The Daily Parker

We woke up in the US to two major stories about the planet, one with a short-term effect and the other with a long-term effect.

The acute problem: a 7.1 mw earthquake in central California caused only minor damage and no fatalities because it happened in the middle of nowhere. But people reported feeling it from Phoenix to Sacramento:

Southern California was jolted by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake at 8:19 p.m. on Friday one day after the region was hit by a 6.4 quake, the USGS reports.

The epicenter was 10.5 miles away from Ridgecrest, Calif., and there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. According to the USGS, the quake was felt as far north as San Jose and as far south as parts of Mexico.

Thursday's quake struck at 10:33 a.m., and was the largest temblor to strike the region in 20 years, until Friday night. According to the USGS, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake is 11 times stronger than the 6.4 earthquake.

Meanwhile, parts of Alaska got up to 32°C Thursday, breaking records and (probably) allowing methane to leak from melting permafrost farther north:

At 5 p.m. local time Thursday, Anchorage reached 32°C for the first time in the state’s recorded history, topping the previous record set at Anchorage International Airport of 29°C on June 14, 1969.

Kenai and King Salmon, Alaska, both hit a new all-time high temperature record of 31.7°C, according to the National Weather Service. The previous high in Kenai was 30.6°C on June 26, 1953 and June 18, 1903. Palmer, Alaska, reached 31°C, matching its previous record of 31°C on May 27, 2011.

The state has been battling several wildfires, with a dense smoke advisory in effect until noon local time on Saturday for the interior Kenai Peninsula, including the cities of Kenai, Soldotna, Homer,and Cooper Landing, the National Weather Service said. Smoke from the Swan Lake fire will reduce visibility to a quarter mile or less at times, the weather service said, with the worst conditions taking place overnight through the morning hours.

Wildfires, particulates, subliming methane gas...yeah, even though the earthquake has gotten more press today, the heat in Alaska actually matters more.

Beloved humor magazine of my childhood and my father's Mad Magazine will effectively end its 67-year run with the August issue:

Sources tell [The Hollywood Reporter] that after issue 9, MAD will no longer be sold on newsstands and will only be available through comic book shops as well as mailed to subscribers. After issue 10, there will no longer be new content in subsequent issues save for the end-of-year specials (those will be all-new). Beginning with issue 11, the magazine will only feature previously published content — classic and best-of nostalgic fare — from its massive fault of the past 67 years. DC, however, will also continue to publish MAD books and special collections.

The venerable humor magazine was founded in 1952 by a group of editors led by Harvey Kurtzman. Although it began as a comic book, bimonthly issues were published and became the norm for the satirical content. MAD, with it's always memorable covers featuring the gap-toothed Alfred E. Neuman, has been highly influential on successive generations of comedians, artists, writers and performers.

Fweep. So long, and thanks for all the jokes.

That's what screenwriter Jeff Greenfield, writing for Politico, says:

Celebrations of the Fourth do not tend to benefit both parties equally, and here, Trump may well be demonstrating his instinctive grasp of which way a big event tends to nudge the populace. In 2011, two academics who studied the political effect of Fourth of July festivities concluded that: "Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation's political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party. … The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century, [so] there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican Party.”

For all that, history also suggests there's good reason that his plan is rubbing people the wrong way. For one, it really is rare; it's far more common for presidents to vacate Washington on the Fourth of July, or to remain at the White House, than to insert themselves into the proceedings.

Someone who can say of himself that he has been treated worse than any president in history—four of whom were assassinated—has an impressively unique understanding of his own role in the American story, to say the least.

NPR says the event will cost taxpayers millions. And Rick Atkinson takes a broader view, comparing us on our 243rd anniversary of independence from Britain to Britain of that time.

History buffs Daniel Pogorzelski and Jacob Kaplan got permission to enter a space previously occupied by former Chicago alderman. They discovered that no one had ever cleaned the space out after the alderman died:

Longtime city clerk and former 35th Ward Ald. John Marcin, one of former Mayor Richard J. Daley’s closest political allies, had worked out of the building for years. There were rumors all of his stuff was still in there, virtually untouched since his death in 1984.

