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I figured out why comments broke for anonymous users: caching is hard. I spent some time yesterday after work digging into the caching code and realized that I was an idiot. I also found where my bad decision about what to cache caused unrelated things to work, which they wouldn't have done had I done caching correctly. I'll fix that tonight.

I've just had a lot to do today and I'm not feeling particularly creative. So, nu, maybe Friday?

Yep, I'm still doing these, because I still have meetings and have to queue stories up: Brian Beutler has another "30 thoughts on the illegal Venezuela war." Heather Cox Richardson picks apart Secretary of State Marco Rubio's appearance on ABC's This Week yesterday. It...did not go well. Because they have no plan. Paul Krugman drags the administration for "seeking cash and an ego boost," i.e., "the real Donroe Doctrine." Of all the horrible aspects of our Venezuelan adventure, Adam Kinzinger was most...

Now that I've had a good night's sleep and the sun is out for the first time all year, I have the energy to start reading the news again. On January 2nd, most of the stories are about things that have changed since Wednesday: Chicago had 416 murders in 2025, the lowest number recorded since 1965 when the city had 620,000 (23%) more people. In 2025, the hottest temperature recorded at Inner Drive Technology WHQ was 34.3°C (93.7°F) on June 23rd; the coldest was -20°C (-4°F) January 21st. Officially at...

The Brews & Choos Project will celebrate its 6th anniversary on February 7th. When I started in 2020, I thought I would get most of it done that year. I managed to visit 25 breweries by March 7th (Lunar Brewing in Villa Park was 25th), before pausing in the pandemic panic until breweries with outdoor seating opened up again. It turns out, I only have 9 places to visit within the Chicago city limits, and another 13 in the Metra zone outside Chicago. Short of another pandemic or massive economic...

Just so I can keep track, my month so far: Mon Dec 1, Messiah dress rehearsal, Millar Chapel, EvanstonTue Dec 2, chorus fundraiser planning committeeMon Dec 8, Messiah rehearsalThu Dec 11, Messiah tutti rehearsal, Holy Name Cathedral, ChicagoSat Dec 13, Messiah performance, Holy Name CathedralSun Dec 14, Messiah performance, Millar ChapelTue Dec 16, Messiah sing-a-long, EvanstonWed Dec 17, Christmas Eve rehearsal, EvanstonSun Dec 21 (morning), 4th Sunday of Advent service, EvanstonSun Dec 21...

Well, some of it is interesting, anyway: Adam Kinzinger uses the Great Drone Panic of 2024 to remind us how right-wing media spin people up over nothing. O'Hare may reclaim its title as the World's Busiest Airport if the Federal Aviation Administration confirms flight-tracking company AirNav Radar's statistics next month. Sam Kahn explains "how the New Yorker became irrelevant." Duke evolutionary anthropology PhD student Hannah Salomons conducted a study of how puppies learn that has recently been...

Cassie and I went out right at sunrise (7:14—two more weeks before the latest one of the winter on January 3rd) just as the temperature bottomed out at -10.5°C (13.1°F) after yesterday's cold front. Tomorrow will be above freezing, Sunday will be a bit below, and then Monday through the end of the year looks like it'll be above. And the forecast for Christmas Day is 11°C (52°F). Meanwhile, as I sip my second cup of tea, these stories made me want to go back to bed: As much as we want to ignore the...

Ah, December, when the easy cadence of weekly rehearsals becomes a frenzy of performances and, yes, more rehearsals. This is Messiah week, so I've already spent 8 hours of it in rehearsals or helping to set up for them. Tonight I've got the first of 4 Messiah performances over the next two weeks, plus yet another rehearsal, a church service, and a Christmas Eve service. Then, after Christmas, a bunch of us will be singing at the 50th anniversary party for a couple who have sung with us for longer than...

Of note: Jeff Maurer wants every Democratic candidate in the next election cycle to hammer the OAFPOTUS for selling pardons (and all his other corruption). Former Republican US Representative Adam Kinzinger takes his party to task for rejecting its own history by attacking the civil service. (By the way, Netflix has a great four-part miniseries about Presidents Garfield and Arthur called "Death by Lightning" that you can watch now.) Paul Krugman frets that we have become a "digital narco-state." Amanda...

A weak La Niña has already started affecting the weather in the United States, as this week's cold snap demonstrates. Weak La Niña events typically cause cooler, wetter winters in Chicago. Last night's temperature got down to -12.8°C (9°F), just a few degrees above the coldest December 5th on record. Normal for today would be 4.3°C (39.8°F); this godawful cold is 5°C below the normal low for the coldest day of the year, January 24th. Fortunately the forecast this weekend calls for more seasonable...

As forecast, the temperature dropped steadily from 3:30 pm Monday until finally bottoming out at -5.6°C (22°F) just after sunset yesterday. It's crept up slowly since then, up to -2.5°C (27.5°F) a few minutes ago. C'mon, you can do it! Just a little farther to reach freezing! Because the forecast for tomorrow morning (-13°C/9°F) does not look great. At least we'll see the sun for a few hours. You know what else is cold? My feelings toward the OAFPOTUS. I'm not alone: Peter Hamby looks back on the...

It's nice when you can plan for severe weather. It's snowed nearly all day, lightly at first but turning a lot worse after noon. Since the temperature has stayed right around -1°C it wasn't a problem to give Cassie some off-leash time at the local park: She even made new friends: And you'd think after 9 hours of snowfall, my rain gauge might have registered some precipitation. I wonder what the trouble could be? As of noon we had 76 mm of snow officially at O'Hare. I expect it'll be more than double...

My Brews & Choos buddy and I repeated our walk from 2023 along the North Branch Trail to Barnaby's of Northbook because they have really great pizza. This time we skipped all detours and went straight up from the trail to the restaurant, thereby saving over an hour of walking and, therefore, getting pizza sooner. It helped that Chicago tied the record high temperature yesterday, hitting 21.7°C (71°F) between 2 and 3 pm. We started with cool and gloomy weather that got progressively better throughout the...

"Enjoy:" Charles Marohn rips apart the OAFPOTUS's half-baked proposal to allow 50-year mortgages, which would transfer even more rents to bankers than the current housing situation does. In a spectacular own-goal that will, I hope, be rolled back very soon, Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin has decided the city will no longer buy US treasury bonds, which are still the safest investments in the world and do not "support the regime" as she daftly claims. Jennifer Rubin cheers the millions of...

I took the dramatic beagle and Cassie to Spiteful* yesterday afternoon. Butters got more pats than Cassie did. Perhaps it's this face? This afternoon we took a half-hour walk through the local park because the weather is absolutely perfect. Whenever I stopped to try to photograph the two dogs, they immediately went in separate directions, so this is the best I could do: The girls are now sunning themselves on my front porch, I'm up in my office coding away, and I've got chicken soup going in the slow...

The OAFPOTUS today destroyed the East Wing of the White House, which he does not own. This reminded long-time observers of the time in 1980 when he destroyed historic frescoes that he promised not to destroy with the grace and maturity of a toddler. He has changed quite a bit since then, but unfortunately only through age-related dementia and probably myriad other cognitive problems we'll find out about 20 years from now. The constant firehose of awful things coming from him and his droogs also now...

But today? 10/10 would recommend! Ah, ha ha. Ha. Everything else today has a proportion of funny to not-funny that we should work on a bit more: The administration served up two full helpings of corruption today: indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James as payback for prosecuting the OAFPOTUS, and finalizing a $20 billion gift to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's friends under the guise of propping up the Argentine Peso. US District Judge April Perry (NDIL) has blocked the National Guard from...

The two biggest news stories of the past 24 hours are the government shutting down because Congress couldn't pass a spending bill by the end of fiscal year last night, and the pathetic attempted-fascist assembly of the United States' general and flag officers in Virginia yesterday. We'll take the dumber one first: Jennifer Rubin shakes her head in sadness, but not surprise. Matthew Yglesias has 17 thoughts about the shutdown, and Brian Beutler has 20, but how many thoughts does Rabbi Eliezer have? And...

I haven't regularly used an Apple product in over 30 years when my college newspaper used Mac Classics for compositing. Even by then, I didn't like Apple's closed architecture, having built at least one Windows box from scratch. If you agree with Freddie DeBoer, turns out my instincts were right: There exists, in the digital ether and in the physical world, a peculiar kind of human organization that has no name, no leader, and no stated charter, yet which operates with the ideological precision of the...

Rosh Hashana begins in just a few hours. To celebrate, let's sing! Corruption, corruption! Corruption!Corruption, corruption! Corruption! Who, day and night, has got his tiny hands out?Reaching for a pay-out, raking in the cash?And who keeps on whining, every day he's whining,"I'm the real victim here!" The POTUS, OAFPOTUS! Corruption!The POTUS, OAFPOTUS! Corruption! Who must know the way to break a proper law,A needed law, a settled law?Who must shred all precedent and end the law,So billionaires can...

I agree with most of what the British comedian says, except I would say while both the Right and Left have descended into illiberalism, the Left aren't actually shooting anyone:

Just now on Facebook the first 15 things on my feed were: 4 posts from friends; 3 posts from groups I follow; and 8 posts from advertisers and accounts I don't follow. That, my friends, is enshittification. I remember when, not long ago, 8 posts would be from friends for every 2 that weren't. It's beginning to make Facebook unusable for me. Other things on the Internet have also enshittified to near uselessness, as these three stories attest. First, Vandenberg Coalition executive director Carrie...

Welcome to stop #133 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Pilot Project Brewing, 3473 N Clark, ChicagoTrain line: CTA Red Line, Addison Time from Chicago: 18 minutesDistance from station: 450 m Even though Pilot Project doesn't actually brew beer at their new Wrigleyville location, thus technically not being eligible for the Brews & Choos list, I liked the place enough and found it a little oasis in the maelstrom surrounding Wrigley Field, so I'm overruling my own rules. It helped that my Brews...

I have a chunk of work to do this afternoon, but I'm hoping I can sneak in some time to read all of these: Dan Rather cheers on the Democratic Party for finally finding the fight. Francis Fukuyama says: move over Berlusconi; the Clown Prince of X has done considerably more to harm Western civilization than you ever did. David Daley puts responsibility for the exploding fight over Congressional maps squarely on US Chief Justice John Roberts. Jennifer Rubin wants us to stop using the word "guarantee" when...

