The Daily Parker

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.

As Crash Davis said to Annie Savoy all those years ago: A player on a streak has to respect the streak. Well, I'm on a coding streak. This week, I've been coding up a storm for my day job, leaving little time to read all of today's stories:

• Despite (or perhaps because of) his obvious mental illness and dementia, the OAFPOTUS is really a predictable negotiator who our adversaries have figured out how to manipulate easily.
• Voters may not like the OAFPOTUS, but they don't like us either. Still, the OAFPOTUS has Republicans squirming more and more each day.
• Speaking of dislike, the Qatari airplane bribe is different because "morons understand it." (Morons and MAGA Republicans, Jennifer Rubin clarifies.)
• Oh, and the Republican tax bill will come down particularly hard on the same people, too.
• Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson (D) complains that he hasn't done enough to convince people he's doing a good job. Perhaps--and let me just suggest something wild here--like actually doing a good job?
• Google has rolled new security features for Android phones, which you should turn on.
• The first bridge linking Michigan Avenue across the Chicago River opened 105 years ago today.

Finally, Ernie Smith, who also had a childhood pastime of reading maps for fun, examines why MapQuest became "the RC Cola" of mapping apps. Tl;dr: corporate mergers are never about product quality.

We start this morning with news that US Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), for whom I voted all 5 times he ran for Senate, will not run for re-election in 2026. He turns 82 just after the election and would be 88 at the end of the term. I am very glad he has decided to step aside: we don't need another Feinstein or Thurmond haunting the Senate again.

In other news:

• Vice President JD Vance outlined a proposal to reward Russia for its aggression by giving it all the land it currently holds in the sovereign nation of Ukraine, despite the crashing illegality of the war.
• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D), rocking a 7% approval rating and having long ago made me regret voting for him, has gone into meltdown-panic mode now that it looks like former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel might challenge him in 2027.
• Chicago landlords have moved away from taking refundable security deposits, which come with some strict-liability regulations, and into nonrefundable, unregulated "move-in fees." (I love Block Club Chicago, but I think they might not have quite enough balance in this report. See if you can spot what I mean.)
• Peter Hamby analyzes how the popularity of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) within the Democratic Party contrasts with her unpopularity with everyone else.
• Greenland, for some reason no one could have predicted, has started looking for allies other than the United States.
• Radley Balko emphasizes the importance of remaining decent to each other during the long, difficult resistance to authoritarianism we've only just started.

Finally, I will say that despite all of the crap going on in Washington, the planet doesn't care (at least as long as the nuclear bombs stay in their silos and submarines). We had lovely spring weather yesterday and might have some tomorrow, while today we're getting rain showers and light jacket weather. I mean, Friday is the perfect date, after all.

After our gorgeous weather Sunday and Monday, yesterday's cool-down disappointed me a bit. But we have clear-ish skies and lots of sun, which apparently will persist until Friday night. I'm also pleased to report that we will probably have a good view of tomorrow night's eclipse, which should be spectacular. I'll even plan to get up at 1:30 to see totality.

Elsewhere in the world, the OAFPOTUS continues to explore the outer limits of stupidity (or is it frontotemporal dementia?):

• No one has any idea what the OAFPOTUS's economic plan is, though Republicans seem loath to admit that's because he hasn't got one.
• Canada and the EU, our closest friends in the world since the 1940s, have gotten a bit angry with us lately. Can't think why.
• Paul Krugman frets that while he "always considered, say, Mitch McConnell a malign influence on America, while I described Paul Ryan as a flimflam man, I never questioned their sanity... But I don’t see how you can look at recent statements by Donald Trump and Elon Musk without concluding that both men have lost their grip on reality."
• On the same theme, Bret Stephens laments that "Democracy dies in dumbness."
• ProPublica describes a horrifying recording of Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek's meeting with senior SSA officials last week in which he demonstrated why the OAFPOTUS pulled him from a terminal job as "the ultimate faceless bureaucrat" to head the agency. (Some people have greatness thrust upon 'em?)
• Molly White sees "no public good" for a "strategic bitcoin reserve," but is too polite to call the idea a load of thieving horseshit.
• Author John Scalzi threads the needle on boycotting billionaires.
• Writing for StreetsBlog Chicago, Steven Vance argues that since the city has granted parking relief to almost every new development in the past few years, why not just get rid of parking minimums altogether?

Finally, in a recent interview with Monica Lewinsky, Molly Ringwald said that John Hughes got the idea for Pretty in Pink while out with her and her Sixteen Candles co-stars at Chicago's fabled Kingston Mines. Cool.

