The Daily Parker

My Brews & Choos buddy and I repeated our walk from 2023 along the North Branch Trail to Barnaby's of Northbook because they have really great pizza. This time we skipped all detours and went straight up from the trail to the restaurant, thereby saving over an hour of walking and, therefore, getting pizza sooner.

It helped that Chicago tied the record high temperature yesterday, hitting 21.7°C (71°F) between 2 and 3 pm. We started with cool and gloomy weather that got progressively better throughout the walk, contra 2023 where it started cool and sunny and turned grim as we got closer to our destination.

We also saw some wildlife. The buck stopped here:

I think the two of them just wanted some alone time and hoped the humans would continue on their ways. We didn't see any other deer on the walk, though, so clearly the others found more privacy than these two.

You know, I probably won't be online much Friday through Sunday. I should try to do that more often.

• The OAFPOTUS pretty much guaranteed that Zohran Mamdani will win today's New York City mayoral election by endorsing former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, which I'm pretty sure Cuomo didn't want either.
• Brian Beutler chastises the Democratic Party for "the scourge of wimpiness." I am tempted to send him a strongly-worded email.
• US Rep. Jan Schakowsky's (D-IL9) departure from the US House has led to so many candidates running for her seat] in the March 2026 primary, it's hard to figure out who's who or what they stand for.
• Amherst College political science professor Javier Corrales outlines how Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro has woven the fates of the country's elites together to ensure that their literal survival depends on his political survival.
• Thirteen years after the USDOT and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania spent $77 million building two off-ramps into Chester, Pa., that the community didn't ask for, absolutely no benefits have accrued to the city. As Charles Marohn reminds us, this is "the predictable outcome of a transportation funding system that rewards appearance over impact."

Finally, Block Club Chicago spent the day at one of the last 24-hour-diners in Chicago, which happens to be just 2 km from my house. Now I know where to go if I'm craving a burger at 4am.

I took the dramatic beagle and Cassie to Spiteful* yesterday afternoon. Butters got more pats than Cassie did. Perhaps it's this face?

This afternoon we took a half-hour walk through the local park because the weather is absolutely perfect. Whenever I stopped to try to photograph the two dogs, they immediately went in separate directions, so this is the best I could do:

The girls are now sunning themselves on my front porch, I'm up in my office coding away, and I've got chicken soup going in the slow cooker. It's definitely autumn.

* I really ought to update that Brews & Choos review...

Chicago alderman Timmy Knudsen (43rd) has proposed an ordinance to allow dogs in restaurants:

Right now, Chicago restaurants are prohibited from serving patrons accompanied by dogs — either indoors or outdoors — unless that customer has a service dog.

Although the ban is widely ignored and sporadically enforced, usually in response to a complaint, restaurant owners allow dogs at their own risk and sometimes face the consequences.

The ordinance, slated for introduction at Thursday’s City Council meeting, is tailor-made to resolve the health department’s food safety concerns.

Restaurant owners who post signs declaring themselves dog-friendly would be free to welcome patrons and their leashed dogs inside or outside their establishments without fear of inspection or fine.

Dogs would be limited to one per table. They could only be provided with water — not food or table scraps — either by their owners or by restaurant employees.

The other restrictions outlined in the proposed ordinance make sense. I wouldn't necessarily want to see dogs in certain kinds of places, like buffets or anywhere that has self-service food, as I have seen both my dogs do their own self-service. At the very least, I would hope the city allows dogs unequivocally in outdoor patios.

I have emailed my own alderman to express support of the propsal.

Cassie got another two hours of walkies yesterday, and we're planning another few hours tomorrow. Today, though, I really need to finish the project I started in June, and I'm digesting half a rack of ribs. So Cassie will only get an hour or so today.

If you have half an hour, listen to this talk Cory Doctorow gave in April, which explains why you hate all of the tech you use regularly (except the Daily Parker):

It's still gross outside, but slightly less gross than yesterday. And my trivia team (playing today as "Relieved we're not in Milwaukee") came in 2nd. So things are looking better than they have in a couple of days. And now, Szechuan carry-out.

Regular posting resumes tomorrow.

The temperature at Inner Drive Technology World HQ has passed 32°C (with a 42°C heat index!) and it keeps going up. Welcome to the summer heat advisory season, with 30 million hectares of maize corn sweating to our west.

Speaking of an uncomfortable atmosphere, the OAFPOTUS and his droogs have had a bad couple of days, which they responded to by making everyone else's days bad as well.

First, on yesterday the US Court for the District of New Jersey declined to allow acting US Attorney Alina Habba (whom you may recall for her previous ethical difficulties) to take the post as a permanent appointment. Instead, the Court ordered her deputy, Desiree Leigh Grace, to step in as acting USA, as Grace has years of experience as a prosecutor and no obvious disqualifications. In response, US Attorney General Pam Bondi fired Grace:

Desiree Leigh Grace, Habba’s first assistant, was tapped by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey to lead the office upon the expiration of Habba’s 120-day temporary term. But, Tuesday, Grace was “removed” from the post by the Justice Department (DOJ).

Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “politically minded judges refused to allow [Habba] to continue in her position.”

It's not clear how many acting US Attorneys the OAFPOTUS will have to appoint before the Court decides that one of them is competent enough to stick around more than 120 days. Meanwhile, the USA's office in New Jersey is in absolute shambles—which is a side-benefit for the OAFPOTUS and his cronies as many of them have property or offices in the state.

