The Daily Parker

Spot the moment when I removed the Inner Drive Technology WHQ outdoor weather station from its repurposed birdhouse:

It lives in a birdhouse to protect it from the sun, rain, and (ironically) birds. However, when we have a long stretch of really humid air as we had for most of the week, the birdhouse gets a bit stuffy. I thought that might be the case when the closest other Netatmo weather station showed a much more reasonable temperature-dewpoint spread all day.

So, no, it's not still raining. In fact it's quite pleasant outside, as Cassie and I will soon experience. But my poor Netatmo sensor was feeling a bit clammy.

First, there is no update on Cassie. She had a quick consult today, but they didn't schedule the actual diagnostics that she needs, so we'll go back first thing Tuesday. She does have a small mast cell tumor on her head, but the location makes her oncologist optimistic for treatment. I'll post again next week after the results come back from her spleen and lymph node aspirations.

Meanwhile, in the real world, things lurch forward and backward as the OAFPOTUS's political trajectory slides by millimeters towards Buchanan levels of popularity and effectiveness:

• Jen Rubin sounds yet another alarm, pointing out that charging your political opponents with bullshit crimes makes you a fascist.
• In a fragile but important win for the First Amendment, Justice Amy Coney Barrett (R) recused herself from two Oklahoma cases, which allowed the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision barring publicly-funded religious schools to stand. (Because the per curiam order was unsigned, it's not clear who cast the 4th vote to affirm; my money's on Chief Justice Roberts (R).)
• Nicholas Kristof suggests three ways that we can undermine the OAFPOTUS's autocratic project.
• The Chicago City Council agreed to $87.9 million more in settlements stemming from police brutality over the years, while the police union does nothing to prevent it.
• A bill working its way through the Illinois legislature would require companies to provide an itemized list of fees before a purchase in an attempt to curb "junk fees."

I took half a day off of work because I didn't know how long Cassie's appointment would take, so after my 4pm meeting I will sod off for the rest of the day. There will be much walkies and much patting of the dog starting around 4:30.

I encountered a couple of head-scratchers in today's news feeds. They seem like parodies but, sadly, aren't.

Exhibit the first: Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss (Cons.—South West Norfolk), who got tossed from office in less time than it takes for a head of lettuce to rot because of her disastrous mismanagement of the UK economy, has an op-ed in today's Washington Post praising the OAFPOTUS and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for the "herculean task ahead of them in turning around the U.S. economy and gripping the deep state that has promoted managed decline."

This comes just a day after economist Paul Krugman reminded the world exactly how Truss crashed the UK economy, and how the OAFPOTUS's big, awful bill would be worse. (Her funniest line: "I faced a barrage of criticism from establishment economists who claimed that these actions would stoke inflation and increase the deficit." Yes, because, you see, my dear Mrs Truss, the establishment economists can do arithmetic.)

Exhibit the second: The New York Times' real-estate section asks, "Is this Chicago suburb for you?" The suburb is Elmhurst, so I can tell the Times quite unequivocally that it isn't. I mean, if you're looking to trash some lovely old housing stock and build a McMansion hellscape, then maybe it's for you, like it is for this young couple:

Drew and Ariana Voelsch, a couple in their early 30s, moved to Elmhurst in 2023, from River Forest, a suburb just west of Chicago. They tore down a 1,176-square-foot farmhouse to construct their 5,000-square-foot dream home, a common practice among buyers in Elmhurst.

Why. Just, why. Anyone want to bet the 110 m² house they destroyed fit nicely on the lot and the 465 m² house their builders slapped together looks like an alien dropped it there from the Bizarro dimension?

Look, if you want a suburb with a variety of interesting housing stock, pretty tree-lined streets, and its own connection to the urban fabric of Chicago, might I suggest Evanston? Or if it has to be west of the city, how about Wheaton, which has a lovely downtown and a (mostly) walkable core around it? Or—I'm asking you, Mr and Mrs Voelsch—River Forest?

(I'll also call out Kate Wagner's post last month in Patreon that can't be missed: "The McMansionization of the White House, or: Regional Car Dealership Rococo: a treatise." Because some people need another reminder that the OAFPOTUS is what poor people think a rich person is like, and what an actual rich person thinks is hideous.)

I have to take Cassie to the vet now, but I will return to the absurd and troubling world around us when I get back.

We've had a run of dreary, unseasonably cold weather that more closely resembles the end of March than the middle of May. I've been looking at this gloom all day:

We may have some sun tomorrow afternoon through the weekend, but the forecast calls for continuous north winds and highs around 16°C—the normal high for April 23rd, not May 23rd. Summer officially starts in 10 days. It sure doesn't feel like it.