Former Chicago Opera Theater artistic director Lidya Yankovskaya, with whom I have worked several times, has started moving to London because she doesn't want her children to grow up in the anti-humanities environment the United States is becoming: “I want to be sure that my children can grow up feeling like they can always express themselves freely. I want my children to live in a society that really takes care of its people. I want my children to live in a world that really values things like the...

If you've ever played Snakes & Ladders (Chutes & Ladders in the US) with a small child, or really any game with a small child, you have probably cheated. Of course you have; don't deny it. Everyone knows letting the kid win is often the only way to get out of playing again. It turns out, Japan last week and the European Union this week both demonstrated mastery of that principle while negotiating "trade deals" with the world's largest toddler: [I]f the US-EU trade relationship was more or less OK last...

Leading off the news this afternoon, Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne died today at age 76. I am surprised he lasted this long, as he didn't exactly take care of himself over the years. In other news: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has stopped the legislative process of the United States rather than vote on releasing details of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with the OAFPOTUS. Adam Kinzinger details the quiet cruelty of the OAFPOTUS's droogs. Tom Nichols points out that the...

I'll get to the ABBA—sorry, OBBBA—reactions after lunch. Right now, with apologies, here is a boring link dump: The Clown Prince of X is in the "finding out" phase, learning what happens to oligarchs who cross autocrats. Adam Kinzinger calls out the bribe that Shari Redstone's Paramount/CBS agreed to pay the OAFPOTUS to settle a bogus libel lawsuit stemming from a 2020 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. After the US and Israeli attacks on Iran temporarily shut down Internet...

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...

New York City adopted Ranked-Choice Voting before the 2019 Democratic mayoral primary, and they got Eric Adams—their least-popular mayor in decades—out of it. Since ranked-choice voting was supposed to reduce the likelihood of electing an extremist, this was a surprising result. Fortunately New Yorkers have had a few years to get the hang of ranked-choice, so in this year's Democratic primary, they won't make that mistake again, right? Oh, bother. The extreme leftist won. With incumbent Eric Adams...

What a weekend. I mean, for the world; for me, yesterday included vacuuming the house and my car, and taking Cassie on 2½ hours of walks plus sitting outside at Begyle to get pats from random strangers. (To be clear, Cassie got random pats; I did not.) We started at Horner Park: And stopped briefly at Burning Bush, where Cassie was under the table even before I got my beer: I had some stuff about the political events over the weekend, but I'll put that off until later.

Lunch today will be a sampler of ribs from the first vendor at Ribfest that looks appealing. Then Cassie goes to sleep-away camp and I go to a performance call in Glenview at 3pm. So tune in tomorrow morning for the first rib report.

A smattering of stories this morning show how modern life is both better and worse than in the past: A criminologist at Cambridge has spent 15 years working on "murder maps" of London, Oxford, and York, showing just how awful it was to live in the 14th Century: "The deadliest of the cities was Oxford, which he estimated to have a homicide rate of about 100 per 100,000 inhabitants in the 14th century, while London and York hovered at 20 to 25 per 100,000. (In 2023, the most recent year for which data is...

Like yesterday, today I took Cassie somewhere she'd never been before, giving her an amazing array of new smells and rodents to chase. We went up to the Green Bay Trail in Winnetka, covering just under 5 km, and passing a somewhat-recognizable house along the way: We'll spend more time outside today, though it really hasn't warmed up yet (current temperature: 15°C). She doesn't mind.

As Crash Davis said to Annie Savoy all those years ago: A player on a streak has to respect the streak. Well, I'm on a coding streak. This week, I've been coding up a storm for my day job, leaving little time to read all of today's stories: Despite (or perhaps because of) his obvious mental illness and dementia, the OAFPOTUS is really a predictable negotiator who our adversaries have figured out how to manipulate easily. Voters may not like the OAFPOTUS, but they don't like us either. Still, the...

I had a lot going on today, so I only have a couple of minutes to note these stories: Not only is the OAFPOTUS's "new" (actually quite well-used) Qatari Boeing 747-8 a huge bribe, it will cost taxpayers almost as much as one of the (actually) new VC-25B airplanes the Air Force is currently building, as it completely fails to meet any of the requirements for survivability and security. (“You might even ask why Qatar no longer wants the aircraft," former USAF acquisitions chief Andrew Hunter said. "And...

Cassie and I walked 14 km yesterday, giving her almost 3 hours of walks and 8 hours continuously outside with friends (including Butters). The walk included a stop at Jimmy's Pizza Cafe. (It's possible Cassie got a bit of pizza.) She's now on the couch, fast asleep. I would also like to be on the couch, fast asleep, but it is a work day. I also wish some of the people in today's stories were asleep on the couch instead of asleep at the switch: The Qatari government has offered the OAFPOTUS a naked bribe...

...and it's Star Wars trivia tonight at Spiteful Brewing, so I'll just have to save some links to read tomorrow: Matt Bai shakes his head at the Clown Prince of X nakedly cashing in on the trade war. Yascha Mounk says the OAFPOTUS "has a genuine mandate," but can't get past his own narcissism and grievances to use it. Jennifer Rubin agrees, saying "doubling down with a pair of deuces isn't a winning strategy." Jeff Maurer shares his thoughts on the OAFPOTUS's "first hundred years in office." Former US...

We start this morning with news that US Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), for whom I voted all 5 times he ran for Senate, will not run for re-election in 2026. He turns 82 just after the election and would be 88 at the end of the term. I am very glad he has decided to step aside: we don't need another Feinstein or Thurmond haunting the Senate again. In other news: Vice President JD Vance outlined a proposal to reward Russia for its aggression by giving it all the land it currently holds in the...

On Monday, Jeff Bezos' company Blue Origin (the one with phallic space ships) sent an all-female "crew" into low orbit for ten minutes, pretty much demonstrating everything wrong with 2020s America: Blue Origin's all-female crew, which included pop star Katy Perry, completed their trip into space Monday morning. Along with Perry, the crew included Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos' journalist fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, who is also a helicopter pilot. Speaking after touchdown, Perry said she brought a daisy...

Cassie and I are taking a moment after a visit to Horner Park, where she met a bunch of new friends: Note that the woman in the photo is not the beagle's human, which the beagle finds irrelevant if she can get her snoot deeper into that bag. We have stopped for a moment to enjoy a beer (Hazy Sunday IPA) and crack-soaked popcorn at Burning Bush near the park. I feel no urgency about anything at the moment. It's a good day.

With the bare minimum of planning and no time between all my meetings and the train leaving, I am happy to report that my Brews Buddy and I are on the Borealis heading north. For more on our destination, I recommend this lecture from Prof Cooper. Tomorrow I have an all-day Euchre tournament, so reviews from Milwaukee will start Sunday.

I may have dodged a virus this week, though I'm not 100% sure yet. I have a lot more confidence in my health than the world has in the OAFPOTUS, however. And the news today doesn't change that at all: Radley Balko, tongue firmly in cheek, satirizes the Republican Party in a way I will not spoil for you. (His takedown of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, made me guffaw.) Yascha Mounk warns that the OAFPOTUS's irrational and malignantly stupid attack on the very things that made America great in...

The markets started slightly up this morning, but whatever optimism traders had before noon has evaporated. Both the S&P and DJIA are technically up, but less than 0.5%, while the OAFPOTUS continues to act like the demented old man he is. And to think, Twin Peaks turned 35 today. Meanwhile... The Biden Treasury official who co-wrote the research the OAFPOTUS cited to justify his malignantly stupid tariffs explains how malignantly stupid the OAFPOTUS is. Catherine Rampell waits in vain for the little boy...

If you're old enough, you may remember the show Moonlighting, which ran from March 1985 until May 1989 on ABC. And if you remember Moonlighting, you may remember this bit from the first season finale that aired 40 years ago today: Later today we'll return to our ongoing existential horror. But let's pause and remember what it was like to watch that scene unfold on broadcast television with no way to play it back until it finished recording on tape.

Welcome to a special stop on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Tennessee Brew Works, 809 Ewing Ave., Nashville, Tenn.4 starsTrain line: Wego Train, Riverfront Nashville Time from Chicago: 2 hoursDistance from station: 1.7 km Neither Tennessee Brew Works nor New Heights Brewing is a particularly pleasant walk from the WeGo station, but I would visit both of them again. TBW decided to give us two drink tokens each instead of worrying about pouring and distributing 40 flights. I chose two of their...

Stuff to read: Forgetting (or just plain ignorant) that we have a Coast Guard better suited to the task of guarding our coasts, the OAFPOTUS has ordered the guided missile destroyer USS Gravely to the Texas-Mexico border. The OAFPOTUS and the Clown Prince of X, apparently not seeing the connection between weather forecasters and weather forecasts, have illegally fired 10% of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration staff just as a violent tornado outbreak killed 40 people in the Midwest and...

After our gorgeous weather Sunday and Monday, yesterday's cool-down disappointed me a bit. But we have clear-ish skies and lots of sun, which apparently will persist until Friday night. I'm also pleased to report that we will probably have a good view of tomorrow night's eclipse, which should be spectacular. I'll even plan to get up at 1:30 to see totality. Elsewhere in the world, the OAFPOTUS continues to explore the outer limits of stupidity (or is it frontotemporal dementia?): No one has any idea...

I want to start with a speech on the floor of the French Senate three days ago, in which Claude Malhuret (LIRT-Allier) had this to say about the OAFPOTUS: Washington has become the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a jester high on ketamine in charge of purging the civil service. This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will...

It's entirely possible that I will have something to post about the OAFPOTUS's self-dealing almost every one of the next 1,417 days. One hopes not, however. I mean, we only have 608 more days until the next election! Jeff Maurer starts today's update with his take on the laughable proposal for the United States Government to buy cryptocurrency: The president wants to spend taxpayer dollars to buy fake non-money that Twitch streamers use to buy drugs. And he’s not limiting the government to the...

