point story and if the build that's running right now passes, another bug and a 1-point story. So I'm pretty comfortable with my progress through this sprint. But I haven't had time to read any of these, though I may try to sneak them in before rehearsal: The XPOTUS has started using specific terminology to describe his political opponents that we last heard from a head of government in 1945. (Guess which one.) Says Tomasky: "[Republicans] are telling us in broad daylight that they want to...

We've switched around our RTO/WFH schedule recently, so I'm now in the office Tuesday through Thursday. That's exactly the opposite of my preferred schedule, it turns out. So now Tuesdays feel like Mondays. And I still can't get the hang of Thursdays. We did get our bi-weekly build out today, which was boring, as it should be. Alas, the rest of the world wasn't: The XPOTUS has vowed revenge on everyone who has wronged him, pledging to use the US government to smite his enemies, as if we needed any more...

Today's roundup includes only one Earth-shattering kaboom, for starters (and I'll save the political stuff for last): Scientists hypothesize that two continent-sized blobs of hot minerals 3,000 km below Africa and the Pacific Ocean came from Theia, the Mars-sized object that slammed into the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, creating the Moon in the aftermath. October was Illinois 31st warmest and 41st wettest in history (going back to 1895). National Geographic looks into whether the freak winter of...

I'm still thinking about propaganda in the Gaza war, but I'm not done thinking yet. Or, at least, not at a stopping point where a Daily Parker post would make sense. That said, Julia Ioffe sent this in the introduction to her semi-weekly column; unfortunately I can't link to it: The absolutely poisonous discourse around this war, though, has taken all of that to a whole other level. The rage, the screaming, and the disinformation, ahistoricity, the anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, the propaganda—all of...

Google plans to move 2,000 employees into what used to be the State of Illinois Building at Randolph and Clark. The 1985 Helmut Jahn building has stood vacant for several years, literally leaking money: The city has granted permits to demolish the exterior and atrium of the Thompson Center — a critical early step in Google’s $280 million efforts to remake the former state government building into the company’s Chicago headquarters. Under permits issued Oct. 13 by the Department of Buildings, Google will...

I'm iterating on a UI feature that wasn't 100% defined, so I'm also iterating on the API that the feature needs. Sometimes software is like that: you discover that your first design didn't quite solve the problem, so you iterate. it's just that the iteration is a bit of a context shift, so I'm going to read for about 15 minutes to clear my head: Kevin Philips, whose 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority laid out Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" and led to the GOP's subsequent slide into...

The reactions to yesterday's defenestration of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) share a particular theme I can't quite put my finger on: Aaron Blake foresees more chaos, particularly for McCarthy's successor. Dana Milbank foresees more chaos, particularly for the Republican Party. Josh Marshall foresees more chaos, particularly for the so-called Problem-Solvers Caucus. The Economist foresees more chaos, particularly around funding for Ukraine. Ronald Brownstein foresees more chaos...

It's only Wednesday? Sheesh... The Writers Guild of America got nearly everything they wanted from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (i.e., the Astroturf organization set up by the big studios and streamers to negotiate with the Guilds), especially for young writers and for hit shows, but consumers should expect more bundling and higher monthly fees for shows in the future. Josh Marshall suspects that the two competing storylines about the XPOTUS (that he's about to return to...

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...

Another Tuesday, another collection of head-shaking news stories one might expect in the waning days of an empire: Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau (Lib-Papineau, QC) formally accused the government of India of assassinating a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Paul Krugman traces the road from Mitt Romney to MAGA. Jonathan Last accuses "Meet the Press" of acting like 2016 never happened. Police in Birmingham, Ala., Tased a band director for not ending the band's song a minute early as ordered....

The temperature has crept up towards 34°C all day after staying at a comfortable 28°C yesterday and 25°C Friday. It's officially 33°C at O'Hare but just a scoshe above 31°C at IDTWHQ. Also, I still feel...uncomfortable in certain places closely associated with walking. All of which explains why I'm jotting down a bunch of news stories to read instead of walking Cassie. First, if you have tomorrow off for Labor Day, you can thank Chicago workers. (Of course, if you have May 1st off for Labor Day, you can...

Not Just Bikes celebrates 5 years living in the Netherlands by raving about how the Netherlands' anti-car development patterns make just about every city in the country nicer to live than just about anywhere in North America: I'm about 3/4 the way through Nicholas Dagen Bloom's The Great American Transit Disaster, having just finished the chapter on how Detroit's combination of racism, suburban/urban hostility, lack of vision, and massive subsidies for car infrastructure while starving public transit...

Just a couple this morning as I have another long day of Die Zauberflöte rehearsals today: Ronald Brownstein warns that the closest parallel to the XPOTUS and his supporters assaulting the Constitution is "the strategies of the slaveholding South in the decades before the Civil War." David Brooks wonders out loud whether the old guard Republican Party (like himself) created their own monster by aggressively promoting a meritocracy that depends on people having the right parents, among other things. Matt...

While I fight a slow laptop and its long build cycle (and how every UI change seems to require re-compiling), the first day of the last month of summer brought this to my inbox: Who better to prosecute the XPOTUS than a guy who prosecuted other dictators and unsavory characters for the International Criminal Court? (In America, we don't go to The Hague; here, The Hague comes to you!) After the evidence mounted that Hungary has issued hundreds of thousands of passports without adequate identity checks...

The Irish Times reported this morning that the controversial singer and author of a hunk of my university-days soundtrack died unexpectedly yesterday: In a statement, the singer’s family said: “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad. Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.” Ms O’Connor is survived by her three children. Her son, Shane, died last year aged 17. Ms O’Connor converted to Islam in 2018 and changed her...

An entertainer, a criminal, and an architect died this week, and we should remember them all. The most notable person to die was singer Tony Bennet, 96: His peer Frank Sinatra called him the greatest popular singer in the world. His recordings – most of them made for Columbia Records, which signed him in 1950 – were characterized by ebullience, immense warmth, vocal clarity and emotional openness. A gifted and technically accomplished interpreter of the Great American Songbook, he may be best known for...

When I moved to my current house, I planned to hook up my ancient cassette player to a stereo system in my library. So I got my ancient cassettes out of storage and brought them to the new place. It took a couple of stages (ordering bookshelves, getting the bookshelves, waiting for them to fix the adjustable shelf in the center bookshelf) over a few months. In that last phase it looked like this: You're reading that right. I packed that box of cassettes on 3 January 2005, and put a sticker on it when I...

Razib Khan looks at where modern humans came from in light of recent genetic analyses, and how the Toba eruption 74,000 YBP gave our particular lineage an opening our ancestors exploited, wiping out the competing varieties of humans within 10,000 years: The most powerful explosion of the last 2.5 million years, the Toba eruption triggered a decade-long cold snap that wrought havoc even amid the last Ice Age’s already inclement conditions. When the cataclysm hit, Neanderthals had reigned supreme from the...

Here is the state of things as we go into the second half of 2023: The government-owned but independently-edited newspaper Wiener Zeitung published its last daily paper issue today after being in continuous publication since 8 August 1703. Today's headline: "320 years, 12 presidents, 10 emperors, 2 republics, 1 newspaper." Paula Froelich blames Harry Windsor's and Megan Markle's declining popularity on a simple truth: "Not just because they were revealed as lazy, entitled dilettantes, but because they...

The Supreme Court published its ruling in Moore v Harper today, snuffing out the Federalist Society weed-induced fantasy of the "independent state legislature theory" would remain just that—a fantasy: [A]lthough the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to regulate federal elections, state courts can supervise the legislature’s exercise of that power. By a vote of 6-3, the court rejected the so-called “independent state legislature theory,” holding that the North Carolina Supreme Court did not...

I'll elaborate on this later, but I just want to list a couple of things I desperately want for my country and city during my lifetime. For comparison, I'm also listing when other places in the world got them first. For context, I expect (hope?) to live another 50 years or so. Universal health care, whether through extending Medicare to all residents or through some other mechanism. The UK got it in 1948, Canada in 1984, and Germany in 1883. We're the only holdout in the OECD, and it benefits no one...

Just a few stories I came across at lunchtime: In an act that looks a lot like the USSR's scorched-earth retreat in 1941, Ukraine accuses Russia of blowing up the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnieper River, which could have distressing follow-on effects over the next few months. A former Chicago cop faces multiple counts of perjury and forgery after, among other things, claiming his girlfriend stole his car to get out of 44 separate speeding tickets. James Fallows explains what probably happened to the Citation...

On this day in 2000, during that more-innocent time, Beverly Hills 90210 came to an end. (And not a day too soon.) As I contemplate the void in American culture its departure left, I will read these articles: Anna Nemtsova rubs her hands in glee along with Ukrainian president Volodmyr Zelinsky in watching the Kremlin's worst fears about Ukraine come true. Henry Grabar blames the killing of Jordan Neely on conservatives' willful failure to address homelessness and mental illness for the last 50 years....

The Daily Parker began as a joke-of-the-day engine at the newly-established braverman.org on 13 May 1998. This will be my 8,907th post since 1998 and my 8,710th since 13 November 2005. And according to a quick SQL Server query I just ran, The Daily Parker contains 15,043,497 bytes of text and HTML. A large portion of posts just curate the news and opinions that I've read during the day. But sometimes I actually employ thought and creativity, as in these favorites from the past 25 years: Old Man...

We finally have a real May-appropriate day in Chicago, with a breezy 26°C under clear skies (but 23°C closer to the Lake, where I live). Over to my right, my work computer—a 2017-era Lenovo laptop I desperately want to fling onto the railroad tracks—has had some struggles with the UI redesign I just completed, giving me a dose of frustration but also time to line up some lunchtime reading: Both Matt Ford and David Firestone goggle at how stupidly US Rep. George Santos (R-NY) ran his alleged grift...

Tomorrow, King Charles III and Queen Camilla will hold their coronation in London. Matt Ford says it's all fun and games until someone loses a Parliament: Charles’s ascent is not important because he actually has a divine right to reign over the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and roughly a dozen other countries. Nor is it important because Harry is attending without Meghan in either a brave stand against his abusive family or a rude snub of his well-intentioned father. The British...

Fifty years ago this week, steelworkers fastened the final girder to the tallest building in the world: Placement of the beam — painted white and signed by thousands of Sears employees — ended nearly three years of construction that required Porzuczek and other ironworkers to climb up and down the steadily rising tower, wearing up to 70 pounds of tools around their waists. The 110-story skyscraper at 233 S. Wacker Drive was topped out May 3, 1973. It ended the Empire State Building’s four-decade reign...

A plethora: Google has updated its satellite photos of Mariupol, clearly showing the destruction from Russia's invasion and subsequent siege. Senators Angus King (I-ME) and Lisa Murkowsky (R-AK) have introduced legislation to force the Supreme Court—read: Justices Thomas (R$) and Gorsuch (R)—to adopt a binding code of ethics. Presumably a Democratic bill that would actually let Congress set the Court's ethical standards will come soon. On Monday, the city will cut down a bur oak they estimate has lived...

On this day in 1998, I registered braverman.org, and just a few weeks later built the first draft of what became this blog. When I registered it, only about a million domain names existed, though 1998 turned out to be the year the Internet exploded worldwide. Just seven years earlier, only 100 .org names existed, so braverman.org may be one of the oldest .orgs out there. (For comparison, there are just about 350 million registered domain names today.) Of course, the 25th anniversary of braverman.org...

