The Daily Parker

That's just one of the absurdities that I encountered over the course of the last 24 hours:

• A prankster put up an official-looking sign declaring Loyola Beach on the north side of Chicago clothing-optional. Unfortunately no one was fooled.
• For the 15th or 20th time since its founding, critics accuse the US Navy of adapting too slowly to emerging risks in order to preserve tradition and Mississippi jobs. (Really, this comes up about every 20 years.)
• Of course, it doesn't help that we currently have no Chief of Naval Operations, Army Chief of Staff, or Marine Commandant, thanks to US Senator Tommy "Never Could Beat Alabama" Tuberville (R-AL).
• A working group that didn't include historians has proposed how sweeping changes to Chicago-area transit can help it become more like 1960s Baltimore more quickly: concentrate on "financial viability" at the expense of fast, frequent service. Because we really have learned nothing in the last 75 years.
• Illinois has become the third-largest home of data center space in part because we have a lot of office parks no one wants anymore.

Finally, Arizona continues to allow residential development as if the state has as much available water as Illinois. Because we really have learned nothing in the last 75 years.

The temperature has crept up towards 34°C all day after staying at a comfortable 28°C yesterday and 25°C Friday. It's officially 33°C at O'Hare but just a scoshe above 31°C at IDTWHQ. Also, I still feel...uncomfortable in certain places closely associated with walking. All of which explains why I'm jotting down a bunch of news stories to read instead of walking Cassie.

• First, if you have tomorrow off for Labor Day, you can thank Chicago workers. (Of course, if you have May 1st off for Labor Day, you can also thank us on the actual day that they intended.)
• A new study suggests 84% of the general population want to experience an orchestral concert, though it didn't get into how much they want to pay for such a thing. (You can hear Händel's complete Messiah on December 9th at Holy Name Cathedral or December 10th at Millar Chapel for just $50!)
• An FBI whistleblower claims Russian intelligence co-opted Rudy Giuliani in the run-up to the 2020 election—not as a Russian agent, mind you, just as a "useful idiot."
• Rapper Eminem has told Republican presidential (*cough*) candidate Vivek Ramaswamy—who Michelle Goldberg calls "very annoying"—to stop using his music in his political campaign.
• The government of Chile has promised to investigate the 3000 or so disappearances that happened under dictator Agosto Pinochet, though they acknowledge that it might be hard to find the ones thrown out of helicopters into the sea, or dropped down mine shafts. And with most of the murderers already dead of old age, it's about time.
• Julia Ioffe wonders when the next putsch attempt will get close to Moscow, now that Prigozhin seems to be dead.
• About 70,000 people continue to squelch through ankle-deep mud at Black Rock City after torrential rains at Burning Man this weekend. (I can't wait to see the moop map...)
• University of Michigan Law Professor Nicholas Bagley had a cogent explanation of why pharmaceutical companies don't want to negotiate drug prices with Medicare. (Hint: record profits.)
• Switching Chicago's pre-World War II bungalows from gas to electric heating could cut the city's GHG emissions by 14%.
• Molly White's weekly newsletter starts off with some truly clueless and entitled behavior from Sam Bankman-Fried and gets weirder.
• Zoning laws, plus the inability of the Portland, Ore., government to allow variances in any useful fashion, has condemned an entire high school to send its kids an hour away by bus while the building gets repaired, rather than just across the street to the community college many of them attend in the evenings. (Guess what skin color the kids have. Go on, guess.)
• A group of hackers compromised a Portuguese-language "stalkerware" company and deleted all the data the company's spyware had downloaded, as well as the keys to the compromised phones it came from, then posted the company's customer data online. "Because fuck stalkerware," they said.
• Traffic engineers, please don't confuse people by turning their small-town streets into stroads. It causes accidents. Which you, not they, have caused.
• Illinois had a mild and dry summer, ending just before our ferociously hot Labor Day weekend.
• James Fallows talks about college rankings, "which are marginally more encouraging than the current chaos of College Football."

Finally, I'll just leave this Tweet from former labor secretary Robert Reich as its own little monument to the New Gilded Age we now inhabit:

Three multibillionaires now own more wealth than the bottom 90% of America – 291 million Americans. This is what oligarchy looks like.

