The Daily Parker

Given the weather and the fact that I'd been stuck in the conference hotel all day, I slipped out for a 4-kilometer walk around downtown San Diego this afternoon. It was perfectly clear and 20°C, but somehow I persevered.

I was exercising so I didn't take a lot of photos. But I have never seen a cruise ship up close before, so despite the mouse on the front, this impressed me:

That's the Disney Wonder. I will never go on that ship any more than I will get to go on the USS Carl Vinson, which is behind it to the left, and frankly even more impressive.

Then there was this sign, which shows that Little Italy will, in fact, take your shit:

And now, I have to demonstrate the product we've been working on for four years to a lot of other developers.

My body thought this was around 8:30am, but no, it was 6:30:

Also, it turns out that my three favorite people in Southern California live 60, 90, and 120 minutes away from here. Aw, snap.

Just quickly passing through O'Hare on my way to a work conference for a couple days. I saw a couple of snow flurries on my way here this morning, which happens mid-March in Chicago. Despite the two minutes of discomfort, though, I left my winter coat in my car. Won't need it where I'm going.

Before I take Cassie on yet another 30-minute walk (how she suffers!), I'm going to clear some links:

• Julia Angwin asks the same thing a couple of my friends have asked: why is Congress talking about banning TikTok instead of, you know, governing? (tl;dr: Republicans, who control the house, really don't want to govern.)
• Speaking of sclerotic government, Paul Krugman reminds you that the Republican Party really does want to take away Social Security and Medicare, even as our closest friends and allies guarantee that everyone has social security and medical care.
• WTF is going on with Aaron Rodgers, and has he always been this way?
• Despite having fewer electrified rail miles than Iran, the United States actually has seen record passenger rail miles travelled this year.
• Portland, Ore., has passed a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers, with a phase-out to start in 2026. Oh, would Chicago be so progressive...
• Sierra Jones, writing for Strong Towns, provides five good reasons why we should end highway expansion.
• The Atlantic's Jonathan Haidt warns that we need to change the way children interact with their phones, and quickly.

OK, Cassie has roused herself, and probably needs to pee. Off we go.

What a lucky dog. For her Gotcha Day, after she got a ride in the car to the grocery store (always fun!), she got some grilled chicken from my salad and some belly rubs. She had no idea that I got a lot of grilled chicken, but that's for later.

We then walked 5 km to Horner Park DFA, where she got half an hour of off-leash time:

Another 5 km walk took us to Spiteful Brewing, where she found a 15-centimeter bully stick that some other dog had apparently lost:

Altogether she got almost 3 hours of walks, the previously-mentioned grilled chicken for dinner, lots of pats, belly rubs, and new friends at the dog park and at Spiteful. She is now passed out on the couch, dreaming of unexpected bully sticks.

Cassie and I adopted each other three years ago today. And yet, she remains one of my most frustrating photographic subjects:

Regardless, I got really lucky when I found her at PAWS. I hope she feels the same way.

Leave it to the WGN Weather Blog to trumpet that we've set a new record for days over 15.6°C before March 15th (12). We've also tied the record for days over 240K (75)! In fact, I'm confident that 2024 will tie the all-time record for days over 240K (366), last set in 2020.

Closer to home (ah, ha ha), I still have two claim forms to fill out in the great National Association of Realtors settlement for anti-competitive commission payments, which has gotten the group to make a modest concession to avoid getting sued again:

The National Association of Realtors, a powerful organization that has set the guidelines for home sales for decades, has agreed to settle a series of lawsuits by paying $418 million in damages and by eliminating its rules on commissions. Legal counsel for N.A.R. approved the agreement early Friday morning, and The New York Times obtained a copy of the signed document.

Americans pay roughly $100 billion in real estate commissions annually, and real estate agents in the United States have some of the highest standard commissions in the world. In many other countries, commission rates hover between 1 and 3 percent. In the United States, most agents specify a commission of 5 or 6 percent, paid by the seller. If the buyer has an agent, the seller’s agent agrees to share a portion of the commission with that agent when listing the home on the market.

The lawsuits argued that N.A.R., and brokerages who required their agents to be members of N.A.R., had violated antitrust laws by mandating that the seller’s agent make an offer of payment to the buyer’s agent, and setting rules that led to an industrywide standard commission. Without that rate essentially guaranteed, agents will now most likely have to lower their commissions as they compete for business

The settlement will pay me a few hundred dollars, even though I could argue that during the settlement period I paid over $10,000 in excess commissions. It gets worse: in three deals, the same agency represented both sides, making it even harder to get a discount or shop around.

