Events

Via CityLab, a new short video argues that the Thompson Center needs to be preserved: Says CityLab: Few of the film’s interviewees seem to find the Thompson Center beautiful—noted Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman calls it “a piece of shit.” But he, like the rest of the talking heads in the film, believes the building should be preserved for its architectural significance. It was a boundary-breaking structure when it was completed in 1985, becoming one of the first curved buildings in downtown...

There's a lot going on at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters, so I haven't had a lot of time or energy to post this weekend. Regular posting should resume tomorrow.

...and chilly. It's below freezing for the first time in a while. But I don't care, I'm going to be asleep in half an hour. I hope.

I'm chilling in my hotel room on the second day of my trip, not sure how much longer I'll remain awake. (Waking up at 5am sucks, even more so when it's 4am back home.) This is a problem in that I need to write some code before tomorrow. So I've spent a few minutes perusing the blog feeds and news reports that came in today, and I have a favorite. The favorite is not: Philip Bump explaining how President Trump made a bad night for his party even worse by being himself; Cook County (which contains...

I mentioned yesterday needing to meet my team at 5:30 this morning. That is why I'm up right now having cereal and coffee while I try to remember how to type. (My Fitbit says I got 4:20 sleep. My brain says I didn't.) Today is going to be very, very long.

Ah, business travel. What could possibly improve upon eating a turkey sandwich in a faux-chic room at an Aloft outside BWI airport while reading all the articles I queued up earlier? Certainly not the need to get up at 5:00 tomorrow morning—Eastern time, an hour ahead of Chicago—to get someplace by 5:30. But when I got off the plane, I saw this bit of good news: Democrat Ralph Northam was projected to win Virginia’s race for governor Tuesday over Republican Ed Gillespie, as Democrats appeared headed for...

I'm heading back to the East Coast tonight to continue research for my current project, so my time today is very constrained. I hope I remember to keep these browser windows open for the plane: 538 examines why, a full year later, the 2016 election just won't go away. James Bridle says something is wrong on the Internet. Josh Marshall continues to bang the drum on President Trump's creeping authoritarianism. (Or, you know, not so much creeping as shambling, with all the zombie implications in the term....

Jimmy Carter captained nuclear missile submarines. Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Barack Obama was a Constitutional Law professor at one of the top-5 law schools in the country. Donald Trump thinks...well, I'll let Japan Times explain: Trump said ‘samurai’ Japan should have shot down overflying North Korean missiles U.S. President Donald Trump has said Japan should have shot down the North Korean missiles that flew over the country before landing in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year, diplomatic...

The only real benefits of ending daylight saving time are getting an extra hour of sleep the first Sunday in November and having the sun already up when you awaken for the first time in weeks. This morning, Parker, not knowing anything about clocks or sleeping in, nudged me awake at 6:45. Sure, my Fitbit says I got almost 8 full hours of sleep, but dammit, dog. Plus, it's a gray, damp, cool morning in November. Sleeping just a little longer would have been nice.

Because of a quirk in the calendar, today's sunrise in parts of the United States that observe daylight saving time was the latest it's been in many years. In Chicago, that was 7:27 this morning. The sunrise won't be that late again until 6 November 2021. Plus, it was pissing with rain when the sun finally did come up today, making it especially gloomy. I'm not really sure why we switched from the end of October to the beginning of November in 2007, but I really hate it.