Events

Too bad I'm in my downtown office. It's a perfect, sunny day in Chicago. I did spend half an hour outside at lunchtime, and I might take off a little early. But at least for the next hour, I'll be looking through this sealed high-rise window at the kind of day we only get about 25 times a year here. Elsewhere in the world: Former CIA lawyer James Petrila and former CIA spook John Sipher warn that the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v US could undo 50 years of reforms that reined in illegal clandestine...

The President will go on the air tonight at 8pm EDT to explain why he dropped out of the race, and presumably also to endorse Vice President Harris as his successor. This has the XPOTUS so rattled that a campaign lawyer whined to the television networks that the XPOTUS wants equal time so they can whine to everyone. OK, Boomer. Meanwhile: Hillary Clinton lays out a strategy for Harris to do what she couldn't: become our first female president. The European Union's climate-tracking directive reported...

The last 48 hours have no precedent in US politics. People have only just started to absorb what it means for President Biden to drop out of the election and Vice President Harris to take his place (which she has almost certainly done, based on delegate counts--and the endorsements of both the House Minority Leader and Senate Majority Leader). No polling data released before Thursday will have captured any of that. I will say, however, that I feel so much better about the election than I did Sunday...

What a consequential 24 hours we've had. After President Biden's historical withdrawal from the 2024 election, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. So far, dozens of other elected Democrats have followed, including Illinois governor JB Pritzker just this morning. And because the Vice President is already on the campaign, according to Federal election rules, she can use the entire $96 million campaign fund—and in fact she's already filed with the Federal Election Commission to do so. In other words...

The New York Times reports that President Biden has withdrawn from the 2024 election: After three weeks of often angry refusals to step aside, Mr. Biden finally yielded to a torrent of devastating polls, urgent pleas from Democratic lawmakers and clear signs that donors were no longer willing to pay for him to continue. Mr. Biden said he will not resign the presidency, and intends to finish out his term even as he leaves it to others to try and defeat Mr. Trump. Over the next several months, the...

Cassie found a comfortable position on the couch while I was making lunch yesterday.

I use Adobe Lightroom to catalog and retouch my photos. Like any complex piece of software, it has a lot of features I haven't learned how to use yet. So I decided to play around this morning. Here's a new edit of Cassie's Gotcha Day photo from March: Here's the photo as previously published: Other than the aspect ratio change, the changes are subtle, but I think the top photo is better. And Cassie is just as adorable in both.

Welcome to stop #113 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Is/Was Brewing, 5121 N. Ravenswood Ave., ChicagoTrain line: Union Pacific North, Ravenswood (Also CTA Brown Line, Damen) Time from Chicago: 16 minutes (Zone 2)Distance from station: 600 m (1.6 km from CTA) If this façade seems familiar, it's because this storefront has a long history of making adult beverages. Until September 2022, Urban Brew Labs lived here; before they moved in, Koval Spirits called it home. And last week, Is/Was opened...

Network security company CrowdStrike pushed a minor update to its Falcon Sensor product around 11pm Chicago time yesterday that managed to take down almost every virtual machine in Microsoft's Azure cloud: Cascading technology errors stranded airline passengers around the world, halted hospital surgeries and crippled office workers’ computers on Friday in one of the most disruptive computer outages in years, highlighting how much of the world relies on potentially error-prone software from a handful of...

My fur factory turned 6 today: Here's to many more.