One of my work projects has a monthly release these days, so right now I'm watching a DevOps pipeline run through about 400 time-consuming integration tests before I release this month's update. That gives me some time to catch up on all this: The New York Times has a long explanation of how the Clown Prince of X took over the federal bureaucracy. As I and others have warned for years, the OAFPOTUS has embarked on a truly unprecedented program of bribery and corruption that we may never recover from....

The Weather Now gazetteer import has gotten to the Ps (Pakistan) with 11,445,567 places imported and 10,890,186 indexed. (The indexer runs every three hours.) I'll have a bunch of statistics about the database when the import finishes, probably later tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. I'm especially pleased with the import software I wrote, and with Azure Cosmos DB. They're churning through batches of about 30 files at a time and importing places at around 10,000 per minute. Meanwhile, in the...

Time got away from me this afternoon. I might read all this tomorrow morning: Nicholas Kristof says the Musk/OAFPOTUS administration prostrating to Russia will make the world more dangerous. So does Alex Shepard. Jennifer Rubin says that the Musk/OAFPOTUS administration will break the government, and therefore own it. Anne Applebaum decries Vice President JD Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference. Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced his retirement, now that he got...

I'm just noting a few things and moving on with my day: Pilot Project Brewing has announced plans for a second brewery/taproom in Wrigleyville, just 500 meters from the Addison Red Line station. Google Maps turned 20 four days ago, and The Guardian has a history of how it began. Microsoft will be retiring the (11-year-old) database APIs that this build of The Daily Parker uses, so watch this space for news about a brand new Daily Parker experience this fall! I'm planning to wrap up a new release of...

Topping the link round-up this afternoon, my go-to brewery Spiteful fears for its business if it has to pay a 25% tariff on imported aluminum cans. If the OAFPOTUS drives Spiteful out of business for no fucking reason I will be quite put out. In other news: Timothy Noah reads Jean Piaget to learn more about the OAFPOTUS's "infantile incapacity to grasp the mechanics of cause and effect," suggesting that his reasoning is more transductive, like a 3-year old's ("taking a nap causes the afternoon" ~=~ "DEI...

First: the good. My friend Kat Kruse has a new book of her short stories coming out. She let me read a couple of them, and I couldn't wait to pre-order the entire collection. I should get it on February 17th. Still on the good things—or at least the things that don't seem so bad, considering: The Guardian has a reflection on Seoul removing the Cheonggyecheon Expressway in 2005 to expose the historic stream that the highway previously covered. Margaret Renkl praises the coyotes that live with us in our...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 Library of Congress has named Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and 24 other films to the National Film Registry this week. A quick view of the list tells me I've only seen 5 of them, so I need to start watching more movies. In other news: Former Chicago mayor and outgoing US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel suggests some ways the Democratic Party can get back in the saddle. The Chicago City Council finally passed its 2025 budget, a $17.3 bn mess that only got 27 out of 50 votes, and then only because...

The temperature dropped below freezing Tuesday evening and stayed there until about half an hour ago. The forecast predicts it'll stay there until Wednesday night. And since we've got until about 3pm before the rain starts, it looks like Cassie will get a trip to the dog park at lunchtime. Once it starts raining, I'll spend some time reading these: Andrew Sullivan shakes his head at "the dumb luck" of the OAFPOTUS. On David Roberts' podcast, Dan Savage muses on "blue America in the age" of the OAFPOTUS....

Two stories I mentioned previously have updates today: After a Federal judge in Oregon and a state judge in Washington rejected the Albertsons-Kroger merger, Albertsons has filed suit against Kroger for breach of contract in the failed deal. A Federal bankruptcy judge in Houston has rejected the Onion's acquisition of Infowars in the estate dissolution of Alex Jones, citing a lack of transparency in the process. As long as I've got five minutes before my next meeting, I also want to spike these two for...

First, Andrew Sullivan makes a very good, nuanced point about President Biden pardoning his son: A consensus of sorts has emerged among historians. Little abuses of power in the Roman system slowly multiplied, as rival factions exploited loopholes, or made minor adjustments, for short-term advantages. And so, for example, the term-limits of consuls — once strictly limited to two years in order to keep power dispersed — were gradually extended after the first breach, which set a precedent for further...

Today is the 30th anniversary of the trope-namer first appearing in Calvin and Hobbes, making the comic strip self-referential at this point. (It's the ur-noodle incident.) Unfortunately, today's mood rather more reflects The Far Side's famous "Crisis Clinic" comic from the same era: Adam Gray (D) has defeated US Representative John Duarte (R) in California's 13 district, bringing the House of Representatives to its final tally of 210 Democrats and 215 Republicans. An assassin shot and killed...

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago has performed Händel's Messiah 145 years in a row. Our 146th will happen at 7pm Saturday December 14th at DePaul's Holtschneider Performance Center and at 2pm Sunday December 15th at Millar Chapel, Evanston. We've gotten really good at this. And Josefien Stoppelenburg is the absolute queen of melismas. Don't miss this!

The US Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow provides me with a long-awaited opportunity to clean out the closet under my stairs so an orphan kid more boxes will have room to stay there. I also may finish the Iain Banks novel I started two weeks ago, thereby finishing The Culture. (Don't worry, I have over 100 books on my to-be-read bookshelf; I'll find something else to read.) Meanwhile: Even though I, personally, haven't got the time to get exercised about the OAFPOTUS's ridiculous threat to impose crippling...

The Brews & Choos Project had a net shift of zero in the last two weeks. I am pretty bummed about the loss, but intrigued by the gain. The loss: Long-time Evanston microbrewery Temperance closed up shop on October 27th. I am sad: Evanston didn’t have a brewery before Temperance Beer Co. arrived at the end of 2013. The suburb’s first brewery was a historic moment, and the taproom quickly became one of the city’s finest with hits like Might Meets Right and Gatecrasher IPA. Temperance represented the...

Chicago-based humor magazine The Onion has won the bankruptcy auction to acquire Alex Jones's InfoWars Media: The Onion said that the bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems. The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation...

Revolution Brewpub, which opened its Logan Square brewpub in 2010 and featured in the (really bad) film Drinking Buddies, announced it will close on December 14th: Almost 15 years ago, we threw open the doors of our Milwaukee Avenue brewpub and launched Revolution Brewing to the world. The brewpub is where the first Revolution beers were served and where we first brewed beers like Anti-Hero IPA which would change the shape of craft beer in Chicagoland. Today that chapter of our story starts to wind down...

I can scarcely believe I took these 10 days ago, on Friday the 20th. I already posted about my walk from Borough Market back to King's X; this is where I started: You can get a lovely snack there for just a few quid. In my case, a container of fresh olives, some bread, and some cheese set me back about £6. Next time, I'll try something from Mei Mei. Later, I scored one of the rare pork baps at Southampton Arms. Someone else really wanted a bite, too: Sorry, little guy, I can't give you any of this—oh...

Last night, the Chicago White Sox lost their 120th game of the season, tying the record set by the New York Mets in 1962: With their fifth consecutive defeat and 23rd in the last 28 games, the Sox fell to 36-120 to tie the expansion 1962 Mets’ record for most losses in the modern era and break the 2003 Tigers’ AL-record 119 losses. Rookie right-hander Sean Burke pitched six innings of one-run ball with eight strikeouts, and Korey Lee also homered to give Burke a 2-1 lead, but the Padres (90-66) rallied...

I will spend most of today exploring the narrow streets and fromageries of Aix-en-Provence and visiting with an old friend up in the hills above the city. While I endure those horrors and privations, I will also be struggling with the realization that the TV series Lost premiered 20 years ago today. Remember, kids: don't let the smoke monster cast you out of purgatory until you've figured out the meaning of your life.E

I just finished a 75-minute open-level French test as part of a QA study that Duolingo invited me to participate in. What an eye-opener. And quelle épuisement! The test started well enough but got a lot harder as it went on, for two principal reasons. First, the order of sections went precisely in the order of my abilities: reading, writing, listening, speaking. Turns out I read French a lot better than I write it, write it better than I understand it, and speak it like a reject from a Pink Panther...

The weather today requires that I leave work as early as permissible and take Cassie home the long way. Of course, in order to do that, I have to eat at my desk. (I suppose I could have taken a long lunch, but then I wouldn't have as much time with my dog. Choices.) Last night I fired up the ol' grill. I am proud to report I have gotten steak grilling just right; this guy was a perfect slightly-rare-of-medium and every bite was juicy and tender: Dinner tonight (and probably tomorrow) will be leftovers...

I mentioned that the weather today is amazing, but yesterday's was also pretty good (if a bit humid). Cassie and I walked about 18 km throughout the day and spent most of the rest of the day outside. But Cassie's day started pretty well even before we set out: Sadly, neither of us could get to the last little bit of peanut butter at the bottom of the jar. (I labeled it "dog" because no one wants to get her peanut butter confused with the jar for people.) We trundled off to the Horner Park DFA early in...

Yesterday, Cassie and I walked 16.4 km (just over 10 miles), including a 10 km walk that I'd planned only to be a bit less than 7 km. I wanted to stop by Ravinia Brewing's Logan Square taproom, but alas, when we got there, the patio was closed. So we went to Burning Bush instead. In all, we spent most of the day outside in the perfect weather. We'll do more of the same today, just not quite as much walking. Another brewery that didn't make the cut for the Brews & Choos Project—it's too far from the...

The XPOTUS's handlers cut short his appearance this afternoon at the National Association of Black Journalists convention just 2 km from where I'm sitting. The XPOTUS began by insulting the hosts and the panelists. Then, when one of the panelists had just brought up Project 2025 (the Republican Party's blueprint for rolling the country back to the 1850s), the moderator suddenly interrupted and said the campaign had told her to wrap it up. The 37 minutes of Harris Campaign footage the XPOTUS had already...

The US election is 98 days away, and August starts Thursday. Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'...into the future... And yet, the ever-present Now keeps us here: Both Paul Krugman and Molly White are baffled that the XPOTUS is making cryptocurrency a campaign issue, when almost none of their voters understands the first thing about it. (Hint: their biggest tech-bro donors care about it a lot.) James Fallows introduces us to Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D). Chuck Marohn shakes his head sadly at...