Justice Clarence Thomas (R) began his lifetime tenure to the United States Supreme Court with the help of some old men who knew their behavior towards their subordinates would get them in trouble if they held Thomas accountable for his deplorable behavior towards Anita Hill. Since confirmation, Thomas has become more like himself, as the saying goes. In 1991 he was an arrogant, contemptuous middle-aged man who assumed anyone criticizing him or his behavior had a mental deficiency. Ah, but how much he's...

Political satirist Mark Russell will be missed: With his deadpan solemnity, stars-and-stripes stage sets and fusty bow ties, Mr. Russell looked more like a senator than a comic. But as the capital merry-go-round spun its peccadilloes, scandals and ballyhooed promises, his jaunty baritone restored order with bipartisan japes and irreverent songs to deflate the preening ego and the Big Idea. Presidents from Eisenhower to Trump caught the flak. He sang “Bail to the Chief” for Richard M. Nixon, urged George...

Once again, I have too much to read: After Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) tried to end Disney's control over the municipal area around Disneyworld, the outgoing board added a series of restrictive covenants completely neutering DeSantis' hand-picked replacements, including a rule-against-perpetuities clause tying the covenants to the last living descendant of King Charles III. Robert Wright observed ChatGPT expressing cognitive empathy. An anonymous source provided a German reporter with 5,000 pages...

I've had a bunch of tasks and a mid-afternoon meeting, so I didn't get a chance to read all of these yet: Fifty years ago today, United States combat troops left South Vietnam. The DC foreign policy elite have grown impatient for President Biden to articulate a clearer policy on Ukraine. The Post has a fascinating story of a Russian spy who posed as a Brazilian student to get into Johns Hopkins, but got arrested when he tried to take a new job at the International Criminal Court using his fake identity....

Today is the 25th anniversary of the US Food and Drug Administration signing off on Pfizer's miracle drug, Sildenafil. The drug helped raise Pfizer's profits and keep them up for years, until competitors like tadalafil and vardenafil popped up and made significant market penetration. And on the 5th of next month, WGN-TV in Chicago will turn 75. The eponymous World's Greatest Newspaper that owned WGN radio and TV for most of their lives, the Chicago Tribune, reminds us that WGN's biggest star for decades...

Media reports, including the XPOTUS's own social-media posts, suggest the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York will issue an historic indictment on Tuesday: The Manhattan district attorney's office is expected to issue criminal charges against Trump in a case centering on a payment that Michael Cohen, Trump's attorney and fixer at the time, made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election. Cohen told CNN Thursday that he believed an indictment...

Twenty years ago today, the United States invaded a neutral country that hadn't taken a shot at us for over a decade. This had predictable results for the region, including making our long-time adversary Iran a major player: The invasion “was the original sin,” said Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank. “It helped Iran bolster its position by being a predator in Iraq. It’s where Iran perfected the use of...

I'm in Phoenix for my company's Tech Forum, where all the technology professionals come together for a few days of panel discussions and heavy drinking networking events. This morning's lineup, including the keynote speaker, emphasized to me the dangers in the United States' declining ability to teach kids English and history. I will have more details later, but for now I'll mention these three things. First, if you show the ubiquitous graph of the growing gap between productivity and wages that the US...

Perhaps the first day of spring brings encourages some spring cleaning? Or at least, revisiting stories of the recent and more distant past: The Navy has revisited how it names ships, deciding that naming United States vessels after events or people from a failed rebellion doesn't quite work. As a consequence, the guided missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG-62, named after a Confederate victory) will become the USS Robert Smalls, named after the former slave who stole the CSS Planter right from...

I spent way more time than I should have this morning trying to set up an API key for the Associated Press data tools. Their online form to sign up created a general customer-service ticket, which promptly got closed with an instruction to...go to the online sign-up form. They also had a phone number, which turned out to have nothing to do with sales. And I've now sent two emails a week apart to their "digital sales" office, with crickets in response. The New York Times had an online setup that took...

Let's start with combat-actor Jill Bearup explaining how the Netflix-ITV-BBC ban on corsets solves entirely the wrong problems: Meanwhile, in the modern world: The National Transportation Safety Board reported that an axle on the 23rd car of the train that derailed in East Palesine, Ohio, had a bearing temperature 140°C over normal—which is 30°C over "critical." The crew were trying to stop the train when the bearing failed. Perhaps if the train had fewer cars, or more crew, or the proper braking...

We've had rain since about 9am while the temperature has held onto 1°C with two hands and a carabiner, so neither Cassie nor I will get our quota of walks this afternoon. But that does give me extra time to digest all this: James Fallows eulogizes his old boss, President Jimmy Carter. After listening to yesterday's oral arguments, the Washington Post team covering Gonzalez v Google doesn't think the Supreme Court will overturn Section 230. A history teacher wants to help Bloomington, Ill., move past its...

I spent the morning going over an API for standards and style, which will result in an uncomfortably large commit before I leave the office today. I prefer smaller, more focused commits, but this kind of polishing task makes small code changes all over the place, and touches lots of files. So while I have my (late) lunch, I'm taking a break to read some news: Chicago's El got color-coded route designations 30 years ago today. No more Howard-Dan Ryan line; now it's the Red Line. Web hosting service...

In honor of thus august holiday, Aimee Mann has painted portraits of our worst presidents: And Ezra Klein argues in favor of the current president's re-election: There is no end of commentary gently — and not so gently — urging President Biden to act his age and step aside. And all else being equal, I share that sentiment. I don’t think we want a president ending his second term closer to 90 than he is to 80. But all else is never equal. And the commentaries that focus solely on Biden’s central weakness...

I finished a couple of big stories for my day job today that let us throw away a whole bunch of code from early 2020. I also spent 40 minutes writing a bug report for the third time because not everyone diligently reads attachments. (That sentence went through several drafts, just so you know.) While waiting for several builds to complete today, I happened upon these stories: The former co-CEO of @Properties bought 2240 N. Burling St., one of the only remaining pre-Fire houses in Lincoln Park, so...