Speaking of the gloomy and the retrograde:

• Former US judge and George HW Bush appointee J. Michael Luttig argues that the OAFPOTUS "is destroying the American presidency, though I would not say that is intentional and deliberate."
• In a case of "careful what you wish for," FBI Director Dan Bongino can't escape his past conspiracy theorizing but also can't really escape the realities of (or his lack of qualifications for) his new position.
• Writer Louis Pisano excoriates Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez for their "idea that billionaires can buy their way into virtue with just enough gala invitations, foundation launches, and pocket-change donations" in Cannes this week.
• Adam Kinzinger shakes his fist at the OAFPOTUS-murdered Voice of America, now "subsidized by taxpayer dollars [to broadcast] Trump-aligned propaganda in 49 languages worldwide."
• Jen Rubin, vacationing in Spain, explains how the country's centuries-long Catholic purges of Jews and Muslims drove their globe-spanning empire into irrelevance. "The notion that national defense required ethnic and religious homogeneity not only resulted in mass atrocities, it also deprived Spain of many of the people and ideas that had helped it become a world power," she concludes. (Not that we need to worry here in the US, right?)
• Chuck Marohn shakes his head at the Brainerd, Minn., city council for ignoring his advice and building massive infrastructure they can't afford to maintain.
• Metra has formally taken control of the commuter trains running on Union Pacific track, including the one that goes right past Inner Drive Technology WHQ.
• The village of Dolton, Ill., has informed potential buyers of Pope Leo XVI's childhood home that it intends to invoke eminent domain and work with the Archdiocese of Chicago on preserving the building. Said the village attorney, "We don't want it to become a nickel-and-dime, 'buy a little pope' place."

Speaking of cashing in on the Chicago Pope, Burning Bush Brewery has just released a new mild ale called "Da Pope." Next time Cassie and I go to Horner Park, we'll stop by Burning Bush and one of us will try it. (Un?)Fortunately, we won't have time to get there by 11pm Friday, so we'll miss the $8 Chicago Pope Handshake special (a pint of Da Pope and a shot of Malört). Dang.

Sunday's Sun-Times included an insert of recommended summer activities that may not have gone through the normal editorial process:

The May 18th issue of the Chicago Sun-Times features dozens of pages of recommended summer activities: new trends, outdoor activities, and books to read. But some of the recommendations point to fake, AI-generated books, and other articles quote and cite people that don’t appear to exist.

Alongside actual books like Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman, a summer reading list features fake titles by real authors. Min Jin Lee is a real, lauded novelist — but “Nightshade Market,” “a riveting tale set in Seoul’s underground economy,” isn’t one of her works. Rebecca Makkai, a Chicago local, is credited for a fake book called “Boiling Point” that the article claims is about a climate scientist whose teenage daughter turns on her.

The newspaper responded this afternoon:

The special section was supplied by a nationally-recognized content partner and syndicated to the Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers

We’ve historically relied on content partners for this information, but we are in a moment of great transformation in journalism, and we regularly evaluate our partnerships and processes to ensure we continue meeting the full range of our readers’ needs and our own journalistic standards.

Our partner confirmed that a freelancer used an AI agent to write the article. This should be a learning moment for all of journalism that our work is valued because of the relationship our very real, human reporters and editors have with our audiences.

They intend to "explicitly identify third-party licensed editorial content" going forward. Perhaps they can start by identifying the third-party content provider who screwed them? As a longtime Chicago Public Media supporter, I would very much like to know more about this.

Chuck Marohn makes an important and oft-overlooked point about North American street design, and asks, why are we subsidizing mega corporations at our own expense?

I spent a lot of time outside over the weekend until the temperature started to slide into the single digits (Celsius) last night, so I put off reading online stories in favor of reading real books. I also failed to mention that we had an honest-to-goodness haboob in Northern Illinois on Friday, the first significant one since 1934. Because hey, let's bring back the 1930s in all their glory!