Lots of stories in the last day: Are we about to see a historic change at the top of the Democratic ticket? What's the connection between vice-president nominee JD Vance (R-OH) and Hulk Hogan? Or between JD Vance and Faust? Or between JD Vance and your menstruation cycle? The City of Chicago has approved tearing down the Eamus Catuli building on Waveland. We actually had 25 tornados on Monday. Twenty five. Finally, comic genius and Chicago native Bob Newhart has died at age 94. He was a national treasure.

Three celebrities from my youth died yesterday, but for obvious reasons none was the top story on any news outlet this morning. No one should politicize the attempt on the XPOTUS's life yesterday at a rally outside Pittsburgh. We have no idea why the assailant shot the XPOTUS and three other people; the FBI and the Pennsylvania State Police are investigating, and with the shooter killed by the Secret Service, we won't have to wait for a criminal trial for the full story. I trust both agencies to...

The New York Times had two opinion pieces today that seemed to go together. In the first, literary critic Hillary Kelly notes the prevalence of pop-culture stories about people not so much in dystopia, but stuck in something else: On one sci-fi show after another I’ve encountered long, zigzagging, labyrinthine passageways marked by impenetrable doors and countless blind alleys — places that have no obvious beginning or end. The characters are holed up in bunkers (“Fallout”), consigned to stark...

Welcome to stop #106 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Industry Ales, 230 S. Wabash Ave., ChicagoTrain line: All of them Time from Chicago: not applicableDistance from station: 100 m from Adams/Wabash, 1.6 km from Ogilvie Transportation Center Chicago's newest brewery opened in April in what used to be Kramer's Health Foods next to the 125-year-old Central Camera store in the Loop. I am impressed. My Brews & Choos buddy and I went there Wednesday directly after visiting Chicago's oldest...

Welcome to stop #105 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Adams Street Brewery, 17 W. Adams St., ChicagoTrain line: All of them Time from Chicago: not applicableDistance from station: 100 m from Adams/Wabash, 1.3 km from Ogilvie Transportation Center The Adams Street Brewery traces its history back to 1887, and has existed in the same location in the Chicago Loop since 1898. It stopped brewing during Prohibition, but the Berghoff Restaurant above the brew works remained open throughout. I doubt much...

I'm about to leave the office for the next 4½ days. Happy Independence Day! And who could forget that the UK will have a general election tomorrow? To celebrate, the Post has a graphical round-up of just how badly the Conservative Party has screwed things up since taking power in 2010: There’s a widespread feeling among voters that something has gone awry under Tory government, that the country is stagnating, if not in perilous decline. Nearly three-quarters of the public believes that the country is...

Apparently everyone else got over Covid yesterday, too. Or they're just trying to make deadline before the holiday: Peter Hamby pulls the fire alarm after reading a leaked polling report showing President Biden's support slipping in key states after last week's debate catastrophe. Constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe fumes that yesterday's decision on presidential immunity "reveals the rot in the system." Ruth Marcus simply calls the Republican majority on the Court "dishonorable." In her dissent in...

Thank you, Pfizer-BioNTech, for helping my body recognize and eliminate the SARS-Cov-2 virus in only five days: I've got 5 Brews & Choos stops planned over the long weekend. This helps immensely. And stay tuned: this summer I'm also planning to investigate some of the 12 breweries and distilleries in downtown Milwaukee. (It's only 80 minutes away by train!)

Lunchtime link roundup: Dr Daniela J Lamas of Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston evaluates how age has affected President Biden and the convicted-felon XPOTUS, given that whoever wins in November has a high probability of being the oldest serving US President in history. Israel's highest court ruled that the IDF can, in fact, draft all the religious nutters who have avoided doing anything for the benefit of society since the country was founded. Perhaps this will help the country's crushing...

As I mentioned after lunch, a lot of other things crossed my desk today than just wasted sushi: Politico reports the results of its latest poll, which, contra many pundits, shows a marked decline in the convicted felon XPOTUS's popularity following his 34 felony convictions. NPR describes what it's like living through a 50°C day in Delhi, India. Fully 83% of the union representing WBEZ-FM and Chicago Sun-Times employees voted "no confidence" in Chicago Public Media CEO Matt Moog. New York Magazine...

The last three days—i.e., the first three days of Summer—have shown us most of the weather we can expect this season. It rained most of Saturday, yesterday we had cool, sunny, and eminently walkable weather, and today it's hot and sticky with thunderstorms on the way. At least Cassie and I got to spend most of yesterday outside. In other news: David French argues that Justice Sonia Sotomayor's (I) recent opinion defending the National Rifle Association "reinforced the constitutional wall of protection...

I first went to the Duke of Perth in June 1993, about four years after it opened. Today will be the pub's last day at their 35-year-old location on Clark St., after the property owner* doubled the rent. A bunch of us regulars and bartenders from the old days got together yesterday for one last whisky: The place really hasn't changed much since 1989, which is how it maintained its charm. That, and the patio, where I had more than a few first dates: When I lived in the neighborhood, I did so much...

I took Cassie out at 11am instead of her usual 12:30pm because of this: The storm front passed quickly, but it hit right at 12:30 and continued for half an hour with some intensity. It'll keep raining on and off all day, too. Other things rained down in the past day or so: Robert Wright points out the obvious, warning that the XPOTUS was (and would be again if re-elected) way, way worse than President Biden on Gaza. Jennifer Rubin points out the obvious, echoing the warnings of Republican...

I usually spend the first day or two of a sprint researching and testing out approaches before I start the real coding effort. Since one of my stories this sprint requires me to refactor a fairly important feature—an effort I think will take me all of next week—I decided to read up on something today and have wound up in a rabbit hole. Naturally, that means a few interesting stories have piled up: The Presidential Greatness Project released its annual list of, well, presidents, putting Lincoln at the...

Welcome to stop #104 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Demo Brewing, 1763 W. Berteau Ave., ChicagoTrain line: Union Pacific North, Ravenswood. (Also CTA Brown Line, Irving Park) Time from Chicago: 16 minutes (zone 2)Distance from station: 1.1 km (400 m from CTA) The newest brewery on Malt Row opened March 29th just 2 km from Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters and less than 500 meters from the CTA. I had a lot going on in April so I didn't get to check it out until last weekend. Cassie came...

Cassie and I just got back from her vet, with a good 2 km walk in each direction and treats at both ends. The semi-annual wellness check was only $88, and pronounced Cassie in perfect health. Even her weight (25 kg) is exactly what it should be, so I can start adding a little kibble to her meals if we walk a lot. Of course, the heartworm pills were $230 and the fecal test was $107, so not everything about the checkup was great. Le sigh. Also, it's warm today: 27°C for both walks, which is more like June...

My frequent Brews buddy and I trekked out to Woodstock, Ill., yesterday, and visited the two breweries in town, then took Cassie to the newest brewery in my own neighborhood. I'll be going through notes and photos later today, so expect the reviews up tomorrow through Wednesday. Meanwhile, for some reason, Minnesota unfurled a new state flag yesterday: Minnesota's new flag went into official use Saturday, which has many wondering why the state adopted a new flag. The controversial replacement of the old...

Cassie and I got over 2 hours of walks yesterday, and spent most of the day outside. By the time we got to Spiteful, Cassie needed a nap: Her day ended pretty well, on the couch getting lots of scritches, but between our 10 km of walks, the dog park, and meeting new friends along the way, she got a bath. Instead of struggling and trying to escape, though, she mournfully stepped into the tub and awaited her fate. Such a good girl! Later today, the Apollo Chorus will conclude its season at St Michael...

I'll lead off today with real-estate notices about two houses just hitting the market. In Kenilworth, the house featured at the end of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles can be yours for about $2.6 million. If you'd prefer something with a bit more mystique, the Webster Ave. building where Henry Darger lived for 40 years, now a single-family house, will also soon hit the market for $2.6 million. (That house is less than 300 meters from where my chorus rehearses.) In other news: Tina Nguyen warns about the...

I'm heading off to a Euchre tournament in a bit. I haven't played cards with actual, live people in quite some time, so I just hope to end up in the middle of the pack. Or one perfect lay-down loner... A guy can dream. When I get home, I might have the time and attention span to read these: John Grinspan looks at the similarities and crucial differences between the upcoming election and the election of 1892. Andy Borowitz jokes about the latest of Robert F Kennedy's conspiracy theories: that his own...

I tried for a little more than 6 months to read a book of humorous essays by an author I really like, and just couldn't finish. It pains me. But I feel a tiny bit of relief at not seeing the book on my nightstand anymore. Since I started reading it, I read—no exaggeration—24 other books, which suggests I really didn't find it all that interesting. Sometimes you have to just move on, no matter how much you like someone's other work. Meanwhile, tonight is our annual fundraiser/cabaret, for which I need to...

American Airlines says my flight home has a 45-minute delay at the moment (though of course that could get worse). So I just spent 35 minutes walking in a big circle around the southwest corner of downtown San Diego. I don't think I'd ever live here, but I do enjoy the weather. Meanwhile, as if I don't have too many things on my to-be-read shelf already, the New York Times book editor has released a list of the 22 funniest novels since Catch-22. Maybe someday I'll get to a few of them? Anyway, I...

For Reasons, we have the dress rehearsal for our Saturday performance on Saturday. That means poor Cassie will likely go ten hours crossing her paws between the time I have to leave and when I'm likely to get back. Fortunately, she should be exhausted by then. Tonight's dress rehearsal for our Sunday performance won't put her out as much, thanks to Dog Delivery from my doggy day care. Still, I'd rather have a quiet evening at home than a 3-hour rehearsal and an hour-long car trip home... Meanwhile, in...

Since I learned how to drive a car, I've wanted to pick up a BMW in Munich. The European Delivery program allowed Americans to buy a made-to-order car at their local dealer, pick it up in Munich, drive it around Europe for up to 6 months, drop it off at an Atlantic port (Antwerp, I think), and drive it home from your local dealer about 12 weeks after that. Because of tax incentives from the German government and other factors, the purchase price of the car and delivery to your local dealer cost almost...

I learned this morning that I have a meeting at 6am Wednesday, because the participants will be in four time zones across four continents. Since I'm traveling to Munich later that day, I'll just comfort myself by remembering it's 1pm Central Europe time. I'm already queuing up some things to read on the flights. I'll probably finish all of these later today, though: Jennifer Rubin highlights four ways in which the XPOTUS has demonstrated his electoral weakness in the past few weeks. Republican pollster...

