Events

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:

First, Wednesday after work at Spiteful Brewing. Cassie enjoyed the seemingly-bottomless treat bag, but after one beer we both wanted to go home and get dinner. (Note that Cassie did not have the beer.) As I alluded yesterday, I went to City Winery last night to see '90s folk singer Dar Williams: Great set! I always feel like I'm back in the aughts when I see her.

Ah, Tricky Dick, you were far worse than a crook: For context, Woodward and Bernstein had only just started investigating Watergate, and he still hadn't gotten us out of Vietnam. But good thing he reassured us he didn't do anything illegal.

I have tickets to a late concert downtown, which means a few things, principally that I'm still at the office. But I'm killing it on this sprint, so it works out. Of course this means a link dump: The XPOTUS has a hate-hate relationship with life. After a damning ethics report, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has announced he won't run again, which is too bad because it would have been an easy D pickup. Speaking of Republicans in Congress, why do they behave like adolescent boys all the time? Israel is seeing...

I hope to make the 17:10 train this evening, so I'll just note some things I want to read later: Monica Hesse can't help making fun of the dude-bros in the US Senate who think they're still in middle school. Guess which party they're in? Julia Ioffe interviews National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Last night I finished Jake Berman's The Lost Subways of North America, and this morning I read Veronica Esposito's (positive) review for The Guardian. I recommend this book too. The New Republic interviews...

Despite the XPOTUS publicly declaring himself a fascist (again), the world has other things going on: Josh Marshall plots out how House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) knows he has to pass a budget that Democrats can stomach, but because he still has to placate the extreme right wing of his party, he's pretending he can pass something else. And the clown show continues. The US Supreme Court has published their new ethics rules, which look a lot like a subset of the rules the rest of the Federal courts have...

Yesterday I linked to Michael Tomasky's reaction to the XPOTUS referring to his political enemies as "Ungenziefer vermin," which the troika of WWII-era dictators used to demonize and ultimately encourage people to kill their opponents. PBS NewsHour yesterday interviewed NYU historian Ruth Ben Ghiat, who explained plainly: Props to Amna Nawaz for not mincing words about the XPOTUS's lies and fascist rhetoric. When challenged on the similarities between the XPOTUS's rhetoric and 1930s fascist dictators...