Just look at that cold front, wouldn't you? And notice how the dewpoint dropped hardly at all:
The same thing happened at the official Chicago station at O'Hare, where the temperature dropped from 31°C to 22°C in 15 minutes, while the dewpoint went up. At least the forecast predicts tomorrow will be lovely.
In a related note, the OAFPOTUS's and the Republicans' 40% reduction in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stopped the agency's Atlas 15 project, which will have a ripple effect through urban planning and disaster management for decades:
The tool is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlas 15 project — a massive dataset that will show how often storms of a given duration and intensity could be expected to occur at locations across the United States. The project was intended to be published in two volumes: one that would assess communities’ current risks and a second that would project how those risks will change under future climate scenarios.
The release of Atlas 15 had been long awaited by civil engineers, regional planners and other groups that use NOAA’s precipitation frequency estimates to develop regulations and design infrastructure. Many parts of the country rely on decades-old data to determine their rainfall risks, and there is no authoritative national dataset of how rainfall and flood threats will rise in a warmer world.
But work on Atlas 15’s climate projections has been on hold for months after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ordered a review of Volume 2 this spring, according to current and former NOAA officials with knowledge of the project.
The review of Atlas 15 is among a number of efforts by the Trump administration to curb climate science. The administration dismissed the scientists responsible for writing the National Climate Assessment — a congressionally mandated study typically published every four to five years — and dismantled the program that oversees the reports. In a budget document submitted to Congress last month, Trump proposed zeroing out funding for NOAA’s climate research and eliminating many of the agency’s laboratories and institutes.
Do you know that more Republican voters live in areas negatively affected by climate change than Democratic voters? Neither did they.
We cannot comprehend the damage this administration has already done to the United States. And they plan to do so much more.
I've gotten some progress on the feature update, and the build pipeline is running now, so I will take a moment to read all of these things:
- Radley Balko looks at the creation of what looks a lot like the OAFPOTUS's Waffen-Shutzstaffel and says we've lost the debate on police militarization: "In six months, the Trump administration made that debate irrelevant. It has taken two-and-a-half centuries of tradition, caution, and fear of standing armies and simply discarded it."
- Linda Greenhouse condemns the pervasive cruelty of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Tom Homan: "Something beyond the raw politics of immigration lies behind the venomous cruelty on display, and I think it is this: To everyone involved, from the policymakers in Washington to the masked agents on the street, undocumented individuals are “the other” — people who not only lack legal rights as a formal matter but who stand outside the web of connection that defines human society."
- Paul Krugman explains more cogently than I did why the Republicans cutting NOAA will hurt everyone: "Trump’s cuts to scientific research aren’t about shrinking government and saving money. They’re about dealing with possibly inconvenient evidence by covering the nation’s ears and shouting 'La, la, la, we can’t hear you.' "
- The inconvenient evidence includes a growing realization in Mediterranean countries that their summer resorts are no longer habitable in the summer: "Across Spain, Italy, Greece, France and beyond, sand-devouring storms, rising seas, asphyxiating temperatures, deadly floods and horrific wildfires have year after year turned some of the continent’s most desired getaways into miserable locales to get away from."
- Ilya Shapiro, constitutional studies director at the Manhattan Institute, believes both the left and the right have got Amy Coney Barrett all wrong: "She’s an originalist with a strong devotion both to constitutional text and institutional procedure. But she’s also a stickler for prudence in the face of novelty. The one thing Barrett is zealous about is upholding the rule of law..."
- A group of mayors from the Chicago suburbs has decided they don't like the very same public-private partnerships between railroads and their surrounding areas that created many of the same suburbs: "Real estate could be the recipe for long-term fiscal sustainability for [the Northern Illinois Transit Authority, making some of the current revenue mechanisms only temporary and reducing the risk of a repeat of this year's fiscal cliff. [But y]ou can’t protest government overreach of private property rights, and then defend zoning in the same paragraph."
- At the same time suburban mayors rant against better transit, their residents have clogged half the side streets in Chicago to get around Kennedy Expressway construction this summer. Of course, better transit would obviate all those car trips that cause the congestion in the first place, but let's not think too hard about that.
- In some parts of the country, though, street designs from the Netherlands have become more popular as planners and citizens see how much safer they are for everyone.
- Patrick Smith takes a look at last month's Air India crash and fears the worst: "[I]f the [fuel] switches were moved to CUTOFF manually, the billion-dollar question is why? Were they moved by accident, or nefariously? Was it an act of absurd absent-mindedness, or one of willful mass murder, a la EgyptAir, Germanwings, and (almost certainly) MH370."
- Google announced a new partnership with electric truck maker Rivian to use Google Maps for navigation.
- New studies suggest that we have crooked teeth because our diet changed: "With softer diets came less mechanical strain on the jaw. Over generations, our mandibles began to shrink— a trend visible in the fossil record."
Finally, a number of commentators have experienced a healthy dose of Schadenfreude watching the OAFPOTUS's rabid followers turn on him, including Adam Kinzinger, Josh Marshall, Dan Rather, and of course, Jeff Maurer. It's not exactly "the blood of Marat strangles him," but as a centrist, I am enjoying this part just a little. (And in fairness, Kinzinger, a Republican, believes that the administration's policies will do more damage to the party than this nonsense about Epstein.)
Cassie had a solid night of post-anesthesia sleep and woke up mostly refreshed. The cone still bums her out, and the surgery bill bums me out, but at least she's walking at close to her normal speed. She gets her stiches out—and her cone off—two weeks from today.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:
- Very stupid people have allowed measles, which we functionally eliminated from the US in 2000, to infect close to 1300 people this year.
- Jennifer Rubin argues that the Department of Homeland Security provides neither “freedom from danger” or “freedom from fear or anxiety,” i.e., security.
- Former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers is ashamed of the OAFPOTUS's tax bill and what it will do to the most vulnerable Americans.
- George Will praises former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel for holding the center against the loony left.
- Echoing my own thoughts, Stephanie Bai wants people to stop throwing blame around for this past weekend's Texas floods. (The blame for future disasters, however, falls squarely on the Republican Party.)
- Paul Krugman lauds victories over NIMBYs that are starting to revitalize building in urban areas.
- Cook County's practice of stealing people's homes for non-payment of property tax will likely cost us hundreds of millions of dollars once the class-action lawsuit gets going.
- Strava has once again lost control of its subscribers' location data, this time outing the Swedish prime minister's bodyguards, and thus the PM himself. Oops. (In fairness, it might be that the bodyguards themselves failed to protect the data by posting workouts publicly.)
Finally, lightning bugs appear to have made a small comeback in the Chicago area after a few years of reduced numbers. Educational campaigns have encouraged people to leave leaf litter undisturbed whenever possible, to allow the critters to breed safely. A mild winter and wet spring also helped a lot.
I'll skip the usual political screeds today. Enjoy these:
That's it. I have to continue refactoring a client-facing app until my 4pm meeting.
I'll get to the ABBA—sorry, OBBBA—reactions after lunch. Right now, with apologies, here is a boring link dump:
Finally, does a healthy adult really need to drink 4 liters of water per day? Well, it depends on a lot of things. National Geographic debunks this and five other myths about hydration.
And just because she's so pretty, here is a gratuitous photo of Cassie:
Note: I started this post at 8:30 am but got interrupted by work and HOA stuff.
I'm done with work for the week, owing to my previously-mentioned PTO cap, so later this afternoon I'm teaming up with my Brews & Choos Buddy to visit two breweries on the North Side. Later this weekend (probably Sunday), I'm going to share an unexpected result of a long-overdue project to excise a lot of old crap from my storage locker: articles from the proto-Daily Parker that ran out of my employer's office a full year before braverman.org became its own domain.
Before I do any of that, however, I'm going to read these things:
- The US Supreme Court temporarily and partially paused rulings by three lower-court judges on the OAFPOTUS's birthright citizenship order on the narrow question of whether lower courts can enjoin the entire country. (I will read Justice Coney Barrett's opinion when I have an empty stomach and a strong gummy.)
- Paul Krugman does the math on the Medicaid provisions in the ridiculous Republican budget proposal now winding through the Senate, and calls it "the coming health care apocalypse."
- Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has quietly killed the most onerous MAGA over-reaches from the ridiculous Republican budget proposal.
- Politico describes how Georgia's Medicaid work mandate has resulted in 97% of eligible residents being unable to register for the state's work verification program—which, given the current state of the Republican Party, seems exactly on brand.
- Julia Ioffe scoffs at the inability of the OAFPOTUS and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to utter more than three consecutive words about our attack on Iran last weekend without lying.
- Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) sees omens and portents in Zohran Mamdani's win in Tuesday's New York City Democratic Party primary. So does Dan Rather. Jeff Maurer jokes about who really won.
- Writing in the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan bawls out the gay-rights movement for morphing into a radical, illiberal, and ultimately ineffective leftist crusade: "Far from celebrating victory, defending the gains, staying vigilant, but winding down as a movement that had achieved its core objectives — including the end of H.I.V. in the United States as an unstoppable plague — gay and lesbian rights groups did the opposite. Swayed by the broader liberal shift to the “social justice” left, they radicalized."