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) September 3, 2023

I did it again:

Of my three attempts to do this (2020, 2021, and 2022), this was 3rd best. Considering that last year I didn't even make it out of Evanston, it wasn't really that bad:

So even though yesterday's marathon time was 21 minutes longer than 2020 and 25 minutes longer than 2021, at least I finished. But why so slow (other than I'm getting older)?

Some clues: in 2020 and 2021, I got about 8¼ hours of sleep the night before; yesterday I woke up after only 7¼ hours of sleep. In 2020 and 2021, I started the day with Garmin Body Battery scores of 93 and 84 respectively; in 2022, it was 49, and yesterday, 67. More relevantly, as my walking partner (who does Ironman races and so never crested a heart rate of 125) pointed out, in 2020 and 2021 I actually trained for it.

Another trivium. I have a 3-year-old Garmin Venu 2, and my walking partner wore an newer Garmin Forerunner 265S and an older Forerunner 935. The 935 uses GPS only. The 265 has a dual-band chip that "intelligently" switches between GPS, Galileo, and GLONASS. My Venu 2 can use any of the three navigation satellite systems, but I had it set to GPS+GLONASS. We walked the same course at the same pace, and except for a few minutes when our watches were all paused, we were never more than 2 meters from each other, and we recorded total course times within a few seconds entirely attributable to imprecision in starting the timers.

Yet somehow, my Venu 2 logged 44.45 km (27.63 mi) for the entire walk, while hers got 43.80 km (27.22 mi) and 43.73 km (27.18 mi) respectively. There is no possibility that I walked 725 meters—almost four Chicago city blocks—farther than she did. So later this weekend, we're going to dig into the track files to figure out where I got the extra half-mile.

Regardless, the weather was about the same this year as in 2020, meaning really gorgeous:

Yes, I'm going to do it again next September. But I'll also do a few other walks next summer to prepare. And my walking partner and I plan a hike on the North Branch Trail in Ocotober that ends not with a brewery but with pizza.

Meteorological autumn begins at midnight local time, even though today's autumn-like temperatures will give way to summer heat for a few days starting Saturday. Tomorrow I will once again attempt the 42-kilometer walk from Cassie's daycare to Lake Bluff. Will I go 3-for-4 or .500? Tune in Saturday morning to find out.

Meanwhile:

1. Quinta Jurecic foresees some problems with the overlapping XPOTUS criminal trials next year, not least of which is looking for a judicial solution to a political problem.
2. Even though I prefer them to rabbits, even I can see that Chicago has a rat problem.
3. Pilot Patrick Smith laments the endless noise in most airport terminals, but praises Schiphol for its quiet. (Yet another reason to emigrate?)

Finally, it seems like anyone with a valid credit card number (their own or someone else's) can track the owner of that credit card on the New York City subway. I wonder how the MTA will plug that particular hole?

Private railroad operator Brightline has started modestly-high-speed service in South Florida, and has agreements in place to start Los Angeles to Las Vegas service by the end of the decade:

Launching with no federal help, the modern debut of private passenger rail connecting two major metropolitan areas will come to fruition when Brightline riders arrive in Orlando from downtown Miami. The Federal Railroad Administration expects to sign off within days, triggering a three-week testing period before Brightline carries passengers. The company will then set its sights on a $12 billion high-speed railway from Las Vegas to Southern California, a massive undertaking that could put trains traveling at 300 km/h on America’s tracks by 2028.

After operating much like a commuter service through South Florida, the Orlando station will be the nation’s first non-Amtrak passenger train connection between two metro areas in four decades — a project with nearly $6 billion in private investment. Although not a true high-speed operation, the Brightline Florida service will surpass speeds of 200 km/h in some areas — the nation’s fastest train outside the D.C.-Boston region.

Five years after Brightline opened its 67-mile service between Miami and West Palm Beach, passengers fill the five-car trains for sporting events and festivals while commuters use it to get to jobs. Students receive discounted passes for educational excursions.

Brightline uses business tycoon Henry Flagler’s original Miami train station and his Florida East Coast Railway, built in the late 1880s. The station had fallen into disrepair and was surrounded by parking lots. The raised platform is now the hub of 1.5 million square feet of development, with office, commercial and residential spaces built by Brightline’s owner.

The 425 km electrified rail line from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga, where it would connect to downtown Los Angeles via commuter train, is estimated to cost $12 billion — three times the price tag envisioned in the mid-2000s. Brightline submitted a 4,000-page application in April for a $3.75 billion federal grant from the infrastructure law.