With the news this morning that Ukraine has disabled yet another Russian ship, incapacitating fully one-third of the Russian Black Sea fleet, it has become apparent that Ukraine is better at making Russian submarines than the Murmansk shipyards. Russia could, of course, stop their own massive military losses—so far they've lost 90% of their army as well—simply by pulling back to the pre-2014 border, but we all know they won't do that. In other news of small-minded people continuing to do wastefully...

Fifty years ago today, Mel Brooks inflicted upon the world a comedic masterpiece that no one will ever surpass: Blazing Saddles. No one will ever surpass it, of course, because most of the funniest jokes in the movie shock and offend people even more today than when it came out. But that was the point: Brooks and co-writer Richard Pryor skewered everyone in the film. Even the jokes that got mangled by the studio (the "it's twoo" scene originally ended with Bart saying, "baby, that's my elbow") still...

Welcome to stop #100 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Illuminated Brew Works, 6186 N. Northwest Hwy., ChicagoTrain line: Union Pacific Northwest, Norwood Park (Zone 2) Time from Chicago: 22 minutesDistance from station: 400 m It only took four years and a pandemic to get to the 100th Brews & Choos stop. When I stopped at Macushla in Glenview almost exactly four years ago, I thought I'd knock out all 90 or so breweries and distilleries in about 18 months. We all know what happened a month...

A weather pattern has set up shop near Chicago that threatens to occlude the sun for the next week, in exchange for temperatures approaching 15°C the first weekend of February. We've already had 43 days with above-normal temperatures this winter, and just 12 below normal during the cold snap from January 13th through the 22nd. By February 2nd, 84% of our days will have had above-normal temperatures since December 1st. Thank you, El Niño. Though I'm not sure the gloominess is a fair exchange for it....

Walking Cassie to day camp took a lot longer than usual this morning because the freezing rain and near-freezing temperatures after a long cold snap laid a layer of ice over nearly every sidewalk and street in Chicago. She seemed very concerned about my ability to walk, and very disappointed that we didn't take our usual detour to the bagel place to get me some coffee and her a fresh dog treat. The "wintry mix" has stopped and the temperature has risen all the way to 1.5°C at Inner Drive Technology...

Though my "to-be-read" bookshelf has over 100 volumes on it, at least two of which I've meant to read since the 1980s, the first book I started in 2024 turned out to be Cory Doctorow's The Lost Cause, which I bought because of the author's post on John Scalzi's blog back in November. That is not what I'm reading today at lunch, though. No, I'm reading a selection of things the mainstream media published in the last day: Economic historian Guido Alfani examines the data on the richest people to live...

Some Daily Parker followers expressed interest in what books I read this year. So instead of just counting them in the annual statistical roundup, I've decided to list most of the media that I consumed last year in a separate post. Books In 2023 I started 39 and finished 37 books, not including the 6 reference books that I consulted at various points. It turns out, I read a lot more than in 2022 (27 started, 24 finished), and in fact more than in any year since 2010, when I read 51. Notable books I...

Last year continued the trend of getting back to normal after 2020, and with one nice exception came a lot closer to long-term bog standard normal than 2022. I posted 500 times on The Daily Parker, 13 more than in 2022 and only 6 below the long-term median. January, May, and August had the most posts (45) and February, as usual, the least (37). The mean of 41.67 was actually slightly higher than the long-term mean (41.23), with a standard deviation of 2.54, which may be the lowest (i.e., most consistent...

I don't usually do link round-ups on Saturday mornings, but I got stuff to do today: Josh Marshall is enjoying the "comical rake-stomp opera" of Nikki Haley's (R-SC) primary campaign. The Economist pokes around the "city" of Rosemont, Ill., a family-owned fiefdom less than 10 km from Inner Drive Technology World HQ. The New York Times highlights the most informative charts they published in 2023. The Chicago Tribune lists some of the new Illinois laws taking effect on Monday. My favorite: Illinois will...

One of my friends got this little clock for me: It's an Author Clock. Instead of just the time, it shows a literary quote containing the time. They have well over 1,440 quotes in there (they claim 13,000), and they update frequently, so you may never see the same quote twice. I had it in my home office for about an hour and got no work done. Because it's that cool.

As I wait for my rice to cook and my adobo to finish cooking, I'm plunging through an unusually large number of very small changes to a codebase recommended by one of my tools. And while waiting for the CI to run just now, I lined these up for tomorrow morning: Michael Tomasky calls former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has left the House and scampered back to California, "the most incompetent House Speaker of all time." (No argument from me.) Former GOP strategist, lawyer, and generally sane...

May your solstice be more luminous than these stories would have it: Chicago politician Ed Burke, who ruled the city's Finance Committee from his 14th-Ward office for 50 years, got convicted of bribery and corruption this afternoon. This has to do with all the bribes he accepted and the corruption he embodied from 1969 through May of this year. New Republic's Tori Otten agrees with me that US Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is the dumbest schmuck in the Senate. (She didn't use the word "schmuck," but it...

I complained yesterday that Chicago hadn't seen sunlight in almost a week. Ever the fount of helpful weather statistics, WGN pointed out that it made it the cloudiest start to a December since 1952. This streak had nothing on my winter break in 1991-92, when Chicago went 12 days without sunlight, or spring 2022, which had only 1 day of sunshine from March 21st through May 2nd. So the sun on my face this morning was delightful. In other gloominess: Julia Ioffe reports that Hamas has refused to release...

Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Olfactory Brewery & Blendery, 2245 3rd St., San FranciscoTrain line: Caltrain, 22nd St Time from SF Terminal: 5 minutesTime from Chicago: about 4½ hours by airDistance from station: 800 m I really liked Olfactory Brewery, and though I'd never visited before, I really liked Dogpatch. The place has a chill vibe, good beer, and dogs whenever they stop by. I tried three beers: the (checks notes) Más o Menos Bien Czech Pilsner (4.6%), great...

Tomorrow I have a quick trip to the Bay Area to see family. I expect I will not only continue posting normally, but I will also research at least two Brews & Choos Special Stops while there. Exciting stuff. And because we live in exciting times: The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York has charged an Indian national with a murder-for-hire scheme in which our "friend" the Government of India put out a hit on a Sikh activist living in our country. The US Dept of Defense has released its...

I have tickets to a late concert downtown, which means a few things, principally that I'm still at the office. But I'm killing it on this sprint, so it works out. Of course this means a link dump: The XPOTUS has a hate-hate relationship with life. After a damning ethics report, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has announced he won't run again, which is too bad because it would have been an easy D pickup. Speaking of Republicans in Congress, why do they behave like adolescent boys all the time? Israel is seeing...

I hope to make the 17:10 train this evening, so I'll just note some things I want to read later: Monica Hesse can't help making fun of the dude-bros in the US Senate who think they're still in middle school. Guess which party they're in? Julia Ioffe interviews National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Last night I finished Jake Berman's The Lost Subways of North America, and this morning I read Veronica Esposito's (positive) review for The Guardian. I recommend this book too. The New Republic interviews...

I'm still thinking about propaganda in the Gaza war, but I'm not done thinking yet. Or, at least, not at a stopping point where a Daily Parker post would make sense. That said, Julia Ioffe sent this in the introduction to her semi-weekly column; unfortunately I can't link to it: The absolutely poisonous discourse around this war, though, has taken all of that to a whole other level. The rage, the screaming, and the disinformation, ahistoricity, the anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, the propaganda—all of...

We officially had our first freeze last night as the temperature at O'Hare dipped to -1°C. At Inner Drive Technology World HQ it only got down to 0.1°C, barely above freezing, but still cold enough to put on ear muffs and gloves taking Cassie to day camp this morning. It'll warm up a bit this weekend, though. Meanwhile, I'm writing a longer post about propaganda, which I may post today or tomorrow. And that's not the only fun thing happening in the world, either: Ukraine has had a lot of success blowing...

Last weekend I made approximately 5 liters of chicken soup due to an unfortunate decision midway through the process to add more salt. Given the saltiness of the soup I put in mason jars, I recommend a 3:2 ratio of soup to water, meaning I effectively made 8 liters of soup. Most of it is in my freezer now, in convenient 250 mL jars, one serving apiece. Suffice it to say I have had chicken soup for lunch 3 times this week. It is, however, very delicious. Except for over-salting it (which is easily...

An old friend stopped by today on her way from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest, and insisted we take our dogs to the dog beach. It's 14°C and sunny. What do you think I did? Yeah: Fortunately it's the middle of the sprint, and I have a metric shit ton (a shite tonne) of PTO hours, so this was my afternoon. If you're my boss and reading this...I swear, this is not what I planned for the day.

I'm iterating on a UI feature that wasn't 100% defined, so I'm also iterating on the API that the feature needs. Sometimes software is like that: you discover that your first design didn't quite solve the problem, so you iterate. it's just that the iteration is a bit of a context shift, so I'm going to read for about 15 minutes to clear my head: Kevin Philips, whose 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority laid out Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" and led to the GOP's subsequent slide into...

I woke up this morning feeling like I'm fighting a cold, which usually means I'm fighting a cold. One negative Covid test later, I'm still debating whether to go to rehearsal tonight. Perhaps after a nap. And wearing an N-95. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world: Kenyan runner Kelvin Kiptum ran the world's fastest marathon yesterday in Chicago, finishing the race in 2:00:35, 36 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge's 2:01:09 set last year in Berlin. David Ignatius reflects on the massive intelligence...

A rainy cold front passed over Inner Drive Technology WHQ just after noon, taking us from 15°C down to just above 10°C in two hours. The sun has come back out but we won't get a lot warmer until next week. I've had a lot of coding today, and I have a rehearsal in about two hours, so this list of things to read will have to do: Mother Jones's Russ Choma thinks the XPOTUS doesn't really want to win his fraud trial. Robert Wright interviewed Brown University professor Lyle Goldstein, late of the US Naval...

Other things actually happened recently: Slate's Sarah Lipton-Lubet explains how the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court keep allowing straw plaintiffs to raise bullshit cases so they can overturn laws they don't like. Julia Ioffe, who has a new podcast explaining how Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's upbringing as a street thug informs his foreign policy today, doesn't think the West or Ukraine really need to worry about Robert Fico's election win in Slovakia. Chicago Transit...

