Events

Cassie, yesterday:

Two guest essays in yesterday's New York Times caught my attention. The first, by Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter who wrote the "unintended work of fiction" The Art of the Deal, pivots off the new XPOTUS biopic to warn us, once more, about the psychopath topping the Republican ticket: What struck me from the first day I met Mr. Trump was his unquenchable thirst to be the center of attention. No amount of external recognition ever seemed to be enough. Beneath his bluster and his bombast, he struck me as...

My day got away from me yesterday afternoon, so all this shiznit piled up: In the first of two gobsmacking First Amendment stories this week, the Florida Dept of Health has threatened television stations with criminal prosecution after they aired a pro-choice ad that appears to be working. In the second horrific First Amendment violation story, the state of Oklahoma is backpedaling after mandating that every school kid gets a Bible that just happens to look like the one the XPOTUS is hawking. (Note to...

Following a coronal mass ejection on Monday, tonight's aurora forecast is epic: Unfortunately, I have an event just outside the Loop that ends around 10. By the time I got home, loaded up the dog, and drove to a place without streetlights, it would be around 1am. So no photos; but maybe I'll see some aurorae when I get home. We'll see. Fortunately, we have had perfectly clear skies for 4 straight days, with no significant cloud cover forecast until tomorrow afternoon. Aurorae peak at local midnight...

Julia Ioffe despairs of Israel ever coexisting peacefully with its neighbors: Unfortunately, I’ve learned that ideology, for both the left and the right, is far more important than human life. How many times have you heard the left say that there are no civilians on the Israeli side, because they are all complicit in “settler colonialism”? Or heard from the right that civilians in Gaza and southern Lebanon are all complicit in the crimes of Hamas or Hezbollah? Suddenly, in a region of millions and...

For once, Chicago's legendary corruption isn't the biggest news story of the day. Let's start with New York, where the Adams administration seems determined to set new standards for public corruption, going so far as to float the "we're only a little bit criminal" defense: The indictment alleged that, for years, starting during his tenure as Brooklyn borough president, Adams had cultivated a relationship with a representative of the Turkish government who arranged for him to receive some $123,000 worth...

The extreme-right-wing US Supreme Court begins a new term today, which we can all expect to continue the trends they have been on for the last 30 years. All we need is a razor-thin margin in one or two swing states on the 5th, and then, as George HW Bush said once, "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah! Now it's off to the races!" Meanwhile: A new book argues that the "originalism" practiced by many Republican judges, like Justices Alito and Thomas, has absolutely no basis in historical fact. But we knew that already....

I had a busy Friday and a busier Saturday, so I just got to these this morning: The entire Chicago Public Schools board resigned Friday in the latest salvo in the fight between Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. The Supreme Court rejected two emergency applications from polluters who want to continue polluting while their cases work through the system. Brett Stephens looks back at a year of increasing anti-Semitism disguised as "anti-Zionism." (This is exactly why I'm reading...

I didn't get up at 2am to drive to Mt Rainier like one of my friends, but I did spend almost all day outside yesterday. Cassie and I met friends (one human, one dog) in Elmhurst for a 9-kilometer walk down the Prairie Path in the morning. And my car flipped 30,000 km on the way back from the walk: That 2.1 L/100 km (112 MPG) is for the entire life of the car. In fact, I used some gasoline yesterday for the first time since June 15th, so this year my car is getting closer to 1.5 L/100 km (151 MPG)—and of...

I decamped to Marseille on my last full day in France last week, since I had a flight before 11 am and didn't want to add another hour coming from Aix. I will have to visit the city again, hopefully before I'm too old to negotiate the steps to the train station: I walked around a bit, up through the Panier district, where I caught this view of the Vieux Port: But this is probably a better view: I finished the evening at this little corner bar near my hotel. If it were in Chicago, it would just have an...