Anniversaries
Today is the 245th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, which began the American Revolution.It's also the 25th anniversary of the Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City.And day 28th day of...
View ArticleMinnesota under siege, day 3...
The president continues to ignore the opprobrium leveled against him after his asinine Tweets Friday morning:James Fallows notes how deeply weird and deeply troubling the Tweets were in themselves.Mary...
View ArticleHow crude
Demand for petroleum has crashed so hard and so fast that North American oil producers have run out of space to store the excess. This morning the price of US crude collapsed, falling 105 500% to...
View ArticleIt all just keeps coming, you know?
Welcome to day 31 of the Illinois shelter-in-place regime, which also turns out to be day 36 of my own working-from-home regime (or day 43 if you ignore that I had to go into the office on March 16th)....
View ArticleMore financial musical chairs
When the economy went into its current medically-induced coma, cash movements slowed almost to a halt in some sectors. If you had cash four weeks ago, you have probably held onto it; if you held debt...
View ArticleSurprisingly productive today
Either I spent all day coding and therefore didn't have time to read these things, or I just didn't want to read these things. Let's start with the big questions:Should you use an electric or manual...
View ArticleGet the Republican Party's politics out of the pandemic response
Another 4.4 million people filed unemployment claims last week, bringing the total unemployed in the US to 26 million and the unemployment rate to around 20%. This is the fifth straight week of record...
View ArticleFirst Covid-19 casualty of Brews & Choos
I suspended the Brews & Choos Project after March 7th as the state closed restaurants and bars to slow the spread of SARS-COV-2. I had planned to continue the project as soon as things opened up...
View ArticleThe past and the future
Two pieces caught my eye this week, one telling us that things will get better, and the other...well...First, a letter from New Yorker London correspondent Mollie Panter-Downes—sent 14 September 1940,...
View ArticlePlease have sympathy for the mentally ill and the elderly
The President of the United States, a man who literally has the power to kill billions of people in an hour, made a suggestion at his press briefing yesterday:(NBC's report on the incident includes the...
View ArticleSupport craft distillers
The Covid-19 shutdown has driven people to buy mass-produced spirits instead of good spirits. The good guys are losing:The coronavirus recession has left no industry unaffected, but the one-two punch...
View ArticleOnly so many ways to state the obvious
James Fallows:Reporters from the Washington Post quoted Dara Kass, of Columbia University Medical Center, on the difference between this and Trump’s previous, now-discredited advice that people start...
View ArticlePresident of the Continental Congress
The only president this country has right now massively trolled my party and my state today:As talk in Washington has swiftly moved to the next coronavirus relief package, President Donald Trump on...
View ArticleStupid is more contagious than smart
A small-town Republican Illinois State Representative sued in a small-town State court to have Governor Pritzker's stay-at-home order overturned—for himself, personally:The ruling by Clay County...
View ArticleModern GOP origin story
The Hulu biopic "Mrs America" gives you the founding matron of the modern Republican Party, in all her crazy:It tells the story of the 1970s battle over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that pitted...
View ArticleThe US is now a joke to the rest of the world
Thanks, Obama!No, really. The countries that don't pity us are laughing their asses off. This video from a Chinese satire program sums it up nicely:China: We discovered a new virus.America: So...
View ArticleBack to your regularly-scheduled horror movie
Congratulations! You've made it to the end of April. This month has felt like one of the longest years of my life, and probably yours.So as we head into May, here's what the last few hours of April...
View ArticleGosh, where to begin?
Happy May Day! Or m'aidez? Hard to know for sure right now. The weather in Chicago is sunny and almost the right temperature, and I have had some remarkable productivity at work this week, so in that...
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Pothole art
A couple of blocks from Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters, artist Jim Bachor has made mosaic art in potholes. He added two new installations in the last couple of weeks:The mosaics depict a...
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