Happy fin de Septembre, the last day of the 3rd quarter and possibly the last really summer-like weekend of 2023. At the moment it's a perfectly sunny 21.4°C at Inner Drive WHQ with a perfect forecast of 24°C. The plan today: walk 4 km to a friend's house because her kids want to see Cassie, then walk 3 km to the Horner Park DFA, then another 5 km to Spiteful Brewing's Oktoberfest, then walk the last kilometer home and plotz. I am confident both Cassie and I will succeed in all aspects of this plan....

Somehow, it's already the end of September. I realize this happens with some predictability right around this time of year, but it still seems odd to me. Of course, most of the world seems odd these days: As we careen into the 4th Republican-caused government shutdown in the last 30 years, we might want to reflect on the fact that only 68,000 people elected the 8 clowns most responsible for this year's bullshit. New York Times editorial board member Alex Kingsbury wants people to keep top of mind the...

It's only Wednesday? Sheesh... The Writers Guild of America got nearly everything they wanted from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (i.e., the Astroturf organization set up by the big studios and streamers to negotiate with the Guilds), especially for young writers and for hit shows, but consumers should expect more bundling and higher monthly fees for shows in the future. Josh Marshall suspects that the two competing storylines about the XPOTUS (that he's about to return to...

The Writers Guild of America's negotiating committee announced the tentative deal last night: We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional – with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership. What remains now is for our staff to make sure everything we have agreed to is codified in final contract language. And though we are eager to share the details of what has been achieved with you, we cannot do that until the last “i” is dotted. To do so would...

Welcome to stop #87 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Nick & Ivy Brewing, 1026 S. State St., LockportTrain line: Heritage Corridor, LockportTime from Chicago: 47 minutesDistance from station: 400 m Nik & Ivy is directly across the stroad from Lock & Mule, which could not have been more convenient on Saturday. In fact, I took the above photo from just outside Lock & Mule while I contemplated how I was going to frogger over there after brunch. I liked the place, and traffic on Rte 176 was light...

My Garmin Venu 3 continues to impress me. First, its navigation accuracy averages  within less than 2 meters, meaning you can see on my activity tracks when I dip into an alley to drop off Cassie's latest offering.  Second, its battery life rocks. I'm charging it right now after it last got to 100% around noon last Friday. When I connected its charger 45 minutes ago it had dwindled to 7%. That equates to just over 15 percentage points per day, or a full discharge in 6½ days. My old Venu 2 could barely...

Another Tuesday, another collection of head-shaking news stories one might expect in the waning days of an empire: Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau (Lib-Papineau, QC) formally accused the government of India of assassinating a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Paul Krugman traces the road from Mitt Romney to MAGA. Jonathan Last accuses "Meet the Press" of acting like 2016 never happened. Police in Birmingham, Ala., Tased a band director for not ending the band's song a minute early as ordered....

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...

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...

Welcome to stop #84 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Tighthead Brewing, 161 N. Archer Ave., MundeleinTrain line: North Central Service, MundeleinTime from Chicago: 59 minutesDistance 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...

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...

My home office sits at the top of my house as a loft over the floor below. I think it could not have a more effective design for trapping hot air. (Fortunately I can let a lot of that out through this blog.) This afternoon the temperature outside Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters didn't quite make 25°C, and it's back down to 23°C with a nice breeze coming through the window. Wednesday and Thursday, though, the forecast predicts 36°C with heat indices up to 43°C. Whee. (It gets a lot better...

We may stop at Ribfest one more time today, after we hike over to Horner Park to meet some friends. (This may also include a quick stop to cool off at Burning Bush.) Yesterday, Cassie got a chance to nap during the day while I spent some time a few kilometers off shore in Lake Michigan: Not a bad view, despite the Canadian wildfire smoke: After I got home, Cassie and I went back over to Ribfest for three more samplers before ending the evening at Beygle again. But the poor girl really needed another...

I'm about to take Cassie on her noon peregrination, which will be shorter than usual as we're heading over to North Center Ribfest tonight in perfect weather. Last year's Ribfest disappointed me (but not Cassie). I hope this year's is better than last year's. (Hard to believe I took Parker to our first Ribfest over 15 years ago...) Chicago street festivals are having trouble raising money, however. When a festival takes over a public street, they're not allowed to charge an entry fee, though they can...

The XPOTUS continuing to get indicted for trying to steal the 2020 election wasn't the only bit of authoritarian fuckery this week: Constitutional law professor Deborah Pearlstein wonders, as do many other people, why so many of the XPOTUS's mooks are lawyers. Nicholas Grossman can't figure out why the media spend so much time trying to understand the populist right when Biden got millions more votes than the other guy. The Marion, Kan., police department raided the town newspaper and seized its...

I love it when something passes all the integration tests locally, then on the CI build, and then I discover that the code works perfectly well but not as I intended it. So while I'm waiting for yet another CI build to run, I'm making note of these: Who's dumber than the XPOTUS? His lawyers. The city of Chicago has released plans to build a tunnel connecting the existing Bloomingdale Trail with the other side of I-90/94 and the Union Pacific tracks, but they don't expect it to open for about 3 years....

The Martin Theater at Ravinia Park yesterday: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra sold out both of our Magic Flute performances in the Theater this weekend, but you can still get lawn tickets for 7:30pm tonight or 1pm Sunday. And if you take Metra, you can ride to and from the park for free.

I'm still working on the feature I described in my last post. So some articles have stacked up for me to read: The US Senate has the second-highest average age in its 234-year history, with 34 members over 70. The House is the third-oldest, with 72 members over 70. Josh Marshall (and The Daily Parker) don't extend that worry to the presidency, however: we're just fine with four more years of President Biden being the oldest president ever. The Chicago Transit Authority has cut over the CTA Red and...

I'm just over a week from performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, so as I try to finish a feature that turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought, I'm hearing opera choruses in my head. Between rehearsals and actual work, I might never get to read any of these items: Jesse Wegman describes how to tell a political prosecution from a real one, which would be great except the people doing the political ones don't read the Times. Meaghan O'Rourke points to...

An entertainer, a criminal, and an architect died this week, and we should remember them all. The most notable person to die was singer Tony Bennet, 96: His peer Frank Sinatra called him the greatest popular singer in the world. His recordings – most of them made for Columbia Records, which signed him in 1950 – were characterized by ebullience, immense warmth, vocal clarity and emotional openness. A gifted and technically accomplished interpreter of the Great American Songbook, he may be best known for...

When I moved to my current house, I planned to hook up my ancient cassette player to a stereo system in my library. So I got my ancient cassettes out of storage and brought them to the new place. It took a couple of stages (ordering bookshelves, getting the bookshelves, waiting for them to fix the adjustable shelf in the center bookshelf) over a few months. In that last phase it looked like this: You're reading that right. I packed that box of cassettes on 3 January 2005, and put a sticker on it when I...

Corporate IT has decreed that all passwords must conform to the following rules:https://neal.fun/password-game/ Keep safe out there!

More photos. The Czech countryside, approximately here: Hafnersteig, in Vienna's Innere Stadt: The Schloss Belvedere, with (I am told) an Apollo capsule:

On this day in 2000, during that more-innocent time, Beverly Hills 90210 came to an end. (And not a day too soon.) As I contemplate the void in American culture its departure left, I will read these articles: Anna Nemtsova rubs her hands in glee along with Ukrainian president Volodmyr Zelinsky in watching the Kremlin's worst fears about Ukraine come true. Henry Grabar blames the killing of Jordan Neely on conservatives' willful failure to address homelessness and mental illness for the last 50 years....

During the weeks around our Spring Concert, like during the first couple of weeks of December, I have almost no free time. The Beethoven performance also took away an entire day. Yesterday I had hoped to finish a bit of code linking my home weather station to Weather Now, but alas, I studied German instead. Plus, with the aforementioned Spring Concerts on Friday and today, I felt that Cassie needed some couch time. (We both sit on the couch while I read or watch TV and she gets non-stop pats. It's good...

The Daily Parker began as a joke-of-the-day engine at the newly-established braverman.org on 13 May 1998. This will be my 8,907th post since 1998 and my 8,710th since 13 November 2005. And according to a quick SQL Server query I just ran, The Daily Parker contains 15,043,497 bytes of text and HTML. A large portion of posts just curate the news and opinions that I've read during the day. But sometimes I actually employ thought and creativity, as in these favorites from the past 25 years: Old Man...

If you haven't got plans tonight, or you do but you're free Sunday afternoon, come to our Spring Concert: You can read these during the intermission: The National Association of Government Employees has sued President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen—both of whom they support politically—to force the Administration to ignore the debt ceiling. Sci-fi author Ted Chiang, in a brutal essay, suggests a metaphor for AI: think of it "as a management consulting firm, along the lines of McKinsey &...

Fifty years ago this week, steelworkers fastened the final girder to the tallest building in the world: Placement of the beam — painted white and signed by thousands of Sears employees — ended nearly three years of construction that required Porzuczek and other ironworkers to climb up and down the steadily rising tower, wearing up to 70 pounds of tools around their waists. The 110-story skyscraper at 233 S. Wacker Drive was topped out May 3, 1973. It ended the Empire State Building’s four-decade reign...

A plethora: Google has updated its satellite photos of Mariupol, clearly showing the destruction from Russia's invasion and subsequent siege. Senators Angus King (I-ME) and Lisa Murkowsky (R-AK) have introduced legislation to force the Supreme Court—read: Justices Thomas (R$) and Gorsuch (R)—to adopt a binding code of ethics. Presumably a Democratic bill that would actually let Congress set the Court's ethical standards will come soon. On Monday, the city will cut down a bur oak they estimate has lived...

But for me, it was Tuesday: The Democratic National Committee has selected Chicago to host its convention next August, when (I assume) our party will nominate President Biden for a second term. We last hosted the DNC in 1996, when the party nominated President Clinton for his second term. Just a few minutes ago, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed suit in the Southern District of New York to enjoin US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) from interfering in the prosecution of the XPOTUS. Speaking of the...

