The Daily Parker

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 losses in the American League yesterday by winning their first game in the last 23.
• Of the $1.2 trillion Carbon Reduction Program funds allocated to reduce fossil-fuel emissions, $130 billion has been spent so far: but only $26 billion on rail, and $70 billion on highways. 
• Even though Deutsche Bahn has faster, timelier, more convenient, more comfortable, and just more trains than the US, Germans say their national railroad is on the wrong track.
• Deadhorse, Alaska, which lies at 70° north latitude, set an all-time record yesterday with a high temperature just below 32°C.
• After CrowdStrike told Delta Airlines to go pound sand a couple days ago, Microsoft told the carrier off yesterday.
• Be careful taking dogs to fresh-water swimming holes: warmer weather has made blue-green algae blooms more common.

Finally, today is the 60th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. If you don't know what that is, read up. It's probably the most direct cause of most of our military policy since then.

One of my co-workers and I got into a good-natured debate about the efficiency of my Prius Prime. In addition to boasting that I used no gasoline at all last month (and only 41.6 L—11 gallons—all year), I pointed out that Illinois gets a majority of its power from nuclear fission, so yes, my car is net-positive on carbon emissions. He challenged me on that, saying that Illinois uses a lot of coal and natural gas, obviating the benefits of my car's electric drive.

Well, the New York Times has a really cool interactive piece today showing how each US state's electricity generation mix has changed this century. And it turns out, I was right:

Nuclear energy has been Illinois’s top source of power generation for much of the last two decades, accounting for about half of the electricity produced in the state during most years. Coal was long the second-largest power source, briefly surpassing nuclear as the top generation fuel in 2004 and again in 2008. But coal’s role in the state power mix has declined significantly in recent years as older coal-fired power plants have retired or been converted to burn natural gas. Both natural gas and wind generation have grown over the past decade, and last year gas surpassed coal as the second-largest source of power in the state.

So, in fact, Illinois gets 68% of its power from renewables and only 15% from coal—and wind power is going up while coal and gas go down. And down at the bottom there, it looks like solar is finally making a debut, at about 2% but going up.

Vermont's graph, though, surprised me. It turns out that all of Vermont's power generation has been renewable for since 2001. But since the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station closed in 2014, the mix went from 76% nuclear/16% hydro/7% biomass to 51% hydro/19% solar/16% biomass/15% wind today.

We really need to start building more nuclear power plants, though:

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 fact-checked in real time.
• Author Katherine Stewart lays out the right-wing worldview that explains how people like vice-presidential candidate JD Vance (R-OH) can lie so effortlessly while claiming to have morals.
• Paul Krugman warns that the Cryptocurrency industry "initially driven, seemingly, by libertarian instincts but which has never delivered on its economic promises will nonetheless be able to buy itself a huge government bailout."
• Chicago's Red Line extension to 130th Street got an unexpected boost of nearly $400 million extra for its first year, and may get another $2 billion (of $3.6 billion in projected costs) next year.
• The Paris regional transit agency has persuaded Google and Apple to direct travelers away from the fastest routes on the RER and Métro so "[t]hat each spectator can benefit from the best itinerary, not necessarily the most direct but the most comfortable."
• It turns out, adults learn foreign languages just as well as young children, and derive great benefits from doing so. C'est pourquoi j'apprends le français maintenant pour obtenir le niveau CEFR-B1 devant mes vacances le mois prochain.
• This year is the 100th anniversary of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb killing Bobby Franks in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago.

And as we go into the election, it's worth remembering that German President Paul von Hindenburg died 90 years ago today, ending the democratic German Republic and elevating you-know-who. Let's keep working to prevent anything like that ever happening here.

I had a burst of tasks at the end of the workday, so I didn't get a chance to read all of these:

• Associate Justice Sam Alito (R) drafted such loony-right-wing opinions in two major cases this term that he lost crucial support from other Republican justices, reversing the Court's initial vote.
• Russia released journalist Evan Gershkovich and other hostages in exchange for a convicted KGB hit-man.
• Tom Nichols argues that, however good it is to get our hostages back from Russia, they were still hostages.
• Banker Rebecca Patterson argues that the XPOTUS's treasury policy proposals threaten the world's banking system.
• The Internet Engineering Task Force published a new standard (RFC-9557) for date and time formats back in April.

