Lunchtime links

While waiting for Visual Studio to update (it was too early to go to lunch when I started this post), I'm reading these:

• Someone handed the OAFPOTUS a new crayon, which he used to scrawl his name on a new class of battleship the US Navy wants to build. (Since the Navy won't even lay down the keel of the first ship in the new BBG class until the mid-2030s at the earliest, long after this elderly toddler has shuffled off his office and likely also this mortal coil, there is no actual possibility of any ship being named after him.)
• Former US Senator and presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R-UT) warns the 1% that they need to pay their fair share of taxes or people like me will come at them with (metaphorical) pitchforks. Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor has expanded since the OAFPOTUS took office, after contracting under President Biden.
• Jennifer Rubin reflects on some lessons from 2025.
• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has surrendered to the City Council majority who passed their own 2026 budget after rejecting his.
• Writing from Marseilles, Cole Stangler ponders the possibility of a Sixième République Française to break the French political logjam.
• 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi has pulled the fire alarm after CBS Editor in Chief Bari Weiss spiked her story about the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, apparently to appease the OAFPOTUS's droogs.

Finally, since Americans and Canadians seem psychologically incapable of seeing pedestrians and bicyclists, the "Dutch intersection" could help. Of course, that requires planning departments to plan them properly, city engineers to design them properly, and construction companies to build them properly. One can dream.

Time for lunch, from the salad bar downstairs. Dinner tonight might be ribs; I need to save room.

Here in Cambridge, the city altered a major roundabout near the main hospital back in 2020 to convert it to a "Dutch style" roundabout that supposedly protects cyclists. Unfortunately, the frequency of collisions then went up: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-65310167

Yes, in the months after a new Dutch intersection is opened, collisions sometimes go up, but *fatalities* go way down. Inattentive drivers tapping each other on the bumpers is unfortunate but the alternative is dead cyclists.