Stuff read while waiting for code to compile: Alex Shephard rolls his eyes at the Republican Party's unhinged response to the XPOTUS's indictment. California's Tulare Lake used to be the largest freshwater body west of the Mississippi, until agriculture drained it. Thanks to record rainfall, it has returned. Stanford Law 3L Tess Winston writes that 10% of her class generates 95% of the noise, but the 1L and 2L classes are worse. The head of Chicago-area concert promoter Jam Productions testified to the...

Political satirist Mark Russell will be missed: With his deadpan solemnity, stars-and-stripes stage sets and fusty bow ties, Mr. Russell looked more like a senator than a comic. But as the capital merry-go-round spun its peccadilloes, scandals and ballyhooed promises, his jaunty baritone restored order with bipartisan japes and irreverent songs to deflate the preening ego and the Big Idea. Presidents from Eisenhower to Trump caught the flak. He sang “Bail to the Chief” for Richard M. Nixon, urged George...

Once again, I have too much to read: After Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) tried to end Disney's control over the municipal area around Disneyworld, the outgoing board added a series of restrictive covenants completely neutering DeSantis' hand-picked replacements, including a rule-against-perpetuities clause tying the covenants to the last living descendant of King Charles III. Robert Wright observed ChatGPT expressing cognitive empathy. An anonymous source provided a German reporter with 5,000 pages...

I've had a bunch of tasks and a mid-afternoon meeting, so I didn't get a chance to read all of these yet: Fifty years ago today, United States combat troops left South Vietnam. The DC foreign policy elite have grown impatient for President Biden to articulate a clearer policy on Ukraine. The Post has a fascinating story of a Russian spy who posed as a Brazilian student to get into Johns Hopkins, but got arrested when he tried to take a new job at the International Criminal Court using his fake identity....

Cassie and I hung out for a bit at Spiteful Brewery yesterday. She, of course, got pats and love from everyone. But the couple sitting next to us had a Land Camera, so she also got photographed: These are now on display in my library.

Welcome to stop #82 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Art History Brewing, 649 W. State St., GenevaTrain line: Union Pacific West, GenevaTime from Chicago: 72 minutes (Zone H)Distance from station: 1.0 km Art History Brewing opened in the summer of 2020, a few months after their planned March 15th opening (oops). They got through the pandemic in part by brewing for Hopleaf, the excellent Belgian-inspired restaurant less than a kilometer from my house. But for whatever reason, none of their beers...

Welcome to stop #81 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Obscurity Brewing, 113 W. North St., ElburnTrain line: Union Pacific West, ElburnTime from Chicago: 85 minutes (Zone I)Distance from station: 1.2 km Elburn, Ill., is the end of the line for the Union Pacific West line. The station opened in 2006, extending the line past Geneva for the first time since the Chicago & North Western ceased intercity train service in 1971. In fact, when the last C&NW train pulled into Elburn 51 years ago, it...

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...

Newspapers around the country finally chucked "Dilbert" into the bin after the cartoon's creator, Scott Adams, gave them the excuse: Newspapers across the United States have pulled Scott Adams’s long-running “Dilbert” comic strip after the cartoonist called Black Americans a “hate group” and said White people should “get the hell away from” them. The Washington Post, the USA Today network of hundreds of newspapers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Los Angeles Times and other publications announced they...

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...

Let's start with combat-actor Jill Bearup explaining how the Netflix-ITV-BBC ban on corsets solves entirely the wrong problems: Meanwhile, in the modern world: The National Transportation Safety Board reported that an axle on the 23rd car of the train that derailed in East Palesine, Ohio, had a bearing temperature 140°C over normal—which is 30°C over "critical." The crew were trying to stop the train when the bearing failed. Perhaps if the train had fewer cars, or more crew, or the proper braking...

Just in time for spring, the City of Chicago has just announced the winning names for seven of our beloved snowplows: Da Plow Holy Plow! Jean Baptiste Point du Shovel Mrs O'Leary's Plow Salter Payton Sears Plower Sleet Home Chicago From the Chicago Tribune: Nearly 7,000 potential names were submitted in 17,000 suggestions from Chicago residents. Initially, the city planned to name six snowplows — one for each snow district — in its fleet of almost 300 baby-blue “Snow Fighting Trucks.” (During a major...

I finished a couple of big stories for my day job today that let us throw away a whole bunch of code from early 2020. I also spent 40 minutes writing a bug report for the third time because not everyone diligently reads attachments. (That sentence went through several drafts, just so you know.) While waiting for several builds to complete today, I happened upon these stories: The former co-CEO of @Properties bought 2240 N. Burling St., one of the only remaining pre-Fire houses in Lincoln Park, so...

Welcome to stop #79 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Bungalow by Middle Brow., 2840 W. Armitage Ave., ChicagoTrain line: CTA Blue Line, California Time from Chicago: 14 minutesDistance from station: 600 m I had plans to meet a friend who lives in Logan Square last Thursday, so why not combine it with the Brews and Choos Project? The friend loves Bungalow by Middle Brow, and I understand why. It's really cool. I tried a sip of my friend's Cottage Mexican Lager (4%), and put it in the category of...

Time is funny. On this day, 90 years ago, radio station WXYZ in Detroit began a serial called "The Lone Ranger," written by Fran Striker, who had probably never seen Texas or a Native American person in his life. When I read that this morning, it struck me that the radio audience in Detroit had living memory of the closest historical analogue to the entirely-fictional Lone Ranger character. Deputy US Marshall Bass Reeves served from 1875 to 1907, retiring just 26 years before the radio show started. So...

Just a pre-weekend rundown of stuff you might want to read: The US Supreme Court's investigation into the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's (R) Dobbs opinion failed to identify Ginny Thomas as the source. Since the Marshal of the Court only investigated employees, and not the Justices themselves, one somehow does not feel that the matter is settled. Paul Krugman advises sane people not to give in to threats about the debt ceiling. I would like to see the President just ignore it on the grounds that Article...

Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Black Hammer Brewing, 544 Bryant St., San FranciscoTrain line: Caltrain, San Francisco terminalTime from Chicago: about 4½ hours by airDistance from station: 600 m I spent most of Monday in Palo Alto, Calif., one of the few places in California that has an actual commuter rail station. Caltrain's northern terminus, at 4th and King, is only three blocks from an actual brewery, so naturally I stopped in. My $20 flight started with the Jaded...

Unfortunately, though, I'm already at the airport, staring out at blue skies and sunny...airplanes. I'm looking forward to getting home, though, and to picking up Cassie tomorrow morning after her bath. (She was already overdue, but after 4 days with her pack, she'll need it even more.) I've got a couple of Brews & Choos from yesterday as well as a few photos from the weekend coming later this week. Stay tuned.

Apparently the rain has stopped! So I'm going to take a walk and get some tea. Lunch in Palo Alto; dinner possibly at The Stinking Rose, depending on how much I want to offend the people sitting next to me on the flight home tomorrow. What am I doing hanging round? I should be on that train and gone.

I got a lot done today, mostly a bunch of smaller tasks I put off for a while. I also put off reading all of this, which I will do now while my rice cooks: The EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service determined that 2022 was the fifth-hottest year on record, once again making the last 8 years the hottest on record. As North America sees record warmth and record-low snowfall this winter, we can guess how 2023 will end up. In no small irony, Illinois was actually cooler than normal last year. I've said...

One of the most loathsome, talentless personalities on the Internet self-pwnd yesterday after going 0-for-2 against 19-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, and it was beautiful. Actor George Takei sums it up: So...Elon Musk let Andrew Tate back on Twitter, and Tate promptly used it to reveal his whereabouts to authorities in Romania who then arrested him. All because Greta Thunberg owned him so hard his little wee-wee fell off. Do I have that right? Please say I have that right. — George Takei...

We get one or two every year. The National Weather Service predicts that by Friday morning, Chicago will have heavy snowfall and gale-force winds, just what everyone wants two days before Christmas. By Saturday afternoon we'll have clear skies—and -15°C temperatures with 400 mm of snow on the ground. Whee! We get to share our misery with a sizeable portion of the country as the bomb cyclone develops over the next three days. At least, once its gone and we have a clear evening Saturday or Sunday, we can...

Both of our Messiah performances went well. We had too few rehearsals and too many new members this year to sing the 11 movements from memory that we have done in the past, which meant that all us veterans sang stuff we'd memorized with our scores open. So like many people in the chorus, I felt better about this year than I have since I started. We got a decent review, too. Also, we passed a milestone yesterday: 1,000 days since my company closed our Chicago office because of the pandemic, on 16 March...

With tomorrow night having the earliest sunset of the year, it got dark at 4:20 pm—two hours ago. One loses time, you see. Especially with a demo tomorrow. So I'll just read these while devops pipelines run: Reversing their First Amendment argument from only 18 months ago, the Chicago Tribune editorial board finally agrees with most Chicagoans that the big sign facing down Wabash Street from the tower named after the XPOTUS has to go. After reporting on elections for 22 years, Josh Marshall finally...

It's 14°C right now, going down to -3°C tonight. Then it's back up to 8°C on Friday. Because why wouldn't the beginning of winter feel like April? While you ponder that, read this: Tom Nichols warns that the authoritarian right may have lost the plot recently, but not for long. Patty Davis thinks that ignoring the XPOTUS will make him go away. That's cute. The Republicans have asked loser Blake Masters to explain why they lost. United Airlines and American Airlines have moved away from small regional...

Cassie and I took a 33-minute walk at lunchtime and we'll take another half-hour or so before dinner as the temperature grazes 14°C this afternoon. Tomorrow and each day following will cool off a bit until Wednesday, the first official day of winter, which will return to normal. Meanwhile... As every lawyer who paid attention predicted, Justice Clarence Thomas's (R) opinion in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen last summer articulated a Republican policy platform while providing...

I'm just finishing up a very large push to our dev/test environment, with 38 commits (including 2 commits fixing unrelated bugs) going back to last Tuesday. I do not like large pushes like this, because they tend to be exciting. So, to mitigate that, I'm running all 546 unit tests locally before the CI service does the same. This happens when you change the basic architecture of an entire feature set. (And I just marked 6 tests with "Ignore: broken by story X, to be rewritten in story Y." Not the best...

