The Daily Parker

Lunchtime link roundup:

• Dr Daniela J Lamas of Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston evaluates how age has affected President Biden and the convicted-felon XPOTUS, given that whoever wins in November has a high probability of being the oldest serving US President in history.
• Israel's highest court ruled that the IDF can, in fact, draft all the religious nutters who have avoided doing anything for the benefit of society since the country was founded. Perhaps this will help the country's crushing gloominess?
• A judge sentenced former Chicago alderman Ed Burke (D-14th) to two years in prison and ordered him to pay a $2m fine after Burke's conviction on charges relating to his 50-plus-year career of naked corruption. He becomes the 35th Chicago alderman convicted of corruption since 1973.
• A group of THC-infused drink manufacturers have sued the state of Iowa to prevent a law going into effect on Monday that would criminalize most of their products.
• The Regional Transportation Authority of Northern Illinois (RTA) has voted to create an all-access day pass that would allow unlimited travel on CTA, Pace, and Metra.

Finally, People for Bikes has consistently rated Chicago the worst major US city for biking, principally because of our 50 km/h speed limit. If only we'd lower it to 40 km/h, they say, Chicago would immediately jump in the ratings to something approaching its peers.

I may have my next Japanese itinerary, courtesy of Not Just Bikes:

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 than he had for the first. Take, as just one example, his fiscally illiterate idea to replace income taxes with tariffs.
• Megan McArdle argues in favor of eliminating the mortgage-interest deduction.
• Bruce Schneier essays on "the hacking of culture and the creation of socio-technical debt."
• Ronald Brownstein asserts that Chinatown, released 50 years ago Thursday, "explains 2020s America."
• New York City is looking for $5 billion to replace the section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that runs under the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, rather than looking for a way to remove it entirely.

Finally, the Post examined a Social Security Administration dataset yesterday that shows how baby names have converged on a few patterns in the last decade. If you think there are a lot of names ending in -son lately (Jason, Jackson, Mason, Grayson, Failson...), you're not wrong.

Imagine an overnight train from New York to Miami that takes 12 hours. China just opened a $165 train that does about the same thing:

From Hong Kong to Beijing, the overnight trip takes 12 hours 30 minutes, and it covers roughly the same distance as a flight from New York to Miami or Los Angeles to Dallas. It complements the 8 hour 15 minute day train that has run for years.

The overnight trip to Shanghai takes 11 hours. The corresponding day train takes just 7 hours 47 minutes.

We can have similar rail lines and options, if we choose to. The Federal Railroad Administration has in fact published plans that call for HSR service between cities of similar (or longer) distances. For example, the Midwest Regional Rail Plan calls for high-speed trains between St. Paul and Nashville, while the Southeast Regional Rail Plan calls for high-speed trains between Nashville and Orlando.

Together, the plans would create a single HSR line of about 1,500 miles. So, a family in St. Paul could board a sleeper train in the evening and be at Orlando’s Disney World by mid-morning the next day—rested and ready to go, instead of stressed out from driving and poorer from a hotel stay.

I will grant two things that make this a difficult problem for the US: the fifth amendment and our psychotic relationship with cars. The first requires that the government provides just compensation for any property it takes, and buying the land to create a grade-separated high-speed rail line would not be cheap. China just kicks people off their land.

The second is that we've spent a century subsidizing cars and building our physical environment around cars, which prevents even reasonable people from understanding the basic economics behind highways. (Or, if you're the Chicago Tribune editorial board, the basic understanding of how traffic works.)

Still, it frustrates me to no end that we're not even discussing it.

In the early autumn I'm going to get on a train in London, change in Paris, and get off the train in Marseille, which will take about 7 hours, depending on how tight I want to make the connection between Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon. I'll get to St Pancras about half an hour before the train, very likely from a hotel a few blocks away, and when I get off the train in Marseille, I'll have another walk of a block or two to that hotel. Contrast with my flight home from Marseille, which, including half an hour by transit to the Provence airport, customs, emigration in France and immigration into the UK, will take about the same length of time. And then I'll be at Heathrow, an hour from central London.

I once made it from central Richmond, Va., to a friend's apartment in Murray Hill, Manhattan, in just over 5 hours, door to door. So I know the US has the ability to build real high-speed trains. But will I ever see one in my lifetime?

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 explains why New York governor Kathy Hochul (D) slammed the brakes on New York City's congestion-pricing scheme. Elsewhere in this week's edition, Rebecca Traister asks, "How did Republican women end up like this?"
• An archaeological dig in Mount Vernon, Va., uncovered dozens of perfectly-preserved jugs of preserved cherries in what was once George Washington's cellar.

Finally, Taylor Swift fans have roundly rejected Ticketmaster's monopolistic gouging by flying to Europe to catch the Eras Tour, often saving so much money on tickets that it pays for their travel. I personally know one such Swiftie who took her honeymoon in Stockholm, where Swift played earlier this year. It turns out, Europe has stricter rules against the kind of parasitic behavior Ticketmaster perpetrates on Americans.

