Because I'm about to hit my PTO cap at work, I'm taking the next few Friday afternoons off. Today I've planned a Brews & Choos trip out to the wilds of Lake County. Check back tomorrow for the result!
Meanwhile, I have more meetings...
First, an update on Cassie: her spleen and lymph cytology came back clean, with no evidence of mast cell disease. That means the small tumor on her head is likely the only site of the disease, and they can pop it out surgically. We'll probably schedule that for the end of June.
I have had an unusually full calendar this week, so this afternoon I blocked off three and a half hours with "No Meetings - Coding." Before I dive into finishing up the features for what I expect will be the 129th boring release of the product I'm working on, I am taking a moment to read the news, which I have not had time to do all day:
Finally, the city of Chicago has started formal negotiations with the Union Pacific Railroad to acquire an abandoned right-of-way on the Northwest Side—that Cassie and I walked on just a week ago and that my Brews & Choos buddy and I used to get to Alarmist back in November 2023. The project still requires a few million dollars and a few years to complete. Still, the city also is talking about building a protected bike lane along Bryn Mawr Avenue in the North Park and Lincoln Square Community Areas, which would connect the Weber Spur with the North Shore trail just east of the Chicago River. For the time being, the UPRR doesn't seem to mind people walking on their right-of-way, though technically it's still private property. But that trail will be really cool when completed.
And now, I will finish this feature...
On some days, I have more meetings than others. Today was a more extreme example, with meetings for 6 of the 8½ hours I put in. Somehow I also managed to read some documentation and get some other things accomplished. I also can't say that any of the meetings was a waste of time, either. Welcome back to management.
Unfortunately, that meant I could only put these stories in a queue so I can read them now:
- William Finnegan wonders if he or Homeland Security Secretary Kristi "Dead Puppies" Noem is brain-damaged.
- Chicago's animal shelters report a surge in surrenders as people discover pets cost a lot of money (I'm looking at you, Cassie).
- Does it make sense for the CDC to recommend that healthy children and pregnant women not get a covid booster? Yes, with some pretty big caveats, and a reminder that corruption and incompetence make it really hard to trust what comes out of the executive branch these days.
- With only a couple of days left until the Illinois legislature lets public transit in Chicago fall off a cliff, a bill is slouching towards the governor's desk to reorganize our multiple transit agencies into one big one.
OK, Cassie is sitting next to me and staring into my eyes with an intense "feed me" vibe, so off I go. I really hope I have fewer meetings tomorrow.
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:
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.
I had a lot going on today, so I only have a couple of minutes to note these stories:
- Not only is the OAFPOTUS's "new" (actually quite well-used) Qatari Boeing 747-8 a huge bribe, it will cost taxpayers almost as much as one of the (actually) new VC-25B airplanes the Air Force is currently building, as it completely fails to meet any of the requirements for survivability and security. (“You might even ask why Qatar no longer wants the aircraft," former USAF acquisitions chief Andrew Hunter said. "And the answer may be that it’s too expensive for them to maintain.”)
- The Economist analyzes county-level data and finds that Republican areas are outperforming Democratic areas on a couple of measures—for now.
- Rolling Stone criticizes Ezra Klein's Abundance for playing into the oligarchs' plans, though I wonder if I'm reading the same book they did? (I'll have more to say when I finish the book.)
- Elaine Kamarck and William Galston, on the other hand, have some pretty good ideas about how the Democrats can get their mojo back, and "oligarchy" doesn't come up once. (For the record, I think Kamarck and Galston have a better take than Rolling Stone.)
- Times reporter Molly Young went to the "world's happiest country" in February and was not the world's happiest reporter.
Finally, a late-night club in Lincoln Park that the city closed down after shootings and other crime in 2017 will reopen at the end of May as a doggy day spa. Pup Social, at 2200 N. Ashland Ave., will offer off-leash play, a coworking lounge (presumably for humans), and a bar (also presumably for humans). The fees will start at $99 per month.
Cassie and I walked 14 km yesterday, giving her almost 3 hours of walks and 8 hours continuously outside with friends (including Butters). The walk included a stop at Jimmy's Pizza Cafe. (It's possible Cassie got a bit of pizza.)
She's now on the couch, fast asleep. I would also like to be on the couch, fast asleep, but it is a work day.
I also wish some of the people in today's stories were asleep on the couch instead of asleep at the switch:
Finally, the Economist draws attention to all the ways that my generation continues to suffer because of the two much larger generations on either side of us. The Boomers want to use up Social Security and the Millennials want all the resources for child-raising that we didn't take. It's out lot in life.
I have more coding to do now. Though I really, really want a nap.
Chicago has microclimates. If you get within about 2 km of Lake Michigan on a hot day, you can feel it even if the wind is calm. Add a lake breeze and the cool zone can extend 10–15 km easily.
It turns out, Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters and its Netatmo weather station sit just over 2 km from the lake (it's 2,170 meters to Foster Beach). O'Hare, Chicago's official weather station, is 21.5 km from the lakefront (in Winnetka, because Geometry!).
I've seen days with stiff east winds (usually convective lake breezes) where O'Hare was 15°C warmer than my own weather station. But I haven't had any visibility into how much colder it was at the lakefront than here.
Fortunately, one of my friends just got their own Netatmo weather station, and they live only 580 meters from the lake.
After tweaking some adapter code, Weather Now now has their weather station data to go along with mine! So we'll both be able to see how much the lake influences the weather even over such short distances. At the moment, their station shows 10.4°C and mine shows 11.2°C, while O'Hare is reporting 19°C. Not surprisingly, the winds at O'Hare are out of the east—but only 10 km/h, a gentle breeze.
