President Jimmy Carter turned 100 today, making him the first former president to do so. James Fallows has a bit of hagiography on his blog today, and the State of Georgia has declared today "Jimmy Carter Day." I hope I make it to 100, too, but I don't expect the State of Illinois to declare that day a public holiday.
In other news:
Finally, yesterday the UK turned off its last operating coal-fired power plant, ending a 142-year run of burning coal to generate power. XKCD points out that in those 142 years, the UK burned the equivalent of about 3 inches of its land surface generating electricity.
And of course, I'll watch the Vice-Presidential Debate tonight at 9pm Eastern, but I don't plan to live-blog. Reactions tomorrow, though.
I can scarcely believe I took these 10 days ago, on Friday the 20th. I already posted about my walk from Borough Market back to King's X; this is where I started:
You can get a lovely snack there for just a few quid. In my case, a container of fresh olives, some bread, and some cheese set me back about £6. Next time, I'll try something from Mei Mei.
Later, I scored one of the rare pork baps at Southampton Arms. Someone else really wanted a bite, too:
Sorry, little guy, I can't give you any of this—oh darn I just dropped a bit of pork on the ground. (Lucky dog.)
Finally, this screen shot shows why I love Europe so much. (It's in French because I switched my phone's language settings to help practice while I was preparing for the trip.) The blue dot in the center-left shows where my train was at 20:06 France time (18:06 UTC) on Saturday the 21st. The stuff in the upper-right corner shows my phone's GPS utility. If you look at the left side of that box, you can see "Vitesse 303;" i.e., a speed of 303 km/h, or 190 mph. And that isn't even the train's top normal operating speed.
If we elect people in this country who actually care about climate change, we could have trains like that here, too. But given the proportion of the electorate who plan to vote for the convicted-felon rapist demented geriatric XPOTUS in five weeks, I am not optimistic.
Because I had a busy weekend, I had quite a full inbox this morning. After deleting the 85% of it that came from the Democratic Party and the Harris-Walz campaign (guys, you've already got my vote, FFS), I still had quite a few items of interest:
Finally, astronomers have found a rocky, Earth-sized planet orbiting a dying main-sequence white dwarf star, seemingly having survived the star's expansion during its red-giant phase. This suggests that our planet may last until the end of time itself. Life on Earth probably won't last more than a billion more years, but that's someone else's problem.
I meant to post more photos from my trip earlier this month, but I do have a full-time job and other obligations. Plus it took me a couple of days longer than usual to recover, which I blame squarely on the shitty hotel room I had for my first night causing a sleep deficit that I never recovered from.
I posted a couple of these already, but with crude, quick edits done on my phone. I think these treatments might be a little better.
Sunrise at O'Hare on the 18th:
The hills of Hampshire:
Invasive megafauna preparing to attack:
Why I decided to walk for 10 km through Hampshire in the first place:
The Grand Canal:
It might take a few days to get more of these done. I'll post more as I get to them.
The White Sox lost to the Detroit Tigers last night, their 121st loss of the season and the most losses in Major League Baseball history, to become the Greatest Losers of All Time:
After enjoying a three-game sweep of the struggling Angels to avoid history in front of their disgruntled home fans, the Sox went back to their losing ways Friday, falling for the 121st time to set a modern-day major-league record on the third-to-last day of the season.
The Sox had shared the loss record with the 1962 Mets since Sunday, and, harboring hopes of sweeping the Tigers to avoid breaking the mark, they sent their best pitcher to face Detroit in hopes of extending their winning streak to four. Garrett Crochet, making his 32nd start in his first season as a starter, tossed four scoreless innings to do his part. The All-Star left-hander, who didn’t pitch more than four innings after June, struck out six, walked one and allowed four hits.
“No real emotions,” Crochet said. “Obviously, it sucks. We put ourselves in this position early on. We had a bad April [6-24 in March and April]. We just never dug ourselves out of that hole. We are where we are because of the way we played, which sucks. But that’s just all it is.”
The Sox will go into October finished with baseball and standing alone as the losingest team in the modern era. Only the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who were 20-134, lost more games.
So only one question remains: can they make it 123?
Two of the worst teams in baseball played their last home games of the season yesterday, one of them for the last time in their current home.
