Where did SBF come from?
Theodore Schleifer examines the intellectual and ethical upbringing of Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old indicted yesterday for perpetrating one of the biggest frauds in history:Of all the potentially...
View ArticleDisaster averted in London, but not elsewhere
A little less than 50 years ago, the Greater London Council finally abandoned a plan from 1966 that would have obliterated Earls Court, Brixton, Hampstead, and many other central neighborhoods:If...
View ArticleIs it post-empire time yet?
I can't quite draw a line between all of these stories, but it feels like I should:Elon Musk suspended several top journalist's Twitter accounts last night while ranting about nonsense "assassination...
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Transport priorities: Ravenswood vs I-290
I mentioned this in passing earlier this week, but I wanted to highlight this story of the American automobile fetish and how much it costs us. On Wednesday, the city officially opened an $800 million...
View ArticleSecond day of sun, fading fast
What a delight to wake up for the second day in a row and see the sun. After 13 consecutive days of blah, even the -11°C cold that encouraged Cassie and me to get her to day care at a trot didn't...
View ArticleBrace yourselves: winter is coming
We get one or two every year. The National Weather Service predicts that by Friday morning, Chicago will have heavy snowfall and gale-force winds, just what everyone wants two days before Christmas. By...
View ArticleOutside the vortex
The world continues to turn outside the Chicago icebox:Julia Ioffe sees an interesting power play between the US and China taking shape in Africa.Ed Zitron experiences unbridled Schadenfreude as three...
View ArticleLast full day of work, 2022
I have to work tomorrow, but come on, it's the Thursday before a mandatory 4-day weekend, so Cassie might just get extra walks. So it turns out I've already mostly caught up on my reading for the day....
View ArticleStupid time zone tricks
This moment in the January 6th committee proceedings was total Daily Parker bait (h/t George Conway). It came as the committee interviewed Max Miller, former senior adviser to the XPOTUS and as of next...
View ArticleA glimmer of hope on a muddy Thursday
I broke away from my last day of work in 2022 around 2:15 to take Cassie on a 3½-kilometer walk. It's 14°C (!!!) right now so almost every snowflake has melted into a thin layer of mud over the entire...
View ArticleStupid is as stupid does
One of the most loathsome, talentless personalities on the Internet self-pwnd yesterday after going 0-for-2 against 19-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, and it was beautiful. Actor George Takei...
View ArticleThe news doesn't pause
Speaking of loathsome, misogynist creeps, former Bishop of Rome Joseph Ratzinger died this morning, as groundbreaking journalist Barbara Walters did yesterday.In other news showing that 2022 refuses to...
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Statistics: 2022
We've now got two full years between us and 2020, and it does look like 2022 got mostly back to normal2.The Daily Parker got 487 posts in 2022, 51 fewer than in 2021 and 25 below median. As usual, I...
View ArticleWhat day is it?
I took my use-it-or-lose-it floating holiday Friday and today was a company holiday. So it feels like today's really Sunday, but so was yesterday, after two Saturdays in a row.I think tomorrow's...
View ArticleStill no Speaker
The House will probably elect a Speaker before the end of March, so we probably won't set any records for majority-party dickery before the Congress even starts. (We might for what the 118th Congress...
View ArticleMMXXIII
While looking for something else, I stumbled upon a post from 2013 that could use some updating:American children born this month will likely graduate from high school in 2041 and college in...
View ArticleMore black smoke
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has lost his seventh bid for Speaker—nope, eighth—while Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has amassed more cumulative votes for the office than anyone except Sam Rayburn. Things in...
View ArticleMy office is still and here
In a form of enlightened laziness, I often go into my company's downtown Chicago office on Friday and the following Monday, avoiding the inconvenience of taking my laptop home. It helps also that...
View ArticleWaiting for an upload
I got a lot done today, mostly a bunch of smaller tasks I put off for a while. I also put off reading all of this, which I will do now while my rice cooks:The EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service...
View ArticleUnfortunate computer issues this morning
The Federal Aviation Administration halted all takeoffs from US airports for about an hour this morning after the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system failed. Planes have resumed flying, but the...
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