The Daily Parker

The forecast today called for a lot more rain than we've had, so Cassie might get more walkies than planned. Before that happens, I'm waiting for a build to run in our dev pipeline, and one or two stories piqued my interest to occupy me before it finishes:

• Jennifer Rubin grabs the popcorn as the XPOTUS finds himself not really helped by his first criminal trial. Mary Trump says it's because the world finally sees him for the loser he's always been.
• The Federal Trade Commission has issued a sweeping ban of non-compete agreements, which will no doubt crash against the reactionary US Supreme Court in about five years. But it's a good statement.
• Speaking of SCOTUS, Ari Berman frets in his new book that American democracy may have reached a tipping point with the current reactionary crop on the bench.
• Walter Shapiro paints a picture of the Republican abortion win as a car that caught the speeding car.
• Jerry Useem traces Boeing's decline from an airplane company to a finance company, but suggests a way it could return to its better self: by having executives spend time on the shop floor, like they used to.
• Charles Marohn does the math to explain how multi-decade mortgages and the 10-year interest rate trough have trapped the real-estate market in its current high-cost, low-volume state.

Finally, after a couple of months of incoherent babbling, Voyager 1—now 24.3 million kilometers from Earth, 22.5 light-hours away, after 46 years and 7 months of travel—has started making sense again. Well, hello there!

It's a gorgeous Friday afternoon in Chicago. So why am I inside? Right. Work. I'll eventually take Cassie out again today, and I may even have a chance to read all of these:

• A Florida man set himself on fire across the street from where the XPOTUS was sitting through jury selection, apparently to protest the lack of mental health care in the US.
• Josh Kovensky draws a straight line from the XPOTUS's narcissistic need to cast everyone who disagrees with him as an enemy to be defeated to his lawyers trying to undercut the bedrock principle of impartial jury trials.
• Graeme Wood says Iran has handed Israel an opportunity, so what will Netanyahu do now? Julia Ioffe wonders the same thing.
• Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) admitted (perhaps unintentionally) in a recent Politico interview that he, more than anyone else in the country, caused imbecilic grandstanding rather than actual legislating to become the main measure of Congress in some districts, like his own.
• The Governor of Illinois joined the Daily Parker and the Chicago Tribune editorial board in demanding that the city fire Chicago Transit Authority president Dorval Carter, who (to give just one example of why) takes a chauffeured car to his office which is adjacent to an El station.
• Uri Berliner's resignation from NPR continued to generate op-ed columns, with Eric Wemple taking him to task and Andrew Sullivan taking Katherine Maher to task.
• Edinburgh, Scotland, recently opened a 3-kilometer, £23 million bike path that not everyone in the capital wants.

Finally, a milestone of sorts. The retail vacancy rate in downtown Chicago continues to climb as a longtime institution on North Wells finally closed. That's right, Wells Books, the last adult-entertainment store in the Loop, has closed.

A cold front passed this morning right after I got to the office, sparing me the 60 km/h winds and pouring rain that made the 9am arrivals miserable. The rain has passed, but the temperature has slowly descended to 17°C after hanging out around 19°C all night. I might have to close my windows tonight.

I also completed a mini-project for work a few minutes ago, so I now have time to read a couple of stories:

• The voir dire in the XPOTUS's porn-star-payoff criminal trial forced him to listen to a lot of jokes about himself (plus a warning from the judge to shut up).
• His other criminal trial could hit right after Labor Day, which will make the last few weeks of the election season more interesting than anyone wants them to be.
• Molly White finds AI somewhat useful, while the Canadian Parliament finds the Tories' use of AI to gum up the legislative process somewhat douchey.
• Most economists believe that personalized pricing will make everyone's life easier, while almost everyone else wants to punch those economists.
• Aurora-based Oberweis Dairy declared bankruptcy, just a couple of years after the bankrupt gubernatorial campaign of the current owner's father.