If you can get from LA to Vegas in 2 hours, you can charge more than the airlines charge, but you can also charge less. That's about the same distance as Paris to Lyon, which the TGV currently makes in about that time, for about €50 in second class. And an electric train over that distance produces a fraction of greenhouse gasses per passenger than a car or airplane.

Notice that this can only happen with massive Federal subsidies. But that's exactly how all major transportation projects work in the US. Remember the Interstate Highway System, that provided some $500 billion (2023 dollars) in subsidies over 35 years for cars? Not to mention all the other road projects that gave us the ugliest infrastructure in the history of the world.

I hope people use these trains. And I'm really waiting for my 40-minute Chicago-to-Milwaukee train.

Not Just Bikes celebrates 5 years living in the Netherlands by raving about how the Netherlands' anti-car development patterns make just about every city in the country nicer to live than just about anywhere in North America:

I'm about 3/4 the way through Nicholas Dagen Bloom's The Great American Transit Disaster, having just finished the chapter on how Detroit's combination of racism, suburban/urban hostility, lack of vision, and massive subsidies for car infrastructure while starving public transit gave us the hollowed-out hellscape the city has become. This, after reading the chapter on how Atlanta's combination of racism, suburban/urban hostility, lack of vision, and massive subsidies for car infrastructure while starving public transit gave us the depressing echo of its former glory the city has become. And the chapter on how Chicago's combination of racism, suburban/urban hostility, and massive subsidies for car infrastructure almost—but not quite—overcame the city's history as the country's largest railroad hub with rail-driven suburban development along the Chicago & North Western and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad lines.

Sigh.

I'm nowhere near retiring. And even though I work for an international company,  reporting up to the London office, my team are 100% Chicago-based for the time being. But when I'm old and decrepit 40 years from now, I imagine getting around a country that cares about its public transit might be easier than even one of the most transit-friendly cities in North America.

I tried something different yesterday after watching Uncle Roger's stab at adobo:

Ng's basic outline worked really well, and I got close to what I had hoped on the first attempt. Next time I'll use less liquid, a bit more sugar, a bit less vinegar, and a bit more time simmering. Still, dinner last night was pretty tasty.

Much of the news today, however, is not:

• US District Judge Tanya Chutkan set the XPOTUS's Federal criminal trial for next March 4th, two years earlier than he wanted it.
• Writing for The Guardian, Margaret Sullivan blasts Republican presidential wannabe Vivek Ramaswamy as "a demagogue in waiting," and a distressing preview of Millennial politicians.
• The MiG pilot who ejected during an airshow on August 13th blamed the non-flying observer in the back seat for pulling the ejection cord on his own.
• Chicago has struggled for 15 or more years to get critical repairs to our international dock on the South Side.
• Elizabeth Spiers has a pretty good idea why Michael Oher, subject of Michael Lewis's 2006 book The Blind Side and the 2009 film of the same name, is pissed off at the white family that didn't actually adopt him.

Finally, via Bruce Schneier, a couple of kids with $30 worth of radio equipment managed to stop 20 trains in Poland by exploiting a mind-boggling weakness in Polish train dispatching equipment. Despite some media sources calling this a "cyber attack," it was nothing of the sort. The instructions for how to do this have existed for decades.

Welcome to stop #85 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Liquid Love Brewing, 1310 Busch Pkwy., Buffalo Grove
Train line: North Central Service, Buffalo Grove
Time from Chicago: 55 minutes
Distance from station: 1.3 km

Before I review Liquid Love, I need to apologize for having a couple of breweries on this list that meet the criteria but really don't belong here. If Hailstorm in Tinley Park didn't have it's great beer and vibe, I would not recommend it, for the same reason that I can't recommend Liquid Love. Alter Brewing in Downers Grove got a "maybe go back" only because you only have to slog 800 meters through an unwalkable industrial park.

No such luck here. From the moment you get off the Metra at Buffalo Grove, you have almost a mile of stroads and sidewalk- and shade-free light industrial park hellscape to traverse before you get to this little taproom next to the ironically-named "MiR Tactical" paintball supply shop in the same strip mall. ("Mir" is Russian for "peace.")