Time is funny. On this day, 90 years ago, radio station WXYZ in Detroit began a serial called "The Lone Ranger," written by Fran Striker, who had probably never seen Texas or a Native American person in his life. When I read that this morning, it struck me that the radio audience in Detroit had living memory of the closest historical analogue to the entirely-fictional Lone Ranger character. Deputy US Marshall Bass Reeves served from 1875 to 1907, retiring just 26 years before the radio show started. So...

Just a pre-weekend rundown of stuff you might want to read: The US Supreme Court's investigation into the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's (R) Dobbs opinion failed to identify Ginny Thomas as the source. Since the Marshal of the Court only investigated employees, and not the Justices themselves, one somehow does not feel that the matter is settled. Paul Krugman advises sane people not to give in to threats about the debt ceiling. I would like to see the President just ignore it on the grounds that Article...

The United States once had the best universities in the world. Maybe we still do, to an extent. Most empires, in their primes, have them. But in every culture, some people simply don't (or can't) understand the benefits of learning for its own sake. In the waning days of empire, when politics drifts farther from governing and closer to self-dealing, people who do understand why we need great universities nevertheless see political advantage in pretending we don't. In the last week I've seen three...

In a form of enlightened laziness, I often go into my company's downtown Chicago office on Friday and the following Monday, avoiding the inconvenience of taking my laptop home. It helps also that Fridays and Mondays have become the quietest days of the week, with most return-to-office workers heading in Tuesdays through Thursdays. And after a productive morning, I have a few things to read at lunch: The Economist says a lot of nice things about Chicago, including that we have an almost inexhaustible...

The House will probably elect a Speaker before the end of March, so we probably won't set any records for majority-party dickery before the Congress even starts. (We might for what the 118th Congress does, though.) But with three ballots down and the guy who thought he'd get the job unable to get the last 19 votes he needs, it might take a few days. Meanwhile: How does the House elect its Speaker, anyway? Whoever the Republicans elect, they have already made clear their intentions for the 118th to...

What a delight to wake up for the second day in a row and see the sun. After 13 consecutive days of blah, even the -11°C cold that encouraged Cassie and me to get her to day care at a trot didn't bother me too much. Unfortunately, the weather forecast says a blizzard will (probably) hit us next weekend, so I guess I'll have time to read all of these stories sitting on the couch with my dog: The House Select Committee on the January 6th Insurrection referred the XPOTUS to the Justice Department on four...

Both of our Messiah performances went well. We had too few rehearsals and too many new members this year to sing the 11 movements from memory that we have done in the past, which meant that all us veterans sang stuff we'd memorized with our scores open. So like many people in the chorus, I felt better about this year than I have since I started. We got a decent review, too. Also, we passed a milestone yesterday: 1,000 days since my company closed our Chicago office because of the pandemic, on 16 March...

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...

Even with Chicago's 1,642 judges on the ballot ("Shall NERDLY McSNOOD be retained as a circuit court judge in Cook County?"), I still got in and out of my polling place in about 15 minutes. It helped that the various bar associations only gave "not recommended" marks to two of them, which still left 1,640 little "yes" ovals to fill in. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world... Republican pollster Rick Wilson, one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project, has a head-shaking Twitter thread warning everyone...

I'm starting to adapt my habits and patterns to the new place. I haven't figured out where to put everything yet, especially in my kitchen, but I'll live with the first draft for a few weeks before moving things around. I'm also back at work in my new office loft, which is measurably quieter than the previous location—except when the Metra comes by, but that just takes a couple of seconds. I actually have the mental space to resume my normal diet of reading. If only I had the time. Nevertheless: Texas...

Stanford University historian Francis Fukuyama outlines why liberal democracies have better governance than dictatorships, and why authoritarianism comes back like an old stray cat ever couple of generations: Russia and China both have argued that liberal democracy is in long-term decline, and that their brand of muscular authoritarian government is able to act decisively and get things done while their democratic rivals debate, dither, and fail to deliver on their promises. Over the past year, though...

As far as I know, I'm moving in 2½ weeks, though the exact timing of both real-estate closings remain unknown. Last time I moved it took me about 38 hours to pack and 15 to unpack. This time I expect it to go faster, in part because I'm not spending as much time going "oh, I love this book!" I'm taking a quick break and catching up on some reading: Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon (R-Fla.) continues to help the guy who appointed her in absurd ways large and small. David French explains why "strong"...

The Registrar General for Scotland finally released a death certificate that raised more questions than it answered: Queen Elizabeth II’s cause of death is described as “old age” in the register of deaths released on Thursday. The registrar general for Scotland, Paul Lowe, confirmed that the Queen’s death was registered in Aberdeenshire on 16 September. Suspicious, innit? She survived in power for 70 years and this is the best you've got? Apparently Scottish law allows this sort of obfuscation: Old age...

Wired examines the art and science of managing an 8-kilometer, 14-hour queue: At its peak, the queue has snaked 5 miles across the capital, with an estimated 14-hour wait. When it reached capacity and closed on Friday, people defied government advice and formed a separate queue for the queue. Such scenes are remarkable—but they’re not unprecedented. When George VI—Queen Elizabeth II’s father—died in February 1952, 300,000 people filed past his coffin in St. George’s Chapel over the course of three days....

I love this, but I have to ask: why did the Post do this, and not the Tribune or Block Club Chicago? As an adopted Chicagoan and longtime John Hughes devotee, I’ve always wondered whether it’s possible to do everything Ferris accomplished as he dodges school in the 1986 film. He knocks out a trip to the top of the Sears Tower, the Chicago Board of Trade, a fancy French lunch, a Cubs game, the Art Institute, the Von Steuben Day parade and the beach, then races on foot through his North Shore suburb to...