- Yascha Mounk shares "18 observations about learning Chinese."
- Bruce Schneier argues that we need to care more about data integrity in systems design.
- What the hell happened to the Lincoln Yards development site?
Finally, though I have not seen the Apple TV show Dark Matter, it's on my list. And if I really like it, I can buy the house whose façade is used as the protagonist's house. It's going on the market for only $2.5 million.
I'm done with work for the week, owing to my previously-mentioned PTO cap, so later this afternoon I'm teaming up with my Brews & Choos Buddy to visit two breweries on the North Side. Later this weekend (probably Sunday), I'm going to share an unexpected result of a long-overdue project to excise a lot of old crap from my storage locker: articles from the proto-Daily Parker that ran out of my employer's office a full year before braverman.org became its own domain.
Before I do any of that, however, I'm going to read these things:
- The US Supreme Court temporarily and partially paused rulings by three lower-court judges on the OAFPOTUS's birthright citizenship order on the narrow question of whether lower courts can enjoin the entire country. (I will read Justice Coney Barrett's opinion when I have an empty stomach and a strong gummy.)
- Paul Krugman does the math on the Medicaid provisions in the ridiculous Republican budget proposal now winding through the Senate, and calls it "the coming health care apocalypse."
- Politico describes how Georgia's Medicaid work mandate has resulted in 97% of eligible residents being unable to register for the state's work verification program—which, given the current state of the Republican Party, seems exactly on brand.
- Julia Ioffe scoffs at the inability of the OAFPOTUS and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to utter more than three consecutive words about our attack on Iran last weekend without lying.
- Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) sees omens and portents in Zohran Mamdani's win in Tuesday's New York City Democratic Party primary. So does Dan Rather. Jeff Maurer jokes about who really won.
- Writing in the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan bawls out the gay-rights movement for morphing into a radical, illiberal, and ultimately ineffective leftist crusade: "Far from celebrating victory, defending the gains, staying vigilant, but winding down as a movement that had achieved its core objectives — including the end of H.I.V. in the United States as an unstoppable plague — gay and lesbian rights groups did the opposite. Swayed by the broader liberal shift to the “social justice” left, they radicalized."
- Yascha Mounk shares "18 observations about learning Chinese."
- Bruce Schneier argues that we need to care more about data integrity in systems design.
- What the hell happened to the Lincoln Yards development site?
Finally, though I have not seen the Apple TV show Dark Matter, it's on my list. And if I really like it, I can buy the house whose façade is used as the protagonist's house. It's going on the market for only $2.5 million.
I don't watch a lot of YouTube videos, mainly because I can no longer concentrate on two things at once with any useful comprehension like (I thought) I could in my 20s. Today at lunch, though, I watched two short videos by well-respected creators that are worth passing on.
First, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich reminds us, "The purpose of a government is not to turn a profit, it's to achieve the common good:"
Second, Strong Towns executive director Charles Marohn points out the flawed thinking that leads some cities and traffic engineers to miss the obvious reason traffic deaths went up in the pandemic and down when people started driving again:
Enjoy.
I got in a bit early this morning to beat the heat. Good thing, too, as my train line partially shut down upstream of my stop just as I got on the train. It's up to 34°C at O'Hare and 33°C at Inner Drive Technology World HQ (feels like 42°C—107°F), with a forecast of 36°C and continued horrible heat indicies for this afternoon when I walk Cassie home from dog school.
Chicago isn't the only place getting this awful weather. The record heat will affect over 200 million people this week with similar temperatures from North Carolina to Connecticut hitting tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the Lake Michigan-Huron system's water level has dropped more than 150 cm since its soggy peak in 2020, giving us our beaches back and ending routine flooding on lakefront streets on the South Side. (Don't worry, we still have a fifth of the world's fresh water.)
The weather should moderate tomorrow, with thunderstorms coming through in the afternoon. I very much preferred the weather in Seattle this past weekend, though. And I hope that Cassie and I can get some real walks this week.
I'm flying tomorrow and Sunday, giving me a few uninterrupted hours to read between now and Monday. So I'm just queuing some of these things up:
Finally, after four years, the CTA Red Line stations at Lawrence, Argyle, Berwyn, and Bryn Mawr will re-open July 20th, which also means that Purple Line trains will resume running express. I am very pleased that a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar transport project actually finished on time and within budget in Chicago. If only we could do more of them.