Events

Just a few: What is Putin's real game with Ukraine right now? Julia Ioffe thinks it may just be R-E-S-P-E-C-T. After Bob Dole's death this week, Paul Krugman bemoans the disappearance of Republican grown-ups. A stupid-looking statute of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest finally came down. Germany's incoming government claims it wants to protect end-to-end encryption, a move Bruce Schneier likes. Bloomberg CityLab asks, why does US infrastructure cost so much? A rash of earthquakes shook the Pacific...

I've had intermittent Internet all morning for no reason that Comcast/Xfinity can tell me. Everything I do professionally requires an Internet connection. I am displeased.

The temperature bottomed out last night just under -10°C, colder than any night since I adopted Cassie. (We last got that cold on February 20th.) Even now the temperature has just gone above -6°C. Though she has two fur coats on all the time, I still think keeping her outside longer than about 20 minutes would cause her some discomfort. Add that it's Messiah week and I barely have enough free time to give her a full hour of walks today. Meanwhile, life goes on, even if I can only get the gist of it...

I'm looking ahead to two long rehearsals, three performances, and squeezing into my tuxedo, all while the temperature drops over the next six hours to a predicted -9°C. I conclude from these facts that it's the beginning of winter. I also just spent the last hour trying to get Visual Studio to log into the correct Azure subscription. So instead of reading these things at lunch, I had to let them pile up: The UK High Court ruled yesterday that Uber's business model is unlawful, saying ride-hail...

LTU history professor Andrew C McKevitt explains how gun capitalism fuels our gun crisis, not "ghost guns" (or "Saturday Night Specials" or mail-order guns or...): Ghost guns are the latest iteration of this variety of moral panic, which distracts from and obscures the most direct source of the gun violence that plagues us: American gun capitalism, with its largely unrestricted production, distribution, marketing and sale of civilian firearms unequaled anywhere in the world. That system has placed a...

I've finally resumed progress on a major update to Weather Now. I finished everything except the user interface way back in April, but between summer, Cassie, and everything else, I paused. At least, until last week, when something clicked in my head, and I started writing again. As my dad would say, I broke the code's back. It turns out, the APIs really work well, and I'm getting used to .NET Blazor, so I'm actually getting things done. The only downside applies to Cassie, who will probably only get 90...

Police arrested Jennifer and James Crumbley at a commercial building in Detroit today after a day-long manhunt. They're the parents of the kid who killed four of his high school classmates last week, and wow, are they in trouble: Prosecutors allege that the parents bought the gun for their son, and that Jennifer Crumbley boasted on social media about taking her son to a shooting range to try it out. Authorities also say 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley’s parents left the gun unlocked and neglected to act on...

I swear, the local poké place used three shots of chili oil instead of one today. Whew. (Not that I'm complaining, of course.) While my mouth slowly incinerates, I'm reading these: University of Baltimore School of Law professor Kimberly Wehle warns that the legal theories the Republicans on the Supreme Court suggested this week could roll back a lot more than just abortion rights. Also in The Atlantic, actor Joshua Malina wonders why anyone would hire raging anti-Semite Mel Gibson. Daniel Strauss asks...

First, continuing the thread from this morning, (Republican) columnist Jennifer Rubin neatly sums up how the Republican justices on the Supreme Court seem poised to undo Republican Party gains by over-reaching: We are, in short, on the verge of a constitutional and political tsunami. What was settled, predictable law on which millions of people relied will likely be tossed aside. The blowback likely will be ferocious. It may not be what Republicans intended. But it is coming. Next up, Washington Post...

Even though the Court probably won't release its ruling in the Mississippi anti-abortion bill until June, just about everyone has the same understanding about how it will turn out. No one seems to believe abortion will remain legal in much of the US beyond the end of this term. My guess: Justice Amy Coney Barrett (R) writing the opinion for a 5-4 Court with an unusual number of concurrences and dissents. If the Court overturns or significantly curtails Roe v Wade, it will be one of the rare times that...