Their beer was not too bad, though I found their palate a bit malty for my taste. I tried the Monarch Pale Ale (5.6%), which had a nice balance and was quite drinkable. The Oktoberfest (5.8%) tasted like a very sweet Märzen, with a lot of malt, apple, and honey notes. And the Monarch ESB (4.5%) was a decent example of the style, but still too malty for me.

If you paid attention to my review of Tighthead yesterday, you know that I used the one and only southbound afternoon NCS train to get from Mundelein to Buffalo Grove. Getting to my friends at Sketchbook Skokie required a Lyft to Deerfield, the MD-N to Morton Grove, then another Lyft to Sketchbook. Yet another reason not to trek out to an industrial park 1,300 meters from the one train home that had just OK beer. (Of course, there's an hourly bus. Whee.)

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? No
Would hang out with a book? No
Would hang out with friends? No
Would go back? No

Welcome to stop #84 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Tighthead Brewing, 161 N. Archer Ave., Mundelein
Train line: North Central Service, Mundelein
Time from Chicago: 59 minutes
Distance from station: 200 m

Planning to visit the handful of breweries along the North Central Service line presents certain challenges. Metra runs a total of 7 trains in each direction during the work week, but only one in the reverse-commute direction. And until they restored train 105 last December, there was literally no way to get back to Chicago by train.

I spent a few minutes working this out on Friday, however, and managed to visit two of them, starting with Liquid Love in Mundelein. It helped that the brewery is only 200 meters across the parking lot from the train station.

For just $20 I tried six of their brews, though one of them was a free sip of IRIE IPA (7.8%, >100 IBU, pronounced "aye-ree" like they say in the Islands). I mean, my word, 100+ IBUs. OK, I've now had that experience.

For the real tasting, I started with the Comfortably Blonde (4.8%, 20 IBU), a lovely malty beer (bottom right, above) with slight banana and honey notes. Next (top left) was the Chilly Water Pale (4.8%, 40 IBU), a clean, crisp, long-finishing, not-too-hoppy pale. The Bear's Choice APA (6.5%, 75 IBU, top right) brought me back to the higher-hops IPAs of yore, but wasn't over the top. It had a complex, malty body and an clean finish that lingered just the right amount. I finished the official flight with a Boxcar Porter (6%, 40 IBU, bottom left) that had nice, complex chocolate and coffee flavors, and a crisper finish than I expected. I had a few minutes for the train so I finished up with a taster-size Casked Oktoberfest (5.5%, 27 IBU, not pictured), which had a lovely balance and a smooth, malty flavor.

I also met a few happy dogs outside. The brewery has a sprawling outdoor area with tons of trees that would make you forget about being in Middle Suburbistan and easily stranded if you miss your train were it not for the sprawling parking lot surrounding it.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? No, but food trucks come by
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Since today is the last Friday of the summer, I'm leaving the office a little early to tackle one of the more logistically challenging itineraries on the Brews & Choos Project. So I'm queueing up a few things to read over the weekend:

• The XPOTUS finally won his "long hard battle" to finally get a mugshot, which the Internet immediately (a) put on swag you can buy and (b) compared with the Kubrick Stare. But where did the Fulton County Jail get his height and weight?
• US intelligence sources believe the airplane purportedly carrying mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin suffered an "internal explosion" consistent with a bomb before crashing with 10 people on board.
• The Russian Government dismissed as "all lies" that it had anything to do with Prigozhin's apparent assassination, meaning it absolutely blew up the plane and wants you to know it.
• Robert Wright interviews exiled Russian journalist Nikita Petrov about Prigozhin's disappearance, while Julia Ioffe explains how this fits with Putin's philosophy of poniyate, "understandings." ("Oh, Yevgeny, won't see him no more.")
• Lydia Polgreen "glimpsed our brutal future" when she observed our "ally" Saudi Arabia slaughter thousands of Ethiopian refugees at their border with Yemen.
• Matt Ford says the Supreme Court got its stopped-clock moment when it unanimously decided NCAA v Alston (141 S.Ct. 2141, 2021) in favor of student athletes who generate billions in revenue for their schools but see none of it.
• Crime has fallen and punctuality has risen on the CTA, and even Crain's irascible political columnist Greg Hinz has a cheer for them.

Finally, via Bruce Schneier, a report on Mexican food labeling laws, how manufacturers have gone to absurd lengths to skirt them, and how these fights are probably coming the US soon.