Events

The windows at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters are all open—yes, on February 17th—because it's 18°C outside. This is the normal high temperature for May 1st. Parker's having a bath, too, so the weather is great for him to walk home from the doggy daycare place.

Since December I've been the technical lead on an 18-person project at work, which has tanked my blogging frequency. I may return to my previous 3-posts-in-two-days velocity at some point. For now, here are some articles to read: Pilot Patrick Smith wades into the Trump travel ban, and also talks about the longest scheduled flights you can take. Charles Pierce, Jeet Heer, and Josh Marshall all boggle at President Trump's press conference earlier today. NCPC is predicting a warm spring in Chicago. That's...

Diners at Mar-al-Lago overheard the President talking with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the latest in a string of idiotic security breaches he's made all by himself: As Mar-a-Lago's wealthy members looked on from their tables, and with a keyboard player crooning in the background, Trump and Abe's evening meal quickly morphed into a strategy session, the decision-making on full view to fellow diners, who described it in detail to CNN. News of Pyongyang's launch had emerged an hour earlier, as...

We haven't gotten 25mm of snow in Chicago since December 19th, and the forecast for the next week is precipitation-free—57 days of snow-free weather so far. The record is 83, which we'll break if we don't get that much snow before March 12th. This is unlikely most years, but this year, the climate predictions look promising. Stay tuned. We could always get a blizzard. It's February, after all.

Quick hits: This week's "What Just Happened?" column from Alex Shepherd is a must-read. And by the way, as I've been saying, the president has done everything he promised. Why is anyone surprised? Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has proposed a high-speed rail link between O'Hare and downtown. And soon, the weekend...

Not exactly a slow news day: Former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions won confirmation as Attorney General of the U.S. on a 52-47 party-line vote. Meanwhile, the Senate told Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to sit down and shut up, but "she persisted," thus beginning her 2020 presidential campaign. And though the event was almost 26 full hours ago, yesterday's appeals court hearing in California resulted in a Trump tweet being rebuked by the President's own nominee for the Supreme Court. (The BBC has...

Betsy DeVos was just confirmed as Secretary of Education by one vote: the vice president's tie-breaker. This has never happened before in the history of the United States. So far, all of President Trump's nominees requiring confirmation have had roll-call votes, and the rest are likely to. This also has never happened before: She is only the latest of Trump’s Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominees to face an unusual amount of opposition in the Senate. Newly elected presidents are typically afforded wide...

Stuff I'll read before rehearsal today: Senior administration officials are re-thinking their strategy after doing almost nothing correctly in their first two weeks. The "bucket with no bottom" that is the West Wing continues to leak in historical proportions. The Republican Party has been bullshitting the American public, and now it's even more obvious. The Speaker of the UK House of Commons has forbidden President Trump from speaking at Westminster Palace. We've had almost no snow since December 19th...

New Republic has the update. tl;dr: Each week is worse than the one before.

Five U.S. representatives out of Illinois' 20-member Congressional delegation are trying real hard to support President Trump's ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and still sound like Americans. Peter Roskam (R-6th), Mike Bost (R-12th), Rodney Davis (R-13th), and John Shimkus (R-15th) have all made statements NPR says "support" the ban; Adam Kinzinger (R-16th) is "unclear." All but Roskam represent large rural districts where you can probably count the Muslims on one hand. Roskam, who represents the...