The Daily Parker

A coronal mass ejection late last week caused Kp7-level aurorae last night that people could see as far south as Alabama. Unfortunately, I missed them, though some of my friends did not. Fortunately, NOAA predicts that another mass of charged particles will hit around 6pm tonight, causing even more pronounced aurorae for most of the night. This time, I plan to get to a dark corner of the suburbs to look for them.

Meanwhile:

• ProPublica has an extended report about how the OAFPOTUS uses pardons and clemency far more corruptly than Harding, Jackson, or Reagan could imagine. (Madison, Jefferson, and the rest of the founders could imagine it, however, and they did not like it one bit.)
• John Judis thinks "the 8 dissenters did Democrats a favor:" "I believe that as the shutdown dragged into Thanksgiving, and as more jobs were lost, social services suspended, and planes grounded, the public would have begun blaming the Democrats more because — let’s face it — they had initiated the shutdown. The polls also showed that far more Democrats than Republicans felt affected by the shutdown."
• Brian Beutler wonders whether the divergence between people's perception of the economy and reality has more to do with the fracturing media landscape than with people's ability to intuit reality the same way economists do: "Our collective, manic emphasis on the cost of things has both made people upset, and given people a peg to hang their political frustrations on—but people did not become upset over nominal prices in some organic way. Democrats shouldn’t convince themselves that if they manage to lower prices, they’ll be assured more victories, or that if Trump manages to get costs down (perhaps with the help of the Supreme Court) he’ll become politically invulnerable. They certainly shouldn’t convince themselves that all things unconnected to prices are politically inert."
• Amanda Nelson reminds us that in 2008, the wealthy people who got wealthier even as the housing market collapsed and impoverished millions weren't stupid; they just didn't care. And neither do the authors of Project 2025.
• The $1.5 billion Illinois just pledged to transit projects fundamentally changed the vision of passenger rail across the region, according to the High Speed Rail Alliance.
• Chicago has issued the first permits for construction of the new O'Hare Concourse D, the first new concourse built at the airport since Terminal 5 opened in 1993. Construction could complete as early as 2028.

Finally, the OAFPOTUS's latest demented assertion about crime on the "miracle mile shopping center" left people baffled and also led to city council member Brendan Reilly (D-42), whose ward includes the Magnificent Mile, clapping back: "My suggestion to President Trump: spend more time focusing on your struggling real estate investments, especially the 70,000 square feet of vacant retail space that has remained un-leased since the opening of Trump Tower, 16 years ago...."

After dragging my tired ass to Peet's just as they opened at 6 am (8 am back home), I got the same tired ass to the BART station just down the street and discovered that the Red Line operates as a shuttle between Millbrae and SFO sometimes. This knowledge came to me after I took an unplanned round-trip to the airport, learning this bit of BART lore at the cost of 25 minutes of my life.

I did make it to Powell and Market before 8:30 am, which allowed me plenty of time to take the oldest form of public transit in the city from there up to Hyde and Beach, then walk from there to the Caltrain station on 4th street, where I caught a train to San Jose and then a VTA light rail trolley to the closest stop near my family's house.

I'll have photos when I get back to Chicago, which I hope will be tomorrow. I've already ordered a Lyft for 4:15 am, which sounds awful except that I usually get up around 6:30 am in Chicago anyway.

For now, I'm going to digest this bit of rice I picked up from a local Millbrae Mandarin spot I like, then collapse.

But today? 10/10 would recommend!

Ah, ha ha. Ha.

Everything else today has a proportion of funny to not-funny that we should work on a bit more:

• The administration served up two full helpings of corruption today: indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James as payback for prosecuting the OAFPOTUS, and finalizing a $20 billion gift to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's friends under the guise of propping up the Argentine Peso.
• US District Judge April Perry (NDIL) has blocked the National Guard from entering Chicago pending new arguments on the 24th.
• Julia Ioffe reports on what the troops sent to Portland, Ore., think of being sent there; Jeff Maurer reports on the twerking inflatable dinosaurs taunting ICE there.
• Paul Krugman patiently explains that, in fact, everything economists predicted about the OAFPOTUS's tariffs has happened, even though what non-economists claimed they predicted didn't: "The point is that corporations are very good at finding ways to avoid paying taxes, especially when the rules are complicated and the tax collectors don’t have enough resources to track down their clever strategies."
• Why is billionaire and scary dude Peter Thiel warning about the Antichrist? Seems, you know, unhinged. In fact, he sounds a lot like Charlotte Iserbyt. What is it with these people?
• Quico Toro has lived in Japan for a year, which gave him an unhappy view of Amtrak. (Though, frankly, living in any other OECD country except Canada would do that.)
• The Cubs beat the Milwaukee Brewers yesterday, so the two teams go on to a final, fifth game tomorrow at Miller Park.

