Happy Monday!
Need another reason to vote for Biden? Slower news cycles. Because just this morning we've had these:After 127 years, Mississippi finally voted to remove the Confederate Battle Flag from its state...
View ArticleHalfway there...
Welp, it's July now, so we've completed half of 2020. (You can insert your own adverb there; I'll go with "only.")A couple of things magically changed or got recorded at midnight, though. Among...
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It's not "reopening"
Josh Marshall points out that talking about "reopening," before we have a cure or vaccine for Covid-19, is facile at best and dangerous at worst:From the start this metaphor has saddled us with...
View ArticleToday's lunchtime reading
As I take a minute from banging away on C# code to savor my BBQ pork on rice from the local Chinese takeout, I have these to read:President Trump once again said the quiet part out loud, announcing he...
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Then and Now, Morse/Glenwood
The Apollo Chorus of Chicago annual benefit will take place at 7pm on Friday July 17th. We have to do it online, of course, but the original plan had us at Mayne Stage on April 4th. I had to go up...
View ArticleHoliday weekend
Tomorrow a good portion of the United States will celebrate our independence from the UK. NPR this morning reminded me about the portion of the US that Frederick Douglass described in his speech to the...
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Then and now, Montrose/Dayton
I found this photo of the 800 West block of Montrose in April 1891 in a Chicago Public Library collection:Here's the same place yesterday:A few things have changed. In 1891, Montrose was paved for the...
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Then and now, Lawrence and Broadway (revisited)
I originally posted the top photo a couple of weeks ago, before I found the legal loophole allowing me to take my drone above 120 m AGL. (It turns out I can take it 120 m above the tallest structure...
View ArticleThanks, imbeciles
Because Covid-19 infections have started to climb again after just a few weeks of slowly dropping, the worst-affected states (coincidentally those with Republican governors who really, really wanted to...
View ArticleThe right-wing science counter-revolution
Writing for New Republic, Ari Shulman presents a nuanced and well-thought analysis of the apparent right-wing hostility to science. It's not science per se they object to; rather, they object to what...
View ArticleSomebody call "lunch!"
Stuff to read:White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany accidentally referenced the Armenian genocide, which would have been great if she had any clue why the Turkish embassy immediately demanded...
View ArticleNYC district attorney may obtain Trump financial records
The US Supreme Court handed down a pair of 7-2 decisions this morning about who can see the president's financial records, both written by Chief Justice John Roberts, and both dissented by Associate...
View ArticleAfter-work reading
I was in meetings almost without break from 10am until just a few minutes ago, so a few things have piled up in my inbox:Writing in the Washington Post, Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule explains...
View ArticleNo debates unless...
Tom Friedman gives Joe Biden some good advice:First, Biden should declare that he will take part in a debate only if Trump releases his tax returns for 2016 through 2018. Biden has already done so, and...
View ArticleThe cost of the president's ego
So many months and so many lies ago, the President of the United States doctored a weather map with a Sharpie so that he wouldn't be wrong about saying a hurricane was going to hit Alabama. Yes, he'd...
View Article"Unprecedented, historic corruption"
The pardon power granted in Article II of the Constitution exists so that the President can save people from true miscarriages of justice. Well, originally, anyway. Now it exists to save President...
View ArticleChicago, 41 years ago today
Who could forget?Rolling Stone explains:Forty [one] years ago this evening, a doubleheader at Chicago’s Comiskey Park devolved into a fiery riot when crazed fans stormed the field as part of anti-disco...
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Who could have predicted this?
Yesterday, Florida reported 15,300 new cases of Covid-19, handily breaking the one-day record for new cases we set waaaay back in early April. We've now passed 70,000 new cases nationally in one day...
View ArticleA small clearing in the woods we're not out of
For the first time since reporting its first Covid-19 death on March 11th, New York City yesterday reported zero confirmed or probable deaths from the virus:The milestone came Sunday in initial data...
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Lake Michigan's continued record levels
Lake Michigan continues to set records for high water levels, with yesterday's 177.5 m being more than 90 cm above the long-term average:Here is the scene yesterday at what used to be the Belmont...
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