Just a few before I take a brick to my laptop for taking a damned half-hour to reformat a JSON file: The King has a long history of meddling in architecture and urban planning, with the divisive planned community of Poundbury, Dorset, his largest project to date. Meanwhile, in the US, architect Adam Paul Susaneck argues that cities need to remove highways that segregate communities. (Plus they're ugly and they cause the traffic they're built to alleviate, but that's another argument.) The Queen's death...

With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the British National Anthem has changed back to "God Save the King" for the third time in 185 years. In other news: The Guardian explains Elizabeth's funeral and other events that will take place over the next 10 days. James Fallows takes a second look at President Biden's speech from last week, in the context of the predictable reaction cycle about anything he does. Dana Milbank doesn't worry the MAGA folks want a Mussolini, since some of them keep going on about...

Happy Monday: The XPOTUS uses the same pattern of lies every time he gets caught committing a crime. Jennifer Rubin says this was his dumbest crime yet. Usability experts at the Nielsen/Norman Group lay out everything you hate about phone trees, and how companies could fix them. My generation should be your boss now, but of course, we aren't. Within 30 years, Chicago could experience 52°C heat indexes. I would now like to take a nap, but alas...

Today is India's 75th anniversary as an independent nation after the UK essentially abandoned it after World War II. The Guardian looks at how much—and how little—has changed: The attack on Salman Rushdie shone a light on where Pakistan and India, both now 75 years old, share common ground. Amid worldwide outrage, both governments were conspicuous by their silence. The silence came from different roots. Some of the first riots after the publication of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses were in Pakistan and...

After Tuesday's half-day of rehearsals (which would have been a full day except for a scheduling conflict I couldn't move), and yesterday's all-day rehearsals, my intellectual capabilities and creativity seem a bit diminished this week. We open tonight with Don Giovanni and close Sunday afternoon with La Clemenza di Tito. I'm meant to work on our product roadmap for the next 5-10 sprints (i.e., through years' end) while also delivering at least one more feature for the current sprint that ends Tuesday....

In just a few minutes I will take Cassie to boarding, then head up to Northwestern for a rehearsal (I'm in the chorus at Ravinia's upcoming performances of La Clemenza di Tito.) I'll then have to pack when I get home from rehearsal, then head to a hotel by O'Hare. Ah, how much fun is an 8:30 international flight! As I'll have some time at the airport in the morning, and no time now, I want to queue these up for myself: Jonathan Chait says Senator Joe Manchin (D?-WV) didn't kill President Biden's agenda...

I will definitely make time this weekend to drool over the recent photos from the James Webb Space Telescope. It's kind of sad that no living human will ever see anything outside our solar system, but we can dream, right? Closer to home than the edge of the visible universe: Josh Marshall highlight's a reader's note explaining how the historic conservatism of the Executive Branch legal team won't work any more. The President's conservatism doesn't work either, as recent polls and Democratic-party...

Mark Thiessen took a victory lap in the Post this afternoon, congratulating himself and his fellow travelers for succeeding in their 50-year project to make abortions illegal in most of the US: Overturning Roe v. Wade has been the overarching, seemingly impossible goal of the pro-life movement for almost five decades. Now that it has finally been achieved, four words should be on the lips of every pro-life conservative today: Thank you, Donald Trump. Looking back on Trump’s chaotic presidency, some...

Chicago's official temperature last hit 38°C (100°F) on 6 July 2022, almost 10 years ago. As of 4pm O'Hare reported steady at 37°C (98°F) with the likelihood of breaking the record diminishing by the minute. At Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters, we have 37.2°C, still climbing, but leveling off. In other hotness around the world: The Texas Republican Party published their new platform this week in a bold bid to return to the 19th Century, including seceding from the United States. Dana Milibank...

Even though I feel like I have a moderate cold (stuffy, sneezy, and an occasional cough), I recognize that Covid-19 poses a real danger to people who haven't gotten vaccinations or who have other comorbidities. So I'm staying home today except to walk Cassie. It's 18°C and perfectly sunny, so Cassie might get a lot of walks. Meanwhile, I have a couple of things to occupy my time: Arthur Rizer draws a straight line from the militarization of police to them becoming "LARPing half-trained, half-formed kids...

Writer Eula Biss essays on the disappearance of common grazing lands through enclosure laws as part of a larger pattern of class struggle (and no, she's not a Marxist): In the time before enclosure, shared pastures where landless villagers could graze their animals were common. Laxton [England] had two, the Town Moor Common and the much larger Westwood Common, which together supported a hundred and four rights to common use, with each of these rights attached to a cottage or a toft of land in the...

The security guru just posted a video he presented in November 2020:

First, I believe this might be the greatest gaffe* of the 21st century: Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX — Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 19, 2022 Second, for everyone whinging on about paying $5 per gallon of gas, why not take this opportunity to finally switch to the metric system? Then you'd only be paying $1.29 per liter** of gas! * And I do mean "gaffe" in the sense...

NPR did a segment this morning on the 1978 movie Grease, which correspondent Dori Bell had never seen—since, you know, she's a late Millennial. As I listened to the movie, while slowly waking up and patting Cassie, the timeline of the movie and the play just made me feel...old. The play, which premiered in 1971, takes place in the fall of 1958. The movie came out in 1978. So try this out, with the dates changed a bit: The play premiered in 2015 and takes place in 2002. Oh, it gets better, Gen-Xers and...

Yesterday we had summer-like temperatures and autumn-like winds in Chicago, with 60 km/h wind gusts from the south. That may have had something to do with this insanity: Yes, the Cubs won 21-0 yesterday on 23 hits, their biggest shutout in over 120 years: Nico Hoerner was one of five Cubs to record three or more hits, finishing with three RBIs on a career-high four hits. After a three-hit performance Friday, it also marked the first back-to-back three-hit games of his career. Rivas, Seiya Suzuki, Ian...

