Events

Ah, ha ha. Ha. Anyway, here are a couple other stories from the last couple of days: A New York appellate judge took all of two hours to toss out a frivolous lawsuit by the XPOTUS seeking to get his gag order removed in the Stormy Daniels case, bringing the world just that little bit more relief from the XPOTUS's endless polysyllabic farts. Jennifer Rubin lists the reasons this case might even stop those noisome emanations for good. The Arizona Supreme Court voted 4-2 to allow enforcement of...

The International Space Station caught some video of the moon's shadow yesterday:

Getting down to Whitestown, Ind., yesterday took about 4 hours and 45 minutes, including a stop to empty Cassie, which isn't great but isn't nearly as bad as I'd feared. Getting home, however, taught me about the limitations of Google Maps in a way I'm not likely to forget. Here's the first leg of our return trip, from Whitestown to just south of Wolcott, Ind., a distance of 109 km: That took us 3 hours and 41 minutes, an average of 29.6 km/h. People ride bikes faster than that. You can see spots where...

I tried for a little more than 6 months to read a book of humorous essays by an author I really like, and just couldn't finish. It pains me. But I feel a tiny bit of relief at not seeing the book on my nightstand anymore. Since I started reading it, I read—no exaggeration—24 other books, which suggests I really didn't find it all that interesting. Sometimes you have to just move on, no matter how much you like someone's other work. Meanwhile, tonight is our annual fundraiser/cabaret, for which I need to...

A 4.8-magnitude earthquake rattled Hundterdon County, N.J., about 45 minutes ago: The U.S.G.S. reported that the earthquake’s epicenter was in Lebanon, N.J., about 50 miles west of Manhattan. The shaking was reportedly felt in cities from Philadelphia to Boston. Several East Coast airports issued ground stops halting air traffic in the immediate aftermath. The New York Police Department said it had no immediate reports of damage, but sirens could be heard all over the city. Having experienced a couple...

I'm almost done with the new feature I mentioned yesterday (day job, unfortunately, so I can't describe it further), so while the build is running, I'm queuing these up: Philip Bump analyzes the New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan's dismissal of the XPOTUS's bogus immunity claim. Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson (D) told reporters he's done everything he promised to do when he took office a year ago, at which point the reporters no doubt collectively cocked their eyebrows. Molly White doesn't think...

We have a truly delightful mix of light rain and snow flurries right now that convinced me to shorten Cassie's lunchtime walk from 30 minutes to 15 minutes to just 9 minutes each time I came to a street corner. I don't even think I'll make 10,000 steps today, because neither of us really wants to go outside in this crap. I'm also working on a feature improvement that requires fixing some code I've never liked, which I haven't ever fixed because it's very tricky. I know why I made those choices, but they...

Remember this XKCD from 2020? With a little help from what researchers think may be the Russian government, that little brick wobbled a bit in the past few days: The cybersecurity world got really lucky last week. An intentionally placed backdoor in xz Utils, an open-source compression utility, was pretty much accidentally discovered by a Microsoft engineer—weeks before it would have been incorporated into both Debian and Red Hat Linux. It was an incredibly complex backdoor. Installing it was a...

Ah, just look at it: Rain, snow, wind, and general gloominess will trundle through Chicago over the next 36 hours or so, severely impacting Cassie's ability to get a full hour of walkies tomorrow. Poor doggie. If only that were the worst thing I saw this morning: The XPOTUS called for an end to the war in Gaza, but without regard to the hostages Hamas still holds, irritating just about everyone on the right and on the left. Knight Specialty Insurance Company of California has provided the XPOTUS with...

Yes, I do mean the demented, very old man running as the Republican nominee for President. One might believe, in a moment of weakness, that Swiss farmers harvest tons of spaghetti each year, but that wouldn't bother most people outside of your closest friends and possible your boss. Alas, the guy who believes whatever will get him the next win, no matter how un-strategic that may be, keeps popping up in my newspapers: Dennis Aftergut explains how "violence and intimidation are key to understanding" the...