Events

I'm serious: I couldn't have planned it better. Remember how I said I booked the early (4:50pm) flight because I wanted to fly on one of British Airways' brand-new 787-10 airplanes, and they swapped it out for one of they're old-ass 777s? Well, I woke up this morning to an email saying that the old-ass 777 won't actually make the trip after all, so they shoved me onto the next available flight on American. After a not-so-quick call to American Airlines (them, because they issued the original ticket, and...

I haven't even left yet and already I've encountered three noteworthy irritations about the first 12 hours of my vacation, two of them involving British Airways and one involving Transport for London. (This will no doubt shock my readers in the UK.) First, I chose an early-ish flight out of Chicago because when I booked it, BA planned to fly one of their brand-spanking-new 787-10 airplanes with their brand-spanking-new business class seats. But when I reconfirmed my seat yesterday (not my first time...

As the right featherweights of the right wing of the Republican House delegation play chicken with the world economy, a Federal Court in Boston weighs a lawsuit demanding the President's chicken starts driving a snowblower*: U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns set a May 31 hearing on a lawsuit filed by a federal workers union contending that the 14th Amendment empowers Biden and other officials to sidestep the standoff with Congress that has threatened a potential default. Treasury Secretary Janet...

A family of red foxes has taken up residence in Millennium Park, Chicago: The fox family “just walked right in” to the popular downtown park a couple weeks back, said Kathryn Deery, head horticulturalist at the park’s Lurie Garden. The family — two adults and four babies — typically pops out when the park is less crowded in the mornings and evenings. Deery has watched the “adorable” baby foxes, known as kits, wrestle in the garden and play with food as their parents hunt for rabbits, birds, rodents and...

The roofing project continues apace, taking advantage of an exceptionally lovely bit of weather this week. So, yay us, new roof and all. But I'm trying to work at home today—my last WFH day until June 8th, in fact—and the roofers have devised new ways to make it suck. First came the generator. I don't know whatever reason they needed to put a large generator outside my office window, but there it sat for about 90 minutes. Closing my window helped the noise but not the temperature (remember, they...

The 17- and 13-year cicadas will both emerge next year, together for the first time since 1803. But this year, possibly as early as this weekend, a relatively small number of Magicicada septendecim may come out ahead of schedule: Love them or hate them, Chicagoans might not have to wait another year to see the blood-red eyes of these polarizing creatures with orange wings. It often happens that a few hundred stragglers get confused and emerge a few years before or after they are supposed to. Scientists...

Cassie got about 4 hours of walks yesterday, plus about 9 additional hours of outdoor time. I got sunburned. So I didn't have any time to post, but I did have time to get side-eye from this girl: That's Butters, a beagle whose every look is side-eye. It's quite a talent. "If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live."—Lin Yutang

Sorry, the weather is just too nice to spend time inside writing blog posts. Regular posting resumes tomorrow...or Monday, if tomorrow is like this, too.

Linguist Anvita Abbi studied the language family on Great Andaman (just south of Myanmar in the Andaman Sea) and made a fascinating discovery: Somehow my extensive experience with all five Indian language families was no help. One time I asked Nao Jr. to tell me the word for “blood.” He looked at me as if I were an utter fool and did not reply. When I insisted, he said, “Tell me where it is coming from.” I replied, “From nowhere.” Irritated, he repeated, “Where did you see it?” Now I had to make up...

She won't, though, despite worrying facts about her 3-month absence that have started to come out: Ms. Feinstein’s frail appearance was a result of several complications after she was hospitalized for shingles in February, some of which she has not publicly disclosed. The shingles spread to her face and neck, causing vision and balance impairments and facial paralysis known as Ramsay Hunt syndrome. The virus also brought on a previously unreported case of encephalitis, a rare but potentially...