Events

The Tribune reports that today ends Chicago's second-wettest spring ever, the wettest May ever, and the only second month in recorded history (out of 1,770 months) to have 21 days of precipitation. This might become the new normal: 9 of the last 10 Mays have had above-average precipitation. Lake Michigan, the inland sea ten blocks from where I'm sitting, has near-record water levels: Lake Ontario, downstream, has swelled by almost a meter in the last two months to all-time record levels: So not only has...

As Chicago finishes the wettest May in history, Bloomberg points out that all the rain has caused serious problems with Illinois agriculture: Rabobank is predicting an unprecedented number of unplanted acres of corn, the most widely grown American crop. A Bloomberg survey of 10 traders and analysts indicates growers could file insurance claims for about 6 million corn acres they haven’t been able to sow, almost double the record in 2013. Corn futures surged more than 20% to a three-year high over the...

Two made the news this week. First, Lampert has sued Sears (which he owns) for not conveying property that his investment firm bought from the doomed retailer: Lampert's Transform is accusing the Sears estate, a bankrupt shell entity that is winding down under court supervision, of multiple wrongs including breaking the agreement by holding on to the chain's headquarters in Illinois. The estate is also intentionally delaying payments to vendors and trying to shift $166 million in accounts payable costs...

Williams College Biology Professor Luana Maroja sounds the alarm as she sees students challenging long-established science on political grounds: The trouble began when we discussed the notion of heritability as it applies to human intelligence. I asked students to think about the limitations of the data, which do not control for environmental differences, and explained that the raw numbers say nothing about whether observed differences are indeed “inborn”—that is, genetic. There is, of course, a long...

Today's Daily Parker flash of inspiration will memorialize my update to an obsolete proverb. Instead of "a stopped watch is right twice a day," substitute "a dead mobile gets no bad texts." On second thought, they're not orthogonal. But in my defense, I was thinking of the president at the time.

Just a few things in the news: The Illinois legislature has approved an amendment to the state constitution that, if approved by voters in November 2020, will allow the state to set up a graduated income tax. The current proposal would slightly lower taxes for most people but dramatically increase taxes for people making over $500,000 per year. James Fallows has a look at the real complexities of the urban-rural divide in the US. James Comey has an Op-Ed in the Post about the dumb lies the President...

Yesterday Chicago set a few weather records: wettest Memorial Day ever recorded, tied for most days in May with measurable prediction (18), tied for most days in May that have had more than 7.6 mm of precipitation (10), and up to the 3rd wettest month of May (186 mm). And we have more rain predicted tonight. Warmer air holds more moisture. The atmosphere worldwide is warmer. QED.

People who thought moving to far suburbs made economic sense in the 1990s and 2000s can't seem to sell their ugly, too-large houses: "For most of the 1990s, if you looked at the geographic center of jobs in the Chicago area, it was moving steadily northwest, out from the city toward Schaumburg," homebuilding consultant Tracy Cross says. Like the corporate campuses that popped up in that era, the houses were often built big. A generation later, tastes for both have faded: Corporations have shifted their...

Burger King has decided to embrace the suck: Sir, this was a Burger King commercial. Part of a partnership with the nonprofit Mental Health America — as well as an unsubtle dig at the McDonald’s Happy Meal — the nearly two-minute “short film” promotes a limited-time, select-city product called “Real Meals,” which correspond to a customer’s “real” mood: Blue, Salty, Pissed, DGAF and YAAAS. In place of information about where to seek help if you’re experiencing feelings of depression, which would usually...

Burger King's brand implosion aside, other, more important news came out in the last couple of days: This morning, UK Prime Minister Theresa May announced she would step down on June 7th, having lost the confidence of the right-wing crazies holding her majority together. The likely outcome of this will be Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is actually less popular than May, forcing a general election through incompetence by the August bank holiday. The heads of NOAA and NASA have raised the alarm that...