Today is the 50th anniversary of DB Cooper jumping out of a hijacked airplane into the wilds of Washington State. It's also the day I will try to get a Covid-19 booster shot, since I have nothing scheduled for tomorrow that I'd have to cancel if I wind up sleeping all day while my immune system tries to beat the crap out of some spike proteins in my arm.
Meanwhile, for reasons passing understanding (at least if you have a good grasp of economics), President Biden's approval ratings have declined even though last week had fewer new unemployment claims than any week in my lifetime. (He's still more popular than the last guy, though.)
In other news:
- Federal Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter ordered two Colorado lawyers to pay $187,000 in fees and penalties for filing their frivolous election-fraud lawsuit.
- The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance has added the United States to its list of "backsliding democracies" thanks to the antics of the Republican Party since 2019.
- Governing magazine interviews historian Richard White about his book examining the "greed, ineptitude, and economic cost" of our 19th-century railroad expansion.
- Chris Stokel-Walker channels your annoyance at the proliferation of streaming services and how casual viewers can't find the latest Star Trek series.
- New Buffalo, Mich., which depends almost entirely on tourist money, has sharply curtailed where they will allow short-term rentals going forward.
- The Salt Lake Tribune has re-drawn its maps of the Great Salt Lake to reflect its historically-low water levels.
Any moment now, my third DevOps build in the last hour will complete. I've had to run all three builds with full tests because I don't always write perfect code the first time. But this is exactly why I have a DevOps build pipeline with lots of tests.