Also yesterday, the OAFPOTUS announced a "deal" with Japan that sets bilateral import taxes at 15%, compared with basically 0% before he started ripping up the global trading system. Paul Krugman patiently explains how this "deal" will make things so much worse than before:

As I and others have repeatedly pointed out, there’s some basic arithmetic linking international investment and the trade balance. A few technical details aside,

U.S. trade deficit = Net foreign investment in the United States

This isn’t a theory, it’s just accounting. So if the deal leads to more investment in the U.S., it must, necessarily, lead to a bigger trade deficit.

So why aren’t we seeing big increases in consumer prices yet? Basically because for the moment U.S. businesses are absorbing much of the cost rather than passing it on to consumers. They’ve been able to do that partly because many companies rushed to bring imports in before the tariffs hit, and are still selling out of that inventory. They’ve been willing to do that because they don’t want to alienate customers and lose market share, and have been hoping that the tariffs will mostly go away.

But if Japan still faces a 15 percent tariff after making a deal, that hope will soon fade. Winter Inflation is coming.

Update: Friends have been pointing out that this deal means that Japanese cars will pay 15 percent tariffs, while US car producers will still be paying 50 percent on imported steel. Not exactly a strategy to boost manufacturing. What were they thinking? They probably weren’t thinking.

Of course, the main point of all these tariffs is to further the massive theft of American wealth that is the point of the entire Republican project these days. As Krugman says, "We’re already well on the way toward an economy in which success in business depends not on how good your product is but on your political influence."

Just don't call them stupid. They wouldn't like it.

Somehow, tomorrow is July 1st. As far as I can tell, this is because today is June 30th, and yesterday was June 7th, and last week was sometime in 2018.

And yet, I have more stuff to read at lunchtime from just the last day or so:

• Josh Marshall distinguishes between the energy and engagement of the Democratic Party (i.e., the actual voters) and the torpor of the Party's leadership: "[It's] not a nightmare. Certainly not for the party. It may be a nightmare for some incumbents."
• The Washington Post digs into the data to figure out why restaurants inside airports converge on mediocre even while they have wildly different qualities in the real world.
• The Nielsen-Norman Group suggests a new rubric for assessing how different kinds of users work with a complex application.
• I have wanted to visit Fairbanks, Alaska, for a long time, but I never considered going there for a midnight sun baseball game.

And now, despite an uncomfortable 34°C heat index, I must walk Cassie.

Cassie and I took a 7 km walk from sleep-away camp to Ribfest yesterday, which added up to 2½ hours of walkies including the rest of the day. Then we got some relaxing couch time in the evening. We don't get that many gorgeous weekend days in Chicago—perhaps 30 per year—so we had to take advantage of it.

Of course, it's Monday now, and all the things I ignored over the weekend still exist:

• Josh Marshall digs into the OAFPOTUS's attack on the state of California, noting that "all the federalizations [of the National Guard] during the Civil Rights Era were over the refusal of segregationist state governments to enforce federal law under court order. Trump’s argument is...[that] the President [has the right] to decide when a state government isn’t protecting or enforcing civil order to his liking and to intervene with federalized National Guard or the U.S. military to do it at the point of a bayonet. ... The crisis the administration insisted it needed to solve was a crisis of the administration’s creation."
• Philip Bump puts the encroaching fascism in broader context: "What’s important to remember about the fracture that emerged in Los Angeles over the weekend is that it came shortly after reports that President Donald Trump was seeking to block California from receiving certain federal funding. ... The point was that the Trump administration wanted to bring California to heel...."
• The Guardian highlights how Chicago has led the way in resisting the OAFPOTUS's xenophobic mass-deportation program, as part of our long history of respecting immigrant rights.
• Anne Applebaum looks at last week's election in Poland and feels a chill that "every election is now existential."
• Lisa Schwarzbaum, a former film critic for Entertainment Weekly, likens the OAFPOTUS's style of governing to Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom."
• Ezra Klein expresses surprise at who has objected the most to the recommendations in his recent book Abundance, and the left-wing emphasis on messaging: "Democrats aren’t struggling primarily because they choose the wrong messages. They’re struggling because they fail to solve problems. ... [Brandon] Johnson is the most proudly left-wing big-city mayor in the country. ... He’s also the least popular big-city mayor in the country and may well end up as the least popular mayor in Chicago’s history. Policy failure breeds political failure."
• Oh, by the way, Meta and Yandex have started to de-anonymize your Android device by abusing how your Internet browser works.

Finally, a community group on the Northwest Side has launched an effort to build a 5-km rails-to-trails plus greenway project to connect the Bloomingdale Trail with the North Branch Trail. This would create a direct connection between the southern flank of Lincoln Park and the Chicago Botanic Garden in suburban Glencoe. It's still early days, though. I'd love to see this in my lifetime. I'm also waiting for electrified railroads around Chicago, but this project would be a lot cheaper.

Pro tip: Get to Ribfest as soon as possible after it opens. Cassie and I arrived exactly at noon yesterday, allowing me to score three 3-bone samplers in just 45 minutes.

Here, too, where I expect the lines would be a block long by 2pm:

In the end, Cassie had a really good afternoon—at least until she went to sleep-away camp because of my concert:

I sense ribs in my future today as well. And very likely a 5 km walk either coming or going from Ribfest. Sadly, we won't get there exactly at noon, because I have some errands to run before then. As long as we get home before it starts raining...