Pogorzelski and Kaplan, writers and editors for local history website Forgotten Chicago, tried for years to get ahold of the property owner, but they struck out each time.

It took awhile, but finally in 2014, with the help of Avondale Neighborhood Association President Liz Muscare, they got in.

And, much to their surprise, the rumors were true: Marcin’s office at 3534 W. Diversey Ave. had been left untouched. Old photos, campaign literature (some dating back to the 1930s when Marcin ran for congress), meticulously compiled scrapbooks, oil paintings and even neon signs were all sitting there, collecting dust.

Last week, Pogorzelski and Kaplan packed it all up in a U-Haul and delivered it to the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Richard J. Daley Library. The two donated the collection in hopes of deepening Chicago’s understanding of local politics.

“There’s all of the appointment books during his time as city clerk, the people he met with. You can kinda see how the city operated at that time,” Kaplan said.

“It’s not just ephemera. It’s stuff he used as city clerk and alderman that people will find really informative.”

For years, I thought I was going to be an historian, even going so far as to take the GRE and meet with a few East Coast history departments during my last two years in college. This kind of documentary bonanza can make someone's career. I'm glad it's going to an organization that can use it.

Just one thing, though: who paid the rent on the building for 30 years?

Starting today, my state has some new laws:

• The gasoline tax doubled to the still-too-low 10¢ per litre. Oh my stars. How could they. Ruination. (You will detect more ironic tone if you read my post from yesterday about how much gasoline I use.) For comparison with other OECD countries, the UK adds 57.95p (73.3¢) per litre, Australia gets 41.2¢ (28.6¢ US), and even Canada levies 45¢ (34¢ US). But hey, we doubled the tax, so now we can pay for our state pension deficit fixing our infrastructure.
• Cigarette taxes went up to $2.98 a pack, and e-cigarettes now have a 15% excise. Also, we raised the legal age to buy tobacco to 21, though you can still have sex and get a drivers license at 17 and sign a contract at 18, so kids still have lots of ways to ruin their lives. (Former governor Bruce Rauner vetoed these measures last year.)
• Schools now have to provide 5 clock-hours of instruction to count as a "school day." Having gone to Illinois schools as a kid that provided 6 to 7, it's hard for me to grasp that until today, schools only had to provide 4.
• Finally, our $40 billion budget took effect today, the first time in 5 years that a state budget has taken effect on the first day of the fiscal year.

This is what happens when the party that wants to govern takes power from the party that wants to shower gifts on their rich friends. More on that in my next post.

I bought my car, a Toyota Prius Prime plug-in hybrid, on December 23rd. It took almost 188 days—more than six months—before I finally put gas in the thing.

Friday morning, on my way to Toronto, I put 34.8 L into the car after driving it 2183.6 km since the dealer delivered her. That's an average efficiency of 1.6 L/100 km, and an operating cost of 1.4¢/km.

For comparison, the last six months I owned my last car, she was getting 13.3 L/100 km and had an operating cost (because of maintenance as well as gas) of 52.9¢/km.

The whole trip to Toronto, during which the car ran almost exclusively on gas instead of battery, used only 73 L of fuel and averaged 4.3 L/100 km.

I think it was a good purchase.

Also, let me just say that adaptive cruise control makes long-distance drives a ton easier.

Significant changes in the northern jet stream has caused serious problems for Europe and South Asia:

Unusual jet stream behavior has been recorded every three to five years since 2000 — in 2003, 2006, 2010, 2015 and 2018 — turning what scientists initially thought could be an isolated abnormality into what appears to be a pattern, [Jeff Masters, co-founder and director of meteorology for Weather Underground] said.

What is surprising to scientists now is that the wavier-than-normal jet stream has returned for a second year in a row — the first time that has been observed, said Kai Kornhuber, a climate scientist at The Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City.

“I wouldn’t have expected this situation to return so quickly after the extreme summer last year,” Kornhuber said. “It gives me the chills to see this evolving in real time again. It’s a really worrying development.”

