The Daily Parker

We've got a classic weather event rolling through Chicago right now:

What makes it atypical is the low pressure over northeast Minnesota (980 mB) and the tight pressure gradient around it. So while the temperature at IDTWHQ has gone up 7.2°C (13°F) in five hours—2°C in the last hour alone—we've also got a bit of wind. O'Hare reports southwest winds at 16 kts with peak one-minute winds of 39 kts, which qualifies as a fresh gale.

But you see that blue line curving through Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wyoming? That cold front will slide through Chicago overnight, bringing us below freezing for a couple of days.

For what it's worth, the normal temperature range for March 1st is -3.1°C to 4.9°C. We should get that entire range between 8pm and 3am tonight.

So this isn't really that unusual for Chicago. March has the most variable weather of any month here. That's why we dress in layers.

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 rest of the world:

• The OAFPOTUS will likely get nowhere with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for the same reasons no one else has: Putin doesn't negotiate in good faith.
• Former US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman explains how Hungarian president Viktor Orbán and his allies have enriched themselves at the country's expense, as a warning about what is starting to happen over here.
• French president Emmanuel Macron had to correct the OAFPOTUS more than once in a press conference yesterday that I'm sure one of them remembered and the other did not.
• Clown Prince Elon Musk stepped on a rake over the weekend in part because his prank email to every Federal worker could very likely cause some Justice Department lawyers to face sanctions.
• James Fallows explains how Musk's Maoist vandalism of the US Government will have catastrophic consequences in aviation sooner rather than later.
• Will the known charlatan Dr Mehmet Oz truly divest himself from his financial interests in Medicare- and Medicaid-related companies now that he's been tapped to head the Federal agency that runs both? Ah, ha ha, ha. How droll.
• Chicago Public Media has come out as strongly as they can against Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's proposed $830 million bond sale. (I mentioned the bond sale last week.)
• According to Newsweek, a poll found Johnson's approval rating at 6.6%, lower than Rod Blagojevich's approval when the legislature removed him from office in 2009. (A Daily Parker reader joked that Johnson is now less popular than chlamydia.)
• Medium-term inflation expectations in the US have surged to levels we haven't seen this century, prompting Paul Krugman to ask why the markets don't seem to care (hint: Upton Sinclair).
• Craft distilleries in Illinois have their hopes pinned on a bill making its way through the state legislature that would remove restrictions on how they can operate tasting rooms. I'm also hoping the bill passes.

Finally, in February 1852, a man calling himself David Kennison died in Chicago. He had clamed to be 115 years old, participated in the Boston Tea Party, and hobnobbed with the great and good in the early days of the Republic. And in the proud tradition of people giving undue acclaim to total charlatans, the entire city turned out for his funeral—173 years ago yesterday.

First, the temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ has gotten up to 10.5°C for the first time since 3:33 pm on Monday December 9th. If it goes up just 0.1°C more, that will make today the warmest day since Monday November 25th. Fingers crossed.

Second, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency returned to DNS this morning. Someone at the Department of Defense must have noticed that the government's maps had vanished and was able to get the DNS entries restored. In consequence, I have downloaded everything through Romania, imported everything through Comoros (except China; that's importing right now), and the automatic indexer has captured 274,194 new places for a total gazetteer size of 2,668,565 places. That will rise dramatically later today; there are 2.05 million records for China, of which the import tool has already saved 1 million.

Updates as conditions warrant.

Update: As of 2:29 pm the temperature hit 10.6°C for the first time since 1:49 pm on Monday November 25th. Today is officially the warmest day of the 2024-25 winter season!

Garmin periodically challenges its users to get active. About once a month they put out a distance challenge for walkers. This month, the challenge was to do a 4.8 km walk this weekend. Cassie and I just did that, as it turns out Jimmy's Pizza Cafe is conveniently 2.6 km away. It helps that we haven't had temperatures this warm (4.0°C) since just after 1pm on the 3rd.

Butters, however, did not like getting left behind. According to my security camera, she spent 18 minutes crying by the front door, took a quick stroll around my lower level, then went back to cry by the front door for another 10 minutes before going upstairs to cry in the living room. She gave up for a while, then returned to the front door for another 15 minutes, alternately crying and sitting quietly. I haven't watched the whole 54 minutes but I'd bet she was quiescent for less than 10.

I am sorry for my neighbors. Fortunately, the neighbor to the north is out of town. And frankly, the neighbors to the south have a 3-year-old boy who makes far more noise in the aggregate than any dogs I've ever owned (or looked after).

Tomorrow I'll go back to complaining about world events. Right now, I'm taking both dogs and my friend Kat's new book to Spiteful Brewing.

Butters, possibly traumatized by Cassie and me leaving her alone for almost half an hour yesterday, has decided to stake out my office:

Incidentally, this is what Cassie and I walked past in the local park yesterday:

We've had progressively warmer days since the temperature bottomed out Monday morning. We might even get above freezing today! I hope so, because I need a 5 km walk to meet a Garmin challenge this weekend. (Cassie will help with that; Butters, not so much.)

Time got away from me this afternoon. I might read all this tomorrow morning:

• Nicholas Kristof says the Musk/OAFPOTUS administration prostrating to Russia will make the world more dangerous. So does Alex Shepard.
• Jennifer Rubin says that the Musk/OAFPOTUS administration will break the government, and therefore own it.
• Anne Applebaum decries Vice President JD Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference.
• Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced his retirement, now that he got everything he wanted.
• The Chicago City Council narrowly voted against lowering the city speed limit to 25 mph (40 km/h), despite evidence that more people will die.
• American Airlines is adding 22% more flights from O'Hare this summer. Yay!
• Hurricane, the most-decorated dog in the United States Secret Service, has died at age 15.

