Events

One of my friends got this little clock for me: It's an Author Clock. Instead of just the time, it shows a literary quote containing the time. They have well over 1,440 quotes in there (they claim 13,000), and they update frequently, so you may never see the same quote twice. I had it in my home office for about an hour and got no work done. Because it's that cool.

I'm just monkeying with code today, not waiting six years for the perfect alignment on a clear evening to take one photo. Seriously, Monday's NASA Astronomy Photo of the Day blew my mind.

As I said yesterday, Christmas this year had much better weather than last year, despite the rain. And this morning, it's official: we had the second-warmest December 25th since records began, with a high at O'Hare of 15°C. The warmest, in 1982, hit 17°C. It's cooled off just a bit today but we don't expect any rain. I managed to get Cassie out for an hour and eight minutes yesterday. Today I actually have to work, but she'll get a full hour at least.

Last year: Today: This kind of warmth on Christmas? (In fairness, the record is 17°C in 1982.) Thank you, Santa! Cassie has already gotten more than an hour of walks, to say nothing of the 3½ hours of walks she got earlier this weekend. It's raining now, but we'll go out again once it stops.

Cassie and I walked down to Christkindlmarket by Wrigley Field yesterday to meet up with some friends. I understand that the lakefront was completely fogged in, but a kilometer or so inland it just looked creepy: And on the walk home: Right now at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters, the sun has started peeking out, though the temperature-dewpoint spread hasn't gotten that much wider from this morning: 10.9°C with a dewpoint of 10.6°C. O'Hare still reports mist with increasing horizontal...

As I wait for my rice to cook and my adobo to finish cooking, I'm plunging through an unusually large number of very small changes to a codebase recommended by one of my tools. And while waiting for the CI to run just now, I lined these up for tomorrow morning: Michael Tomasky calls former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has left the House and scampered back to California, "the most incompetent House Speaker of all time." (No argument from me.) Former GOP strategist, lawyer, and generally sane...

The WGN Weather Blog noted that today's forecast high temperature at O'Hare (11°C) is an incredible 29°C/52°F warmer than the high temperature a year ago. Last December 22nd stayed above freezing until just before noon, then slid all the way down to -21°C at midnight. And it kept getting colder overnight. Last December 23rd, Cassie got all of 13 minutes of walkies. She's already gotten half an hour this morning with promises of 2 full hours before we go to bed. I know it's a lot to ask for, Santa, but...

Climate scientist Rollie Williams explains the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's not-so-secret plan to get "every molecule" of hydrocarbons out of the ground: Seriously. You can almost hear them twiddling their mustaches and tying the maiden to the tracks in this one. Ordinarily I'd quote Upton Sinclair, but the government of KSA completely understands the thing. Then again, with temperatures on the Arabian peninsula routinely cresting 45°C and sometimes exceeding 50°C, what do they think will happen if their...

May your solstice be more luminous than these stories would have it: Chicago politician Ed Burke, who ruled the city's Finance Committee from his 14th-Ward office for 50 years, got convicted of bribery and corruption this afternoon. This has to do with all the bribes he accepted and the corruption he embodied from 1969 through May of this year. New Republic's Tori Otten agrees with me that US Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is the dumbest schmuck in the Senate. (She didn't use the word "schmuck," but it...

Back when I was growing up, Rudy Giuliani destroyed the Italian mob in New York City. Today he declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy to avoid paying a $148 million defamation verdict—the day after the people he defamed sued him again for repeating the same defamatory statements outside the courthouse after the judgment was handed down: Lawyers for the two Georgia election workers who won $148 million in damages from former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani last week filed a new lawsuit Monday, asking a federal...