The Daily Parker

Anyone who has read The Daily Parker knows I desperately hope the US and Canada get over their suburban growth pattern psychopathy sometime before I die. Any actuarial table you consult will suggest the declining likelihood of that happening. Still, a guy can dream. (Or move to Continental Europe, I suppose.)

Thus my interest in these two stories today. First, from the New York Times, a report about the repeated failures of self-driving cars to operate safely in urban environments:

In San Francisco, more than 600 self-driving vehicle incidents were documented from June 2022 to June 2023, according to the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency. After one episode where a driverless car from Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, ran over and dragged a pedestrian, California regulators ordered the company to suspend its service last month. Kyle Vogt, Cruise’s chief executive, resigned on Sunday.

To handle the fallout, San Francisco has designated at least one city employee to work on autonomous car policies and asked two transportation agencies to compile and manage a database of incidents based on 911 calls, social media posts and employee reports.

Last year, the number of 911 calls from San Francisco residents about robotaxis began rising, city officials said. In one three-month period, 28 incidents were reported, according to a letter that city officials sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Waymo said it had rolled out a software update to its cars in October that would let firefighters and other authorities take control of the vehicles within seconds.

My surmise from 30 years of writing software professionally and dealing with non-technical executives is simple: they rushed technology to market before it was ready (which is nearly universal), but this particular technology can kill people (which is very rare).

Another thing: self-driving cars don't add much at all in places that have adequate public transit. (By "adequate" I mean Chicago and New York, not Amsterdam, which has really amazing public transit.)

Speaking of non-technical executives rolling something out over the objections of engineers, Wired reports that the City of New Orleans tried to dole out licenses for short-term rentals like Airbnb through a lottery:

The plan was simple: Carve up the city into blocks and use a hand-cranked lottery machine to draw numbers, allowing one rental property per residential block. For the winners, the prize was a license to keep listing their property on sites like Airbnb and Vrbo. For the losers, despair.

But the controversial rules, enacted in March 2023, led to just one lottery before being temporarily halted by a federal judge in August. As the city awaits a final decision, short-term rentals in New Orleans have been left in limbo. The city has said it is no longer accepting applications for the short-term rental licenses it requires hosts to have, nor is it renewing existing ones. And, until the court makes a final ruling, the lottery balls have stopped spinning and the city has halted enforcement of its latest licensing rules.

I'm now living in the third consecutive housing development that bans short-term leases, and in fact as president of my last HOA I proposed the bylaws change to extend the minimum lease period to 6 months from 3.

I don't think Airbnb is bad, necessarily. In Chicago, with our 6% vacancy rate and pretty reasonable house prices for a city our size, we can absorb a few thousand Airbnb units. But in many cities, where zoning has created a housing crisis, Airbnb makes things worse by taking units off the market.

I hope to make the 17:10 train this evening, so I'll just note some things I want to read later:

• Monica Hesse can't help making fun of the dude-bros in the US Senate who think they're still in middle school. Guess which party they're in?
• Julia Ioffe interviews National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
• Last night I finished Jake Berman's The Lost Subways of North America, and this morning I read Veronica Esposito's (positive) review for The Guardian. I recommend this book too.
• The New Republic interviews James Fallows about the uptick in aviation near-misses lately.
• National Geographic cuts through the mythology and history of Paul Bunyan.
• I did not feel the 3.6-magnitude earthquake that rattled central Illinois this morning, because who really feels a 3.6?

Finally, Molly White looks at the ugly wriggling things under the rocks Sam Bankman-Fried's trial turned over: "Now that Sam Bankman-Fried has been convicted in one of the largest financial fraud cases in history, the crypto industry would like people to please hurry up and move on. The trial is over, and it’s just so dang inconvenient that Bankman-Fried so publicly ruined the general reputation of an industry rife with scams and frauds by making it seem as though it is an industry rife with scams and frauds."

I closed a 3-point story and if the build that's running right now passes, another bug and a 1-point story. So I'm pretty comfortable with my progress through this sprint. But I haven't had time to read any of these, though I may try to sneak them in before rehearsal:

• The XPOTUS has started using specific terminology to describe his political opponents that we last heard from a head of government in 1945. (Guess which one.) Says Tomasky: "[Republicans] are telling us in broad daylight that they want to rape the Constitution. And now Trump has told us explicitly that he will use Nazi rhetoric to stoke the hatred and fear that will make this rape seem, to some, a necessary cleansing."
• Writing for the Guardian, Margaret Sullivan implores the mainstream print media to explain the previous bullet point, which she calls "doing their fucking job."
• The average age of repeat home buyers is 58, meaning "boomers are buying up all the houses." My Millennial friends will rejoice, no doubt.
• Bruce Schneier lists 10 ways AI will change democracy, not all of them bad.
• The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution says not to worry, the Gulf Stream won't shut down. It might slow down, though.
• The Times interviewed Joseph Emerson, the pilot who freaked out while coming off a 'shrooms trip in the cockpit of an Alaska Airlines plane, and who now faces 83 counts of attempted murder in Oregon.
• Author John Scalzi got to see a band he and I both listened to in college, Depeche Mode, in what will probably be their last tour.
• The Times also has "an extremely detailed map of New York City neighborhoods," along with an explainer. Total Daily Parker bait.