On 13 April 1992, damage to a tunnel under the Chicago River caused a billion liters of water to flood the Loop—entirely underground: The Great Chicago Flood paralyzed downtown — shutting down power and prompting an evacuation that would affect financial markets and bring business to a halt for days. Those who were there vividly recall that spring day when 124 million gallons of water from the Chicago River flowed into the city’s maze of underground freight tunnels and building basements, turning the...

I've gotten two solid nights of sleep in a row, and I've got a clean desk for the first time in weeks. I hope that this becomes the norm, at least until November, when I'll have a packed musical schedule for six weeks as the Apollo Chorus rehearses or performs about 30 times. But that's seven months off. That gives me plenty of time to listen to or read these: Time Zone Database coordinator Paul Eggert explains the TZDB, its history, and how it works. David Sedaris discusses how the US changed between...

As I did in 2020, this year I live-posted SOTU on Facebook. Here are my posts, in the order I made them: OK, here we go with the SOTU. Last time (2020) I needed two martinis and watched with the sound off. This time, I see no need for alcohol and I'm happy to listen. What changed, I wonder? Ukrainian ambassador gets an extended standing ovation from the entire government of the United States. She might prefer fighter jets and ammunition, but it was a nice gesture We're putting troops along the Russian...

I've had a lot to do at work the last couple of days, leading to an absolute pile-up of unread press: Casey Michael outlines how Russian President Vladimir Putin's aims in Ukraine have little to do with NATO and a lot to do with him wanting to restore the Russian Empire. Tom Nichols calls Putin's actions the beginning of "a forever war," and Julia Ioffe calls Putin "a furious and clearly deranged old man, threatening to drag us all into World War III." Col. Jerad Harper USA, a professor at the US Army...

A couple more resources about "web3" (cryptocurrencies, NFTs, DAOs, etc) crossed my inbox this week. Even before going through these stories and essays, the only way I can understand the persistence of the fantastic thinking that drives all this stuff is that the people most engaged with it turn out to be the same people who believe all kinds of other fantasies and wish-fulfillment stories. Case in point: the extreme right-wing protestors up in Canada have received almost all of their funding from...

One hundred years ago today, President Warren Harding installed a "Radio Phone" in his White House office. As the Tribune reported, "Navy radio experts commenced work to-day installing the latest scientific means of communication." Flash forward to now: Margaret Talbot argues that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom nobody ever elected to public office, is playing a long game to bring her right-wing Catholic ideology into the mainstream—or, at least, to enshrine it in the law. Times columnist Margaret...

Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle read through a week of newspapers to understand the hot topics of 100 years ago: First, there is news of the great Washington Naval Conference, which has commanded half of the front page since opening in mid-November. The idea of the conference is for the great powers to jointly reduce their armaments, so everyone can spend the money on better things. Inside the paper, we may spend some time browsing the ads, perhaps pausing over the homage to the REO Speed Wagon...

Today is the second anniversary of the first reported Covid-19 case, a fact I had forgotten when I booked my booster shot two weeks ago. Since 2019, about 5.8 million people have died of it, 822,000 of them here in the US. And it has also befuddled peoples' senses of time. NBC has a quiz to see if you remember when things happened in the last two years. I got 28, which embarrasses me. I really did forget all about Kanye West's divorce and Alex Trebek's death. Let's hope that next year is 2,022, and not...

Just two of note. First, on this day 21 years ago, Al Gore conceded the 2000 election to George W Bush. Good thing that made almost no difference at all in world events. Another anniversary is the one that happens every January 1st to works of art created a certain point in the past. A whole bunch of books, films, and musical compositions pass into the public domain as their copyrights expire, including: The Sun Also Rises and Winnie-the-Pooh, both published in 1926; The works of Louis Armstrong and Jim...

Just a few: What is Putin's real game with Ukraine right now? Julia Ioffe thinks it may just be R-E-S-P-E-C-T. After Bob Dole's death this week, Paul Krugman bemoans the disappearance of Republican grown-ups. A stupid-looking statute of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest finally came down. Germany's incoming government claims it wants to protect end-to-end encryption, a move Bruce Schneier likes. Bloomberg CityLab asks, why does US infrastructure cost so much? A rash of earthquakes shook the Pacific...

First, continuing the thread from this morning, (Republican) columnist Jennifer Rubin neatly sums up how the Republican justices on the Supreme Court seem poised to undo Republican Party gains by over-reaching: We are, in short, on the verge of a constitutional and political tsunami. What was settled, predictable law on which millions of people relied will likely be tossed aside. The blowback likely will be ferocious. It may not be what Republicans intended. But it is coming. Next up, Washington Post...

Even though the Court probably won't release its ruling in the Mississippi anti-abortion bill until June, just about everyone has the same understanding about how it will turn out. No one seems to believe abortion will remain legal in much of the US beyond the end of this term. My guess: Justice Amy Coney Barrett (R) writing the opinion for a 5-4 Court with an unusual number of concurrences and dissents. If the Court overturns or significantly curtails Roe v Wade, it will be one of the rare times that...

This is worth an hour of your time:

While running errands this morning I had the same thought I've had for the past three or so weeks: the trees look great this autumn. Whatever combination of heat, precipitation, and the gradual cooling we've had since the beginning of October, the trees refuse to give up their leaves yet, giving us cathedrals of yellow, orange, and red over our streets. And then I come home to a bunch of news stories that also remind me everything changes: Like most sentient humans, Adam Serwer feels no surprise (but...

The richest person in Illinois has bought one of the only remaining original copies of the US Constitution at auction for $43 million, and I think this says a lot about where America has gotten in the 21st Century: Citadel Founder Ken Griffin bought a first printing of the U.S. Constitution which sold for a record-setting $43.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction, the auction house announced Friday. Griffin said he will loan the document to Billionaire Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American...