Dignitaries and Metra executives celebrated the opening of the Peterson-Ridge station on the UP-North line this past Sunday:

Hopefully West Ridge, Edgewater, and Lincoln Square residents remembered that patience is a virtue, as they waited for more than ten years for Metra's new Peterson/Ridge station, 1780 W. Peterson Ave., to serve their communities. The commuter railroad, elected officials, and neighbors rejoiced over the completion of the Union Pacific North line stop, which opened on May 20, with an official ribbon-cutting ceremony this morning.

The $27.8 million project included a pair of new six-car platforms; heated concrete stairs and wheelchair ramps; a warming house; two shelters; an access drive; and lots of car and bicycle parking. It was bankrolled with $15 million from the state's Rebuild Illinois capital program, with the remainder of the cash coming from the Federal Transit Administration.

The new station was discussed for over a decade, and took more than two-and-a-half years to construct. That was about a year longer than planned, and the project cost roughly $5 million more than expected, according to a Tribune report last month by Sarah Freishtat.

"I'm glad it's finally done!" local alder Andre Vasquez (40th) told Streetsblog this morning. "This was like, I wouldn't say a CTA-level delay, but it's completed, so that's awesome... We kind of showed up on the last leg of it. [Ald. Vasquez took office last year.] During the [Governor Bruce] Rauner era there were funding challenges."

Just 3 km south, the Ravenswood station—my damn station—took more than 12 years to rebuild because of "Rauner era funding challenges." When it finally opened almost a year ago, did we get a fancy ribbon-cutting? No. Did politicians show up and give speeches? Nope. Did anyone even mention it before, one day, they cordoned off the 10-year-old "temporary" platform? Guess again.

Ravenswood, by the way, was the busiest station on the UP-N and the 3rd-busiest overall just before the pandemic. Ridge-Peterson never existed before, though trains used to stop at the Rosehill Cemetery gate two blocks south and at Granville, a block north, until 1958. (A 1955 schedule I saw showed a 40-minute travel time between Ravenswood and the Loop. It's now 16-18 minutes.)

Urbanist channel Not Just Bikes gushes at the integration and efficiency of the world's busiest train station, Tokyo's Shinjuku:

I passed through it every day during my visit to Tokyo in 2011, and yes, it is a marvel.

Cassie and I took two long walks yesterday. We drove up to the Skokie Lagoons before lunchtime and took a 7.25 km stroll along the north loop. The weather cooperated:

I wanted to go up there in part because a 100-year-old forest had a higher probability of cicadas than anywhere near my house. We were not disappointed. Cassie and I both had passengers at various points in the walk:

And wow, were they loud. I forgot how loud they got during the 2007 outbreak. Even at the points on the walk closest to the Edens Expressway, the cicadas were often louder than the hightway:

On Saturday we're heading out to a friend's house in Wheaton, and we'll take our dogs around that neighborhood. My friend complained that the cicadas have taken over her backyard. Can't wait!

I started my day with overlapping meetings, a visit from the housekeeping service, more meetings, a visit from an electrician, and just now discovered that a "new" bug report actually relates a bug we introduced on June 20th last year, but only now got reported. Oh, also: it's 25°C and sunny.

At least it's Friday.

And I guess I can read some of these tomorrow morning:

• Tara Palmeri examines the Beltway reactions to the convicted-felon XPOTUS's 34-count felony conviction. (But Josh Marshall says of this post: "Her dispatch on Trump’s conviction is just drenched in the contempt in which she holds all Democrats.")
• Metra had a public meeting to discuss their Systemwide Network Plan, which outlines a shift from a commuter model to a regional transportation model.
• Related to that, a group of Chicago alders want the state to change direction on the planned Lake Shore Drive redesign to focus on buses rather than cars.
• Japan will soon introduce new Yen notes that may break millions of vending machines across the country.
• SOM's lead architect explains the O'Hare Terminal 2 redesign.
• Michelle Singletary answers your questions about whether tipping has gone too far.

Finally, the Chicago White Sox set a new team record yesterday: 14 losses in a row. They play the Red Sox tonight at home; can they make it 15 straight losses?

Every other Tuesday we release software, so that's what I just did. It was so boring we even pushed the bits yesterday evening. In theory we always have a code-freeze the night before a release, but in fact we sometimes have just one more thing to do before we commit this last bit of code...

And yet, the world outside keeps becoming less boring:

• Paul Krugman thinks President Biden should toot his own horn a bit more.
• Michelle Goldberg reminds us all that the XPOTUS meant "lock her up" literally: "A truism of the Trump era is that every accusation is a confession."
• The Louisiana Supreme Court will allow the white side of East Baton Rough Parish to form their own little whites-only enclave, bless their hearts, while those people no longer get the things that the Parish used to fund, like schools.
• This continues the great Southern tradition of taking taxpayer dollars for private schooling, which now counts in the billions of dollars.
• Windsor, Calif., Planning Commissioner Tim Zahner came away from the Congress of New Urbanism gathering last month with a new understanding of how urbanism affects tourism.
• A new Illinois law will restrict credit-card processors from charging a fee on taxes and gratuities, which the Illinois Bankers Association does not like at all, so it's probably a good thing.

Finally, one of Chicago's oldest and most popular Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms, Angelic Organics, announced this season would be their last. I used to have a subscription, which resulted in a lot more kale than I ever wanted, but also some of the freshest produce I've ever had. They'll be missed.