I'm sure I'll have other comparative reports throughout the summer, especially when I take Cassie to the dog beach.
Just queuing a few things up to read at lunchtime:
- From tavern-style communion pizza and Malört to the horrific discovery that the Pope is a White Sox fan, Chicagoans have gone nuts for Leo XIV. Catholics everywhere are finally safe from ketchup with their Eucharist.
- Former US Supreme Court Justice David Souter has died, aged 85. He "pulled a Brennan" by drifting left during his term on the court, much to the annoyance of the Republicans who elevated him.
- Political scientists Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Zilbatt warn that a descent into competitive authoritarianism—the ruling style of autocrats like India's Modi and Türkiye's Erdoğan—shows up most clearly as an increasing cost of opposing the government.
- Josh Marshall reports on how the OAFPOTUS's droogs are cutting off medical research grant payments without explicitly (if illegally) cancelling the grants, hoping they won't get caught until it's too late.
- Molly White and Paul Krugman provide their regular reminders that crypto is a scam, now with added corruption.
- James Fallows, who usually tries to get people to calm down about aviation mishaps, wants the press to be more alarmed about the air traffic control blackouts in Newark. (Another one happened just this morning, in fact.)
- Yascha Mounk looks at the Democratic Party and shrugs that, for good or ill, "the resistance is gonna be woke," even if it costs us the next two elections.
- ProPublica's David Armstrong dug into why his cancer drugs cost more than an iPhone for each dose.
- Charles Marohn points out the lie in a recent Times op-ed by reminding anyone who can do math that sprawl is a Ponzi scheme, not a solution to our housing problem.
Finally, Chicago's ubiquitous summer street fairs have found it much more difficult to sustain their funding in the years since the pandemic. The city prohibits charging an entry fee for walking down a street, so the fairs have to rely on gate donations. But even with increasing expenses, people attending festivals have stopped donating at the gate, putting the fairs in jeopardy.
When I go to Ribfest in four weeks, I will pay the donation every day, because I want my ribs. This will be the festival's 25th year. I will do my part to get them another 25.
Happy May Day! In both the calendar and crashing-airplane senses!
We start with two reports about how the Clown Prince of X has taken control over so much government data that the concepts of "privacy" and "compartmentalization" seem quaint. First, from the Times:
Elon Musk may be stepping back from running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but his legacy there is already secured. DOGE is assembling a sprawling domestic surveillance system for the Trump administration — the likes of which we have never seen in the United States.
President Trump could soon have the tools to satisfy his many grievances by swiftly locating compromising information about his political opponents or anyone who simply annoys him. The administration has already declared that it plans to comb through tax records to find the addresses of immigrants it is investigating — a plan so morally and legally challenged, it prompted several top I.R.S. officials to quit in protest. Some federal workers have been told that DOGE is using artificial intelligence to sift through their communications to identify people who harbor anti-Musk or -Trump sentiment (and presumably punish or fire them).
What this amounts to is a stunningly fast reversal of our long history of siloing government data to prevent its misuse. In their first 100 days, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have knocked down the barriers that were intended to prevent them from creating dossiers on every U.S. resident. Now they seem to be building a defining feature of many authoritarian regimes: comprehensive files on everyone so they can punish those who protest.
And from The Atlantic:
But what can an American authoritarian, or his private-sector accomplices, do with all the government’s data, both alone and combined with data from the private sector? To answer this question, we spoke with former government officials who have spent time in these systems and who know what information these agencies collect and how it is stored.
To a person, these experts are alarmed about the possibilities for harm, graft, and abuse. Today, they argued, Trump is targeting law firms, but DOGE data could allow him to target individual Americans at scale. For instance, they described how the government, aside from providing benefits, is also a debt collector on all kinds of federal loans. Those who struggle to repay, they said, could be punished beyond what’s possible now, by having professional licenses revoked or having their wages or bank accounts frozen.
These data could also allow the government or, should they be shared, its private-sector allies to target big swaths of the population based on a supposed attribute or trait. Maybe you have information from background checks or health studies that allows you to punish people who have seen a therapist for mental illness. Or to terminate certain public benefits to anybody who has ever shown income above a particular threshold, claiming that they obviously don’t need public benefits because they once made a high salary. A pool of government data is especially powerful when combined with private-sector data, such as extremely comprehensive mobile-phone geolocation data. These actors could make inferences about actions, activities, or associates of almost anybody perceived as a government critic or dissident. These instances are hypothetical, but the government’s current use of combined data in service of deportations—and its refusal to offer credible evidence of wrongdoing for some of those deported—suggests that the administration is willing to use these data for its political aims.
This is what the Republican Party has bequeathed us. Because they never wanted to govern; they have always wanted to rule.
Finally, American Airlines plans to add flights to seven new destinations this fall, including (whee!) Sint Maarten. I haven't been to the island in 11 years and I've wanted to go back, but the frustrating schedule involving an early-morning flight from JFK or Miami made it inconvenient. But a non-stop from O'Hare? Oh, yeah.
It was warm enough last night to leave a couple of windows ajar, which lets in fresh air along with every sound in the neighborhood. Also last night, an idiot cardinal found a convenient streetlight, stepped out of the shade, and said something like, "You and me, babe, how about it?" He started his serenade a little after 4 am, according to my Garmin sleep report, and continued well into the morning. I don't remember ever wishing for a cat as much as I did around 5.
Remember this little ode? Yeah. Really feeling it today.
I then had about 5 hours of meetings with various and sundry, with a vet visit sandwiched in for Cassie's annual wellness checkup. (She's in perfect health.)
I might have more creativity tomorrow. Anyway, I hope I do.