Not to mention, this week we've had some of the stickiest weather I can remember, with dewpoints above 20°C for the past several days. And this sort of thing will only get worse:

Climate change is accumulating humidity in the region — between 1895 and 2019, average precipitation in Illinois increased by 15%. A moist atmosphere ramps up heat indexes, meaning the weather feels worse to the human body than it would during drier conditions.

In Chicago, overall summer average temperatures have warmed by 1.5 degrees between 1970 and 2022, but that’s not the whole story: Average lows on summer nights have increased by 2.2 degrees in that same time.

Warmer nights occur when the atmosphere is waterlogged. Clouds form and reflect incoming heat from the sun back into space during the day, but after the sun sets, clouds absorb heat from the surface and emit it back toward the ground.

Just like greenhouse gases trap heat, moisture holds onto heat in the atmosphere for longer and into the night. Rising temperatures, in turn, lead to rising humidity: For every 1°C increase in temperature, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water. It’s a never-ending loop.

Yeah, even walking Cassie from day care (less than 1.6 km) sucks in this weather. At least I got home before the thunderstorms hit.

Too bad I'm in my downtown office. It's a perfect, sunny day in Chicago. I did spend half an hour outside at lunchtime, and I might take off a little early. But at least for the next hour, I'll be looking through this sealed high-rise window at the kind of day we only get about 25 times a year here.

Elsewhere in the world:

• Former CIA lawyer James Petrila and former CIA spook John Sipher warn that the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v US could undo 50 years of reforms that reined in illegal clandestine activities here and abroad.
• James Fallows reviews President Biden's "quasi-valedictory" address from last night.
• The doddering, elderly, convicted-felon Republican nominee for President seemed to have some difficulties at last night's rally. Maybe he's too old to be president and he should withdraw from the race?
• Helen Lewis, shaking her head sadly at the mess of a human being that is Republican Vice-President nominee JD Vance, hopes the XPOTUS "kept the receipt."
• Bowing to market pressure, Southwest Airlines has announced an end to its chaotic boarding process, and will now assign seats like a grown-up airline.
• London expanded its Ultra-Low-Emissions Zone (ULEZ) to encompass most of the metro area last year, which has resulted in improved air quality equivalent to taking 200,000 cars off the road.
• Unfortunately, this side of the pond, the Illinois Dept of Transportation seems unable to comprehend the opportunity we have to remake DuSable Lake Shore Drive for the future, and instead wants to repeat all the mistakes of the past. All the aldermen along the north lakefront oppose the plan, fortunately.
• The South Works site on the southeast side of Chicago, which used to house one of the world's largest steel mills, will soon become a quantum-computing research facility.

Finally, the various agencies charged with protecting the Democratic National Convention next month have published their plan for a 60-hectare "pedestrian restriction" zone around the United Center and a smaller zone around McCormick Place. "Only people with credentials who 'have a need to be there' – such as delegates, volunteers and other workers – will be allowed within that inner perimeter, said 2024 DNC coordinator Jeff Burnside." Presumably people who live on the Near West Side will be able to get to and from their homes as well.

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 president faces the ongoing war in Ukraine and the increasingly desperate efforts to reach a negotiated deal to end the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

No sitting American president has dropped out of a race so late in the election cycle. The Democratic National Convention, where Mr. Biden was to have been formally nominated by 3,939 delegates, is scheduled to begin Aug. 19 in Chicago. That leaves less than a month for Democrats to decide who should replace Mr. Biden on the ticket and just under four months for that person to mount a campaign against Mr. Trump.

And now the race is between a demented 78-year-old who has a proven track record of chaos and corruption against a brilliant 59-year-old who has a proven track record of accomplishment and fighting for our rights.

The XPOTUS's campaign must be shitting bricks right now.

Here's the President's statement:

The High Speed Rail Alliance advocates extending the Metra UP-North (my line) all the way to Milwaukee:

Hourly trains departures will bring Chicago and Milwaukee closer together, strengthen the economic and social ties between them, and help revitalize both city centers.

Wisconsin and Illinois set a goal of 14 daily roundtrips, which is close to hourly, in the mid-1990s. More recently, the Federal Railroad Administration’s Midwest Regional Rail Plan called for 24 daily roundtrips.

But heavy freight traffic between Techny and Rondout on the existing route has made the current goal of 10 daily roundtrips difficult to achieve.

