Friday morning link roundup

It's another gorgeous day in Chicago thanks to a blocking pattern keeping non-gorgeous weather well away from us. Unfortunately, that also means we're back in drought conditions, which the warm weather will exacerbate. And don't forget, summer begins Monday.

In other news:

• Reports out of the Dept of Justice suggest they plan to go after E Jean Carroll , which is a level of brazenness that can only mean former Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying about the Epstein Files today.
• The OAFPOTUS has claimed a deal with Iran is days away for the last couple of months, almost as if he has no plan in his shriveling brain for getting us out of it.
• What do you expect from our real-life President Camacho?
• The OAFPOTUS's "great American state fair" has hit a snag as it seems no one wants to perform there.
• Speaking of dropping out, US Representative Tom Kean Jr (R-NJ) hasn't been seen in months, which worries his Republican colleagues only insofar as there's this election coming up in 5 months...
• Radley Balko continues his series on the egregious and easily-debunked lies coming from Immigration and Customs Enforcement with the story of Ruben Ray Martinez, the first person shot by immigration agents during the OAFPOTUS's second term.
• Jeff Maurer, looking at US Senate candidate Graham Platner (D-ME), wonders, "Where's the line where you start drawing lines?"
• Republican voters have a completely different understanding of the economy right now, in a way that can only be described as "deranged."
• Democratic voters, on the other hand, want their party to fight rather than just draft policy documents we can't even implement until 2029.
• Kyla Scanlon examines how much AI is affecting the labor market and finds...it's complicated.
• Anthropic has released Claude 4.8, their most advanced model yet, which I plan to test in the next day or so.

Finally, Ribfest starts in one week. I now live slightly farther away (3.2 km vs 2.4 km), but Cassie has no trouble with that distance and will enjoy the Fest as much as I do. They've got 11 rib vendors lined up, and if I get there when it opens each day I might get to them all.