Concert weekend

Ah, December, when the easy cadence of weekly rehearsals becomes a frenzy of performances and, yes, more rehearsals. This is Messiah week, so I've already spent 8 hours of it in rehearsals or helping to set up for them. Tonight I've got the first of 4 Messiah performances over the next two weeks, plus yet another rehearsal, a church service, and a Christmas Eve service. Then, after Christmas, a bunch of us will be singing at the 50th anniversary party for a couple who have sung with us for longer than that. (They met in the Chorus.)

I need a nap, and it's only 9am.

Meanwhile, life continues:

• Retired USAF Major General Steven Lepper, the former Judge Advocate General of the Air Force, warns that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's purge of the JAG Corps will lead to even more lawless behavior than we've already seen.
• Related to that, the OAFPOTUS has become the biggest threat to US national security that we face today.
• A left-leaning think-tank has reported that Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election more cause of Democrats staying home than undecided voters breaking for the OAFPOTUS, and therefore we should continue to talk like unhinged academics instead of working to solve the problems that real people have.
• A Federal judge has ruled that Cook County's forfeiture laws violate the 5th Amendment, hopefully ending the county's practice of seizing houses for unpaid property tax but not returning the equity to the taxpayer.
• Robert Wright worries that elite opinion about AI across the political spectrum is incoherent and poorly-considered.
• Jeff Maurer wonders why there are "a million NIMBY-themed movies and no YIMBY-themed ones?"
• Employers and job applicants are ghosting each other more and more often, because apparently civility is dead.
• John Scalzi looks back on Ferris Bueller's Day Off with the perspective of a 56-year-old sci-fi author and imagines what happened to the three protagonists: "[T]he point of The Day Off was, what will you do, if you can do whatever you want? It turns out, for all his cleverness and antics and quoting of John Lennon, what Ferris wanted was actually pretty ordinary: To have a great day with his friends, while he still could have a great day with his friends."
• Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason describes the making of the band's 1975 album Wish You Were Here, a six-month process that didn't go well most of the time.

Finally, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker quietly signed Illinois' new physician-assisted suicide bill into law yesterday. The law, which takes effect on September 1st, "allows qualifying adults with a terminal illness and a prognosis of six months or less to receive a prescription for medication they can take to end their lives. ... Under the law, adults who are mentally capable and diagnosed with a terminal illness expected to result in death within six months may qualify. Two physicians must independently confirm the diagnosis and prognosis." This overdue change to the law will allow families to deal with end-of-life issues more openly and, I hope, prevent the kind of long, painful death that my mom had.