The Daily Parker

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:

• Even before known crank Robert F Kennedy, Jr., gets sworn in as Heath and Human Services Secretary, the National Institutes of Health have abruptly stopped meeting with cancer researchers for no reason other than the incompetence of the incoming administration.
• Josh Marshall believes that the OAFPOTUS's pardons of 1,500 cop beaters and insurrectionists will come back to haunt his administration.
• Jennifer Rubin declares the OAFPOTUS's actions not just lawless; "they defy our deepest values."
• Jeff Maurer wonders why the OAFPOTUS has, of all things, a William McKinley fetish.
• Charles Marohn explains how a $5.5 million Federal high-speed Internet grant in Brainerd, Minn., will benefit "lifestyle" rural dwellers at the cost of of a long-term maintenance burden the city has no hope of meeting.
• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the Oscar Nominees for this year, of which I have seen almost none.

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.

Ah, ha ha. Ha.

Today is the first full day of the Once Again Felonious POTUS, who wound everyone up yesterday with a bunch of statements of intent (i.e., executive orders) guaranteed to get people paying attention to him again. Yawn.

But that isn't everything that happened in the last 24 hours:

• Jonathan Last argues that maybe the OAFPOTUS just doesn't like Americans.
• Jennifer Rubin reminds everyone to remain vigilant that the OAFPOTUS's mangling of the English language has consequences.
• Jeff Maurer is flabbergasted that the fanatical left wing has left behind "free speech, color-blindness, and meritocracy" on the playing field so that the right could pick it up at their leisure.
• Connor Echols worries that the US has developed a "total security" problem, with the impossible goal of making everywhere safe for Americans.
• In an unusual nontechnical post, The Daily WTF points out that "everything looks like a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works."
• Bruce Schneier worries that we don't have the tools to deal with the kinds of mistakes AI LLMs will make.
• The 606 Trail, which runs along an abandoned railway right-of-way through several Chicago north side neighborhoods, won't get its promised eastern extension until at least 2027.
• Cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who illustrated one of my favorite childhood books, The Phantom Tollbooth, died age 95.

Finally, while Chicago has almost no snow on the ground, which probably helped prevent the overnight temperature from going below -20°C at Inner Drive Technology WHQ, the same weather system has already dumped more snow on the Gulf Coast cities of Mobile and Pensacola than they have ever recorded. Right now at Pensacola International, they have snow and -4°C temperatures. Climate change science didn't predict this specific event, but it did predict the weakening of the circumpolar jet stream that made this possible. This is not normal (temperatures in Fahrenheit):

So much to read...tomorrow morning, when I wake up:

• Fallows and the Post have solid takes on President Biden's farewell address.
• Kim Lane Scheppelle shakes her head at how authoritarians use playground taunts keep their opponents off balance.
• John Scalzi does not expect much from the incoming administration.
• The Daily Overview has an amazing post today on the Los Angeles fires, and other fires in the recent past.
• Arwa Mahdawi calls out United HealthCare for going "villain mode."
• Heather Souvaine Horn asks, "what if the Los Angeles fires were a turning point?"
• Jeff Maurer sticks his tongue firmly in his cheek, pleading not to ban TikTok "just because it's a flaming planet of dinosaur shit..." and then, today, laughing at China for inviting "our dumbest young people."
• A family on Prince Edward Island captured an actual meteor strike on their doorbell camera, which astronomers believe is the first time this has every happened.

Finally, Block Club Chicago wonders why coyotes seem to be everywhere right now? I have two explanations: first, because it's mating season; and second, because of confirmation bias. We had two coyote sightings in strange places last week, and people are seeing more coyotes in general because they want to get laid. So that leads to more articles on coyotes. QED.

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.

Today marks the middle of winter, when fewer days remain in the (meteorological) season than have passed. Good thing, too: yesterday we had temperatures that looked happy on a graph but felt miserable in real life, and the forecast for Sunday night into Monday will be even worse—as in, a low of -20°C going "up" to -14°C. Fun!.

(Yesterday's graph:)

Elsewhere in the world:

• Israel and Hamas have reached a cease-fire agreement, with the US and Qatar signing off.
• OAFPOTUS Defense Secretary nominee, former Fox News pretty boy, and all-around fundamentalist crackpot Pete Hegseth sat before the US Senate Armed Services committee yesterday, whose Republican members asked him about "your wife that you love" and whose Democratic members asked him about unlawful orders and the numerous allegations of wrongdoing against him. My combat-decorated junior Senator, Tammy Duckworth (D), flatly called him "unqualified." (She was being polite.)
• Jennifer Rubin calls Hegseth "the greatest DEI disaster ever:" "Considering Hegseth, election denier Attorney General Pam Bondi, WWE exec Linda McMahon for secretary of education, and vaccine denier, brain-worm victim Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for Health and Human Services, one must conclude Republicans are not sending us their best. (Or, the more alarming alternative…they are sending their best.)" Ruth Marcus also piled on.
• Author John Scalzi shares his thoughts on the allegations against and admissions of author Neil Gaiman published in New York this week.
• Chicago's Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) has proposed $1.5 bn in spending to improve transit for the entire area.
• Chicago lost another coyote yesterday when a plane taking off from O'Hare ran him over. (Neither the FAA nor United Airlines has confirmed that the coyote died, but I think we can make an inference here.)
• Last year was the second-warmest on record in Illinois, continuing a long-term warming trend that began after the coldest winters ever in the early 1980s.

