Events

I finally got a chance to re-edit some of the photos I took in London last weekend. Here are four from Thursday, in chronological order. Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich: Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn: St Paul's Cathedral, west façade: Blackfriars Bridge:

While running errands this morning I had the same thought I've had for the past three or so weeks: the trees look great this autumn. Whatever combination of heat, precipitation, and the gradual cooling we've had since the beginning of October, the trees refuse to give up their leaves yet, giving us cathedrals of yellow, orange, and red over our streets. And then I come home to a bunch of news stories that also remind me everything changes: Like most sentient humans, Adam Serwer feels no surprise (but...

The richest person in Illinois has bought one of the only remaining original copies of the US Constitution at auction for $43 million, and I think this says a lot about where America has gotten in the 21st Century: Citadel Founder Ken Griffin bought a first printing of the U.S. Constitution which sold for a record-setting $43.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction, the auction house announced Friday. Griffin said he will loan the document to Billionaire Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American...

A nearly-all-white Kenosha, Wis., jury acquitted Killer Smurf Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges today, which will have the immediate effect of turning Kenosha into a war zone, and the long-term effect of escalating violence at what would otherwise be peaceful protests nationwide. I haven't followed the case closely, though I do trust the sources I've read who say an acquittal would make sense under Wisconsin law. But I doubt that most people who haven't gone to law school will see it that way, or even...

It's hard to believe Parker has been gone a whole year. I miss you, buddy.

I've spent today alternately upgrading my code base for my real job to .NET 6.0, and preparing for the Apollo Chorus performances of Händel's Messiah on December 11th and 12th. Cassie, for her part, enjoys when I work from home, even if we haven't spent a lot of time outside today because (a) I've had a lot to do and (b) it rained from 11am to just about now. So, as I wait for the .NET 6 update to build and deploy on our dev/test CI/CD instance (I think I set the new environments on our app services...

Just a couple of eye-roll-worthy lunchtime links today: Chicago police union head John Catanzara, who I referred to on Facebook yesterday as a "whiny, belligerent infant," has quit the CPD and announced a run for mayor. My previous comments stand. Sears closed its last remaining store in its home state of Illinois on Sunday. I still hate Eddie Lampert for it. Michelle Goldberg takes the "social justice industry" to task for policing words instead of accomplishing real change. Ordinarily-idyllic coastal...

I reported on Friday that angler Jarrett Knize caught a 34 kg carp in the Humboldt Park Lagoon earlier this month. Block Club Chicago explains how the Fish of Unusual Size might have wound up there: As for how the carp got there in the first place, Kevin Irons, assistant chief of fisheries for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, has a theory. Irons, who managed the department’s carp program for a decade, said carp were accidentally introduced to the lagoon about 20 years ago. When a...

Few people in the history of broadcasting have managed the heights of soulless putrefaction that Alex Jones has achieved, and I'm including Father Coughlin and that German guy who opened the 1936 Olympic Games. Jones, I would argue, has even less moral fiber than those other two, because he does it all for profit, to such an extent that he would rather take a multi-million-dollar legal loss on the chin than reveal anything about how his broadcast business actually works: Conspiracy theorist and Infowars...

 Lunch yesterday, at the Iron Duke in Hampshire: The place is so named because it's on the Duke of Wellington's estate. The current Duke lives just a few kilometers away in a somewhat modest house (at least according to Queen Victoria) whose driveway is 5 km long. Walking to and from lunch looked like this: I ended the day at the Southampton Arms as I typically do at least once when visiting the UK. Shortly after arriving and opening a packet of crisps, Marty here came over to investigate: His attitude...