Waiting for customer service
I'm on hold with my bank trying to sort out a transaction they seem to have deleted. I've also just sorted through a hundred or so stories in our project backlog, so while I'm mulling over the next 6...
View ArticleOf course they knew
As we in Chicago enjoy (?) the 12th consecutive day with above-normal temperatures, and look forward to another 10 at least, it turns out ExxonMobil's own scientists predicted global temperature...
View ArticleChanging planes in Dallas
Staring out a window at the Terminal A parking garage at DFW Airport, I pause to check my email. Top of the pile I see this lovely report from MSNBC:Californians should brace for flooding and possible...
View ArticleThe big hole the road sunk into is not a sinkhole!
One Daily Parker reader sent me this clarification that the big hole in CA-92 preventing people in Half Moon Bay, Calif., from reaching Silicon Valley is not, technically, a sink hole:The first thing...
View ArticleAnother step in the slow decline of an empire
The United States once had the best universities in the world. Maybe we still do, to an extent. Most empires, in their primes, have them. But in every culture, some people simply don't (or can't)...
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Let's acknowledge this is weird
I just got an alert that the outside temperature at my house went above 10°C:It's mid-January, and my house in Chicago is only 2°C cooler than San Francisco. (O'Hare is only 1°C cooler.)Maybe I have...
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Black Hammer Brewing, San Francisco
Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project.Brewery: Black Hammer Brewing, 544 Bryant St., San FranciscoTrain line: Caltrain, San Francisco terminalTime from Chicago: about 4½ hours by...
View ArticleCatching up at home
New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Arden, just resigned unexpectedly, which is a much more surprising story than any of these I queued up:President Biden quietly made a big move on immigration that...
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San Francisco photos
First, on the flight from Dallas to San Francisco, this handsome boi slept peacefully on the floor four rows ahead of me:Bane is a malamute mix, 11 years old, and here in the SFO baggage claim area,...
View ArticleFriday night I crashed your party
Just a pre-weekend rundown of stuff you might want to read:The US Supreme Court's investigation into the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's (R) Dobbs opinion failed to identify Ginny Thomas as the source....
View ArticleMolly White is exactly who we need right now
Accused fraudster Sam Bankman Fried did what every prosecutor hopes a defendant will do: start a blog. Researcher Molly White annotated his first post:Sam Bankman-Fried has apparently decided to fill...
View ArticleTuesday night round-up
In other news:Greg Hinz goes over the upcoming Chicago mayoral election.Kansas Republicans have not given up their fight against the state constitution as they try to ban abortions there against the...
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Collateral damage from urban interstates
I've written before about urban highways, never favorably. Ploughing massive roads through dense urban areas has done incalculable damage to North American cities that tearing them down or burying them...
View ArticleThe Tory catastrophe
Two writers in the Times looked at two different aspects of the Conservative party's ongoing vandalism to the United Kingdom. First, David Wallace-Wells tracks the post-Brexit economic declines:By the...
View ArticleNinety years ago
Time is funny. On this day, 90 years ago, radio station WXYZ in Detroit began a serial called "The Lone Ranger," written by Fran Striker, who had probably never seen Texas or a Native American person...
View ArticleNotes to self
The sun finally came out around 3:30 this afternoon, as a high overcast layer slid slowly southeast. Of course, the temperature has fallen to -11°C and will keep sliding to -18°C overnight, but at...
View ArticleWill tomorrow be sunny too?
I have no idea. But today I managed to get a lot of work done, so I'll have to read these later:A whopping 78% of voters in Rep. "George Santos" (R-NY) district think he should resign.Who should I vote...
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So much warmer!
It got practically tropical this afternoon, at least compared with yesterday:Cassie and I took advantage of the no-longer-deadly temperatures right at the top point of that curve to take a 40-minute,...
View ArticleLong but productive day
I finished a couple of big stories for my day job today that let us throw away a whole bunch of code from early 2020. I also spent 40 minutes writing a bug report for the third time because not...
View ArticleThe future of aviation looks buoyant
Eli Dourado takes a deep dive into the engineering and economics that could raise a fleet of 25,000 autonomous cargo airships, each two Chicago city blocks long floating just 1,500 meters over your...
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