Finally, Loyola University Chicago's Sister Jean has died at 106. She was the official team chaplain of the Loyola Ramblers men's basketball team, and well-loved throughout the University.

So many things passed through my inbox in the last day and a half:

• The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that an assistant to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was observed over the weekend discussing plans over Signal with an aide to Reichsminister Stephen Miller to send the 82nd Airborne to Portland.
• Paul Krugman breaks from his usual economics beat to lambast the OAFPOTUS and his Reichskabinett der Nationalen Rettung for the horrifying ICE raid* on a Chicago apartment building last week: "What do we learn from the Chicago apartment raid plus the growing number of incidents in which ICE agents have physically attacked people who posed no conceivable threat? To me, it says that even 'alarmists' who warned about the threat a Trump administration would pose to democracy underestimated just how evil this administration would be."
• Adam Kinzinger draws a straight line between the OAFPOTUS really, really not wanting anyone to read the Epstein files and the Republicans' not caring really one whit about "protecting kids."
• Jamelle Bouie suggests that if Hegseth and the OAFPOTUS want to see "the enemy within," they should glance at the nearest mirror. Jen Rubin concurs.
• In his latest column on the OAFPOTUS's bullshit, Glenn Kessler mocks the TACO King for "crying 'witch hunt' while stirring the cauldron."
• Josh Marshall applauds California governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois governor JB Pritzker for being willing to use the power they have to prevent the rending of our nation.
• Matt Yglesias wants to shake some sense into the "groups" who have clearly learned nothing from Kamala Harris's embarrassing loss last November.
• Pilot and journalist James Fallows once again reminds people that it's safe to fly during a government shutdown. Of course, since all the air-traffic control trainers were furloughed...
• The Times has yet another essay about craft breweries shutting down because there are just too darn many of them. (Since the Brews & Choos Project started in February 2020, 22 of the 146 breweries I've visited have closed—plus another 7 I didn't get to.)

Finally, Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford goes over the numbers: September was warm and very dry. October is shaping up to be as well, despite the forecast calling for rain tonight and cooler temperatures through Saturday.

* Seriously, doesn't anyone in ICE realize that people will talk about them 30 years from now the way we talk today about the Schutzstaffel?

Welcome to stop #133 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Pilot Project Brewing, 3473 N Clark, Chicago
Train line: CTA Red Line, Addison
Time from Chicago: 18 minutes
Distance from station: 450 m

Even though Pilot Project doesn't actually brew beer at their new Wrigleyville location, thus technically not being eligible for the Brews & Choos list, I liked the place enough and found it a little oasis in the maelstrom surrounding Wrigley Field, so I'm overruling my own rules. It helped that my Brews Buddy and I had just come up from the Guinness Brew Pub Experience in Fulton Market so were ready for interesting beer and a less-corporatized environment. It also helped that the Boston terrier at the next table kept making googly eyes at me. (Of course, Boston terriers don't really have any other kind of eyes, but I digress.)

Pilot Project, like District Brew Yards, operates as a contract brewery for startup breweries. As such, they don't really do flights, and some of the beers they produce only come in cans. Consequently my Brews Buddy and I only tried one beer each. The Brewer's Kitchen Two Falls New England IPA (6.5%) looked and tasted more like a hazy, but hoppier. My buddy also liked the lack of dank notes and the almost-spiciness of the beer. (Only on checking links for this review did I remember (a) Brewer's Kitchen is Pilot Project's own brand, and (b) we already tried the Two Falls Hazy when we visited the Logan Square taproom last November.)

We also tried the Cerveceria Paracaidista Zicatela Sunset American IPA (5.6%), a cool IPA with crisp hops and a clean finish we both would drink again.

