After our gorgeous weather Sunday and Monday, yesterday's cool-down disappointed me a bit. But we have clear-ish skies and lots of sun, which apparently will persist until Friday night. I'm also pleased to report that we will probably have a good view of tomorrow night's eclipse, which should be spectacular. I'll even plan to get up at 1:30 to see totality.
Elsewhere in the world, the OAFPOTUS continues to explore the outer limits of stupidity (or is it frontotemporal dementia?):
- No one has any idea what the OAFPOTUS's economic plan is, though Republicans seem loath to admit that's because he hasn't got one.
- Canada and the EU, our closest friends in the world since the 1940s, have gotten a bit angry with us lately. Can't think why.
- Paul Krugman frets that while he "always considered, say, Mitch McConnell a malign influence on America, while I described Paul Ryan as a flimflam man, I never questioned their sanity... But I don’t see how you can look at recent statements by Donald Trump and Elon Musk without concluding that both men have lost their grip on reality."
- On the same theme, Bret Stephens laments that "Democracy dies in dumbness."
- ProPublica describes a horrifying recording of Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek's meeting with senior SSA officials last week in which he demonstrated why the OAFPOTUS pulled him from a terminal job as "the ultimate faceless bureaucrat" to head the agency. (Some people have greatness thrust upon 'em?)
- Molly White sees "no public good" for a "strategic bitcoin reserve," but is too polite to call the idea a load of thieving horseshit.
- Author John Scalzi threads the needle on boycotting billionaires.
- Writing for StreetsBlog Chicago, Steven Vance argues that since the city has granted parking relief to almost every new development in the past few years, why not just get rid of parking minimums altogether?
Finally, in a recent interview with Monica Lewinsky, Molly Ringwald said that John Hughes got the idea for Pretty in Pink while out with her and her Sixteen Candles co-stars at Chicago's fabled Kingston Mines. Cool.
Topping the link round-up this afternoon, my go-to brewery Spiteful fears for its business if it has to pay a 25% tariff on imported aluminum cans. If the OAFPOTUS drives Spiteful out of business for no fucking reason I will be quite put out.
In other news:
Other than the Neil Gaiman thing, which pains me deeply, this all goes to show that President Camacho will be a Republican.
I had a thought about all the executive orders the OAFPOTUS signed Monday and Tuesday. Do they seem to anyone else like a King's Speech at the state opening of Parliament? Remember than an EO only directly affects the Executive Branch, and in many cases, still requires enabling legislation from the other end Pennsylvania Avenue.
I don't like how this reinforces the idea of the President as a monarch—something our founders explicitly said should never happen—but in terms of how an EO actually affects the world, it really could be read out by King Charles and have the same effect in the US.
In any event, it took less than 24 hours for a Federal judge to block the OAFPOTUS's executive order purporting to overturn the 14th Amendment, so our constitutional system hasn't completely collapsed yet.
In other news:
Finally, even though the high temperature today of -3.9°C happened right before sunrise and we're now scraping along at -7.6°C, and even though it hasn't been above freezing since before 8am Saturday, and even though tomorrow will be just as cold...it looks like we might get above freezing by noon this coming Saturday. I can't wait.
Writer and director David Lynch has died at 78:
The director of 10 feature films — or maybe 11, counting the 2017 revival of “Twin Peaks,” which he described as an 18-hour movie — Mr. Lynch received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2019. He also earned four Oscar nominations for directing “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” and for directing and co-writing “The Elephant Man,” a 1980 historical drama about a hideously deformed but beautifully refined Englishman.
“Eraserhead,” his dystopian 1977 debut, featured giant spermatozoa and a singing woman who lives inside a radiator. “Blue Velvet,” a voyeuristic coming-of-age story, opened with a sequence that lingered uncomfortably on swarming ants. “Mulholland Drive,” a neo-noir drama, hinged on altered identities and dreamlike mysteries, including the appearance of an enigmatic blue box inside a character’s bag.
“If you look at TV drama since its inception, shows would tell the audience what they were going to see, show it to them and then tell them what they’ve seen. Nobody was ever puzzled by what was going on,” David Chase, creator of “The Sopranos,” told Time magazine in 2017. “With ‘Twin Peaks,’ Lynch and Frost show it to you and leave you thinking, ‘What did I just see?’ That was revolutionary, and it still is.”
During its first season, on ABC, the show drew as many as 20 million viewers and received 14 Emmy nominations, winning two, behind an ensemble cast that included Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn, Kyle MacLachlan and Michael Ontkean.
I have fond memories of sitting on a dorm bed watching Twin Peaks with my friend Renee on Thursday nights junior and senior years. I have mixed feelings about "The Return"—really, about everything he did (especially Dune)—and let's not talk about Fire Walk With Me, strangled in the crib by the suits at New Line. The first season of Twin Peaks, though. That really meant a lot to us in college.
He will be missed.
I keep thinking of this clip from Remains of the Day:
The "gentleman diplomacy" conducted by British nobility in the 1930s exemplifies the maxim "any sufficiently-advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
After my general statistics for 2024, here are the books and media I consumed since 2023.
