Events

Ukraine has sunk the Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva: Ukrainian officials said they had used Neptune anti-ship missiles to hit the Moskva, a 10,000-tonne Slava-class cruiser which was 60-65 nautical miles (111-120km) south of Odessa. The Moskva, commissioned in 1982, is—or, perhaps, was—the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which has its headquarters in occupied Crimea. It was a “venerable, battle hardened, major surface combatant” which participated in Russian wars in Georgia in 2008 and...

It's a bit windy in Chicago: winds steady at 25 knots peaking at 47 knots at 1pm. WGN says: The National Weather Service has issued a High Wind Warning through 7 p.m. Thursday. Gusts are to build to greater than 60 mph at times–and there are indications a few of the strongest gusts could reach speeds of 70 to 80 mph. Whitecaps were spotted in Lake Michigan and the gusts have the potential to send waves greater than 10 feet on the shoreline. It’s a good idea to move objects indoors and out of the wind....

On 13 April 1992, damage to a tunnel under the Chicago River caused a billion liters of water to flood the Loop—entirely underground: The Great Chicago Flood paralyzed downtown — shutting down power and prompting an evacuation that would affect financial markets and bring business to a halt for days. Those who were there vividly recall that spring day when 124 million gallons of water from the Chicago River flowed into the city’s maze of underground freight tunnels and building basements, turning the...

In this must-read piece on Puck, Julia Ioffe interviews Serhiy Leschenko, one of Volodymyr Zelensky's principal aides: What about American fears that this will set off World War III? It’s absurd. If Russia has become so weak that it couldn’t hold on to Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel, then what World War III could you possibly be talking about? They’re just incapable of doing it. The threat of using nuclear weapons is just the appearance of a threat. He’ll never fire it. Because this decision isn’t made by...

Actually, it's 5pm here. And I have a few stories queued up: Oklahoma has a new law making abortion a felony, because the 1950s were great for the white Christian men who wrote that law. Monika Bauerlein explains why authoritarians hate a free press. Not that we didn't already know. Jonathan Haidt explains "why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid." ("It's not just a phase.") Inflation in the US hit a 40-year high at 8.5% year over year, but Paul Krugman believes it will drop...

Canada has put the Prairie Provinces on a winter storm warning as "the worst blizzard in decades" descends upon Saskatchewan and Manitoba: A winter storm watch is in effect for southern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan, with snowfall accumulations of 30 to 50 centimetres expected mid-week, along with northerly wind gusts of up to 90 kilometres per hour, said Environment Canada on Monday. “Do not plan to travel — this storm has the potential to be the worst blizzard in decades,” the agency warns....

Thursday evening, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance: That's Bill Kurtis, Peter Sagal, Karen Chee, Alonzo Bodden, and Helen Hong at this week's "Wait Wait" taping. The "Not My Job" guest was actor Matt Walsh: Then yesterday, Cassie and I trundled up to Spiteful Brewing in the sun: Not a bad few days, in all.

Via Molly White, a new company called Gripnr wants to monetize your D&D campaign, and it's as horrible as it sounds: Gripnr plans to generate 10,000 random D&D player characters (PCs), assign a “rarity” to certain aspects of each (such as ancestry and class), and mint them as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Each NFT will include character stats and a randomly-generated portrait of the PC designed in a process overseen by Gripnr’s lead artist Justin Kamerer. Additional NFTs will be minted to represent...

US Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) excoriated Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) on the floor of the Senate this week. Greg Sargent follows Josh Marshall in exhorting more Democrats to get messages like this out more often: Grandstanding and disingenuousness are endemic to politics. The tension between sordid political theatrics and the higher ideals they serve goes back to the ancients. But at a certain point, the pileup of absurdities becomes so comically ludicrous, so obviously unmoored from even the most basic...

When I launched the final weather archive import on Tuesday, I predicted it would finish around 1pm today. See my accuracy for yourself: 2022-04-08 12:54:05.0975|INFO|Moved 118,773,651 weather archives from v3 to v5 2022-04-08 12:54:05.0975|INFO|Finished importing; duration 3.03:41:19.2445019 2022-04-08 12:54:05.0975|INFO|Import finished Not a bad prediction. So Weather Now 5 now has about 260 million historical records going back to 2006, including Chicago's weather from 15 years ago this hour. And...