Events

Michael Moore, no friend of Donald Trump, thinks we're just stupid enough to elect him: Here are the 5 reasons Trump is going to win: 1. Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit.  I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a...

Via Bruce Schneier, the Universities of Bath, Manchester, and Princeton have developed a simple model to explain how altruism may have evolved in humans: The key insight is that the total size of population that can be supported depends on the proportion of cooperators: more cooperation means more food for all and a larger population. If, due to chance, there is a random increase in the number of cheats then there is not enough food to go around and total population size will decrease. Conversely, a...

Items of note: We're not imagining the humidity; so far, this month has been the 3rd wettest July in Chicago history. (It's not likely to break into 2nd place, though.) Bruce Schneier has a long post about the security of elections. Josh Marshall thought Hillary Clinton did a great job last night; Andrew Sullivan, never a Clinton supporter, was more critical but nonetheless will "happily use [his] first vote as an American for her." Off to the meeting. More later.

The Chicago sunrise chart for 2016-17 is up, just a few weeks late. (Look, I've been busy.)

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.) Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2016 3 Jul 8:30pm sunset 05:21 20:30 15:09 16 Jul 5:30am sunrise 05:30 20:24 14:54 8 Aug 8pm sunset 05:52 20:00 14:08 16 Aug 6am sunrise 06:00 19:50 13:50 29 Aug 7:30pm sunset 06:14 19:29 13:14 14 Sep 6:30am sunrise 06:30 19:03 12:32 15 Sep 7pm sunset 06:32 19:00 12:28 22 Sep Equinox, 9:21 CDT 06:39 18:48 12:08 25 Sep 12-hour...

Wednesday is work-remotely day on my team, so I naively thought I could go to the doctor at lunch and make up the time later in the afternoon. Three and a half hours later... That's why there's no real post today. Sheesh.

Yesterday, after a run of 77 days (beating my previous record of 70), I missed my Fitbit step goal by less than 800 steps. So embarrassing. From May 9th until July 24th, I walked 10,000 steps every day. Then yesterday I didn't notice I was stuck at 9,200 when I was out with friends. An 8-minute walk could have taken care of that. Crap.

The Daily Beast reports that Arlington, Va.-based ThreatConnect has revealed the DNC hacker to be an agent of the Russian government. The first Sears-Roebuck store, near my house, will remain largely intact during its conversion to condo units. A remote Irish island is offering itself as a haven for Americans wanting to flee a Trump presidency. Medium.com posts the Hillary Clinton speech (NSFW) we all know she wants to give. Paul Krugman compares Trump's foreign policy ideas to Pax Romana. All for now.

London-based historian Tobias Stone sees the same parallels I see to periodic bouts of self-destruction. Le sigh: [W]e humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another. At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To...

Brian Beutler argues that Hillary Clinton needs to put the "lock her up" crap to rest: It’s a problem to have this stench lingering in the air, but just as difficult to address without playing into the hands of her opponents, who’d love nothing more than to turn “lock her up” into a matter of partisan debate. (“Should Clinton be jailed? Some say yes, some say no!”) But a deft communicator could discredit “lock her up” not by protesting too much on Clinton’s behalf, but by treating it as the unhinged...