We'll be back, just not on one of the 81 days a year when the Cubs are in town. They also have a chill cocktail lounge in the basement that might have sufficient remove from Clark Street to enjoy after dinner nearby. I expect we'll be back.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? Maybe
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Welcome to stop #132 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Guinness Open Gate Brewery, 901 W Kinzie, Chicago
Train line: CTA Green Line, Morgan
Time from Chicago: 6 minutes
Distance from station: 300 m

Somehow, I pictured the second US-based Guinness experimental brewery differently, having seen their original brewery in Dublin, Ireland. The building Guinness renovated just north of the Fulton Market District has existed for a century or more, though from as far back as I can remember until last year it was a derelict hulk covered in graffiti. (The whole area used to be a post-industrial wasteland, in fact. Check out historical street views even from 2007, double the wabi sabi, add more abandoned railroad tracks and free-floating trash, and you'll have it as I first saw it in the 1980s.)

Guinness took over the decaying structure and, with the help of consultants and marketing professionals, made it into the forgettable Brew Pub Experience it is today. I did not have high hopes for the place. As my Brews & Choos Buddy and I entered through the gift shop (merch! merch! merch!), the shrug got shruggier.

Fortunately, we had perfect weather, so we sat outside. The patio has glass shielding on the street-facing side, except there's nothing to shield because Kinzie Street rises about 4 meters above the patio at that point. All the shielding did was to reflect every sound back to us, making it one of the loudest patios we've ever sat on. The consultant-approved energetic electronic music (I'm sure there's a better name for it) gave us the comfortable feeling of a Starbucks or a Chipotle. At least they allow dogs out there.

The brewery has two flight options, neither of which appealed to us, so we each got two 175-mL pours. The Near Post ESB (5.7%) had an earthy nose with a very sweet and malty body that almost tasted treacly to me. My Brews Buddy liked it as it went with the also-very-sweet brown bread we ordered. The Kinzie Street Pale Ale (5.5%) was OK, with a good hop balance and a long finish, engineered to perfection for consumption by trendy Millennials. (My Brews Buddy: "It's fine, it's drinkable, it's moderately complex, it's moderately bitter.")

The Lake Effect Haze (6.7%) was also OK, drinkable, unchallenging, and well-balanced with fewer of the dank overtones that I enjoy in a hazy IPA and my Brews Buddy does not. Finally, the Pineapple Coconut Stout (5.3%), while not a style I would ever order for myself, had only light hints of the offending fruit flavors and more of a feeling of them. BB: "I like it more than I expected."

Were we disappointed? No. Were we surprised? No. Were we excited to tell all of our friends and go back tomorrow? No. We agreed that we'd be fine meeting there if friends suggested it, but given its proximity to some pretty great places on Fulton just two blocks away, we might gently persuade them to go elsewhere.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? No
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Maybe

The forecast today looks perfect: 21°C under sunny skies. Perfect for a Brews and Choos trip! And while one of the stops will be to a brewery that could under no circumstances be called "craft," the other stop will take us to a brewery incubator suspiciously close to Wrigley Field.

Fitting, then, that Crain's reports today about how craft breweries have had to evolve to stay in business:

After a decade of unbridled growth, the industry hit a rough patch in the years following the pandemic. Ten percent of the state’s roughly 300 craft breweries closed between 2022 and 2023. Consumers did not return to taprooms after COVID restrictions lifted. Retail beer sales sagged as people turned toward wine, spirits and canned cocktails. The price of ingredients, like grain and aluminum cans, skyrocketed, but people will only pay so much for a beer. Craft breweries that took out big loans to survive the pandemic could not pay them back.

The moment proved to be a crucible. In need of additional revenue, the survivors evolved. They rolled out non-alcoholic options, food menus and THC-infused beverages. In aid, Illinois introduced a new brewer license category that allowed breweries to sell wine and spirits in addition to beer. To stay afloat now, craft breweries must look a lot more like Brother Chimp and a lot less like the taprooms of the 2010s that sold nothing but their own beer.

As craft breweries’ business models have evolved over the past couple of years, their numbers have improved, said Ray Stout, executive director of the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild. Only four craft breweries in the state closed between Jan. 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025. In that same period, 16 breweries opened or expanded.

By Stout’s count, Illinois now has 308 breweries. That’s a record high for the state’s almost $2.9 billion industry.

Beneath those improving numbers, though, the headwinds remain. Craft beer sales in stores are down about 4% compared to a year ago, according to data from market research firm NielsenIQ. The average price for a case was up about 2%.

And would you just look, the article goes into detail about our second stop!

