Events

I'm flying out this evening for a couple of days in Seattle, where apparently we'll need SCUBA equipment on account of the rain. Today in Chicago, however, we have nearly-perfect weather, so I have no reason to complain yet. Regular posting will return Sunday.

CityNerd lays out the economic benefits to people who live along the Amtrak Northeast Corridor from going straight to 600 km/h magnetic levitation trains instead of just to 300 km/h high-speed rail: The infrastructure desperately needs some kind of an upgrade, though. It's approaching 100 years old, to the point where a single blown circuit breaker in New Jersey can halt trains from Boston to Harrisburg.

We have another glorious late-summer day in Chicago cool enough to sleep with the windows open. We still have 11 more days of summer, as the forecast reminds me, but I'll take a couple of days with 22°C sun and nights that go down to 15°C. In other news: Psychologist Vince Greenwood cranks the alarms up to 11 after evaluating the XPOTUS against the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. (Tl;dr: Out of 40 points possible on the checklist, "the average score for individuals in a maximum-security prison setting is...

I mentioned that the weather today is amazing, but yesterday's was also pretty good (if a bit humid). Cassie and I walked about 18 km throughout the day and spent most of the rest of the day outside. But Cassie's day started pretty well even before we set out: Sadly, neither of us could get to the last little bit of peanut butter at the bottom of the jar. (I labeled it "dog" because no one wants to get her peanut butter confused with the jar for people.) We trundled off to the Horner Park DFA early in...

The Democratic National Convention opened today here in Chicago, so naturally that's the main topic in today's lunchtime roundup: I can barely wait until Thursday when I get to see the sparkling-clean O'Hare CTA station, freshened up for the convention. The DNC projected fun messages onto the XPOTUS's eponymous Tower from their hotel across the river. (No comment from the XPOTUS.) Vice President Kamala Harris continues to climb in the polls as people come to realize that she's the real deal and the...

Some of us chorus types went to two outdoor performances this weekend. The first, at Ravinia Park in Highland Park, was a Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance of Mark Knopfler's score for The Princess Bride: Then last night, many of the same people went to the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park to hear the Grant Park Symphony and a lot of other musicians perform Mahler's 8th Symphony: The only problem? Rain. At both performances, we got rained on. The rains ended early, fortunately, and at Ravinia...

Last weekend, California governor Gavin Newsom (D) announced that the San Francisco-San Jose heavy commuter rail line had entered the late 19th century (in a good way): On Thursday, the California High-Speed Rail Authority named its new CEO, Ian Choudri – and today, Choudri joined Governor Gavin Newsom in San Francisco to help celebrate the debut of Caltrain’s new electrified train fleet that will transform rail service in the Bay Area and play a key role in California’s high-speed rail system. The...

Jennifer Rubin adds her voice to the growing chorus warning that the XPOTUS doesn't seem to have even a full Euchre deck: Trump seems unable to handle reality. His opponent is beating him by multiple metrics, especially crowd size. In response, he posted several obvious lies on Truth Social, claiming that “nobody was there” and that photos and video of Vice President Kamala Harris’s crowds were AI-generated (our own reporters were eyewitnesses to the event). Trump might be conditioning voters for...

As I wait for a build pipeline to run, I'm reading these: Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus argues that the recent Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity doesn't shield the XPOTUS from the most serious charges he faces. Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a professor of Thai politics, sees recent events in Thailand as heralds of the coming end of the monarchy's control. Why do people just stop dating? Finally, author John Scalzi doesn't want you to idolize authors—especially not him: Enjoy the art...

National Geographic examines the characteristics that make some cities better bets than others for surviving climate change: Immigrants tend to migrate to neighborhoods that meet their cultural and linguistic needs, but the exodus of climate migrants to Buffalo wasn’t solely due to that established community. Months before Maria struck, the city’s mayor declared Buffalo a “climate refuge city,” noting that Buffalo has, “… a tremendous opportunity as our climate changes.” Since then, the city has...