Events

After an amazing dinner at One Aldwych this evening, I grabbed a book from my room* and headed down to my own hotel's bar. Between the two places I met people from Italy, Spain, Cape Verde (via Portugal), Germany, Russia, Poland, Sardinia (yes, a part of Italy), and Wales (yes, a part of the UK). London has made itself over the past two decades into this kind of mixed, cosmopolitan, vibrant city. I hope it continues; Brexit could kill it. So I'm glad I'm visiting now while it's at peak international....

A triptych. Dinner: Outside: Inside: Noel.

Christmas Eve, not Hallowe'en, is the night Londoners tell ghost stories: The city’s occasional creepiness has been actively fabricated, a product of its history of destruction and haphazard rebuilding. It has long been a canvas for only semi-realized grand designs, from Christopher Wren’s 17th century plans to turn the city into a second Florence to 1970s schemes to flatten historic Covent Garden Market. Destruction in the form of fires, bombing and brutal redevelopment have also reshaped the city...

I've arrived safely in the Ancestral Homeland, and as my body will tell you, it's too early to text anyone back home to let them know. Right now I plan to sleep. Assuming I wake up sometime today, I'll get some caffeine, possibly a bite, and then walk around my second-favorite city in the world for a bit, aiming to queue up for St Paul's midnight service sometime around 22:30. (I might also try to get in to the Christmas carol service at 16:00; haven't decided yet.)

Just a quick post of articles I want to load up on my Surface at O'Hare: Dana Milbank says that we've now lost the Cold War. In his preceding column, he said "Rudy Giuliani is the fool for our time." BBC Scotland reported last week that "more than a third of vintage Scotch whiskies...have been found to be fake." (Last year, Whisky Advocate had a list of ways to check the authenticity of your vintage Scotch.) Chicago Public Media explains how Chicago got some of its street names—and how to pronounce...

Yesterday was a bit busy. I spent my morning getting this: I haven't named it yet. Current thoughts are Hinata (一陽), Hana (初夏), and Asahi (旦陽). (The new car was built in Naguro, Japan; thus, a Japanese name.) The new Prius replaces Magdalena (built in Munich), the BMW 335iX that I got in 2012. Poor Lena, she was so old and decrepit she just couldn't go on much longer. She was burning 13.9 L/100 km, which is just awful. The new car, so far, hasn't burned any gasoline at all—it's only run off batteries....

The December solstice happens today at 22:21 UTC, which is 16:21 here in Chicago, which it turns out is the exact time of tonight's sunset. This is also true for everywhere along the lightest gray line on this map: Note also that Africa and Europe will have a brilliant gibbous moon at the same time. Happy solstice!

As someone joked after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned yesterday, "we have to worry when the grown-up in the room is nicknamed 'Mad Dog.'" His resignation letter doesn't seem that mad: One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without...

Citylab has a list: Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussmann, 1809-1891 It’s hard to overstate the urban legacy of Baron Haussmann, prefect of the Seine during the reign of France’s Emperor Napoleon III. Between 1853 and 1870, Haussmann used his authoritarian mandate to transform the medieval Paris into the paragon of a modern city. He ran broad new boulevards through maze-like old neighborhoods to slow the spread of disease and improve transportation (and, some historians have said, make it easier for troops to...

Via Bruce Schneier, a report on how third-party Amazon sellers use Amazon's own policies to attack their rivals: When you buy something on Amazon, the odds are, you aren’t buying it from Amazon at all. Plansky is one of 6 million sellers on Amazon Marketplace, the company’s third-party platform. They are largely hidden from customers, but behind any item for sale, there could be dozens of sellers, all competing for your click. This year, Marketplace sales were almost double those of Amazon retail...