I think the best structure for a real-estate commission would start with a flat dollar amount and add bonuses for shortening the time on market. Something like, I'll pay you $10,000 plus 1% of anything above list from the sales proceeds if we sell at or above the listing price. I'll pay another $2,500 if we get a buyer within 7 days and the deal is closed within 42 days. But if we don't get a buyer within 28 days or we close for under 92.5% of the listing price, I'm only paying you $7,500.

The days of paying 6% for a sales agent to do one open house and shoot some photos are over.

Getting ready for a work trip on Monday plus (probably) having to do a demo while on the work trip means I spent most of the day getting ready for the demo. In a bit of geography fun, because the participants in the demo will be in six different time zones from UTC-7 (me) to UTC+10 (the client), I got the short straw, and will (probably) attend the demo at 3:30 am PDT.

I say "probably" because the partners on the call may take mercy on me and let me brief them instead of monitoring the technology in the actual meeting. Probably not, though.

So in this afternoon's roundup of news and features, I'll start with:

• Teresa Carr's report in Undark explaining how people in "eccentric time localities" (i.e., on the western edges of time zones) experience negative effects that people east of them don't.
• President Biden's budget proposal includes a $350 million grant to extend the CTA Red Line.
• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the country's most-senior Jewish official, gave a scathing speech in the Senate this morning calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) to resign and hold elections. Josh Marshall puts this in context. (tl;dr: it's a big deal, and Schumer is really the only one in Congress with the heft and history with Israel to make this speech.)
• US Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who faces 18 felony counts in Federal court, may run for re-election as an independent so that he can use his campaign funds to pay his legal bills. Why anyone would give him money to do this I cannot determine.
• Chevrolet and other car manufacturers routinely hand over data about how you drive to a company that then hands that data to your auto insurer, because the US does not yet have anything like the GDPR.
• Julia Ioffe outlines how Ukraine can (sort of) win against Russia if it can hold out until 2025.
• Hopewell Brewing and other Illinois craft brewers have started selling THC-infused beer, taking advantage of a loophole in both the state's brewing and cannabis laws.

I will now check the weather radar to see how wet I'm going to get on the way home...

My Garmin watch thinks I've had a relaxing day, with an average stress level of 21 (out of 100). My four-week average is 32, so this counts as a low-stress day in the Garmin universe.

At least, today was nothing like 13 March 2020, when the world ended. Hard to believe that was four years ago. So when I go to the polls on November 5th, and I ask myself, "Am I better off than 4 years ago?", I have a pretty easy answer.

I spent most of today either in meetings or having an interesting (i.e., not boring) production deployment, so I'm going to take the next 45 minutes or so to read everything I haven't had time to read yet:

• Cognitive psychologist Amber Wardell listened to US Senator Katie Britt's (R-A-87.63657988865225L) reply to President Biden's State of the Union address, and explains how Britt's "phony fundie voice" fits into the right-wing Christian Nationalist worldview she promotes. Hint: Britt wasn't talking to you or me.
• Fulton (Ga.) County Superior Court Judge has quashed three of the XPOTUS's charges because, essentially, Fani Willis's office didn't draft the indictment with enough detail.
• Tori Otten admires the way House Democrats deftly cornered special counsel Robert Hur, forcing him to admit the vast differences between the way President Biden and the XPOTUS handled classified documents.
• Yulia Navalnaya reminds the West that Russian president Vladimir Putin isn't actually a politician; he's really a gangster.
• The Illinois Supreme Court has declined to hear, and thus let stand, an appellate court ruling that keeps the Bring Chicago Home referendum on next Tuesday's ballot. Large real estate companies and some large businesses oppose the plan, which would tax them more and use the money to pay for affordable housing.
• Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson has ignored the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago's offer to house migrants for free, and I would like to know why.
• Los Angeles police warned residents that burglars have started using Wi-Fi jammers to bollix up wireless security systems.
• Michigan will start building its section of the Marquette Greenway Trail, a 93-kilometer bike path that will eventually (late 2027) connect New Buffalo, Mich., with Chicago.
• Chicago passed 21°C yesterday for the fifth time in 2024, the earliest we've ever had as many days above that temperature since records began.

All righty then. I'll wrap up here in a few minutes and head home, where I plan to pat Cassie a lot and read a book.

I do love this aspect of Daylight Saving Time: for the first time since November 2nd—131 days ago—my normal commute and walking Cassie home from day care got me home before sunset.

This happens every March, but it still feels revelatory. Barring a late night at the office I won't walk Cassie home after sunset until around October 21st, 223 days from now.

It's a little thing, but I enjoy it.