Finally, a firefighter died today after sustaining injuries putting out a fire at Lincoln Station, the bar that my chorus goes went to after rehearsals. Given the description of the fall that fatally injured him—he fell through the roof of the 4-story building all the way into the basement—it sounds like the fire destroyed not only the restaurant but many of the apartments above. So far, the bar has not put out a statement, but we in the chorus are saddened by the fire and by Firefighter Drew Price's death. We hope that the bar can rebuild quickly.

I mentioned that my office recently went back to a Tuesday through Thursday schedule downtown. Since our final return to office (RTO), I'd gone in twice a week, usually Wednesday and Thursday. I actually prefer a Friday and Monday schedule, but since the rest of my team comes in mid-week, I have to go in then.

The additional day actually costs additional money. The Sun-Times reported yesterday that RTO costs employees about $51 per day on average. Perhaps; but it costs me about $80 per day, broken down as follows: Cassie's day care, $51; train fare, $8.30; coffee, $4; breakfast, $5; lunch, $10. At least the train fare is pre-tax money. But really, that means, if you add income tax, RTO costs me $100 per day.

But now that she goes to school three days a week instead of just two, at least someone gets a huge benefit from the extra expense:

Fridays, for Cassie, are nap days. For me, they're definitely not. And that $51 per day for day care really stings.

I actually had a lot to do today at my real job, so I pushed these stories to later:

• Sure, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is a crazy Christianist who has fantasies about Israel, but not exactly the fantasies you'd expect from his kind.
• Speaking of Christianist loonies, Josh Marshall doesn't think they've learned anything at all from yesterday's blowout in Ohio.
• Julia Ioffe takes a look at the "horror in the Holy Land" while Eric Levitz examines the fraught language around the war.
• Molly White explains her op-ed in today's Times about the death-spiral of cryptocurrency failures.
• Ravinia Festival has sued Ravinia Brewing Co. over alleged trademark violations, as the neighborhood in Highland Park containing the brewery got its name originally from the music park.
• Michelin announced its recommendations for Chicago restaurants last night, awarding single stars to three new restaurants and a third star to Smyth.
• Northwest Texas had a magnitude 5.2 earthquake yesterday, which the USGS did not say was linked to aquifer overuse or fracking, both of which occur in the area.

Finally, The Economist calls out "six books you didn't know were propaganda," including Doctor Zhivago and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

We've switched around our RTO/WFH schedule recently, so I'm now in the office Tuesday through Thursday. That's exactly the opposite of my preferred schedule, it turns out. So now Tuesdays feel like Mondays. And I still can't get the hang of Thursdays.

We did get our bi-weekly build out today, which was boring, as it should be. Alas, the rest of the world wasn't:

• The XPOTUS has vowed revenge on everyone who has wronged him, pledging to use the US government to smite his enemies, as if we needed any more confirmation that he should never get elected to any public office ever again.
• Meanwhile, the XPOTUS looked positively deranged in his fraud trial yesterday, as the judge continued to question him about things that cut right to his fraudulent self-image.
• Walter Shapiro thinks comparing President Biden to Jimmy Carter miss the mark; Harry Truman might be a better analogy.
• Lawyers for former Chicago Alderperson Ed Burke have asked that a display in the Dirksen Federal Building celebrating the US Attorney's successes securing public-corruption convictions be covered during Burke's public-corruption trial.
• Adams County, Illinois, judge Robert Adrian faces discipline from the state Judicial Inquiry Board after reversing the conviction of a man who sexually assaulted his girlfriend because the teenaged assailant's 148 days in jail was "plenty of punishment."
• In a move that surprised no one, WeWork filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, after failing to "elevate the world's consciousness" through "the energy of We."
• Josh Marshall relays some of his thoughts about the Gaza War, with one in particular I want to call out: "Nothing that has happened in the last month constitutes genocide, either in actual actions or the intent behind those actions. Not a single thing." Worth repeating. But also: "there is a media and propaganda war about this conflict on TikTok and it is one Israel is losing."
• Kevin Dugan relishes the exposure of Sam Bankman-Fried as a common criminal, and not a very original one at that.
• Via Schneier, eminence gris Gene Spafford reflects on the Morris Worm, which chewed its way through most of the 100,000 machines connected to the Internet 35 years ago last week.

