Mark Russell dies at 90
Political satirist Mark Russell will be missed:With his deadpan solemnity, stars-and-stripes stage sets and fusty bow ties, Mr. Russell looked more like a senator than a comic. But as the capital...
View ArticleXPOTUS indicted
The Manhattan District Attorney's office reported last night that a New York grand jury has returned an indictment of former president Trump, the first time this has happened in the 234-year history of...
View ArticleHow Disney beat DeSantis
I mentioned Thursday that the Disney Corp. appears to have beaten Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' (R) plan to penalize them for taking a pro-queer stance. Our side are laughing out loud at how...
View ArticleHow Paris got rid of cars
The City of Lights has done a mitzvah for its citroyens, essentially banning cars from the city center in part by providing real alternatives:French planners got a later start than their American...
View ArticleIn other news
Stuff read while waiting for code to compile:Alex Shephard rolls his eyes at the Republican Party's unhinged response to the XPOTUS's indictment.California's Tulare Lake used to be the largest...
View ArticleXPOTUS, criminal defendant
The New York County District Attorney charged the XPOTUS with 34 felony counts stemming from his payment of hush money to Stephanie Clifford, aka adult film actor Stormy Daniels:The indictment against...
View ArticleTwitter's long slide into irrelevance
I woke up this morning to about 450 error messages because our team's Twitter account got suspended at midnight UTC—that is, at 7pm last evening. No one knew about it because we never considered...
View ArticleAsyncing feeling
I spent all day updating my real job's software to .NET 7, and to predominantly asynchronous operation throughout. Now I have four stubbornly failing unit tests that lead me to suspect I got something...
View ArticleToujours, quelque damn chose
But for me, it was Tuesday:The Democratic National Committee has selected Chicago to host its convention next August, when (I assume) our party will nominate President Biden for a second term. We last...
View ArticleNational security reporters need to get some perspective
Good dog, people, the Discord document leak isn't that dire. And between yesterday's Post and the Times just now, I think we can all relax a bit.Look, I haven't seen the leaked documents, nor have I...
View ArticleMy domain name is 25 years old
On this day in 1998, I registered braverman.org, and just a few weeks later built the first draft of what became this blog. When I registered it, only about a million domain names existed, though 1998...
View ArticleNew Weather Now build
It took a few weeks at odd hours, but I have finally deployed the latest version of Weather Now (5.0.8507). I didn't update anything visual, but all the plumbing got a refresh. It's now running in .NET...
View ArticleClear, cool April morning
The clouds have moved off to the east, so it's a bit warmer and a lot sunnier than yesterday. I still have to wait for an automated build to run. For some reason (which I will have to track down after...
View ArticleTime for a transit tech update?
WBEZ reporter Michael Gerstein went out to the IKEA in Schaumburg, Ill., to test our transit system and its navigation apps. It went fine, but Gerstein had an unusual experience:Major construction...
View ArticleRails to trails
Freelance writer John Carpenter (a "husky man of 60, with the approximate flexibility of a rusty old tractor") explores some of the abandoned railroads that now have bike paths on them in the Chicago...
View ArticleStuff I may come back to later
First, because it's April 20th, we have a a couple of stories about marijuana:Daniel Wolfe calls on cannabis sellers to pick names that actually provide brand differentiation.Cannabis companies here in...
View ArticleAmbivalent about self-identity
Emma Camp, an assistant editor at Reason, initially found an autism diagnosis comforting, but now has second thoughts:In many online circles — particularly those frequented by young, white,...
View ArticleWho could have predicted this?
As professional narcissist Elon Musk threatened, on Thursday Twitter abruptly ended their verified "blue check" program. Suddenly, Twitter users had no way to know for sure whether tens of thousands of...
View ArticleRegular posts resume tomorrow
This weekend involved about 5 hours of dog walks, including 2 with another dog, a disruption to Cassie's environments (new bookshelves, details later), an art fair, and my friend's two toddlers (ages 2...
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Area man finally finishes unpacking
I moved to my house exactly six months ago today, but only this past Saturday did I unpack the last box. I had asked two different carpenters about building in bookshelves in what I designated a...
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