Events

We've switched around our RTO/WFH schedule recently, so I'm now in the office Tuesday through Thursday. That's exactly the opposite of my preferred schedule, it turns out. So now Tuesdays feel like Mondays. And I still can't get the hang of Thursdays. We did get our bi-weekly build out today, which was boring, as it should be. Alas, the rest of the world wasn't: The XPOTUS has vowed revenge on everyone who has wronged him, pledging to use the US government to smite his enemies, as if we needed any more...

Remember how it snowed six days ago? Today it didn't: Unrelated, I'm monitoring some frustrating slowness with the Daily Parker. I'm not sure what's going on. Doubling the VM memory didn't seem to help. I've been thinking of writing my own blog engine again (as I have for about 15 years), so maybe this will give me the push I need.

Tomorrow, Ohio citizens will vote on Issue 1, which would amend the state constitution to protect reproductive rights. But if you read the state Board of Elections explainer—the language that will actually appear on the ballot—you might not know WTF the amendment does. That is by design; Republican-ruled state legislatures have learned the hard way that an issue with 65% support will probably pass if people know what they're voting for. Here's the actual proposed amendment, which would become Section 22...

Climate advocate Rollie Williams looks at the legacy of the 2008 Chicago parking meter deal: Contra Williams, many Chicagoans, including The Daily Parker, saw the problems with the deal at the time, and how it just got worse over a very short time. But spend 25 minutes with Williams' video. He takes you through all the immediate problems as well as how it prevents Chicago from adopting more climate-friendly and pedestrian-friendly changes to its streetscape.

Just a couple to mention: A jury convicted Sam Bankman-Fried of committing the largest fraud in US history. He faces up to 110 years in prison. House Republicans passed a bill that would provide $14 billion in funding for Israel's war with Hamas by taking it from IRS tax evasion enforcement, a move so cynical that Paul Krugman likens it to "the Big Lie." ("Starving the I.R.S. has long been a Republican priority; what’s new is the party’s willingness to serve that priority by endangering national...

Today's roundup includes only one Earth-shattering kaboom, for starters (and I'll save the political stuff for last): Scientists hypothesize that two continent-sized blobs of hot minerals 3,000 km below Africa and the Pacific Ocean came from Theia, the Mars-sized object that slammed into the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, creating the Moon in the aftermath. October was Illinois 31st warmest and 41st wettest in history (going back to 1895). National Geographic looks into whether the freak winter of...

I'm still thinking about propaganda in the Gaza war, but I'm not done thinking yet. Or, at least, not at a stopping point where a Daily Parker post would make sense. That said, Julia Ioffe sent this in the introduction to her semi-weekly column; unfortunately I can't link to it: The absolutely poisonous discourse around this war, though, has taken all of that to a whole other level. The rage, the screaming, and the disinformation, ahistoricity, the anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, the propaganda—all of...

It's still not what I want to see on Hallowe'en: Tomorrow will be warmer, we think.

We officially had our first freeze last night as the temperature at O'Hare dipped to -1°C. At Inner Drive Technology World HQ it only got down to 0.1°C, barely above freezing, but still cold enough to put on ear muffs and gloves taking Cassie to day camp this morning. It'll warm up a bit this weekend, though. Meanwhile, I'm writing a longer post about propaganda, which I may post today or tomorrow. And that's not the only fun thing happening in the world, either: Ukraine has had a lot of success blowing...

With a concert on Sunday and other things going on in my life before then, I don't know how much I'll post this week. Tomorrow I get to walk Cassie to day care and hop on a train to my downtown office in the snow, which sounds really bad until you look at the data and see that October 31st is actually the average date of Chicago's first snowfall. The weather forecast promises it won't stick. Speaking of sticking around: David French believes President Biden has threaded the needle well with his response...