Books
I didn't read as many books in 2024 as in 2023, mainly because they were longer. Any one of the Culture novels is the equivalent of 3 or 4 times The Outsiders, for example. The 30 books I started (and 26 I finished) included:
- Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc. An excellent handbook for the kakistocratic country we now live in.
- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. I hope this does not become a handbook for the kakistocratic country we now live in. (Still reading this. It's not something one just breezes through.)
- Iain Banks, Raw Spirit, his hilarious travelogue of Scottish distilleries, plus the Culture novels Excession, Inversions, Look to Windward, Matter, Surface Detail, and The Hydrogen Sonata. I also finally read The Crow Road.
- Christopher Buehlman, The Daughters' War. Prequel to his previous novel The Black-Tongued Thief.
- Peter Carey, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, which I first read in 2001 and wanted to read again.
- Cory Doctorow, The Lost Cause. Imagine what the world will look like when today's alt-right go to nursing homes and the yet-to-be-born generation has to take care of them.
- David Farley, Modern Software Engineering. Decent recapitulation of stuff I've known for years, but updated.
- Scott Farris, Almost President, short biographies of the men (it's from 2008) who lost presidential elections and still influenced politics for years after.
- William Gibson, The Peripheral. Quite different than the TV series, but both were great.
- Charles King, Every Valley. The history of Händel's Messiah. (Not finished yet.)
- Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind. Absolutely essential reading if you want even to try understanding the horribly damaged generation born after 1995.
- John Scalzi, Fuzzy Nation and Agent to the Stars. I absolutely love Scalzi's writing.
- John R. Schmidt, Authentic Chicago, a collection of historical vignettes from an authentic Chicago historian.
- Matthew Skelton, Team Topologies. A quick read that helped me understand how my new boss looks at software team management.
- Andrew Weir, The Martian. Another one that I have meant to read for a while.
Other Media
In 2024, I watched 24 films, a bit more TV than usual, two concerts, and one comedy show:
- Films I would recommend: American Sniper (2014), The Beekeeper (2024), Constantine (2005), Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), Dune Part 2 (2024), Furiosa (2024), The Gentlemen (2019), The Intern (2015), The Martian (2015), The Menu (2022), Sicario (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), and the entire John Wick series (2014 to present).
- Films you can skip: The Good Shepherd (2006) and Maestro (2023).
- TV shows: The 100 (first two episodes, 2014), The Bear season 1 (2022), The Boys season 4 (2024), The Decameron (2024), Designated Survivor (2016, first two episodes), Fallout (2024), Ghosts (first season of the UK version, first two episodes of the inferior US version), House of the Dragon (both seasons, 2023-2024), Justified season 1 (2010), KAOS (2024), Killing Eve season 1 (2018), Once Upon a Time season 1 (2011), The Peripheral (2023), Rome season 1 and some of season 2 (2005), Silo season 2 (2024), Slow Horses season 4 (2024), Star Trek: Lower Decks season 5 (2024), Tales from the Apocalypse (2023), Three Body (2024), and The Umbrella Academy season 4 (2024).
- I saw two live performances at Ravinia Festival: a live orchestra version of The Princess Bride (1987) and the CSO doing Holst's The Planets.
- I also saw Liz Miele when she visited Chicago, and Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! in December.
A lot of good things in there, and a couple of dogs. Actually, only one dog, who very much enjoyed all the time I spent on the couch with her.
The Library of Congress has named Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and 24 other films to the National Film Registry this week. A quick view of the list tells me I've only seen 5 of them, so I need to start watching more movies.
In other news:
Finally, Illinois could, if it wanted to, redirect $1.5 billion in Federal highway funds to mass-transit projects in the Chicago area under President Biden's 2021 Covid relief plan. Unfortunately, a lot of the state would prefer to build more useless highways, so this probably won't happen.
The History Channel sends me a newsletter every morning listing a bunch of things that happened "this day in history." Today we had a bunch of anniversaries:
And finally, today is the 958th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, which is the reason this blog is written in a Celtic-Norse-Germanic-French creole, not just a Celtic-Norse-Germanic creole.
Three celebrities from my youth died yesterday, but for obvious reasons none was the top story on any news outlet this morning.
No one should politicize the attempt on the XPOTUS's life yesterday at a rally outside Pittsburgh. We have no idea why the assailant shot the XPOTUS and three other people; the FBI and the Pennsylvania State Police are investigating, and with the shooter killed by the Secret Service, we won't have to wait for a criminal trial for the full story. I trust both agencies to investigate thoroughly and report honestly on what they find.
We need to wait until those facts are in before drawing any conclusions. Predictably, some people have already said some horrible things and made ridiculous accusations, and equally predictably, others have reported on those horrible and ridiculous things. I'm not going to do either. And I'm going to examine my own dark thoughts to get a handle on why people are saying what they're saying.
Violence is reprehensible. Political violence doubly so. This is not how civilized societies function.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the passing of Shannen Doherty, Richard Simmons, and Dr Ruth Wesheimer. All three were at their peak celebrity in my teenage and young-adult years. All three dying on the same day is just...weird.
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.