The Daily Parker

The satirical newspaper The Onion just got bought by a newly-formed LLC called, yes, Global Tetrahedron. Longtime Onion readers will probably recognize the name; I had to remind myself.

Other events in the past day or so:

• Among the labor-rights wins on Tuesday was a tweak to wage and hour laws that will qualify millions more Americans for overtime pay.
• Despite having earned the title "Useful Idiot of the Year" a couple of times already, we haven't heard the last of US Representative Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) because her district's voters are just as stupid as she is. Tina Nguyen piles on.
• Julia Ioffe interviews Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt about the rise of anti-Semitism in left-wing student protests. Charles Blow speculates that the protests could come to Chicago for the DNC.
• Microsoft has released the source code to MS-DOS 4.00, which came out in (I think) 1988, just a few days before the 4.01 bug fix.
• The Civic Federation of Chicago, a government watchdog group, has recommended combining the Chicago Transit Authority, PACE (the suburban bus company), and Metra into a single regional organization.

Time to fetch Cassie from school.

The Chicago Dept of Transportation this morning removed and (they claim) preserved the "Chicago Rat Hole" on the 1900 West block of Roscoe St. in the North Center neighborhood. I admit, I never saw the Rat Hole in the flesh (so to speak), but I feel its absence all the same.

Moving on:

• Three Republican Arizona state representatives voted with all 29 Democrats to repeal the state's 1864 abortion ban; the repeal now goes to the Arizona Senate.
• Monica Hesse reminds people who say it's sexist to advocate for US Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire before the end of President Biden's current term that advocates for former Justice Stephen Breyer to resign made much more noise.
• Columbia University linguistics professor John McWhorter cautions student protestors that blaming Jews for the actions of the Israeli government is crossing a line. Bret Stephens concurs, describing attacks on Jewish students that belie the "peaceful" label of the pro-Palestinian protests.
• NPR stops by historical markers at the side of the road, in all their raucous inaccuracy and frivolity. Like the 600 or so planted by the Daughters of the Confederacy, which offer even less accuracy and frivolity than most.
• Meanwhile, the New York Times tunes into the "crisis" at NPR, which has lost nearly a third of its audience since 2020.
• Four people and a horse needed medical treatment and several vehicles needed repairs in London this morning after five of the King's Household Cavalry mounts panicked and ran from a training exercise, making it from near Buckingham Palace all the way to St Paul's before the Met could corral them.

Finally, are you an extrovert, and introvert, and ambivert, an omnivert, or some other kind of green French thing? National Geographic explains the first four.

A whole knot of miserable weather is sneaking across the Mississippi River right now, on its way to Chicago. It looks like, maybe, just maybe, it'll get here after 6pm. So if I take the 4:32 instead of the 5:32, maybe I'll beat it home and not have a wet dog next to me on the couch later.

To that end I'm punting most of these stories until this evening:

• US Representative and professional troll Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wants you to think she isn't serious, except when she is. I would say, when her IQ gets to 80 she should sell. Tina Nguyen has more inside baseball on MTG's bomb-throwing.
• The Biden Administration has a dilemma with electric cars: let cheap Chinese models in and risk losing the election, or keep them out and postpone climate action. (The article skips over the incompetent management at American auto makers as one of the causes of this problem.)
• Gail Collins looks at the abortion debate and wonders, where's the debate about guns?
• Via Bruce Schneier, the attempted infiltration of the XZ project has other open-source maintainers in a near panic about their own code, and they have discovered other attempts at undermining the security of everything that way.
• Charles Marohn unpacks the speculation that rents seem close to collapse even as house prices keep going up.
• Caitlyn Zaloom reviews Benjamin Herold's new book about the "unraveling of America's suburbs," awakening to a problem Marohn has shouted from the rooftops for many, many years.

Finally, if you have an extra $500 lying around and want to buy a nice steak with it, Crain's has options ranging from 170 grams of Chateau Uenae rib-eye steak (and a glass of water) at RPM on down to a happy hour of rib-eye steak frites for eight at El Che. The txuleton at Asador Bastian for $83 seems like a good deal to me, even without three other people or a bottle of wine to bring the bill up to $500. But the Wagyu? Maybe if I get a bonus next year. A guy can dream.