Finally, let's all tip our hats to George Hollywood, a parakeet who lived off the land in my part of Chicago for the better part of summer. He didn't exactly blend in with the pigeons, but as the photos in the news story show, he sure tried.

Climate advocate Rollie Williams looks at the legacy of the 2008 Chicago parking meter deal:

Contra Williams, many Chicagoans, including The Daily Parker, saw the problems with the deal at the time, and how it just got worse over a very short time.

But spend 25 minutes with Williams' video. He takes you through all the immediate problems as well as how it prevents Chicago from adopting more climate-friendly and pedestrian-friendly changes to its streetscape.

Just a couple to mention:

• A jury convicted Sam Bankman-Fried of committing the largest fraud in US history. He faces up to 110 years in prison.
• House Republicans passed a bill that would provide $14 billion in funding for Israel's war with Hamas by taking it from IRS tax evasion enforcement, a move so cynical that Paul Krugman likens it to "the Big Lie." ("Starving the I.R.S. has long been a Republican priority; what’s new is the party’s willingness to serve that priority by endangering national security.")
• Calumet City, a mostly-Black suburb about 35 km south of Chicago, issued a citation to Daily Southtown reporter Hank Sanders for calling city employees and asking for comment (i.e., "reporting") about major flooding in the area.
• Chicago Alderperson (yes, that's what they're called now [shudder]) Ray Lopez (D-15th Ward) pulled a Vrdolyak at yesterday's City Council meeting before describing it to reporters as a "shitshow."

Finally, David Brooks offers some advice on "how to stay sane in brutalizing times."

And, almost forgot: It was 25 years ago today that Minnesota elected Jesse Ventura governor, sending my team running the election data at CBS News into a brief panic before we confirmed the result.

It's 22°C and sunny right now, making me wonder what's wrong with me that I'm putting together a software release. I probably should fire off the release, but I'm doing so under protest. I also probably won't get to read all of these things I've queued up:

• Peter Hamby expresses concern about the rise of the illiberal left in the younger generation.
• Despite the ravings of Fox News and other right-leaning propagandists, the US economy is actually doing better right now than at any point since Obama was in office, says Paul Krugman.
• Greg Sargent slow-claps "the quiet vindication of Hakeem Jeffries."
• Writing in Lawfare, Susan Landau rolls her eyes that law enforcement has turned to scaring people about child sexual abuse in their latest gambit to break end-to-end encryption.
• Archaeologist and sculptor Oscar Nilsson has reconstructed the face of a 14-year-old Inca girl ritually sacrificed in the Andes about 500 years ago.
• An off-duty pilot riding in the jumpseat of an Alaska Airlines E175 attempted to trigger the fire suppressors on the plane's engines Sunday. No one knows why.
• A literature review study has shown convincing evidence my generation really did have a lot more autonomy growing up.
• Google has changed its maps colors for some users—they're still rolling out the changes.
• Today is the 20th anniversary of the Concorde's last revenue flight. Maybe Virgin Galactic will get its SST off the ground someday?

Finally, Stan's Donuts will open a new store just three blocks from the apartment I moved out of one year ago today. I might have to stop in soon. I will not, however, wash them down with CH Distillery's latest abomination, Pumpkin-Spice Malört.

I'm iterating on a UI feature that wasn't 100% defined, so I'm also iterating on the API that the feature needs. Sometimes software is like that: you discover that your first design didn't quite solve the problem, so you iterate. it's just that the iteration is a bit of a context shift, so I'm going to read for about 15 minutes to clear my head:

• Kevin Philips, whose 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority laid out Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" and led to the GOP's subsequent slide into authoritarianism and ethnic entrepreneurialism has died, but unfortunately his ideas haven't.
• The US and Qatar have agreed not to release any of the $6 billion of Iran's money that Qatar currently has in escrow for them, which will no doubt make Iran yet another country demanding to know why Hamas attacked Israel just now.
• The Chicago Tribune digs into Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's $16.6 billion budget.
• In the wake of huge class-action settlements, two major Chicago real-estate brokers have changed their commission policies, but we still have to see if they'll change their actions.
• The History Channel blurbs the origins of Oktoberfest, which started in 1810 and ends for this year today. Und nächstes Jahr, ich möchte nach München zum Oktoberfest gehen!
• Jacob Bacharach says the core problem with Michael Lewis's recent biography of Sam Bankman-Fried is that SBF is just too boring to be the subject of a biography.

Finally, Chicago's heavy-rail operator Metra formally proposed simplifying its fare structure. This will cut my commuting costs by about 11%, assuming I use the day passes and individual tickets correctly. It will have the biggest impacts on suburban riders who commute into the city, and riders whose travel doesn't include the downtown terminals.