Finally, On Tour Brewing, a Brews & Choos Top 10 brewery, will close this spring. A new brewery and a resurrection of one of my favorite pre-pandemic bars, Links Tavern, will open in its place. Can't wait!

The US meeting with Russia and not Ukraine to discuss the fate of Ukraine seems unmistakably similar to the Molotov-Ribbentrop discussions in August 1939 that divvied up Poland between the Nazis and Stalin's Russia. The meeting in Riyadh between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov seems more focused on a colonial-style mineral extraction concession for the US than on Ukrainian sovereignty. This comes just days after Vice President JD Vance channeled UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (a known Nazi sympathizer) in a speech in Munich just before meeting with actual Nazis.

("'I never thought leopards would eat my face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."—Adrian Bott)

Meanwhile, back home:

• The State Department has decided to cancel most of its news subscriptions, because why would our diplomats need to know what's going on in the world?
• Fortunately (for now), the OAFPOTUS violently dismantling the US government's bureaucracy has gotten in the way of him dismantling the regulations that he claims to hate, further showing (a) how fundamentally stupid he is and (b) how it has nothing to do with regulations.
• Apparently jealous of the OAFPOTUS's successful raiding of public funds for his own benefit, Argentine president Javier Milei and his friends appear to have raked in close to $100 million in what looks like a classic memecoin rug-pull.
• The Chicago City Council may vote today on a proposal to borrow $830 m in an issue that would not pay back principal until 2045, a structure that (a) would result in a constant cash-flow to the private investors of something like $80 m per year and (b) cost the city $2 bn once we finally pay it all back. It would be the dumbest thing the city's government has done since the parking-meter scam.
• Researchers have determined that both work-from-home and return-to-office have drawbacks and benefits, and that mandating all of one or the other isn't great for any company. (But we knew that, even if some CEOs didn't.)
• Beware anyone asking you to send a code that you see on the screen; this is a device-code authentication attack, which is increasing in popularity among your finer criminals.

Finally, one of my least-favorite Brews & Choos stops has threatened planned to open a new brewpub in Irving Park. Crust Brewing in Rosemont wants to bring the same hellish experience to the former Leader Bar at 3000 W Irving Park Rd. Yes, this is a B&C-qualifying location, but no, I won't review it until I run out of other things to review.

It seems like so much of the news I've read today concerns people behaving stupidly, but thinking they're behaving intelligently. Sadly, it's mostly the same group of people:

• James Fallows makes it clear the aviation accidents over the past few weeks are not the Administration's fault—but the ones a year from now will certainly be.
• Jeff Maurer likens Elon Musk's wrecking crew to the drunk and sleep-deprived Assemblée Nationale of 4 August 1789; you know, the one that led directly to the French Revolution.
• Josh Marshall theorizes that Musk has employed a bunch of 25-year-old incels to destroy the Government precisely because the infants have no fear of consequences.
• Paul Krugman thanks the OAFPOTUS for "making microbes great again."
• Economist Claudia Goldin has discovered an inverse relationship between fertility and sharing housework, which columnist Heather Long explains is the reason so many people in rich countries have decided not to have kids.
• Cranky Flier can't countenance Southwest Airlines making its first layoffs in history, and puts the blame squarely on the private equity firm they partnered with.

Finally, people in Bridgeport and other Southwest Side neighborhoods have fallen in love with a rotund beaver who lives with her family on the Chicago River. Some have suggested naming the beaver Lori Heavyfoot or Dam Ryan. I hope she doesn't meet up with one of the city's other charismatic megafauna...

The temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ has gone up all day, just surpassing yesterday's afternoon high of -11.3°C:

Of course, yesterday's actual high was -10.3°C, at midnight, and we won't hit that again until tomorrow. But by Friday we'll be able to walk outside without losing extremities, and by Sunday it'll even be above freezing. And then, in 10 days: spring!

There is one advantage to Arctic air over Chicago, though: the air is really clear.

Winter ends two weeks from tomorrow, but climate science and meteorology can only study nature, not command it. That explains why, despite ample sunshine, the temperature at IDTWHQ has stayed around -7°C since it leveled out this morning, and promises to shed another 8-10 degrees tonight. Then we're in for a few blasts of cold interspersed with warm days and some snow here and there for about a week before it consistently warms up.

Elsewhere in the cold, cold world:

• The Senate confirmed the unqualified and probably demented Robert F Kennedy, Jr., as HHS Secretary on a 52-48 vote, with Mitch McConnell (R-KY) crossing the aisle to vote against him.
• In yet another Orwellian display of up-is-downism, Elon Musk and his army of crybabies have started labeling ordinary journalism as "doxxing."
• Josh Marshall says the OAFPOTUS used his order to pause the corruption prosecution of New York mayor Eric Adams to essentially become the unelected mayor of New York—at least until everyone ordered to file the motion to do so has quit.
• Michael Tomasky urges Democrats to hit "economics, culture, and media" in order to take back the legislature next year. Trissie McMillan Cottom agrees.
• A jury convicted former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) of 10 counts of corruption but acquitted him or deadlocked on about half of the charges. (Who says only Illinois governors get all the fun of public corruption?)

Finally, Google has suspended comments on the label "Gulf of America" because of all the one-star reviews people gave the body of water. I realize Google just follows the USGS on American place names (same as Weather Now), but still, they could have slow-walked it (as Weather Now is doing).