The Daily Parker

Not too much:

• The Guardian asks, what happens if cities act to mitigate climate change but nations don't? Meanwhile, the New York Times shows where in the U.S. emissions are coming from.
• Josh Chafetz suggests the House should arrest Rudy Giuliani.
• Dan Lavoie asks, what if President Trump resigned?
• Ukraine's president talked to reporters yesterday for many hours.
• Closer to home, Greg Hinz examines the power struggle between the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Public Schools.
• The Navy Pier Bike Flyover, started in 2014 and scheduled to open in 2016 2017 2018 2019, will now open in 2020.
• A public housing project in Norwich, England, won the Royal Institute of British Architects' Stirling Prize.

And two algorithms I'm testing that should produce similar results are not. So back to the coding window I go.

I was busy today, and apparently so was everyone else:

• Umair Haque deplores the "age of the idiot" in which we now live.
• The Washington Post reports that President Trump has spoken with Russian president Vladimir Putin 16 times, more than with any other world leader.
• Tim Murphy thinks Trump is more Andrew Johnson than Richard Nixon.
• Andrew Sullivan says, since Trump wants to be impeached, let's do it now.
• Elizabeth Warren deftly smacked down a right-wing troll.
• Irish writer Susan McKay asks Boris Johnson how it feels now that Ireland has more power than the UK.
• An unusual bit of architecture in Lakeview (the North Side Chicago neighborhood containing Wrigley Field) will soon be demolished.
• The University of Edinburgh has produced an interactive map of historic witch hunts in Scotland.
• Curbed explores how Los Angeles became "the land of strip malls."
• The New York Times explores how New York taxi companies took over Chicago's taxis, shortly before Uber and Lyft bankrupted the industry.

I'm sure there was other news today. But this is what I have open in my browser for reading later on.

I'm surprised I ate anything today, after this past weekend. I'm less surprised I haven't yet consumed all of these:

• Harvard Law professor John Coates argues that "a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally-authorized power" constitutes an impeachable offense in its own right.
• The Chicago Public Library will stop fining people for overdue books, as long as you bring them back eventually.
• National Geographic digs into the Grimm Brothers' fairy-tale collections.
• Why is the USDOT cracking down on zebra-crossing art?
• London completely failed to block an east-end road to cars for even a full day.
• A 1958 women's magazine's list of 129 ways to get a husband had to have been a joke, right? Right?
• Bruce Schneier has some thoughts on supply-chain security.

Is it nap time yet?

Just a few today:

• Cokie Roberts died yesterday at 75. She will be missed.
• The Washington Post traced all 47 dogs seized from convicted felon Michael Vick's dog-fighting operation. You will not get through this without tissues.
• Greenland struggles with its history and identity as much of it melts.
• Despite his coalition losing seats and the state of Israel essentially repudiating him, Benjamin Netanyahu could still hold onto his job.
• Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot has come up with an innovative use of zoning laws to control where recreational marijuana stores open.
• Grub Street has a paean to the Martini (The Daily Parker's favorite drink).
• The Atlantic's Megan Garber sees a grim reminder in The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: people "still doubt the seriousness of sexual-misconduct allegations."

That's all for this afternoon. Check back tomorrow to see if Israel has a government, if Saudi Arabia decides to take its $67 bn defense budget out for a spin, or if President Trump succeeds in putting homeless people in concentration camps.

CityLab has a good take on how the Democratic Party became the party of cities in the US:

The story begins in the late 19th century, in the filthy, sweaty maw of the Industrial Revolution. To reduce transportation costs, industrialists had built factories in cities with easy access to ports. These factories attracted workers by the thousands, who piled into nearby tenements. Their work was backbreaking—and so were their often-collapsing apartment buildings. When urban workers revolted against their exploitative and dangerous working conditions, they formed the beginning of an international labor movement that would eventually make cities the epicenter of leftist politics.

While workers’ parties won seats in parliamentary European countries with proportional representation, they struggled to gain power in the U.S. Why didn’t socialism take off in America? It’s the question that launched a thousand political-economy papers. One answer is that the U.S. political system is dominated by two parties competing in winner-take-all districts, making it almost impossible for third parties to break through at the national level. To gain power, the U.S. labor movement had to find a home in one of those parties.

This set up the first major inflection point. America’s socialists found welcoming accommodations in the political machines that sprouted up in the largest manufacturing hubs, such as Chicago, Boston, and New York. Not all of the “bosses” at the helm of these machines were Democrats; Philadelphia and Chicago were intermittently controlled by Republicans. But the nation’s most famous machine, New York’s Tammany Hall, was solidly Democratic. As that city’s urban manufacturing workforce exploded in the early 20th century, Tammany Hall bosses had little choice but to forge an alliance with the workers’ parties.

Of course, the more axes on which the parties differ, the less tolerant they become. The cycle of polarization continues.

Two articles on current consequences of climate change. First, the Post has a long-form description of how global temperature rise is lumpy, causing localized hot spots such as the one off the coast of Uruguay:

The mysterious blob covers 130,000 square miles of ocean, an area nearly twice as big as this small country. And it has been heating up extremely rapidly — by over 2 degrees Celsius — or 2C — over the past century, double the global average. At its center, it's grown even hotter, warming by as much as 3 degrees Celsius, according to one analysis.

The entire global ocean is warming, but some parts are changing much faster than others — and the hot spot off Uruguay is one of the fastest. It was first identified by scientists in 2012, but it is still poorly understood and has received virtually no public attention.