In the "how old do I feel now" department for this week, fifty years ago today, Led Zeppelin released their fourth album: Led Zeppelin‘s fourth album is variously known as Led Zeppelin IV, Untitled, Four Symbols and Zoso, but its true title is formed by the four unpronounceable symbols chosen by each band member. Page did that to retaliate against writers, including several in Rolling Stone, who’d snubbed the band’s music: “After all we had accomplished, the press was still calling us a hype. So that is...

I'm not even a little surprised that Republican Glenn Youngkin beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the Viriginia governor's race last night. The margin of 80,000 votes is just over 2% of the vote, so Youngkin can't exactly claim he won in a landslide. And, let's face it, President Biden doesn't exactly have Obama levels of popularity today. (He's still more popular than the last guy. And Gerald Ford.) I worked in Virginia for six months in 2003, and I can tell you most of the state has, shall I say, not...

I'm troubled not only that it's already November but also that it's already 5pm. I've been heads-down coding all day and I've got a dress rehearsal tonight. I did, at least, flag these for later: The Times reports on how traffic stops turn deadly for a lot more people than one might think, and certainly a lot more than one would want. Josh Marshall worries about the proportion of the Republican Party who believe political violence solves all problems. I need to check out this new feature in Adobe...

On this day in 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon completed their survey of the disputed Maryland-Pennsylvania border, which became even more contentious in 1780 when Pennsylvania aboolished slavery. A group of surveyors started re-surveying the border in 2019; I can't find out whether they finished. Meanwhile, 255 years later, politics is still mostly local: Our professional women's basketball team, the Chicago Sky, won the WNBA championship yesterday. Chicago's recently-retired Inspector General...

In June 1943, a group of white American MPs attacked a company of Black American soldiers in the town of Bamber Bridge, England (near Blackpool). The English took the side of the Black soldiers: During the war, American soldiers accounted for the vast majority of black people in Britain. Britain’s population was overwhelmingly white, most of the country almost entirely so. Black Britons numbered around eight thousand in total, and were clustered in London, Liverpool and a few other ports. For the...

Oh boy: Voters have defeated billionaire, populist Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš through the simple process of banding together to kick him out, proof that an electorate can hold the line against strongmen. A school administrator in Texas told teachers that "if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also offer students access to a book from an 'opposing' perspective." Because Texas. Oakland Police should stop shooting Black men having medical emergencies, one would...

Former Chicago Fraternal Order of Police president Dean Angelo died yesterday of Covid-19. And yet the current FOP president, John Catanzara, has promised to sue the City over the requirement that police officers either show proof of vaccination by Friday or go on a twice-a-week testing regimen if they want to keep getting paid: "It literally has been like everything else with this mayor the last two and a half years," said FOP President John Catanzara. "Do it or else because I said so."In a social...

While I wait for a continuous-integration pipeline to finish (with success, I hasten to add), working a bit later into the evening than usual, I have these articles to read later: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Lib-Papineau) called a snap election to boost his party, but pissed off enough people that almost nothing at all changed. Margaret Talbot calls out the State of Mississippi on the "errors of fact and judgment" in its brief to the Supreme Court about its draconian abortion law. Julia...

It's another beautiful September afternoon, upon which I will capitalize when Cassie and I go to a new stop on the Brews & Choos Project after work. At the moment, however, I am refactoring a large collection of classes that for unfortunate reasons don't support automated testing, and looking forward to a day of debugging my refactoring Monday. Meanwhile: Melody Schreiber praises the "radical honesty" of President Biden's new mask mandate, while Josh Marshall praises its good politics. Andrew Sullivan...

I have opened these on my Surface at work, but I'll have to read them at home: The City of Chicago has sued Grubhub and Doordash for deceptive practices. Sue Halpern asks, "Why is Facebook suddenly afraid of the FTC?" Paul Krugman worries that California voters might destroy their own economic success if they remove Governor Gavin Newsom from office next week. Josh Marshall fisks Robert Kagan's opinion piece on the history of the Afghanistan war. Ezra Klein says, "Let's not pretend that the way we...

Chicago & Northwestern Station, 9 August 1971: Approximately the same location, 23 August 2021: The station was demolished in 1984 and replaced with Citicorp Center.

Stories from the usual suspects: Sweden's Prime Minister abruptly resigned Sunday, saying it's for the benefit of his center-left party. Following Andrew Cuomo's resignation, Kathy Hochul became the first female governor of New York State this morning just after midnight. The Capitol Police have cleared the unnamed officer who shot domestic terrorist Ashli Babbit as she tried to force her way into the Speaker's Lobby on January 6th, adding that the shooting likely saved many other lives. Economist Paul...

Eugene Wesley Roddenberry would have been 100 years old today. Star Trek and NASA have a livestream today to celebrate. In other news: Guardian UK Washington correspondent David Smith highlights White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki's ability to expertly destroy Fox News reporter Peter Doocy. T-Mobile has suffered its sixth known data disclosure attack in four years, this time losing control over as many as 40 million customer records. New Republic's Scott Stern profiles former Monsanto lawyer Clarence...

Eric Schnurer outlines the alarming similarities between our present and Rome's past; specifically, the end of the Republic in 54 BCE: History isn’t destiny, of course; the demise of the Roman Republic is a point of comparison—not prediction. But the accelerating comparisons nonetheless beg the question: If one were to make a prediction, what comes next? What might signal the end of democracy as we know it?  There is, it turns out, an easy answer at hand. While there is no precise end date to the...

The Afghan government—or whatever approximation of a government they actually had—has fallen as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as the Taliban took Kabul earlier today: Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the Afghan National Reconciliation Council, confirmed earlier reports that Ghani had left Afghanistan. “He left Afghanistan in a hard time, God hold him accountable,” Abdullah, a longtime rival of Ghani's, said in an online video. Ghani’s team confirmed the departure to CNBC. The Taliban...