Even with Chicago's 1,642 judges on the ballot ("Shall NERDLY McSNOOD be retained as a circuit court judge in Cook County?"), I still got in and out of my polling place in about 15 minutes. It helped that the various bar associations only gave "not recommended" marks to two of them, which still left 1,640 little "yes" ovals to fill in. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world... Republican pollster Rick Wilson, one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project, has a head-shaking Twitter thread warning everyone...

Elon Musk had a lot going for him when he started his first company: rich parents, being white in Apartheid South Africa, malignant narcissism, etc. Like other well-known billionaire charlatans, he has had his share of spectacular successes, and still decided to find his own little corner of the Peter Principle. So let it be with Twitter: Some might say Elon Musk, who last week became Twitter’s official new owner, has buyer’s remorse. But that implies he had actually wanted the thing before he bought...

I reported Saturday that Empirical Brewery, one of my favorite hang-outs just 400 meters from my new house, closed unexpectedly on Sunday. Block Club Chicago's Alex Hernandez found out why: Empirical Brewery was booted from its building and abruptly shut down over the weekend following a months-long legal battle in which the landlord said the company did not pay its rent for several months this year, according to court records. Hayes Properties, which owns the Foster Avenue building, served Empirical...

As far as I know, I'm moving in 2½ weeks, though the exact timing of both real-estate closings remain unknown. Last time I moved it took me about 38 hours to pack and 15 to unpack. This time I expect it to go faster, in part because I'm not spending as much time going "oh, I love this book!" I'm taking a quick break and catching up on some reading: Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon (R-Fla.) continues to help the guy who appointed her in absurd ways large and small. David French explains why "strong"...

We're performing with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra tonight, which means we need to get our butts to Peoria this morning. Which means I woke up way too early. Normal posting resumes tomorrow, assuming I recover by then.

I've had two parallel tasks today, one of them involving feeding 72 people on Saturday. The other one involved finishing a major feature for work. Both seem successful right now but need testing with real users. Meanwhile, outside my little world: The XPOTUS seems to have backed himself into a corner by lying about "declassifying" things psychically, after the Special Master that he asked for called bullshit. Greg Sargent has thoughts. Pro Publica reported on Colorado's halfway-house system that sends...

I took Friday off, so it felt like Saturday. Then Saturday felt like Sunday, Sunday felt like another Saturday, and yesterday was definitely another Sunday. Today does not feel like Tuesday. Like most Mondays, I had a lot of catching up at the office, including mandatory biennial sexual harassment training (prevention and reporting, I hasten to point out). So despite a 7pm meeting with an Australian client tonight, I hope I find time to read these articles: The Chicago Bears have revealed a preliminary...

McSweeney's channels Lovecraft—at Olive Garden: Cheese Ravioli A homogeneity characterized its flaxen cast. Bubbling sacks of slime upon a platter scorching. Beware! Doused in the pureed remains of a dozen orbic fruits, I feel my breath quicken and hands tremble as I pen its likeness as well as I might. My own mind conspires against me when presented with this frightful entrée. To dine? Or will my own visage mirror its sickly jaundice? I have touched with too much haste the vessel of Hades, a burn be my...

I tried three rib samplers yesterday, and I'll probably try a couple more tomorrow. Today I had a ton of errands to run and I didn't feel like eating ribs in the rain. Full report with photos (probably) tomorrow.

We've got a (soft) product release tomorrow afternoon and I've got an opera rehearsal tonight, so a real post will have to wait. I did like Matt Ford's brief note that we've taken the gloves off in the Senate, which is about time. I might have to declare news bankruptcy tonight, though, and return to the world after we launch.

More photos from last weekend. I mentioned The Samuel Palmer in Shoreham, Kent, where I stopped after my hike through the Kentish Downs. I didn't mention that I had a delightful cheese plate for dinner, because cheese: Then I got to experience four Chicago blocks' worth of an English country road at 10:30pm getting to the railway station: On Saturday, I walked along the Regent's Canal on my way to the Southampton Arms: Which remains, as ever, one of my favorite pubs in the world: I will return to all of...

Cassie got almost 2 hours of walkies before 9am with a return trip to the Montrose  Beach Dog Friendly Area: She also got a bath, because even though Lake Michigan supplies millions of people with fresh water, we don't drink it right out of the lake for very good reasons. Also, I did not take 540 photos like last time. Maybe tomorrow...? And if you're listening to "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" on NPR this morning (and tomorrow morning in some markets), I was there Thursday night:

Even though I feel like I have a moderate cold (stuffy, sneezy, and an occasional cough), I recognize that Covid-19 poses a real danger to people who haven't gotten vaccinations or who have other comorbidities. So I'm staying home today except to walk Cassie. It's 18°C and perfectly sunny, so Cassie might get a lot of walks. Meanwhile, I have a couple of things to occupy my time: Arthur Rizer draws a straight line from the militarization of police to them becoming "LARPing half-trained, half-formed kids...

It's not too late to get one of the remaining tickets to Terra Nostra:

Today I learned about the Zoot Suit Riots that began 79 years ago today in Los Angeles. Wow, humans suck. In other revelations: Service and restaurant workers in Chicago have accelerated their pushes for unionization after their bosses showed just how much they valued their workers during the pandemic. Funny how that works. The President can't do much about global food and gasoline prices, but voters will probably blame him anyway come November. I agree with Josh Marshall that preserving the current...

Because it's the first day of summer, I'm only posting fun things right now. First, I'd like to thank Uncle Roger for upping my egg fried rice game. Here's my lunch from earlier today. Fuiyoooh! Around the time I made this delicious and nutritious lunch, a friend who teaches music in a local elementary school sent me a photo of the family of ducks she escorted from one side of the school to the other: In other good news: Believe it or not, today is the 55th anniversary of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club...

Chicago's two baseball teams gave up a combined 36 runs yesterday, with the Cubs losing to the Reds 20-5 and the Sox losing to the Red Sox 16-7. Perhaps the bullpens could use a little work, hmm? In other news: US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has taken more money from gun lobbyists since taking office than anyone else in the Senate, and did not like a British reporter asking him about it yesterday. The local police in Uvalde, Texas, bungled basic policing during the school shooting Tuesday in ways that just...

Tonight our chorus has its (sold out!) fundraiser. This will be the first year since I joined the chorus that I won't be performing, and the second where I'm not running the event. I finally get to just enjoy the night. Except one of the co-chairs has Covid. And the reason I'm not performing is that one of the ensemble I put together also has Covid, and another got called up for his Army Reserve weekend unexpectedly. But, hey, it's going to be fun...and did I mention we sold out? We did find a couple...

NPR did a segment this morning on the 1978 movie Grease, which correspondent Dori Bell had never seen—since, you know, she's a late Millennial. As I listened to the movie, while slowly waking up and patting Cassie, the timeline of the movie and the play just made me feel...old. The play, which premiered in 1971, takes place in the fall of 1958. The movie came out in 1978. So try this out, with the dates changed a bit: The play premiered in 2015 and takes place in 2002. Oh, it gets better, Gen-Xers and...

Authorities in Florida have charged a bride and her caterer with food tampering and the delivery of marijuana, both felonies, after they laced olive oil at the wedding reception with THC: Investigators estimated about 50 people attended the wedding reception. None of the guests interviewed said they knew there would be marijuana in the food. Now, Danya Svoboda and the wedding caterer, Joycelyn Bryant, have been charged with food tampering and the delivery of marijuana, both felonies, as well as...

Leading off today's afternoon roundup, The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman) announced today that Netflix has a series in production based on his game Exploding Kittens. The premise: God and Satan come to Earth—in the bodies of cats. And freakin' Tom Ellis is one of the voices, because he's already played one of those parts. Meanwhile, in reality: A consumers group filed suit against Green Thumb Industries and three other Illinois-based cannabis companies under the Clayton Act, alleging collusion that has driven...

Actually, it's 5pm here. And I have a few stories queued up: Oklahoma has a new law making abortion a felony, because the 1950s were great for the white Christian men who wrote that law. Monika Bauerlein explains why authoritarians hate a free press. Not that we didn't already know. Jonathan Haidt explains "why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid." ("It's not just a phase.") Inflation in the US hit a 40-year high at 8.5% year over year, but Paul Krugman believes it will drop...

Thursday evening, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance: That's Bill Kurtis, Peter Sagal, Karen Chee, Alonzo Bodden, and Helen Hong at this week's "Wait Wait" taping. The "Not My Job" guest was actor Matt Walsh: Then yesterday, Cassie and I trundled up to Spiteful Brewing in the sun: Not a bad few days, in all.

Via Molly White, a new company called Gripnr wants to monetize your D&D campaign, and it's as horrible as it sounds: Gripnr plans to generate 10,000 random D&D player characters (PCs), assign a “rarity” to certain aspects of each (such as ancestry and class), and mint them as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Each NFT will include character stats and a randomly-generated portrait of the PC designed in a process overseen by Gripnr’s lead artist Justin Kamerer. Additional NFTs will be minted to represent...

We're about to get back on the road for our 700 km drive back to Chicago. Before leaving, I just wanted to highlight Ravinia Festival's upcoming 2022 season. In particular, note who they're partnering with for these performances of La Clemenza di Tito and Don Giovanni. Oh, yes, I will be there.

Even as the East Coast gets bombed by an early-spring cyclone, we have sunny skies and bitter cold. But the -12°C at O'Hare at 6am will likely be the coldest temperature we get in Chicago until 2023. The forecast predicts temperatures above 10°C tomorrow and up to 16°C on Wednesday, with no more below-freezing temperatures predicted as far out as predictions can go. Meanwhile, I'm about to leave for our first of two Bach Jonannespassion performances this weekend. We still have tickets available for...

Welcome to stop #72 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Moody Tongue Brewing, 2515 S. Wabash Ave., ChicagoTrain line: CTA Green Line, Cermak–McCormick PlaceTime from Loop: 6 minutesDistance from station: 900 m Moody Tongue surprised everyone when it won two Michelin stars in 2021, in part because of their novel 12-beer parings menu in the dining room. Fortunately for the Brews & Choos Project, they also have a separate bar area, which by itself would qualify for a Bib Gourmand. I got a reservation...