Events

I mentioned a couple days ago that we haven't seen the sun much this spring. Today the sun came out for only the second time in the last 43 days: The National Weather Service categorized just one day in April as “clear and sunny,” said Kevin Donofrio, science and operations officer. NBC 5 meteorologist Paul Deanno said Tuesday just one of the past 42 days saw significant sunshine. That report was followed by another dark and soggy day. Donofrio said this April saw 39.6 mm more rain than usual. Paul...

A day and a half after the unprecedented leak of Justice Alito's (R) draft opinion in Dobbs v Jackson, everyone and her dog has a reaction piece: David Von Drehle in the Post warns that Alito's arguments in Dobbs, if accepted as the final majority opinion, would imperil many other rights based on privacy law: "[S]hould Alito’s draft opinion be affirmed by the court’s majority, there will be little to prevent states from enacting limits [on contraception] if they wish. Women will have only as much...

Via John Scalzi, who also just learned about this Australian treasure today, here is the belly laugh you need tonight:

Politico reported yesterday evening that the US Supreme Court voted back in February to overturn Roe v Wade, and they have Justice Alito's (R) first-draft opinion to prove it: The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes. The immediate impact...

Just a few: Jerusalem Davis bemoans how community input has become “whoever yells the loudest and longest wins.” Max Boot says we shouldn't fear Putin. An Air France B777 captain and first officer both tried to fly the airplane at the same time on short final into DeGualle, but fortunately only one of them succeeded. The City of Chicago plans to plant 75,000 trees in the next five years. Finally, James Fallows rolls his eyes at the annual White House Correspondent's Dinner, but praises Trevor Noah's...

Last month we had the second-gloomiest April on record, with only 34% of possible sunshine reaching Chicago all month. Normal is 51%. I realize May is only 34 hours old, but we haven't gotten any sunshine this month, either, with rain forecast tonight, Tuesday night, and Thursday. Then I'm heading to San Francisco for the weekend, where they haven't had any clouds in a while. I could use the sunshine.

How did it get to be May already? And 7pm on Sunday already?

But instead I'm reading this note (sub.req.) by Paul Krugman, pointing out that college degrees no longer have anything to do with wealth or income: [M]uch of the backlash to proposals for student debt relief is based on a false premise: the belief that Americans who have gone to college are, in general, members of the economic elite. The falsity of this proposition is obvious for those who were exploited by predatory for-profit institutions that encouraged them to go into debt to get more or less...

Two surprising stories out of the UK involving public figures who behaved badly and got caught. First, former tennis star Boris Becker will spend 30 months in jail for hiding assets from the UK bankruptcy court: The former tennis star had faced a jail sentence of up to 28 years under the Insolvency Act. He was found guilty of four charges by a jury at Southwark crown court earlier this month but acquitted of further 20 counts relating to his 2017 bankruptcy. Once nicknamed Britain’s favourite German –...

Some odd stories, some scary stories: Microsoft has released a report on Russia's ongoing cyber attacks against Ukraine. Contra David Ignatius, military policy experts Dr Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds call Russia's invasion of Ukraine "the death throes of imperial delusion" and warn that Putin will likely escalate the conflict rather than face humiliation. Russia historian Tom Nichols puts all of this together and worries about World War III—"not the rhetorical World War III loosely talked about now...