Today is the 40th birthday of the IBM 5150—better known as the IBM PC: It wasn't that long before the August 1981 debut of the IBM PC that an IBM computer often cost as much as $9 million and required an air-conditioned quarter-acre of space and 60 people to run and keep it loaded with instructions. The IBM PC changed all that. It was a very small machine that could not only process information faster than those ponderous mainframes of the 1960s but also hook up to the home TV set, process text and...

Amanda Mull examines why. Because consumer identities are constructed by external forces, [historian Susan Strasser, the author of Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market] said, they are uniquely vulnerable, and the people who hold them are uniquely insecure. If your self-perception is predicated on how you spend your money, then you have to keep spending it, especially if your overall class status has become precarious, as it has for millions of middle-class people in the past...

Just a couple of articles that caught my interest this morning: Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann warns us "the signal of climate change has emerged from the noise." The BBC examines the cost of hosting the Olympics, as The Economist wonders whether cities should bother hosting them. New Republic reviews a book by John Tresch about Edgar Allan Poe's—how does one say?—farcical and tragic misunderstanding of science. Eugene Williams finally got a monument yesterday, at Lincoln Cemetery in Blue...

I know, two days in a row I can't be arsed to write a real blog post. Sometimes I have actual work to do, y'know? The Economist argues that when the world gets 3°C hotter, nowhere will be safe. The New York Times predicts where heat-related deaths will rise when that happens. Jennifer Rubin gives President Biden high marks for his first six months in office. Sophia McClennen explains "why it's (almost) impossible to argue with the right" while Gary Abernathy demonstrates the problem. The National Labor...

I've just yesterday finished Charles Dickens' Hard Times, his shortest and possibly most-Dickensian novel. I'm still thinking about it, and I plan to discuss it with someone who has studied it in depth later this week. I have to say, though, for a 175-year-old novel, it has a lot of relevance for our situation today. It's by turns funny, enraging, and strange. On a few occasions I had to remind myself that Dickens himself invented a particular plot device that today has become cliché, which I also found...

Via Bloomberg CityLab and Block Club Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago started a project in 2017 to chart the "displacements of people and struggles over land, housing, and community in the city of Chicago:" The issue of displacement and the efforts to stop it, in fact, has been present in Uptown for nearly 200 years. That history — in the words of the people who were displaced — is now being recounted through a new University of Illinois Chicago research project. “In general, it’s poor...

Yale history professor Timothy Snyder warns that "memory laws" recently passed in several Republican-held states bear a strong resemblance to similar laws supported by horrifying regimes: After the Soviet Union came to an end in 1991, citizens of a newly independent Ukraine began commemorating the dead of the 1932-33 famine, which they call the Holodomor. In 2006, the Ukrainian Parliament recognized the events in question as a genocide. In 2008, the Russian Duma responded with a resolution that provided...

The two most recent US Supreme Court appointees may have agreed with the moderate justices on a couple of issues this term, but as the last opinions come out this morning, they have reminded us that the Republican Party's anti-democratic policies remain their top priorities. Despite no evidence of retail election fraud, in 2016 Arizona's Republican majority enacted a law making it a crime to collect ballots from voters. Many voters in Arizona and elsewhere have difficulty making it to the polls, and in...

Brandi Levy, a 19-year-old student from Pennsylvania, won her appeal to the US Supreme Court after being suspended from cheerleading for a year after Snapchatting the above sentiment: She sent the message on a Saturday from the Cocoa Hut, a convenience store popular with teenagers. Though Snapchat messages are meant to vanish not long after they are sent, another student took a screenshot and showed it to her mother, a coach. The school suspended Ms. Levy from cheerleading for a year, saying the...

Cassie and I headed up to Tyranena Brewing in Lake Mills, Wis., yesterday to hang out with family. Today, other than a trip to the grocery and adjacent pet store where Cassie picked out an "indestructible" toy that now lies in tatters on the couch, we've had a pretty relaxing Sunday. I thought I'd take a break from Hard Times to queue up some stuff to read tomorrow at lunch: Joni Mitchell and friends discuss her album Blue, which came out 50 years ago this week. National Geographic investigated a...

Oh, to be a dog. Cassie is sleeping comfortably on her bed in my office after having over an hour of walks (including 20 minutes at the dog park) so far today. Meanwhile, at work we resumed using a bit of code that we put on ice for a while, and I promptly discovered four bugs. I've spent the afternoon listening to Cassie snore and swatting the first one. Meanwhile, in the outside world, life continues: Ukrainian police arrested members of the Cl0p ransomware gang, seizing money and cars along with the...

As much fun as Cassie and I have had over the last few days, the news around the world didn't stop: After 448 days, Illinois will finally reopen fully on Friday. Security expert Tarah Wheeler, writing on Schneier.com, warns that our weapons systems have frightening security vulnerabilities. Fastly's content-delivery network (CDN) collapsed this morning, taking down The New York Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg News, and other major properties; no word yet on the cause, but we can guess. About 12,000...

The deployment I concluded yesterday that involved recreating production assets in an entirely new Azure subscription turned out much more boring (read: successful) than anticipated. That still didn't stop me from working until 6pm, but by that point everything except some older demo data worked just fine. That left a bit of a backup of stuff to read, which I may try to get through at lunch today: Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski (aka "Coach K"), the winningest basketball coach in NCAA...

The northern hemisphere started meteorological summer at midnight local time today. Chicago's weather today couldn't have turned out better. Unfortunately, I go into the office on the first and last days of each week, so I only know about this from reading weather reports. At my real job, we have a release tomorrow onto a completely new Azure subscription, so for only the second time in 37 sprints (I hope) I don't expect a boring deployment. Which kind of fits with all the decidedly-not-boring news that...