The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Lunchtime links

Once again, I have too much to read:

Finally, it was 20 years ago tonight that Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley had city workers vandalize Meigs Field so that he could sell the land to his pals. The Tribune has a photo history.

After "calm" discussion, Lebanon pirouettes on daylight saving time

The Lebanese Government has capitulated after the massive outcry and international ridicule that followed their asinine decision to postpone daylight saving time on two days' notice:

Translation:

Mikati: I decided to invite the Council of Ministers to present the above. The discussion was calm and it was decided to adopt daylight saving time, starting from Wednesday-Thursday night...

Uh huh. Perhaps that's because most large institutions, including airlines and banks, told Mikati where he could stuff his decision?

Lebanon's incompetent government

Lebanon has one of the most chaotic political systems in the world. The previous government presided over a massive ammonium nitrate explosion they could have prevented had any one person in government taken responsibility for removing a derelict Russian freighter.

Once again, the Lebanese government has displayed head-shaking incompetence, this time on what seems like a minor matter but could lead to more religious unrest as hot weather combines with people not eating or drinking water during the day. Always a good combination.

So what did the good burghers of Beirut do this time? They decided on Thursday not to change to daylight saving time this weekend, most likely so that people can make Iftar "an hour earlier." Of course, changing the clock time of sunset doesn't actually change the duration of daylight; Earth spins on its axis all the same, indifferent to how we measure it. So observant Muslims in Lebanon will still fast for a little over 12 hours today, just as they did yesterday.

I found out about this idiocy right away from the Time Zone Committee email list, but some Lebanese just found out about it this morning. It hasn't gone well:

Daylight Saving will be introduced from midnight on April 20 rather than from midnight on March 25.

No official explanation has been given for the move although local media suggested it was introduced to coincide with Ramadan.

But the decision is facing widespread revolt, with two TV channels going ahead with the clock changes in protest.

MTV Lebanon and LBCI Lebanon say they will refuse to cooperate with the adjustment, announcing they will go ahead with switching to Daylight Saving Time on Saturday.

CNN also reports, "Adding to the confusion, the government is yet to say whether it has informed officials responsible for synchronizing times on mobile phones, laptops and other electronic devices of the change." This is true; the Government of Lebanon has not officially informed IANA of the change. Fortunately—or unfortunately—for them, someone sent us a link to a reliable Tweet, so we went ahead with a patch, and some guidance on how to use the new rule by changing your phone to the Libyan time zone until April 20th.

The problem with authoritarian governments, of course, is that they believe they control everything within their domains, without having the first clue how things actually get done. Add some religion and it gets even stupider.

Democracy is messy; democracy is frustrating; but democracy doesn't usually get such basic technical decisions so maddeningly wrong.

Layout frustrations

I'm arguing with the Blazorise framework right now because their documentation on how to make a layout work doesn't actually work. Because this requires repeated build/test cycles, I have almost no time to read all of this:

Finally, a group of Chicago aldermen have proposed that the city clear sidewalks of snow and ice when property owners don't. Apparently the $500 fines, which don't happen often, don't work often either.

First sunny day since I returned

We had four completely-overcast days in a row, including one with some blowing snow, so I'm happy today has been completely clear. Tomorrow might even get above 10°C—which would at least get into normal March temperatures. This whole winter has been weird, as the next few will likely be until temperature increases start leveling out.

In other news:

Finally, Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders explain how AI could write our laws in the future.

Following up on a few things

Perhaps the first day of spring brings encourages some spring cleaning? Or at least, revisiting stories of the recent and more distant past:

  • The Navy has revisited how it names ships, deciding that naming United States vessels after events or people from a failed rebellion doesn't quite work. As a consequence, the guided missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG-62, named after a Confederate victory) will become the USS Robert Smalls, named after the former slave who stole the CSS Planter right from Charleston Harbor in 1862.
  • Author John Scalzi revisited whether to stay on Twitter, given its "hot racist right-wing trash" owner, and decides why not? It's not like Musk will ever benefit financially from the app.
  • Charles Blow revisited the (long overdue) defenestration of cartoonist Scott Adams, deciding it doesn't matter whether Adams was lazy or stupid, throwing him out the window was appropriate.
  • Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul revisited the Equal Rights Amendment, but the DC Circuit Court of Appeals decided yesterday not to.
  • WBEZ revisited the only other two Chicago Mayors who lost their re-election bids in the past century, Michael Bilandic and Jane Byrne.
  • A group of US intelligence agencies revisited Havana Syndrome, without finding sufficient evidence to blame either an adversary government or an energy weapon.

Finally, here's a delightful clip of US Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) patiently explaining to Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and her banana-republican party the difference between an adjective and a noun:

Why doesn't the AP want me to give them money?

I spent way more time than I should have this morning trying to set up an API key for the Associated Press data tools. Their online form to sign up created a general customer-service ticket, which promptly got closed with an instruction to...go to the online sign-up form. They also had a phone number, which turned out to have nothing to do with sales. And I've now sent two emails a week apart to their "digital sales" office, with crickets in response.

The New York Times had an online setup that took about five minutes, and I'm already getting stuff using Postman. Nice.

Meanwhile:

Finally, I've got a note on my calendar to check out the Karen's Diner pop-up in Wrigleyville next month. Because who doesn't want to be abused by servers?

Big sprint release, code tidy imminent

I released 13 stories to production this afternoon, all of them around the app's security and customer onboarding, so all of them things that the non-technical members of the team (read: upper management) can see and understand. That leaves me free to tidy up some of the bits we don't need anymore, which I also enjoy doing.

While I'm running multiple rounds of unit and integration tests, I've got all of this to keep me company:

Finally, you may not want to know what the CBP beagle squad has found in baggage at O'Hare.

Time-boxed research

I've got an open research problem that's a bit hard to define, so I'm exploring a few different avenues of it. I hope reading these count:

Since none of these has anything at all to do with my research project, I should get back to work.

Lunch links

My burn-up chart for the current sprint has a "completed" line that nicely intersects the sprint guideline, so I can take a moment this Monday morning to eat lunch and read some news stories:

And closer to home—like, less than a kilometer away—the City of Chicago has made some recommendations to improve a stretch of Clark Street that could be a model for other streets in the city.