The older I get, the less human beings surprise me. Oh, individual people surprise me all the time, mainly because I have smart and creative friends. But groups of people? They're going to be unsurprising and kind of dumb almost always.

Cases in point:

• The Arizona Supreme Court's decision allowing enforcement of a pre-statehood, Civil War-era abortion law looks even worse when you learn what else is in the 1864 Howell Code.
• Chicago's Loop neighborhood has 6,000 unsold luxury condos, with no more new projects underway, in part because developers failed to predict that 3% interest rates wouldn't last forever. This, to me, looks like failing to predict it will rain in Seattle eventually, because it hasn't rained in a week.
• Forget Detroit and Houston; even ultra-wealthy municipalities like Santa Clara, Calif., have obstinately failed to predict that they would ever have to pay ruinous costs to maintain all the infrastructure they built last century.
• Young women embracing the role of "tradwife" (i.e., becoming a 1950s-style woman of leisure or "stay-at-home-girlfriend") seem destined to unhappy long-term consequences of becoming someone's accessory.
• Author John Scalzi provides advice which even he thinks aspiring authors should already know: don't fabricate quotes by living authors to sell your new manuscript because you will get caught.

Finally, author Gary Shteyngart floats off on the maiden voyage of Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas, the largest cruise ship ever built, and finds what can only be described as a very specific slice of humanity that would make the Golgafrinchans proud.

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?

Former US Senator Joe Lieberman (D, maybe?–CT) and Al Gore's running mate in 2000 has died:

Joseph I. Lieberman, the doggedly independent four-term U.S. senator from Connecticut who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, becoming the first Jewish candidate on the national ticket of a major party, died March 27 in New York City. He was 82.

The cause was complications from a fall, his family said in a statement.

Mr. Lieberman viewed himself as a centrist Democrat, solidly in his party’s mainstream with his support of abortion rights, environmental protection, gay rights and gun control. But he was also unafraid to stray from Democratic orthodoxy, most notably in his consistently hawkish stands on foreign policy.

His full-throated support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the increasingly unpopular war that followed doomed Mr. Lieberman’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and led to his rejection by Connecticut Democrats when he sought his fourth Senate term in 2006. He kept his seat by running that November as an independent candidate and attracting substantial support from Republican and unaffiliated voters.

His transition from Al Gore’s running mate in 2000 on the Democratic ticket to high-profile cheerleader for Republican presidential candidate John McCain eight years later was a turnaround unmatched in recent American politics.

Meanwhile, in other news:

• Stanford University sophomore Theo Baker expresses alarm at his classmates' growing anti-rational beliefs.
• Slate's David Zipper analyzes what the Baltimore bridge collapse will do to the city's traffic.
• The Economist reviews the lasting influence (or surprising lack thereof) of Steven Levitt's Freakonomics books.
• The Chicago Dept of Transportation announced major construction on Division Street that will include new protected bike lanes and replacement of two bridges.
• The National Transportation Safety Board has released its final report on the crash of a one-third scale B-29 in Kokomo, Indiana, last year.

Finally, the Atlantic's Faith Hill wonders, why do we date the same person over and over again?

Before I take Cassie on yet another 30-minute walk (how she suffers!), I'm going to clear some links:

• Julia Angwin asks the same thing a couple of my friends have asked: why is Congress talking about banning TikTok instead of, you know, governing? (tl;dr: Republicans, who control the house, really don't want to govern.)
• Speaking of sclerotic government, Paul Krugman reminds you that the Republican Party really does want to take away Social Security and Medicare, even as our closest friends and allies guarantee that everyone has social security and medical care.
• WTF is going on with Aaron Rodgers, and has he always been this way?
• Despite having fewer electrified rail miles than Iran, the United States actually has seen record passenger rail miles travelled this year.
• Portland, Ore., has passed a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers, with a phase-out to start in 2026. Oh, would Chicago be so progressive...
• Sierra Jones, writing for Strong Towns, provides five good reasons why we should end highway expansion.
• The Atlantic's Jonathan Haidt warns that we need to change the way children interact with their phones, and quickly.

OK, Cassie has roused herself, and probably needs to pee. Off we go.

My Garmin watch thinks I've had a relaxing day, with an average stress level of 21 (out of 100). My four-week average is 32, so this counts as a low-stress day in the Garmin universe.