And now, back to the next phase of the mini-project...

I'm heading off to a Euchre tournament in a bit. I haven't played cards with actual, live people in quite some time, so I just hope to end up in the middle of the pack. Or one perfect lay-down loner... A guy can dream.

When I get home, I might have the time and attention span to read these:

• John Grinspan looks at the similarities and crucial differences between the upcoming election and the election of 1892.
• Andy Borowitz jokes about the latest of Robert F Kennedy's conspiracy theories: that his own brain is being controlled by a complete idiot.
• Why do so many of the country's most infamous serial killers come from the Midwest? (Perhaps because it's the home of Kellogg's and General Mills?)
• Michael Sweeney reviews all the errors of navigation and judgment that led to the RMS Titanic sinking 110 years ago tomorrow.
• Speaking of navigation, researchers have found evidence that a sense of direction comes from experience, not genetics.
• Meagan McArdle describes the Oedipus Trap that led Dr Walter Freeman to continue lobotomizing patients years after the horrors of the procedure became clear to just about everyone else, and what this means for some contemporary medical thinking.

Finally, the weather forecast this weekend calls for some real Chicago spring weather: 19°C and sunny today, 22°C and sunny tomorrow...and 9°C with a stiff breeze from the northeast tomorrow afternoon. If you head out to enjoy the warmth tomorrow lunchtime, make sure you have a sweater because it'll be 15°C by dinner.

Attorney Liz Dye teams up with Legal Eagle to explain that the smell emanating from the Truth Social merger and meme stock listing is exactly what you think it is:

So if the XPOTUS gets re-elected, the shares become an intravenous emoluments delivery mechanism; if not, he can cash out and pay his legal bills.

I wonder if I can short it...

Former professional football player, actor, and murderer OJ Simpson has died at age 76:

The cause was cancer, his family announced on social media. The announcement did not say where he died.

A jury in the murder trial, which held up a cracked mirror to Black and white America, cleared Mr. Simpson, but the case ruined his world. In 1997, a civil suit by the victims’ families found him liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman, and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages. He paid little of the debt, moved to Florida and struggled to remake his life, raise his children and stay out of trouble.

In 2007, he was arrested after he and other men invaded a Las Vegas hotel room of some sports memorabilia dealers and took a trove of collectibles. He claimed that the items had been stolen from him, but a jury in 2008 found him guilty of 12 charges, including armed robbery and kidnapping, after a trial that drew only a smattering of reporters and spectators. He was sentenced to 9 to 33 years in a Nevada state prison. He served the minimum term and was released in 2017.

Lucifer Morningstar greeted the new arrival to Hell personally, remarking on the comparative ease of setting up Simpson's loop.

Ah, ha ha. Ha.

Anyway, here are a couple other stories from the last couple of days:

• A New York appellate judge took all of two hours to toss out a frivolous lawsuit by the XPOTUS seeking to get his gag order removed in the Stormy Daniels case, bringing the world just that little bit more relief from the XPOTUS's endless polysyllabic farts. Jennifer Rubin lists the reasons this case might even stop those noisome emanations for good.
• The Arizona Supreme Court voted 4-2 to allow enforcement of a territorial (i.e., before Arizona became a state) law banning most abortions from the moment of conception that predates the famous gunfight in Tombstone by 17 years. (NB: most Arizona voters favor legal abortions.)
• MP William Wragg (Hazel Grove, Manchester) got kicked out of the Conservative Party for sending other MPs' personal phone numbers to a spear phisher, along with photos of his junk, after falling for a Grindr honeypot.
• Paul Krugman wonders about the persistence of people reporting negative feelings about the economy even though they and all their friends and family are doing great.
• Car and Driver columnist Ezra Dyer identifies the main problem electric cars have getting people to buy them: they're boring.