• Adam Kinzinger rolls his eyes at the world's oldest toddler: the OAFPOTUS himself, the biggest champion of the 1930s we have right now.
• Josh Marshall shakes his head at the people in our party who think the electorate is waiting with bated breath to find out which nonessential policies we're going to go with in 2026.
• Jeff Maurer draws similar parallels, this time between HBO/Max/HBO Max/whatever's branding problems and those of the Democratic Party.
• Paul Krugman slaps the GOP hard for its "incredibly cruel" budget—which is their point: "Its cruelty is exceptional even by recent right-wing standards."
• Speaking of cruelty, Jack Goldsmith picks apart Stephen Miller's trolling about habeas corpus, and pleads with journalists to stop falling for this stuff.
• Michael Tomasky says that Kamala Harris's race and gender weren't the problem with her candidacy—it's that the party stopped all conversation about her fitness for the presidency because of her race and gender.
• Tyler Austin Harper agrees, saying that the King Lear analogy with President Biden postulated in Jake Tapper's Original Sin doesn't quite work: his core advisers and his wife bear a lot more responsibility for our 2024 loss than they get credit for.
• Oh, and hey, did anyone in North America notice that the PKK lay down their arms and have ended their 40-year insurgency against Türkiye? It's kind of a big deal.
• In one bit of good news, the critically-endangered piping plovers nesting at Montrose Beach a few hundred meters to the east of where I'm sitting have laid an egg. Good luck, Imani and Sea Rocket!
• The UK has asked if the US Federal Aviation Administration might possibly do their jobs a bit better regulating the Clown Prince of X's rockets, which keep blowing up over the UK's Caribbean territories and littering their beaches with debris.

Finally, Scottish writer Dan Richards looks across the Atlantic and sees that the infrastructure choices we've made have driven us to having only two bad options: slow cars or polluting airplanes. Europe made investments throughout the last 30 years that gave them sleek and comfortable overnight trains.

I last took an overnight European train in September 2013, on what may be my best visit to the UK ever. The Caledonian Sleeper leaves London Euston at 22:30 and gets to Edinburgh at 08:00, for about £250 per person. Put that price against a flight and a hotel, or even an daytime express train and a hotel, and it's not a bad deal. Plus you get a wake-up call with hot tea before arriving.

I've never walked around the Edgebrook neighborhood in Chicago, and I've kept meaning to. So today, with clear, cool weather and nothing pressing to do, I took Cassie for a 40-minute walk up there.

I expect I'll have more interesting things to say tomorrow. The sun doesn't set for almost four hours, and we'll have twilight past 8:30, so I think I'm going to take Cassie out for another walk.

Before we even set out yesterday, I discovered evidence of a cardinal nest in my back patio. The evidence was this guy and his mate dive-bombing me when I went out to check the Inner Drive Technology weather station:

Later, we took the most direct route to the Horner Park Dog Park, where I met up with a friend and Cassie met a bunch of new friends:

Altogether, Cassie got 3 hours of exercise, and we stayed outside for about 6½ hours total. We won't get anywhere near that today, unfortunately, but yesterday was a lot of fun for everyone except the cardinals outside my back door.

Sure, Brian De Palma had a great insight into what he called "the Chicago way," but not being from Chicago, he didn't grasp our true city motto: "Where's Mine?" The owners of 212 E. 141st Place in Dalton, a small house less than 2 kilometers from the Chicago city limits, are living up to the Chicago ideal.

It turns out, the house just happens to be where Robert Prevost grew up. Prevost, who recently took the name Episcopus Romanus, Vicarius Iesu Christi, Successor principis apostolorum, Summus Pontifex Ecclesiea Universalis, etc. Leo XIV, lived in the house until he moved to Saugatuck, Mich., for high school.

So, naturally, the current owners of the house have decided to cash in and cash out:

Pope Leo XIV’s childhood home in south suburban Dolton will be sold to the highest bidder in an online auction next month.

On May 5, the house ... was listed at $219,000 but was quickly taken down after Robert Prevost was elected pope. The Realtor and owner had weighed what to do with Pope Leo’s former home, including restoring it to how the pope may have remembered it in his childhood or turning it into a viewing home or a museum.

Now the Cape Cod-style home has been put up for auction, according to brokers iCandy Realty. The house is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house that has been recently renovated.

The pope’s parents bought the 1,200-square-foot brick house on East 141st Place new in 1949, paying a $42 monthly mortgage.

Ubi est mea indeed. But really, if I discovered that a Very Famous Person had lived in the house I currently own, would I not try to capitalize on that? I mean, hey, I'm from Chicago too!

Update: I forgot to note this other morsel of greed today. Chicago Parking Meters LLC, which has already made back double their investment in their theft lease of Chicago streets, settled for $15.5 million to end their suit over the city taking parking spaces out of circulation during the pandemic. While I begrudgingly admit that they got the right result by the wrong method as far as correctly pricing parking goes, I also think that paying back the entire $1.2 billion from the initial deal will save us money within three years, because math.