This weather pattern brought temperatures over 45°C to France earlier this week:

The highest reliable June temperature previously recorded in France was 41.5°C on 21 June 2003. The country’s highest ever temperature, recorded at two separate locations in southern France on 12 August during the same 2003 heatwave, was 44.1°C.

“At our local Potsdam station, operating since 1893, we’re set to break the past June record by about 2C,” tweeted Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Eastern parts of Germany, including Berlin, are already experiencing their hottest June on record.

“Weather data show that heatwaves and other weather extremes are on the rise in recent decades,” he said. “The hottest summers in Europe since the year AD1500 all occurred since the turn of the last century: 2018, 2010, 2003, 2016, 2002.”

Monthly records were now falling five times as often as they would in a stable climate, Rahmstorf said, adding this was “a consequence of global warming caused by the increasing greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil and gas”.

And the band played on...

My plan for an 8-hour drive from Chicago to Toronto yesterday did not survived contact with the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). It turns out, coming into Toronto from the west during rush hour on Friday before a three-day weekend may involve traffic. So it was, in fact, a 10½-hour drive.

So the secondary plan of wandering around the Rogers Centre, getting a bunch of photos, hearing both "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "O Canada," and then watching the Blue Jays beat the Royals, didn't quite work out. I arrived at my seat during the top of the 6th inning, well after both national anthems, with the Royals up by two, and didn't get any of the shots or wandering that I'd planned.

The Blue Jays did win, though, thanks to four Toronto home runs in the last three innings. And this is in a dome; it's not like the wind was blowing out.

Today: breakfast in Toronto, dinner in Sawyer, Mich., and probably straight to bed when I get home. Tomorrow: photos from the game, a new NuGet package from Inner Drive Technology, and maybe some Pride Parade viewing. Or fleeing the area. Haven't decided yet.

Articles that piqued my interest this morning:

• O'Hare's on-time performance is slipping.
• David Ignatius thinks we're on a death trip as a country, while Dana Milibank reminds us that demanding subservience gets the president incompetence instead.
• West Loop restaurant Aviary suspended a server after the Secret Service arrested her for allegedly spitting on Eric Trump. (I would have just booed him.)
• Josh Marshall analyzes Joe Biden within the context of the late-20th-century crime wave.
• The New Yorker explains why and how weather forecasting keeps getting better.
• The Atlantic's Adam Chandler thinks McDonald's restaurants have become, for many people, the public square...and that's OK.
• Feargus O'Sullivan cries "Death to Livability!"

Back to writing software.

NPR and other outlets reported earlier this week that the far-north Norwegian island of Sommaroy planned to abolish timekeeping:

If the 350 residents of Sommaroy get their way, the clocks will stop ticking and the alarms will cease their noise. A campaign to do away with timekeeping on the island has gained momentum as Norway's parliament considers the island's petition.

Kjell Ove Hveding spearheaded the No Time campaign and presented his petition to a member of parliament on June 13. During the endless summer days, islanders meet up at all hours and the conventions of time are meaningless, Hveding says.

Only, a subsequent press release admitted the whole thing was a marketing campaign:

NRK.no revealed today that the initiative to make Sommarøy a time-free zone was in fact a carefully planned marketing campaign, hatched by the government-owned Innovation Norway.

The story has been covered in more than 1650 articles in 1479 different media, including CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Independent, Time, El País, La Repubblica, Vanity Fair and Der Spiegel, potentially reaching 1.2 billion people. The value of the coverage is estimated to 11.4 million USD - a pretty good return on investment for Innovation Norway, which spent less than 60,000 USD on the campaign.

Paul Koning, one of the moderators of the IANA Time Zone group--the group that maintains the Time Zone Database used in millions of computers, phones, and applications worldwide, including The Daily Parker--was not pleased:

That's very disturbing. It's problematic enough that not all governments give timely notice about time zone rule changes.

But if in addition we have to deal with government agencies supplying deliberately false information, the TZ work becomes that much more difficult.

Difficult indeed. The group has to deal with dictators changing time zones with almost no notice, political groups attacking the spellings of time zone identifiers, and all sorts of hassles. For a government agency to do this on purpose is not cool.