Events

Getting tea at the local Pret this afternoon I discovered that one of the one-pound coins I tried to use no longer had any value: On October 15 2017, the round pound ceased to be legal tender. This meant Brits could no longer use them to make purchases in shops, supermarkets, vending machines and even car parks. The coin was phased out over six months, to pave way for the new five sided £1 which launched last March. Those who find themselves still in possession of any round ones will have to head to...

I can't tell if this is good news or neutral news. It's not bad news: Chicago has been named a finalist in Amazon’s search for its second headquarters, known as H2Q. Amazon announced the short list in an early morning tweet, but didn’t offer many other details other than the other cities that made the short list. The other finalists are Columbus, Ohio; Newark, N.J.; Toronto; Indianapolis; Denver; Nashville; Los Angeles; Dallas; Austin; Boston; New York City; Pittsburgh; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C....

What a day. I thought I'd have more time to catch up on reading up to this point, but life intervened. So an hour from now, when I'm cut off from all telecommunications for 9 hours, I plan to sleep. And if I wake, I'll read these articles that I'm leaving open in Chrome: More fun from The Daily WTF A Chinese research paper on cyber sovereignty (recommended by Bruce Schneier) Gulliver predicting the demise of the A380 My local business newspaper predicting problems for Illinois because of the...

I spent over 3 hours in my car today in principal because there were no public transit options to my remote, suburban destination. That, plus all-day meetings, means that instead of outlining what I'm planning for the weekend—I'll do that tomorrow—I'm just going to line up some articles I want to read: The Daily WTF explains why medical insurance is so expensive. The Intercept describes a reporter's life in the War on Terror. Jeet Heer calls the president an abusive patriarch, not a toddler. Don Norman...

As part of my current project's non-technical requirements, I've just completed 5 hours of anti-terrorism and security training. Biggest takeaway: bullets ricochet down, grenade shrapnel goes up. Also, don't put random CDs in your computer. Oh, and I have to repeat about 3 hours of it a year from now. Today is actually a company holiday but I've got a lot of work to do, including this training. Also we've gotten about 60 mm of snow today with more coming down. So steps go down, heating bill goes up.

A few links to click tomorrow when I have more time: What, exactly, is President Trump's genius? What, exactly, is his definition of treason? How are cities measuring the "Uber Effect?" Chicago had more tourists in 2017 than ever. Facial recognition is coming to retail. Sullivan comments on #MeToo. Fallows on Republicans in Congress. Hanselman on the Azure IoT Arduino Cloud DevKit. Finally, the UK is planting a coast-to-coast forest of 50 million trees. And now, I rest.

As a choir nerd, I encounter all kinds of interesting arrangements of music. Take this, for example: "Hide and Seek" by British songwriter and experimental musician Imogen Heap: It turns out, she made a choral arrangement. Here she is with the London Contemporary Voices: This makes me and my fellow choir nerds so happy.

I'm not referring to the 14°C drop in temperatures over four hours yesterday, though that did suck. (And it did drench me.) No, I'm talking about how, after calling countries that have dark-skinned citizens "shitholes," the best President we have right now abruptly cancelled a visit to the UK to dedicate our new (and ugly, and inconveniently-located) embassy on the south bank of the Thames: The president claimed on Twitter that the reason for calling off the trip was his displeasure at Barack Obama...

The Atlantic reports on some new research in why animals all do this thing that could get them eaten: There are a handful of substances clearly demonstrated to cause sleep—including a molecule called adenosine, which appears to build up in certain parts of the brains of waking rats, then drain away during slumber. Adenosine is particularly interesting because it is adenosine receptors that caffeine seems to work on. When caffeine binds to them, adenosine can’t, which contributes to coffee’s...

The temperature poked its head all the way up to 14°C this morning and has otherwise held steady around 13°C since yesterday evening. That means it's a full 37°C warmer—yes, the difference between freezing and typical human body temperature—than January 1st (-23°C). Unfortunately, a cold front will bring Canadian cold through Chicago this evening, dropping the temperature 20°C overnight and another 5°C (to around -14°C) by Saturday night. So picking the right coat this morning was more challenging than...