The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Ribfest not quite recovered

I mentioned that I went to Ribfest Chicago this past weekend. In years past I have reviewed the vendors and posted photos, but I didn't this year. Simply put, the fest hasn't recovered from Covid.

Two things especially disappointed me: first, the festival of ribs had only 5 dedicated rib vendors, not the 15-20 of years past. Wrigley BBQ closed during the pandemic; Fireside, Piggery, Q, and Smoke Daddy didn't bother to come; and Smoque, one of the best rib places in the city, has never bothered because with their Bib Gourmand rating why should they?

Second, all the vendors had serious quality or service issues. For example, from the first time I wrote about Ribfest in 2011, I've put Mrs Murphy's near the top of my list. On Sunday, though, I got a tray of goo from them. They had ladled on so much sauce that I had to scrape most of it away from the three tiny bones they'd given me, but the bones had spent so long under boil that "fall of the bone" became more "disintegrate off the bone." Another vendor had exhausted children of 10 manning the cash registers, and failing in ways you'd expect. (At the best of times 10-year-olds don't multitask well; at a busy food booth they handled each order to completion, including waiting for food, before taking the next order.)

Two vendors had lines a block long on Friday evening. On Sunday afternoon, one of them had no line—because they'd run out of ribs and it would take another 90 minutes for them to cook more. The other one, returning itinerant Austin Texas Lightning, still had a block-long queue, which upon investigation seemed to have more to do with the booth being woefully understaffed than anything else.

I hope next year they do better, or at least have more vendors.

Cassie wants to go outside

So I'm going to have to postpone reading all of these:

And Cassie, who has not actually had much patience the last few minutes, will now get a walk.

Margaret Sullivan retires

In her last column, the Washington Post veteran warns that journalists still have a long way to go to properly deal with the anti-democratic party to the right:

Here’s the good news: The media has come a long, long way in figuring out how to cover the democracy-threatening ways of Donald Trump and his allies, including his stalwart helpers in right-wing media. It is now common to see headlines and stories that plainly refer to some politicians as “election deniers,” and journalists are far less hesitant to use the blunt and clarifying word “lie” to describe Trump’s false statements. That includes, of course, the former president’s near-constant campaign to claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged to prevent him from keeping the White House.

And yet, I worry that it’s not nearly enough. I don’t mean to suggest that journalists can address the threats to democracy all by themselves — but they must do more.

The deeper question is whether news organizations can break free of their hidebound practices the love of political conflict, the addiction to elections as a horse race — to address those concerns effectively.

For the sake of democracy, they must.

Journalists certainly shouldn’t shill for Trump’s 2024 rivals — whoever they may be — but they have to be willing to show their readers, viewers and listeners that electing him again would be dangerous. That’s a tricky tightrope to walk.

James Fallows has said a lot of the same things. Maybe mainstream journalists will listen?

Monday afternoon and the days are shorter

From around now through the middle of October, the days get noticeably shorter, with the sun setting 2 minutes earlier each day around the equinox. Fall is almost here—less than 8 days away, in fact. But that also means cooler weather, lower electricity bills (because of the cooler weather), and lots of rehearsals and performances.

Before any of that happens, though, I'll read these:

Finally, some ace developers at Hyundai secured one model's in-vehicle infotainment system with an encryption key published in a programming example in many online tutorials of how to use that particular kind of encryption.

Pwn the ribs

I tried three rib samplers yesterday, and I'll probably try a couple more tomorrow. Today I had a ton of errands to run and I didn't feel like eating ribs in the rain.

Full report with photos (probably) tomorrow.

Exciting job opportunities for an up-and-coming lawyers

The XPOTUS can't seem to attract effective legal counsel for some reason:

“Everyone is saying no,” an anonymous source told the Washington Post. Alan Dershowitz, the former Harvard Law School professor who has advised Trump in the past, didn’t seem too encouraging either, telling the Post that “good lawyers should have been working on this case for months.”