At least, today was nothing like 13 March 2020, when the world ended. Hard to believe that was four years ago. So when I go to the polls on November 5th, and I ask myself, "Am I better off than 4 years ago?", I have a pretty easy answer.

I spent most of today either in meetings or having an interesting (i.e., not boring) production deployment, so I'm going to take the next 45 minutes or so to read everything I haven't had time to read yet:

• Cognitive psychologist Amber Wardell listened to US Senator Katie Britt's (R-A-87.63657988865225L) reply to President Biden's State of the Union address, and explains how Britt's "phony fundie voice" fits into the right-wing Christian Nationalist worldview she promotes. Hint: Britt wasn't talking to you or me.
• Fulton (Ga.) County Superior Court Judge has quashed three of the XPOTUS's charges because, essentially, Fani Willis's office didn't draft the indictment with enough detail.
• Tori Otten admires the way House Democrats deftly cornered special counsel Robert Hur, forcing him to admit the vast differences between the way President Biden and the XPOTUS handled classified documents.
• Yulia Navalnaya reminds the West that Russian president Vladimir Putin isn't actually a politician; he's really a gangster.
• The Illinois Supreme Court has declined to hear, and thus let stand, an appellate court ruling that keeps the Bring Chicago Home referendum on next Tuesday's ballot. Large real estate companies and some large businesses oppose the plan, which would tax them more and use the money to pay for affordable housing.
• Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson has ignored the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago's offer to house migrants for free, and I would like to know why.
• Los Angeles police warned residents that burglars have started using Wi-Fi jammers to bollix up wireless security systems.
• Michigan will start building its section of the Marquette Greenway Trail, a 93-kilometer bike path that will eventually (late 2027) connect New Buffalo, Mich., with Chicago.
• Chicago passed 21°C yesterday for the fifth time in 2024, the earliest we've ever had as many days above that temperature since records began.

All righty then. I'll wrap up here in a few minutes and head home, where I plan to pat Cassie a lot and read a book.

We always take a week off after our Choral Classics concert, which saves everyone's sanity. I in fact do have a chorus obligation today, but it's easy and relatively fun: I'm walking through the space where we'll have our annual Benefit Cabaret, Apollo After Hours, and presumably having dinner with the benefit committee. I'll be home early enough to have couch time with Cassie and get a full night's sleep.

Meanwhile:

• Former presidential speechwriter James Fallows annotates President Biden's State of the Union Address.
• Today's TPM Morning Memo blows up US Senator Katie Bush's (R-AL) response to the SOTU, but really I think Scarlett Johansen did it best:
  
• Jennifer Rubin throws cold water on the belief that the United States is "polarized," given that one party wants to, you know, govern, while the other party wants to prevent that from happening so they can take power and therefore preserve the status quo ante from the 1850s: "America is divided not by some free-floating condition of “polarization” but by one party going off the deep end. And that’s a threat to all of us."
• Greg Sargent points out the fundamental and ugly scam right-wingers like the XPOTUS perpetrate when they blather on about "border security:" it has a lot more to do with demographics (see, e.g., "great replacement theory") than crime.
• Charles Marohn warns that blaming drivers for buying bigger cars shifts the blame from planning departments to individuals, where your state's DOT would prefer people put it.
• Kensington Palace has apologized for sending out an obviously-edited photo of Princess Catherine with her children, causing the family some embarrassment, and distracting for a moment from any questions about why the people of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland continue to pay for Kensington Palace.
• Seattle police impounded the oldest newsstand in the city after the landlord complained, repeatedly, over the course of three years.
• If you have a couple of extra bucks lying around and you want a cool place to live, Block Club Chicago has a list of seven historical buildings you can live in, from a $318,000 condo in Marina City on up to the $3 million Edwin J Mosser House in Buena Park.

Finally, Crain's slices into the six best thin-crust pizzas in Chicago, a list that includes three I've personally tried (Bungalow by Middle Brow, Michael's, and Jimmy's), and three that I now need to try soon. (I have some Michael's in my freezer, in fact, which I'm planning to eat for dinner tomorrow.) I would add Barnaby's in Northbrook and Flapjack Brewery in Berwyn, by the way.