Events

The English actor does not make widgets or suffer fools: At some point a few years back, an unholy union of like-minded tech bros, studio suits, media water-carriers and social media personalities settled on their own “widget,” a catchall phrase that would both encompass and minimize the various forms of entertainment they touch: “content.” And when news broke on Sunday night that the monthslong Writers Guild of America strike was coming to an end, Variety, the industry bible, gave this term its most...

It's only Wednesday? Sheesh... The Writers Guild of America got nearly everything they wanted from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (i.e., the Astroturf organization set up by the big studios and streamers to negotiate with the Guilds), especially for young writers and for hit shows, but consumers should expect more bundling and higher monthly fees for shows in the future. Josh Marshall suspects that the two competing storylines about the XPOTUS (that he's about to return to...

New York Supreme Court (i.e., trial court) judge Arthur Engoron ruled yesterday that the XPOTUS's eponymous family business committed fraud on such a scale that the company is no longer allowed to do business in New York State: The surprising decision...is a major victory for Attorney General Letitia James in her lawsuit against Mr. Trump, effectively deciding that no trial was needed to determine that he had fraudulently secured favorable terms on loans and insurance deals. Ms. James has argued that...

Other than getting a little rained on this morning, I've had a pretty good day. But that didn't leave a lot of time to catch up on any of these before I started a deployment just now: Heather Cox Richardson examines US history through the lens of a never-ending conflict between "two Americas, one based in religious zeal, mythology, and inequality; and one grounded in rule of the people and the pursuit of equality." Josh Marshall ponders the difficulty of covering the XPOTUS's increasingly ghastly...

I was a little busy over the summer, so it took me a couple of months to finish adding Inner Drive Technology World HQ's Netatmo weather station to Weather Now. (Implicitly, the app can now read any Netatmo data to which the owner of the station has granted us access.) Netatmo weather stations upload data every 10 minutes, so that's how often Weather Now downloads it. I had to change a number of assumptions throughout the application, as it has only used NOAA aviation weather since its origins in 1997....

The Writers Guild of America's negotiating committee announced the tentative deal last night: We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional – with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership. What remains now is for our staff to make sure everything we have agreed to is codified in final contract language. And though we are eager to share the details of what has been achieved with you, we cannot do that until the last “i” is dotted. To do so would...

Welcome to stop #87 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Nick & Ivy Brewing, 1026 S. State St., LockportTrain line: Heritage Corridor, LockportTime from Chicago: 47 minutesDistance from station: 400 m Nik & Ivy is directly across the stroad from Lock & Mule, which could not have been more convenient on Saturday. In fact, I took the above photo from just outside Lock & Mule while I contemplated how I was going to frogger over there after brunch. I liked the place, and traffic on Rte 176 was light...

Welcome to stop #86 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Lock & Mule by Tangled Roots, 1025 S. State St., LockportTrain line: Heritage Corridor, LockportTime from Chicago: 47 minutesDistance from station: 400 m Metra has special brewery trains on Saturdays this fall, making a quick trip to Lockport a lot easier than it would be during the week. (Just go back to my review of Imperial Oak in Willow Springs for a longer explanation of that pain.) So yesterday, as promised, I visited the two breweries...

Google Chrome is patiently letting me know that there's a "New Chrome available," so in order to avoid losing all my open tabs, I will list them here: No matter what the Republicans in Congress want you to believe, if the government shuts down next week, it's their fault. Dana Milbank concurs. And Tina Nguyen piles on. Along the same lines, economist Paul Krugman explains "why Kevin McCarthy can't do his job." (Hint: Reagan and Gingrich.) Among the other stupid reasons the same Republicans want to...

US Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has gotten himself indicted again for stupefying corruption: The three-count federal indictment depicts a brazen plan hatched during furtive dinners, in text messages and on encrypted calls — much of it aimed at increasing U.S. assistance to Egypt and aiding businessmen in New Jersey. Mr. Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, is accused of acting as a go-between, passing messages to an American-Egyptian businessman, Wael Hana, who maintained close connections with Egyptian...