The South Atlantic blob is part of a global trend: Around the planet, enormous ocean currents are traveling to new locations. As these currents relocate, waters are growing warmer. Scientists have found similar hot spots along the western stretches of four other oceans — the North Atlantic, the North Pacific, the South Pacific, and the Indian.

Barring some dramatic event like a major volcanic eruption — which can cause temporary global cooling by spewing ash that blocks the sun — scientists expect this to continue and steadily worsen.

Climate change has also driven a policy shift in Canada:

Unlike the United States, which will repeatedly help pay for people to rebuild in place, Canada has responded to the escalating costs of climate change by limiting aid after disasters, and even telling people to leave their homes. It is an experiment that has exposed a complex mix of relief, anger and loss as entire neighborhoods are removed, house by house.

The real-world consequences of that philosophy are playing out in Gatineau, a city across the river from Ottawa that has been hit by two 100-year-floods since 2017. Residents here are waiting for officials to tell them if the damage from the latest flood, in April, exceeded 50 percent of the value of those homes. Those who get that notice will be offered some money and told to leave.

Canada doesn't have the constitutional protections for private property that we have in the US. But the approach works; they spend a lot less on clearances than on rebuilding, especially since they only need to clear once.

WaPo has an interactive map:

Cue the 2019 Fall Foliage Prediction Map on SmokyMountains.com, a site promoting tourism in that region. The interactive tool is one of the most helpful resources to reference as you plan your autumnal adventures.

“We believe this interactive tool will enable travelers to take more meaningful fall vacations, capture beautiful fall photos and enjoy the natural beauty of autumn,” data scientist and SmokyMountains.com chief technology officer Wes Melton said in a statement.

Travelers are presented with a map of the United States and a user-friendly timeline to adjust below. As you drag through the season, the map changes to show where fall foliage is minimal, patchy, partial, near peak, peak and past peak.

By swiping through, you can easily find the best time to visit the region of your choosing.

Enjoy. According to the map, Chicago's peak occurs between October 19th and November 2nd. You might see some color this weekend in the Michigan Upper Peninsula and the top tier of New England.

It's the last weekday of summer. Chicago's weather today is perfect; the office is quiet ahead of the three-day weekend; and I'm cooking with gas on my current project.

None of that leaves a lot of time to read any of these:

• Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot gave her first State of the City address last night, complete with her revealing that the city has a $858 million shortfall next year.
• Aaron Gordon says that, essentially, Uber and Lyft are parasites, so it's no wonder they oppose California's efforts to classify their drivers as employees.
• Citylab polled readers to find out who says they live in the Midwest. Hint: Midwesterners do.
• Jeffrey Goldberg interviews Jim Mattis, who incidentally will be in Chicago on the 11th. (And I have a ticket to his speech.)
• President Trump abruptly fired his personal assistant after she revealed "confidential family information" to journalists at an off-the-record dinner. Josh Marshall smells something fishy.
• Josh Marshall also points out the false equivalency of comparing Joe Biden's campaign stretcher with the president's incessant and pathological lying.
• Finally, in an older Medium story, "former card magician" Ben Chapman explains how the president gets away with lying so often.

Now, to find lunch.

I'll circle back to a couple of these later today. But at the moment, I've got the following queued up for my lunch hour:

• The Washington Post charitably describes yesterday's press conference in France as "a glimpse into Trump's unorthodox mind." As in, he lied through the whole thing.
• MSNBC says the G7 as a whole (which ended in the aforementioned presser) shows that other world leaders have learned to manipulate the president pretty well.
• Brazil, meanwhile has become the latest country to discover that authoritarian leaders don't know what they're doing and cover it up with bluster and blame-shifting. Oh, and corruption.
• And when those authoritarian leaders (and wannabes) tank the economy, millennials will, once again, get the worst of it. (Though we Xers aren't exactly raking it in either.)
• Via Schneier, Lawfare raises the alarm about the dangers of fake scientific research.
• Adam Gopnik asks, are spies worth it?
• Meanwhile, Riz Virk argues that we need to figure out if we're in a simulation.
• Finally, Microsoft's Raymond Chen takes us back to the days when software used to cost manufacturers a dollar a byte. (That's around when TV producers paid about $1 per foot, or 2/3 of as second, for film.)

That's enough of a queue for now.

...I might have time to read all of these:

• President Trump's new rule, announced by acting USCIS chief Ken Cuccinelli, could radically change who gets to become an American.
• This week is the 10th anniversary of Kanye West's unpardonable dick move against Taylor Swift.
• The UK banned a Philadelphia cream cheese advert because it portrayed a gender stereotype.
• David Dudley argues that the bad mayor in Stephen Spielberg's 1975 movie Jaws explains "all I really needed to know about cities."
• Blogger Charles Phipps provides 50 bits of evidence that we're now living in a Cyberpunk future.
• Ross Douthat argues that sometimes—albeit rarely—you need to take conspiracy theories seriously.
• Peter Brannen points out that, at some point our entire history will be a few millimeters of rock under an ocean, so debating the "anthropocene" is kind of silly.
• Apparently, Ayn Rand has a recruiting problem.
• Fox and Friends doesn't really understand how tariffs work, even though the network they work for seems to get it.
• Rob Sylvan has some great tips for using Adobe Lightroom.

And now, back to work.