Topping the link round-up this afternoon, my go-to brewery Spiteful fears for its business if it has to pay a 25% tariff on imported aluminum cans. If the OAFPOTUS drives Spiteful out of business for no fucking reason I will be quite put out.

In other news:

• Timothy Noah reads Jean Piaget to learn more about the OAFPOTUS's "infantile incapacity to grasp the mechanics of cause and effect," suggesting that his reasoning is more transductive, like a 3-year old's ("taking a nap causes the afternoon" ~=~ "DEI causes plane crashes").
• Aaron Blake says "it's complicated" whether the OAFPOTUS completely caved to Canada and Mexico earlier this week, despite the "deals" with those nations having already been worked out by the Biden Administration, while Ruth Marcus calls the era that began on January 20th "the most damaging first two weeks in presidential history."
• Margaret Renkl reminds everyone that the Republican plan to destroy public schooling so those people won't get basic education continues apace.
• Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has issued an order to align transit funding with marriage and birth rates, which will help places that don't actually have transit and hurt places like Chicago and New York.
• A woman has sued author Neil Gaiman for sexual assault, alleging serial abuse that occurred in New Zealand while she was his live-in nanny.

Other than the Neil Gaiman thing, which pains me deeply, this all goes to show that President Camacho will be a Republican.

I had a thought about all the executive orders the OAFPOTUS signed Monday and Tuesday. Do they seem to anyone else like a King's Speech at the state opening of Parliament? Remember than an EO only directly affects the Executive Branch, and in many cases, still requires enabling legislation from the other end Pennsylvania Avenue.

I don't like how this reinforces the idea of the President as a monarch—something our founders explicitly said should never happen—but in terms of how an EO actually affects the world, it really could be read out by King Charles and have the same effect in the US.

In any event, it took less than 24 hours for a Federal judge to block the OAFPOTUS's executive order purporting to overturn the 14th Amendment, so our constitutional system hasn't completely collapsed yet.

In other news:

• Even before known crank Robert F Kennedy, Jr., gets sworn in as Heath and Human Services Secretary, the National Institutes of Health have abruptly stopped meeting with cancer researchers for no reason other than the incompetence of the incoming administration.
• Josh Marshall believes that the OAFPOTUS's pardons of 1,500 cop beaters and insurrectionists will come back to haunt his administration.
• Jennifer Rubin declares the OAFPOTUS's actions not just lawless; "they defy our deepest values."
• Jeff Maurer wonders why the OAFPOTUS has, of all things, a William McKinley fetish.
• Charles Marohn explains how a $5.5 million Federal high-speed Internet grant in Brainerd, Minn., will benefit "lifestyle" rural dwellers at the cost of of a long-term maintenance burden the city has no hope of meeting.
• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the Oscar Nominees for this year, of which I have seen almost none.

Finally, even though the high temperature today of -3.9°C happened right before sunrise and we're now scraping along at -7.6°C, and even though it hasn't been above freezing since before 8am Saturday, and even though tomorrow will be just as cold...it looks like we might get above freezing by noon this coming Saturday. I can't wait.

Writer and director David Lynch has died at 78:

The director of 10 feature films — or maybe 11, counting the 2017 revival of “Twin Peaks,” which he described as an 18-hour movie — Mr. Lynch received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2019. He also earned four Oscar nominations for directing “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” and for directing and co-writing “The Elephant Man,” a 1980 historical drama about a hideously deformed but beautifully refined Englishman.

“Eraserhead,” his dystopian 1977 debut, featured giant spermatozoa and a singing woman who lives inside a radiator. “Blue Velvet,” a voyeuristic coming-of-age story, opened with a sequence that lingered uncomfortably on swarming ants. “Mulholland Drive,” a neo-noir drama, hinged on altered identities and dreamlike mysteries, including the appearance of an enigmatic blue box inside a character’s bag.

“If you look at TV drama since its inception, shows would tell the audience what they were going to see, show it to them and then tell them what they’ve seen. Nobody was ever puzzled by what was going on,” David Chase, creator of “The Sopranos,” told Time magazine in 2017. “With ‘Twin Peaks,’ Lynch and Frost show it to you and leave you thinking, ‘What did I just see?’ That was revolutionary, and it still is.”

During its first season, on ABC, the show drew as many as 20 million viewers and received 14 Emmy nominations, winning two, behind an ensemble cast that included Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn, Kyle MacLachlan and Michael Ontkean.

I have fond memories of sitting on a dorm bed watching Twin Peaks with my friend Renee on Thursday nights junior and senior years. I have mixed feelings about "The Return"—really, about everything he did (especially Dune)—and let's not talk about Fire Walk With Me, strangled in the crib by the suits at New Line. The first season of Twin Peaks, though. That really meant a lot to us in college.