Here’s the value of bringing the UP-North into the picture:

1. Almost no freight traffic. There are no freight trains south of Lake Bluff, and there are just one or two, daily, north of Lake Bluff.
2. Stations in the Kenosha and Racine city centers will create synergies between these cities’ downtowns—and channel more passengers onto the trains.
3. Downtown stations in Evanston, Lake Forest, and Waukegan will provide additional traffic and connections to Metra’s local trains.
4. Metra’s ten daily Chicago-Kenosha roundtrips provide a strong foundation for this expansion.
5. At one time, limited-stop trains made this trip in 75 minutes.

I especially like that they used a photo of the new Ravenswood station on the cover.

I'll be on trains for a couple of hours today; Brews & Choos reviews to come.

Everyone in the world knows that President Biden had a bad night two weeks ago. Since then, we've heard a steady drumbeat of calls for him to withdraw from the race. But did anyone watch last night's press conference? Here it is; I'll wait:

The convicted-felon rapist XPOTUS could not have done that press conference, because he lacks the knowledge, the focus, the sanity, and frankly the IQ to answer questions for that long.

And still, what did most press outlets report? That he bobbled the name of the Vice President.

Meanwhile, the convicted-felon rapist XPOTUS can't find a coherent thought with two hands and a flashlight on his best days.

Yes, the President is an old man, and he could drop dead before January 2029. But as he said, "I wouldn't have picked Kamala if she weren't qualified to be President."

Until something actually changes in the race, I'm done with the "will he drop out" bullshit. He's the President, and he's crushing it.

Other things happened in the last 24 hours that were more interesting than George Clooney's whining:

• I haven't yet gotten drunk enough to read the Republican Party platform, but Timothy Noah did, and he says it's worse than you thought.
• A Federal judge dismissed Rudy Giuliani's bankruptcy petition, citing a "lack of transparency" and other malfeasance by the deranged, disbarred former mayor of New York.
• Andrew Sullivan, a British expatriate who voted Tory when he lived in the UK, wants an American Kier Starmer.
• Want to send your kid to one of the best public high schools in Chicago? I hope you started working on it before your kid's 5th birthday.
• The alleged Foxconn plant in Wisconsin, which got juicy concessions from the Republican legislature and the Republican governor, Scott Walker, will cost Wisconsin taxpayers millions and bring almost nothing to the state.
• RedBox is dead as a parrot.
• Just ahead of its 15th anniversary as one of the best comics on the Internet, The Oatmeal has a new cartoon on Netflix: Exploding Kittens!

Finally, if Google Maps and Waze drive you crazy, you're not alone. Julia Angwin explains why, and suggests alternatives, like Valhalla.

I don't know the provenance of this photo, but it appears to be taken from near the top of the Prudential Building at 135 E. Randolph St., summer of 1968:

Here's approximately the same view from last year (via Google Earth):

What a difference 55 years makes. I especially like how we removed all the surface parking lots and hid them under the park. And I'll be there—under the park—tomorrow morning for another Brews & Choos expedition.

In other Chicago history, today is the 45th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park.

If he were even a tiny bit better as a human being, I might have some empathy for the old man clearly suffering from some kind of dementia who spoke in Doral, Fla., yesterday. But he's not, so I don't. I mean...just read the highlights.

In other news:

• Tom Friedman thinks this year's election could only have been dreamed up by the Devil himself. (Lucifer Morningstar could not be reached for comment.)
• Tom Nichols wants you to remember why NATO matters on its 75th birthday.
• If you're looking for a house to go along with the Brews & Choos Project, Chicago Magazine has a quintet for you.

Finally, I got two emails through the contact-us page from the "Brand Ambassador & Link Approval Specialist" at a little company in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick demanding that we remove a link from a post to their site. Each email was clearly the output of an automated process that must have scraped every post on The Daily Parker—all 9,479 of them—more than once, because each email had a different fully-qualified domain name and most of the links they included were for category or history pages. Clearly the BALAS hadn't actually read the post that contained the link. 

The request read: "We kindly request the immediate removal of these links to SchengenVisaInfo.com from your page because SchengenVisaInfo maintains strict editorial control over the information it provides. As such, we do not endorse the linking of our website without our prior consent."

This is dumb for several reasons. First, the emails provide clear evidence that they ran a bot over The Daily Parker more than once, which is rude. Second, this particular link could only benefit the complaining firm as it appeared in context as a way of finding out more about exactly what the company offered. And finally, before you send an email like that, you should confirm that the site you're complaining to won't ridicule you and your firm in a subsequent post.

Of course I removed the link. There are many better sources of information on the topic out there.

(Note to self: remove the company's name before posting!)