Events

As I sit at my desk, sniffling and nursing a scratchy throat from all the dust my packing has thrown up, I found a pair of articles quite timely. From the Washington Post, new research explains how your brain manages illnesses on your body's behalf: Two recent studies published in Nature report that specific parts of the brain rapidly respond to illness and coordinate how the body counters it. This new understanding may also hold clues about why some people continue to have chronic problems such as long...

Bloomberg reports that Kroger and Albertsons, two of the biggest grocery chains in the US, have started merger talks. This would create an enormous entity about the size of Wal-Mart. In Chicago, it would result in the merger of Jewel (Albertsons) and Mariano's (Kroger), just a few years after the dissolution of Dominick's, leaving us with just three major chains including Trader Joe's and Whole Foods Market. Crain's elaborates: An agreement could be reached as soon as this week, [unnamed sources] said...

Man-shaped bag of feces Alex Jones may be "done saying I'm sorry," but a Connecticut jury suggests he should have tried just one more time: The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay $965 million to the families of eight Sandy Hook shooting victims and an FBI agent who responded to the attack for the suffering he caused them by spreading lies on his platforms about the 2012 massacre, a Connecticut jury found on Wednesday. Jones had already been found liable by a judge after refusing to hand over...

Equipment problems caused an Amtrak train to break down on a trip from Detroit to Chicago, turning a 6½-hour trip into a 19-hour adventure: Passengers traveling Amtrak's Wolverine train No. 351 from Michigan to Chicago expected a trip totaling about 6 1/2 hours on Oct. 7. Instead, they endured delays that turned it into a 19-hour ride that left them without power, heat, lights and access to working bathrooms. Some riders, fed up with being stranded, ignored the rules to stay on the disabled train and...

I learned a new phrase in Farsi today: zag shusheet! It means "dog piss." And I learned it from the man who will clean and repair the two early-20th-century rugs that my mother left me. I also learned the Farsi for "chewed edge," but I didn't write that one down. And how much will it cost to restore the two rugs that my darling Cassie has in so many ways defiled? $2,400. Fortunately the work will take a couple of months (Eli has a backlog), so I've got some time to dock her allowance. And our new house...

Just finishing up a sprint at work, lost track of time, have to go in 10 minutes, no time even to list the stories I queued up for later reading. So: happy Monday!

As far as I know, I'm moving in 2½ weeks, though the exact timing of both real-estate closings remain unknown. Last time I moved it took me about 38 hours to pack and 15 to unpack. This time I expect it to go faster, in part because I'm not spending as much time going "oh, I love this book!" I'm taking a quick break and catching up on some reading: Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon (R-Fla.) continues to help the guy who appointed her in absurd ways large and small. David French explains why "strong"...

One of Inner Drive Technology's old laptops—actually, the most recently purchased—can be yours along with a few accessories for only $300: That's a Dell E6440 laptop with 12 GB of RAM and an Intel Core i7 2.4 GHz processor. It has a 97 W/h battery, and I'm including a docking station, 130 W power supply, and a DVI cable to connect the docking station with a monitor. It does not have a hard drive or software. (I originally had a 512 GB SSD. It'll take a standard 3½-inch laptop drive.) But hey, $300? I've...

Comedian John Fuselgang summed up the Georgia GOP's position as: "I oppose abortion in all cases, unless it's to save the political life of the father." And whose political life does the Georgia GOP want to save? This guy's: to read the mainstream media’s coverage of Walker’s gaffes and transgressions—his previously unidentified children from different partners, his spaced-out climate change commentary about “China’s bad air” taking over America’s “good air space,” a seemingly never-ending litany of...

I've had a busy day. I finally solved the token-authentication problem I've been working on all week for my day job (only to discover another flavor of it after deploying to Azure), while dealing with a plumber ($1600 repair!), an HVAC inspector ($170 inspection!) and my buyer's mortgage appraiser (not my problem!). That left some reading to do tonight: Support for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has waned somewhat as Ukraine continues to kick Russian ass. Michael Dobbs warns that Putin has taken all...