With my PTO cap continuing to force me into Friday afternoons off this summer (the horror!), and the sunny but (smoky 23°C) weather, Cassie and I will head to the Horner Park DFA just as soon as I release a new version of Weather Now in just a few minutes.

When Cassie and I come back, I'll spend some time reading all these nuggets of existential dread:

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised last 3 months of US jobs data down to basically nil (which Krugman blames on tariffs), prompting the OAFPOTUS to fire BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer.
• Not only is the State Department's HR director a "RIF-happy, Christian evangelizing MAGA warrior with an axe to grind," he's also apparently kind of creepy.
• Former intelligence officials John Brennan and James Clapper "set the record straight on Russian and 2016."
• James Fallows once again calls on everyone to help protect our institutions.
• Yascha Mounk sees the rise of AI as akin to the Industrial Revolution.
• After more than a century of slow traffic through Wrigleyville, the CTA finally straightened out a section of the Red Line to cut travel times for everyone, which unfortunately means more noise.
• The impending merger between the Southern Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads will have a huge impact on Chicago rail traffic—but no one yet knows whether it will be up or down.
• Molly White suggests using RSS readers instead of email lists to reduce the enshittification of news publications.
• Jeff Maurer, who spent several years writing for John Oliver as you may recall, wants to have a serious autopsy of late night television that includes all the uncomfortable topics.

By the way, the new Weather Now build allows users to create their own weather lists and share them with the world or keep them private. I've wanted to build this feature for a long time, finally starting work on it two weekends ago. Try it out and let me know what you think!

Leading off the news this afternoon, Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne died today at age 76. I am surprised he lasted this long, as he didn't exactly take care of himself over the years.

In other news:

• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has stopped the legislative process of the United States rather than vote on releasing details of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with the OAFPOTUS.
• Adam Kinzinger details the quiet cruelty of the OAFPOTUS's droogs.
• Tom Nichols points out that the OAFPOTUS has no theory of governance beyond "anger, fear, and, most of all, pettiness."
• Maryland police officers got away with at least 36 murders thanks to former Maryland Chief Medical Examiner David Fowler's interference in the death classifications.
• CBS cancelled its top-rated talk show, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, in a sop to the OAFPOTUS ahead of a proposed merger involving CBS's parent company, Paramount. (Jeff Maurer has a more nuanced take on this.)
• Paul Krugman bemoans the "enshittification and the bitterness of billionaire bros."
• The Chicago Transit Authority restored the Red and Purple Lines to full capacity and re-opened the four Red Line stations closed in 2021 for the Red-Purple Modernization Project.

Finally, NOAA released its findings on the meteotsunami and seiche that rolled over Lake Superior on 21 June 2025. The storm surge and seiche rebound caused lake levels to change by 2.2 meters over the span of three hours in some places, making it the largest such event in recorded history.

Oh, and Cassie gets her cone off almost exactly 24 hours from now. Photos when it happens.

Welcome to stop #131 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: GoodTimes Brewery, 3827 N Broadway, Chicago
Train line: CTA Red Line, Sheridan
Time from Chicago: 20 minutes
Distance from station: 500 m

Metropolitan Brewing closed in November 2023, just a few months after brewmaster Raybird Gonzalez decided to found his own brewery. The Smylie Brothers flame-out freed up a turnkey brewing facility right at the north end of Boystown, which he grabbed. The new owners didn't change the interior dramatically, though they did remove some TVs and create a more inviting foyer.

Also, the beer got a lot better.

Because Friday was still really too hot for its own good, I didn't feel like having a lot of beer, so I only tried one small pour for myself and I tasted my Brews & Choos Buddy's selection. The Dynomite! IPA (6.5%) wasn't bad at all: crisp, refreshing, with a balanced bitterness/malt/hop profile I enjoyed. The Primitive Love hazy IPA (6.2%) was a decent, juicy hazy, with a long orange finish, though a little sweet for my palate. (My buddy found it sweet as well, but balanced by the hops, and not overly strong.)

I did not try the food, though my buddy has had their pizza and pronounced it acceptable. As she is very particular about pizza, I would take this as a solid endorsement.

It's not really the vibe I seek out for chillaxing on a lazy afternoon, but it's a good addition to the neighborhood. I expect I'll go back—particularly in the winter when I don't feel it insults nature by spending time inside.

Beer garden? No
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? Full pub menu
Would hang out with a book? No
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes