Events

Today is both the 80th anniversary of the United States dropping a nuclear weapon on Japan for the first time in history, and the 60th anniversary of President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act. Since then, nuclear weapons have proliferated and voting rights have retreated. I think we can say both trends have gone in the wrong direction. And who better than the recently departed Tom Lehrer to put both in one song:

Former Chicago Opera Theater artistic director Lidya Yankovskaya, with whom I have worked several times, has started moving to London because she doesn't want her children to grow up in the anti-humanities environment the United States is becoming: “I want to be sure that my children can grow up feeling like they can always express themselves freely. I want my children to live in a society that really takes care of its people. I want my children to live in a world that really values things like the...

Dayrestan, Iran, sits on an island just inside the Strait of Hormuz directly across the Persian Gulf from the UAE. At 9:30 am local time Thursday, the airport weather station reported a temperature of 40°C with a dewpoint of 36°C, which makes a heat index of 83.2°C (181.8°F). AccuWeather says it was likely an instrument error, though the next station over, in Bandar Abbass, reported a temperature of 39°C with a 27°C dewpoint for a heat index of 52.3°C (126.1°F) at the same time—hardly an improvement....

Cassie and I met up with our friends yesterday for a long (7.3 km) walk down the Prairie Path. Not much else to report, other than we had a really great walk and got lots of sleep last night. I didn't take a lot of photos simply because I spent nearly two hours looking at dog butts: They are very cute dog butts, but still...butts. Also, thanks to my very energetic Weimaraner mix, I got over 100,000 steps in the seven days ending yesterday. She does like her walkies.

Just clearing my photo backlog. From the 23rd: And from yesterday: Today we're trooping out to Suburbistan for a walk with Cassie's old friend Kelsey. Updates as conditions warrant.

I don't scrutinize hobby project deployments as much as work projects for a lot of reasons, one of them being that I don't have a QA staff. So as much as I believe I do pretty cool things with Weather Now, I also know that sometimes things slip through. Which is why I haven't gone out to play yet, though I will right after I hit "publish" on this post, which will happen moments after the second production deployment of the afternoon finishes. Oh, the first one was boring enough, and everything worked. I...

With my PTO cap continuing to force me into Friday afternoons off this summer (the horror!), and the sunny but (smoky 23°C) weather, Cassie and I will head to the Horner Park DFA just as soon as I release a new version of Weather Now in just a few minutes. When Cassie and I come back, I'll spend some time reading all these nuggets of existential dread: The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised last 3 months of US jobs data down to basically nil (which Krugman blames on tariffs), prompting the OAFPOTUS to...

Both the temperature and dewpoint have dropped, from a high of 27°C/23°C just past midnight yesterday to 22°C/19°C just now. The dewpoint should continue dropping for the next day even as the temperature rises tomorrow afternoon, so we're looking forward to a really lovely weekend and sleeping with the windows open for the first time in almost two weeks. Now the downside. The same weather system that brought cool and dry north winds also brought yellow and gross Canadian wildfire smoke, giving Chicago...

One of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded struck off the east coast of Russia last night, registering magnitude 8.8 according to the United States Geological Survey. So far there have been fewer casualty reports than one might expect, owing to the sparse population in the area. Governments around the Pacific basin issued tsunami warnings almost immediately, though they have since downgraded them. In other stories: Jeff Maurer doesn't think the Epstein scandal will end the OAFPOTUS's regime...

If you've ever played Snakes & Ladders (Chutes & Ladders in the US) with a small child, or really any game with a small child, you have probably cheated. Of course you have; don't deny it. Everyone knows letting the kid win is often the only way to get out of playing again. It turns out, Japan last week and the European Union this week both demonstrated mastery of that principle while negotiating "trade deals" with the world's largest toddler: [I]f the US-EU trade relationship was more or less OK last...