Finally, as of today I've had a private pilot certificate for 25 years. When I last posted about this anniversary, I hoped to resume flying later that spring. Alas, something else was in the air. I still want to fly again, though. All I need is a winning lottery ticket.

Yesterday, the temperature at Inner Drive Technology World HQ scraped along at -11°C early in the morning before "warming" up to -7.5°C around 3pm. Cassie and I got a 22-minute walk around then and she seemed fine. Today the pattern completely inverted. I woke up during the warmest part of the day: 7am, -8°C. Around 8am the temperature started dropping and now hovers around -11°C again—slightly colder than the point where I limit Cassie to 15 minutes outside. She just doesn't feel cold, apparently, and would happily stay outside until she passed out from hypothermia.

So, bottom line, I'm in no hurry to take her for her lunchtime walk.

Besides, I've got a lot of interesting stories to read:

• Former Canadian Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff explains why he's a liberal, and why you should be, too.
• Jesse Wegman and Lee Drutman have some ideas about how to fix the United States' "two-party problem:" proportional representation.
• Block Club Chicago lists 10 of its investigations into the Chicago Transit Authority's mismanagement under its outgoing boss, Dorval Carter.
• Chuck Marohn explains why building tons of new housing in old, dense cities like San Francisco and NYC doesn't work as well as people hope.
• Two Illinois state representatives introduced a bill in the state House to decriminalize sex work, which would dramatically increase their safety and security.
• British computer scientist Peter Kirstein died five years ago, and left behind a delightful essay on the beginnings of the Internet—and the Internet's first-ever password.
• James Poniewozik has a fun history of TV show opening titles that will waste a few minutes of your afternoon (in a good way).

Finally, yet another coyote found his way into a store, this time an Aldi in Humboldt Park. Almost 17 years ago one of his ancestors tried to hide in a Quiznos sandwich shop in the Loop. The result was the same for both: removal and relocation. Block Club says yesterday's incident involved "rescuing" the coyote from the Aldi, but that seems pretty harsh. Like, was the coyote trying to go to Whole Foods instead? They're usually not that bougie.

We've gotten about 4 cm of snow so far today, with more coming down until this evening. Cassie loves it; I have mixed feelings. At least the temperature has gone up a bit, getting up to -0.6°C for the first time since around this time on Monday.

Elsewhere:

• Federal Judge Aileen Cannon (R-SDFL) got overruled again, this time after her corrupt effort to block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on January 6th.
• George Will bemoans Congress ceding so much of its authority to the office of the President, especially given who will take that office in ten days.
• Just three corrupt Chicago cops will cost the city almost $34 million in settlements, making me wonder why we don't pay those settlements out of the police pension fund.
• Pamela Paul objects to historians opining about politics, which is actually one of the things they've always done.
• Five years after the pandemic began, we still haven't gotten back in the habit of being out in public, according to Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.

Finally, Maplewood Brewing has started expanding its Logan Square taproom into the other half of the building it occupies. I don't get there often, but I enjoy going back. Can't wait to see what their restaurant looks like when it's done. I also need to get to Cherry Circle Room or the CAA Drawing Room soon, as it looks like the management transition from Land & Sea to Boka may change some things.

A friend pointed out that, as of this morning, we've passed the darkest 36-day period of the year: December 3rd to January 8th. On December 3rd at Inner Drive Technology World HQ, the sun rose at 7:02 and set at 16:20, with 9 hours 18 minutes of daylight. Today it rose at 7:18 and will set at 16:38, for 9 hours 20 minutes of daylight. By the end of January we'll have 10 hours of daylight and the sun will set after 5pm for the first time since November 3rd.

It helps that we've had nothing but sun today. And for now, at least, we can forget about the special weather statement that just came out warning of snow and winds starting later tonight.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:

• Jennifer Rubin snarks that the media have just now noticed that President Biden's economic policies worked better than expected—certainly better than Canada's.
• The Dept of Justice has sued six large landlords for fixing rents using a controversial bit of market-analysis software.
• Josh Marshall points out that the fundamental business model of social media companies makes it nigh impossible for them to do any real content moderation.
• The wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes in Los Angeles County came from years of overdevelopment and months of drought.
• A zero-day exploit of Ivanti VPN appliances has already affected dozens of companies.

Finally, National Geographic explains how the two cups of tea I drink every day (three in the summer) will help me live to 107 years old.

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.