He will be missed.

I keep thinking of this clip from Remains of the Day:

The "gentleman diplomacy" conducted by British nobility in the 1930s exemplifies the maxim "any sufficiently-advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

After my general statistics for 2024, here are the books and media I consumed since 2023.

Books

I didn't read as many books in 2024 as in 2023, mainly because they were longer. Any one of the Culture novels is the equivalent of 3 or 4 times The Outsiders, for example. The 30 books I started (and 26 I finished) included:

• Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc. An excellent handbook for the kakistocratic country we now live in.
• Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. I hope this does not become a handbook for the kakistocratic country we now live in. (Still reading this. It's not something one just breezes through.)
• Iain Banks, Raw Spirit, his hilarious travelogue of Scottish distilleries, plus the Culture novels Excession, Inversions, Look to Windward, Matter, Surface Detail, and The Hydrogen Sonata. I also finally read The Crow Road.
• Christopher Buehlman, The Daughters' War. Prequel to his previous novel The Black-Tongued Thief.
• Peter Carey, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, which I first read in 2001 and wanted to read again.
• Cory Doctorow, The Lost Cause. Imagine what the world will look like when today's alt-right go to nursing homes and the yet-to-be-born generation has to take care of them.
• David Farley, Modern Software Engineering. Decent recapitulation of stuff I've known for years, but updated.
• Scott Farris, Almost President, short biographies of the men (it's from 2008) who lost presidential elections and still influenced politics for years after.
• William Gibson, The Peripheral. Quite different than the TV series, but both were great.
• Charles King, Every Valley. The history of Händel's Messiah. (Not finished yet.)
• Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind. Absolutely essential reading if you want even to try understanding the horribly damaged generation born after 1995.
• John Scalzi, Fuzzy Nation and Agent to the Stars. I absolutely love Scalzi's writing.
• John R. Schmidt, Authentic Chicago, a collection of historical vignettes from an authentic Chicago historian.
• Matthew Skelton, Team Topologies. A quick read that helped me understand how my new boss looks at software team management.
• Andrew Weir, The Martian. Another one that I have meant to read for a while.

Other Media

In 2024, I watched 24 films, a bit more TV than usual, two concerts, and one comedy show:

• Films I would recommend: American Sniper (2014), The Beekeeper (2024), Constantine (2005), Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), Dune Part 2 (2024), Furiosa (2024), The Gentlemen (2019), The Intern (2015), The Martian (2015), The Menu (2022), Sicario (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), and the entire John Wick series (2014 to present).
• Films you can skip: The Good Shepherd (2006) and Maestro (2023).
• TV shows: The 100 (first two episodes, 2014), The Bear season 1 (2022), The Boys season 4 (2024), The Decameron (2024), Designated Survivor (2016, first two episodes), Fallout (2024), Ghosts (first season of the UK version, first two episodes of the inferior US version), House of the Dragon (both seasons, 2023-2024), Justified season 1 (2010), KAOS (2024), Killing Eve season 1 (2018), Once Upon a Time season 1 (2011), The Peripheral (2023), Rome season 1 and some of season 2 (2005), Silo season 2 (2024), Slow Horses season 4 (2024), Star Trek: Lower Decks season 5 (2024), Tales from the Apocalypse (2023), Three Body (2024), and The Umbrella Academy season 4 (2024).
• I saw two live performances at Ravinia Festival: a live orchestra version of The Princess Bride (1987) and the CSO doing Holst's The Planets.
• I also saw Liz Miele when she visited Chicago, and Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! in December.

A lot of good things in there, and a couple of dogs. Actually, only one dog, who very much enjoyed all the time I spent on the couch with her.

The Library of Congress has named Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and 24 other films to the National Film Registry this week. A quick view of the list tells me I've only seen 5 of them, so I need to start watching more movies.

In other news:

• Former Chicago mayor and outgoing US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel suggests some ways the Democratic Party can get back in the saddle.
• The Chicago City Council finally passed its 2025 budget, a $17.3 bn mess that only got 27 out of 50 votes, and then only because it doesn't have a property tax increase. And we're still paying for police tort settlements out of the general fund instead of the police pension fund, where they should come from.
• Chicago's Christkindlmarket in Daley Center Plaza has been named "the most overcrowded holiday market in the US," in part because the overflow Christkindlmarket at Wrigley Field got cancelled this year due to a single hockey game next week.

Finally, Illinois could, if it wanted to, redirect $1.5 billion in Federal highway funds to mass-transit projects in the Chicago area under President Biden's 2021 Covid relief plan. Unfortunately, a lot of the state would prefer to build more useless highways, so this probably won't happen.