But clearly, such “good lawyers” have eluded Trump as he sinks further into a legal hot mess. Perhaps lawyers aren’t touching the case with a 10-foot pole in order to avoid the fate of Trump’s former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose own role in the Big Lie now has him embroiled in the criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia. Let’s also recall that Giuliani’s deeply problematic television interviews were reportedly central to his firing from his own law firm. He eventually got his license suspended by the New York Bar last year.

Matt Ford imagines the job description; look for it on LawJobs.com:

Working on the Trump legal team is an exciting, fast-paced experience. You never know whether you will receive a 3 a.m. telephone call that the FBI is searching your client’s Florida resort for the nation’s nuclear secrets, or that the House January 6 committee has obtained testimony from a former employee who says your client knew the mob was armed when he sicced it on Congress last year, or if local prosecutors in Georgia and New York will bring indictments against the family business and its longtime employees.

Applicants must also be willing to accept some permanent reputational damage within the legal community for their work. Until 2020, John Eastman was a fairly run-of-the-mill conservative law professor and former Clarence Thomas clerk. He has since left his teaching position and his chairmanship of a Federalist Society committee and been widely denounced by his former peers for trying to orchestrate a coup d’état. Joining the Trump team should be seen as the capstone to a long and distinguished legal career, mainly because more than a few of his current and former lawyers are now facing disbarment proceedings.

Ever since John Adams defended British soldiers after the Boston massacre, America has had a strong tradition of giving vigorous legal representation to even the most loathed and least popular defendants. American lawyers have often defended the indefensible, worked pro bono for those who couldn’t pay them back, and kept their commitments to clients who were indifferent and sometimes even hostile to their legal advice. Rarely, however, have all of these challenges been found in a single person. For most people, working as Trump’s lawyer will be the first line in their obituary and the final thing for which they are remembered. It is stunning that more lawyers aren’t leaping at the chance to do it.

Maybe I should apply? I mean, I am a lawyer, in the sense that I have a JD from a good law school. Do I even need to take the bar exam?

Baby's first Ribfest

If Cassie could (a) speak English and (b) understand the concept of "future" she would be quivering with anticipation about going to Ribfest tonight after school. Since she can't anticipate it, I'll do double-duty and drool on her behalf. It helps that the weather today looks perfect: sunny, not too hot, with a strong chance of delicious pork ribs.

Meanwhile, I have a few things to read on my commute that I didn't get to yesterday:

Finally, as I ride on the UP-N commuter line in an hour or so, I can imagine what it will be like when the train gets a battery-powered locomotive in a few years.

Coronal mass ejection hits the planet

We have some intense aurora activity this week:

The Northern Lights may be visible in the mainland U.S. this week due to a strong geomagnetic storm, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The phenomenon, known scientifically as the aurora borealis, typically occurs closer to the North Pole, near Alaska and Canada.

But the storm could push the aurora lights farther south Thursday and Friday, and if weather conditions permit, could be seen in regions of Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon.

Aurora activity hit level 7 (of 10) between 0300 and 0600 UTC (22:00-01:00 CDT) overnight, with activity expected to hit level 6 between 0000 and 0300 UTC (19:00-22:00 CDT) tonight.

The forecast expects level-6 activity over Labor Day weekend.

Amazing late-summer weather

The South's misfortune is Chicago's benefit this week as a hot-air dome over Texas has sent cool Canadian air into the Midwest, giving us in Chicago a perfect 26°C afternoon at O'Hare—with 9°C dewpoint. (It's 25°C at IDTWHQ.) Add to that a sprint review earlier today, and I might have to spend a lot more time outside today.

So I'll just read all this later:

Finally, the leader of the Westminster city council in London really wants to close down the "American" candy stores opening up all up and down Oxford Street.

Lunchtime links

Happy Monday:

I would now like to take a nap, but alas...