Events

It's the hottest weekend of the year so far. We beat the high temperature on June 30th by half a degree (35.6°C v 36.1°C) yesterday, and so far today we've hovered around 32°C for the past four hours. So, naturally, I walked about 5 km earlier today to check out some open houses. I'm ready for fall. Just as soon as I take my second shower of the day...

I love to travel. So I was surprised to learn, after chasing a hunch, that I haven't been outside the state of Illinois since January 22nd, 194 days ago. I confirmed this with Google Timeline. The last time I've gone this long without traveling to another state (or country), as far as I can tell, was 3 August 1981 to 5 March 1982, a gap of 214 days. But my family probably went up to Wisconsin at some point during that period, so I can't exactly call that a reliable record. Same with the 213-day gap...

Temperatures in southern Portugal and Spain have reached 45°C as dust from the Sahara turns skies orange: In the latest phase of a summer of extreme weather that has brought blistering heat to Britain, drought to the Netherlands and deadly wildfires to Greece, the heatwave affecting parts of southern Europe has reached a new intensity this weekend. According to IPMA, the Portuguese weather agency, about a third of the country’s meteorological stations broke temperature records on Saturday. The highest...

Hot, as in "on fire." The Washington Post has found that the President has made more than 4,200 false or misleading claims since taking office, half of them in the last six months. Moreover: On July 5, the president reached a new daily high of 79 false and misleading claims. On a monthly basis, June and July rank in first and second place, with 532 and 446 claims, respectively. Trump has a proclivity to repeat, over and over, many of his false or misleading statements. We’ve counted nearly 150 claims...

Sediment under Lake Chichancanab on the Yucatan Peninsula has offered scientists a clearer view of what happened to the Mayan civilization: Scientists have several theories about why the collapse happened, including deforestation, overpopulation and extreme drought. New research, published in Science Thursday, focuses on the drought and suggests, for the first time, how extreme it was. [S]cientists found a 50 percent decrease in annual precipitation over more than 100 years, from 800 to 1,000 A.D. At...

When I get home tonight, I'll need to read these (and so should you): The New York Times magazine has a long article on how we almost fixed climate change between 1979 and 1989; New Republic has a critique. A house in the Irving Park community in northwest Chicago might have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. A non-profit organization in Chicago is trying to fix our polluted canals, starting with a stretch by the flagship Whole Foods Market on Kingsbury. National Geographic has the story of Mauro...

Bloomberg published on Monday a super-cool analysis of U.S. land use patterns: Using surveys, satellite images and categorizations from various government agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture divides the U.S. into six major types of land. The data can’t be pinpointed to a city block—each square on the map represents 250,000 acres of land. But piecing the data together state-by-state can give a general sense of how U.S. land is used. Gathered together, cropland would take up more than a fifth of...

Happy August! (Wait, where did April go?) As I munch on my salad at my desk today, I'm reading these stories: New Republic wonders if Charles Koch really thinks mainstream Democrats will embrace his vision. (tl;dr: not bloody likely.) Jennifer Rubin takes a look at President Trump's latest rally in Tampa with alarm at his supporters' disconnection from reality. The Atlantic outlines how Paul Manafort's trial in Virginia this week exposes the growing kleptocracy in Washington. In Chicago, businesses and...

Greg Sargent points out how President Trump's latest tweetstorm shows his utter contempt for the voters who elected him: The campaign story Trump told about self-enriching globalist elites was that they have employed permissive immigration and misguided or corrupt trade policies to subject U.S. workers to debilitating labor competition from border-crossing migrants and slave-wage workers in China. Trump supplemented this economic nationalism with vows to make wealthy investors pay more, secure huge...

Aimee Mann performed last night at Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park—for free! So naturally I went. The weather couldn't have been better, so the picnic area was totally full. Which meant that the pavilion itself had plenty of seats. Which meant I got to see her directly rather than just projected on a big screen. Just for posterity, here's her set list: 4th of July Little Bombs Patient Zero The Moth Labrador Humpty Dumpty You Can't Help Me You Never Loved Me Goose Snow Cone (which, she...