Kind of sums up Trumpism in one video
Yesterday, a scheduled "Boat Parade" on Portland, Oregon's Willamette River supporting the president's re-election campaign caused a bystander's boat to sink:Video posted to Twitter showed the boat...
View ArticleHappy birthday, 19th Amendment
The US Constitution has guaranteed the right of women to vote since 18 August 1920:The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any...
View ArticleHappy birthday, Bill
Today is former president Bill Clinton's 74th birthday. Last night, he spoke at the Democratic National Convention, where the party formally nominated former vice president Joe Biden to be president.In...
View ArticleEquidistant
It's been 153 days since the State of Illinois instituted an emergency shutdown of the economy. Friday March 20th was the last "normal" day in the state; since then, we've lived with lockdowns, social...
View ArticleMaybe not the best programming
I'm going into my downtown Chicago office twice a week, even though I'm the only one on the floor, just so I can get some variety and also more monitors for my work laptop. Last week the building...
View ArticleThe vacuity of the modern Republican Party
Politico's Tim Alberta describes what happens "when a party gives up on ideas:"It can now safely be said, as his first term in the White House draws toward closure, that Donald Trump’s party is the...
View ArticleAbove target, not in a good way
Chicago's key Covid-19 metric, the 7-day rolling average positivity rate, ticked above 5% yesterday, as it's been near the 5% threshold for a couple of weeks. It rose from 4% to 5% between July 19th...
View ArticleAfternoon round-up
There's a lot going on today, what with the Republican National Convention celebrating the apocalypse they desperately want, but a few things outside of that also happened:The Lake County Sheriff has...
View ArticleHow long is this going to take?
I'm sitting at my desk waiting for my work laptop to finish updating, a process now in its 24th minute, with "Working on updates 25%" on the screen for the past 5. Very frustrating; I have things to do...
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While Garmin tries to fix its Cloudflare setup...
I'm glad I took a long walk yesterday and not today, because of this:In other news:State health officials warn that suburban Cook County (the immediate suburbs surrounding Chicago) has experienced a...
View ArticleHappy Monday!
Today is the last day of meteorological summer, and by my math we really have had the warmest summer ever in Chicago. (More on that tomorrow, when it's official.) So I, for one, am happy to see it...
View ArticleBetter late than never?
Every six months or so, I update the sunrise chart for Chicago. Because of a bug in the tool I wrote to generate the raw data I use, and because fixing that bug fell nearly to the bottom of my priority...
View ArticleAstronomical math
My birthday is Saturday, but owing to leap years and that I was born early in the morning, I'm actually turning [redacted]—[REDACTED]!—at 9:09 am Chicago time tomorrow. See, Earth revolves around the...
View ArticleRush to judgment
Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for the Washington Post and former New York Times public editor, warns news agencies against adding to what will most likely be a chaotic election night:This time,...
View ArticleHow is it already 4pm?
I've had an unusually busy (and productive!) day, so naturally, the evening reading has piled up:Adam Weinstein says the president "is the military-industrial complex", explaining something of his...
View ArticleAfternoon news break
Here we go:A wildfire currently burning north of Sacramento has become the largest in California history.National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr Anthony Fauci doesn't expect...
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My dearest one, gone for so long
When you ran out on me six months ago, I thought I would never see you again. I looked everywhere, high and low, north and south, but I couldn't find you. I went online, searching even the darkest...
View ArticleSunday morning reading
The sun came out today for the first time since last Sunday, it seems, so I plan to spend most of my day outside. But I have these to read as I sip my morning tea:Historian Mark Bray lists "five myths...
View ArticleSlow news day? In 2020? Ha!
Just a few of the things that crossed my desktop this morning:Astronomers have detected phosphine gas in the clouds on Venus, which is a strong indicator of life.Astronomers have also detected a...
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Hazy shade of wildfires
Smoke from the wildfires out west reached Chicago yesterday:It’s not unusual for smoke from various regions to reach northern Illinois, especially from larger fires, according to Mark Ratzer, a...
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