Events

Of note: Bruce Schneier discusses how propaganda is related to weakening trust in government. Former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson calls President Trump a "clownish caricature of Nixon." Paul Krugman calls Republican climate-change denial "depraved." The Atlantic outlines "the three most chilling conclusions" from the Trump Administration's report on climate change. Writer Lance Ulanoff has just a few weeks to move thousands of pictures off Flickr, reminding us that terms of service can...

Overnight, a major blizzard hit Northern Illinois: As of 7 a.m., 188 mm of snow was recorded at O'Hare International Airport, the city's official measuring station. Crystal Lake got 193 mm and some areas of McHenry County got 333 mm, according to the National Weather Service. The north suburbs and southern Wisconsin bore the brunt of the storm. A winter storm warning remains in effect after blizzard warnings issued Sunday night expired early Monday morning. It was the fifth-worst November blizzard in...

Sometimes it's fun going through some stock shots and giving them another go with Lightroom. Here's a digital photo from July 2004 that needed minimal tweaking: This one needed lots of help, and unfortunately it probably needs another scan. I haven't checked the slide in a while; I hope the problems are with the scan (from 2009) and not with the slide (from 1984): By the way, I took this photo here. Check out what that looks like today. Finally, a slide that came out OK, though again it seems the scan...

I've been working on a personal project all day, except for walking Parker a couple of times, so I have largely avoided the drizzle and rain. Tonight, however, things will change: The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for the Chicago metro area Sunday afternoon. The warning is in effect from 6 p.m. Sunday until 9 a.m. Monday. Issuing a blizzard warning is not common, said National Weather Service meteorologist Ricky Castro. “The last time we had one out for Cook County was in February...

We can all be thankful for things this Thanksgiving weekend, but few will be as thankful as Parker, who got his cone off yesterday:

Yesterday was my [redacted] high school reunion. We started with a tour of the building, which has become a modern office park since we graduated: The glass atrium there is new, as of 2008. The structure back to the left is the Center for the Performing Arts, which featured proudly in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I didn't get a picture of the Michelin-starred student food court, but this, this I had to snap: So, at some point I'll post about Illinois school-funding policies and why one of the richest...

Craft distillers in the U.S., like home-town FEW Spirits, are getting creamed by the European Union's retaliatory tariffs: Following the European Union's June implementation of a 25 percent tariff on bourbon, the popular U.S. whiskey variety, the impact has been clear. One American producer said his exports have "dropped to zero" as a result. Last year, they made up 15 percent of revenue. "Every U.K. buyer backed off," said Paul Hletko, the owner of Evanston-based Few Spirits. "They may want to buy it...

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' White Album: There’s something about The White Album that invites listeners to mess around with it. Joan Didion stole its title for her 1979 essay collection, an elegy for the dreams of 1960s California. The producer Danger Mouse chopped it to pieces and recombined the fragments with vocals from Jay-Z’s The Black Album to create his 2004 mash-up The Grey Album. The jam band Phish covered all 30 songs on stage on Halloween night, 1994. Charles Manson...

When I'm explaining software designs, I'll often say things like, "I don't care if the data comes from SQL, NOSQL, or a squirrel..." It turns out, Frontier Airlines cares very much: A passenger was removed from a Frontier Airlines flight late Tuesday when she attempted to fly with her “emotional support” squirrel and then refused to get off the plane when she was told no, according to the airline. A Frontier spokesman said in a statement that the passenger had alerted the airline that she would be...

Greg Sargent points out the obvious reality of who the president is really looking out for: The suggestion here is that we are now seeing what “America first” really looks like. That is, when Trump says “America first,” he means it. But this concedes too much. In an inadvertent but pernicious way, it supports Trump’s preferred framing of his presidency. In this case and many others, Trump is not being “frank” about his real priorities, and he is not putting America first. He’s putting his own naked...