The Chicago White Sox improbably swept the Los Angeles Angels at home this week, holding their season losses at 120 and their Tragic Number at 1. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Morrissey can't see how this gets better next year:
When a franchise sets the modern-era record for losses in a season, which the Sox are on the verge of doing, it’s going to see fans secede from the union. Especially Sox fans, who are equal measure discerning and crusty.
Assuming the Sox will be bad next season, too — call it a hunch — that will be three straight seasons of awfulness. That’s not a generation of lost fans, but it’s not a blip, either.
The Sox are in the middle of their second rebuild in seven years and have very little to show for it except a chase for the record for losses (120) set by the 1962 Mets, an expansion team. The short-term damage has been obvious. The Sox have the fourth-lowest home attendance in baseball (17,955). The long-term damage? The fans the Sox might have had but never will.
Three thousand kilometers west, the Oakland Athletics yesterday ended their 56-year residence at the ugliest ball park in the Major Leagues, Oakland Coliseum:
Many clad in green and gold came to the Coliseum's parking lot to tailgate hours before first pitch Thursday afternoon and filled the ballpark with cheers for the team and jeers for A's owner John Fisher, who is moving a team that came to Oakland in 1968 and won four World Series during its time in the Bay Area.
The A's are moving for at least three years starting in 2025 to Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, the home of the San Francisco Giants' Triple-A minor league affiliate Sacramento River Cats, before a planned move to Las Vegas for a stadium the team hopes will be ready by 2028.
Oakland took a 3-0 lead in the early innings and held on for the victory with All-Star closer Mason Miller getting the save with a groundout to end the A's tenure in Oakland. After the game, the players and coaches all came out on the field to raise their caps to the fans and stadium staff.
At least the A's won, though their 69-90 record for the year so far won't inspire any Norse sagas. The White Sox, on the other hand, will inspire us for generations.
The African American Sports & Entertainment Group plans to buy the Oakland Coliseum and its surrounding parking lots for a new mixed-use development.
It took me a little bit this morning to get back into things, but once I figured out what my notes meant I managed to finish two whole features today. And I still had time to check these out:
That's it. Just three stories. I really didn't have time to read much else. But I did have time to give Cassie some pats, which I will resume doing in just a few minutes.
I had the opportunity, but not the energy, to bugger off from Heathrow for an hour and a half or so connecting from Marseille. Instead I found a vacant privacy pod in the Galleries South lounge, and had a decent lunch. Plus I'm about to have a G&T.
I've loaded up my Surface with a few articles, but I really only want to call attention to one of them. Bruce Schneier has an op-ed in the New York Times with his perspective on the Hezbollah pager attack and supply-chain vulnerabilities in general. I may even read that before turning my Surface off.
Next stop: Chicago, home, and dog.
I've arrived in Marseille, after a short but perfectly pleasant trip from Aix-en-Provence by basic commuter train. I didn't realize the Gare Marseille was on a hill, however, so it took me a few minutes to sort out how to get to ground level.
Just going to dump three photos from yesterday and this morning, then figure out what to explore in the 2 hours of daylight I have left. The principal goal: scoring a slice of the famed Marseille-style pizza that the New York Times assures me is second-best in Europe after Napoli.
Anyway, this is the view across the street from my friends' house, which they built at the edge of their small village about 40 km north of Aix:
We drove for a bit after lunch to Lourmarin for ice cream and a stroll:
Back in Aix, we had some pretty heavy rain come through overnight, leaving behind clear blue skies and lots of (not too hot) sun:
Once I get back to Chicago I'll have the tools to organize and process my photos better. Now, though: exploring Marseille.
Other than the hotel debacle, I'm having a pretty good time in the UK. Yesterday I went out to Berkhamsted to do Walk #1 in The Home Counties from London by Train Outstanding Circular Walks (Pathfinder Guides):
I followed that up today by getting lunch in Borough Market, then walking back to King's X:
(The maps are in French because I set my phone to French to practice in advance of my arrival in France tomorrow.)
The weather yesterday and today has been spectacular, to boot.
Another nice bit of news: I'm now less than 1,000 miles from lifetime Platinum status on American Airlines (with courtesy Sapphire status on another dozen airlines):
That should flip over 2 million lifetime miles when I get back to Chicago.
And now: a shower, a quick kip, and (I really hope) a pork bap at the Southampton Arms.