Finally, Ohio State wildlife and ecology professor Stanley Gehrt has written a book I will have to stop myself (for now) from adding to my ever-expanding shelf of books I need to read. Gehrt spent decades studying Chicago's coyote population and how well they co-exist with us, tagging more than 1,400 coyotes and collaring another 700.

My only complaint about the animals is they don't eat enough rabbits. I live near several suspected dens, the closest only about 400 meters from my front door. I can't wait to read the book.

As for the risks coyotes pose to humans, he lets us know who the real enemy is: “If you were to ask me, ‘What’s the most dangerous animal out there [for urban dwellers]?’, it’s white-tailed deer,” Gehrt said.

I'm almost done with the new feature I mentioned yesterday (day job, unfortunately, so I can't describe it further), so while the build is running, I'm queuing these up:

• Philip Bump analyzes the New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan's dismissal of the XPOTUS's bogus immunity claim.
• Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson (D) told reporters he's done everything he promised to do when he took office a year ago, at which point the reporters no doubt collectively cocked their eyebrows.
• Molly White doesn't think Sam Bankman-Fried going to prison will make much of a difference in the crypto industry, especially with the abject stupidity of its investors.
• A section of journalist Megan Kimble's new book City Limits reviews how Patrick Kennedy led the fight to demolish Interstate 345 in Dallas.
• Daniel Herriges argues that not all cities can fix their housing problems the same way.
• Are dog DNA tests worth it? (My vet famously told me "it's very likely to say you have a dog.")
• The US Office of Science and Technology Policy has directed NASA to define Coordinated Lunar Time that takes into account the fact that time moves faster there.

All right! The build pipelines have completed successfully, so I will now log off my work laptop and order a pizza.

Ah, just look at it:

Rain, snow, wind, and general gloominess will trundle through Chicago over the next 36 hours or so, severely impacting Cassie's ability to get a full hour of walkies tomorrow. Poor doggie.

If only that were the worst thing I saw this morning:

• The XPOTUS called for an end to the war in Gaza, but without regard to the hostages Hamas still holds, irritating just about everyone on the right and on the left.
• Knight Specialty Insurance Company of California has provided the XPOTUS with the bond he needed to prevent the Manhattan District Attorney from seizing $175 million of his assets, which makes you wonder, what's in it for the insurer?
• Related to that, Michelle Cottle analyzes the Republican Party's finances and concludes that the XPOTUS is destroying them.
• These are the same Republicans, remember, who are threatening to block money needed to re-open the Port of Baltimore and replace the Key Bridge.
• Massachusetts US District Judge Allison Burroughs has ruled that a case against the private air carrier who flew migrants to Martha's Vineyard may proceed, and the case against the politicians who paid for the flight could come back with an amended complaint.
• Charles Marohn argues that cities using cash accounting, rather than accrual accounting, end up completely overwhelming future generations with debt they would never have taken on with an accurate view of their finances.
• But of course, the prevalence of the city-killing suburban development pattern in the US has an upside of sorts: everywhere you go in the US feels like home.

And after all this, does it surprise me that Mother Jones took a moment to review a book called End Times?

Through next weekend I'm going to have a lot to do, so much that I've scheduled "nothing" for the back half of next week going into our annual fundraiser on April 6th. I might even get enough sleep.

I hope I have time to read some of these, too:

• Eileen O'Neill Burke has won the Democratic Party primary for Cook County States Attorney (called a District Attorney just about everywhere else), and is therefore the presumptive successor to outgoing CCSA Kim Foxx.
• Andrew Sullivan sees the XPOTUS hawking $59 Bibles as the apotheosis of Christianism.
• Dana Milbank expresses alarm at the XPOTUS's "glitching."
• Molly White summarizes Sam Bankman-Fried's sentencing hearing earlier this week, with just exactly the right amount of snark. ("I can't believe that post-collapse media tour came back to bite him.")

Finally, submitted without comment: Grazie Sophia Christie, writing in New York Magazine, advises young women to marry older men.