Events

Nothing major in Wx-Now 5.0.8730: annual .NET version update (to .NET 8), minor bug fixes, and some internal changes to how the app logs information from the AspNetCore subsystem. It seems to be a little faster now, probably because it's ignoring 99% of the log messages that it used to write to .NET tables.

Some friends have gone out of town, and I'm traveling in a week, so we arranged a dog swap. This is one of Cassie's friends, Butters Poochface: Butters is quite a solid beagle. Cassie met Butters shortly after I adopted her, and they go to school together, so Butters knows my house and Cassie pretty well. She still goggled for a good five minutes when she saw my back patio this morning: Between Cassie's energy and Butters' stubbornness, walking the two has a few challenges. But they get along just fine....

Enjoy the holiday.

In a speech to the Democratic Leadership Council 29 years ago today, then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich warned of the coming inequality: We knew the world was changing, and we knew how. But the band played on.

Anyone who has read The Daily Parker knows I desperately hope the US and Canada get over their suburban growth pattern psychopathy sometime before I die. Any actuarial table you consult will suggest the declining likelihood of that happening. Still, a guy can dream. (Or move to Continental Europe, I suppose.) Thus my interest in these two stories today. First, from the New York Times, a report about the repeated failures of self-driving cars to operate safely in urban environments: In San Francisco...

After a month-long boycott of Chicago's Berlin Nightclub organized by Unite Here Local 1, the venerable institution closed for good today: The announcement came hours after Unite Here Local 1, which represents the Berlin Nightclub workers who unionized earlier this year, also posted on Instagram the club’s owners told them the bar was permanently closed as of Sunday. Workers at Berlin Nightclub, 954 W. Belmont Ave., had been leading a boycott of the popular LGBTQ+ bar for more than a month, claiming...

I'm setting this to post overnight so I can read these things tomorrow morning: President Biden published an op-ed in Saturday's Washington Post, laying out the necessary steps for ending the Gaza war, with the nuance, sensitivity, and command of the facts we should expect from any President. Robert Wright lays out the history of Hamas, with particular emphasis on how American and Israeli meddling shaped it into the awful group of people it has become. Josh Marshall points out that "the day after" the...

As planned, my urban-hiking friend and I walked just under 21 km for four beers. She timed the entire trip, and I timed each segment, so we know that the total was 3:24:55 over 20.73 km, just about where we expected to be: (Note that she uses the obsolete Imperial system of measurements and I use the International system, so the lap markers on her track are miles. Ugh.) Her Garmin course isn't public, but mine are: Leg 1, Metropolitan Brewing to Burning Bush Brewing; Leg 2, to Alarmist Brewing; Leg 3...

This may be the last warm (enough) weekend of 2023, so once more, I'm planning to go for a long walk. This time we plan to start at Metropolitan Brewing, which will close for good in 5 weeks. We then proceed up the river to Burning Bush, thence 8.5 km northwest to Alarmist, thence 7.5 km northeast to Temperance in Evanston. At that point we'll either head north to Double Clutch (2.4 km), or east to Sketchbook (2.7 km). Both Double Clutch and Sketchbook are along the Metra line that goes right past my...

Good explanation, and no, it's not looking good for the Hawker crew: