The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Three very bad dudes died last week

We lost three people last week whose deaths have made the world ever so slightly better on balance. Religious swindler Pat Robertson went first on Wednesday. Then Saturday, Ted Kaczynski, also known as the "Unabomber" for his terror campaign against university professors in the 1990s, killed himself in his jail cell:

Kaczynski was found unresponsive in his cell around 12:30 a.m. ET and transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Kaczynski was previously in a maximum security facility in Colorado but was moved to a federal medical center in Butner, North Carolina, in December 2021 due to poor health.

Kaczynski, who went nearly 20 years without being captured until his arrest in 1996, was considered America's most prolific bomber.

Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski placed or mailed 16 bombs that killed three people and injured two dozen others, according to authorities.

Finally, yesterday the world lost Silvio Berlusconi, the corrupt former prime minister of Italy whose entry into politics to stymie the many legal cases against him  may have inspired the XPOTUS to do the same:

Liberal politicians, and the prosecutors he demonized as their judicial wing, watched in dismay as he used appeals and statutes of limitations to avoid punishment despite being convicted of false accounting, bribing judges and illegal political party financing.

His governments spent an inordinate amount of time on laws that seemed tailor-made to protect him from decades of corruption trials, a goal that some of his closest advisers acknowledged was why he had entered politics in the first place.

One law overturned a court ruling that would have required Mr. Berlusconi to give up one of his TV networks; others downgraded the crime of false accounting and reduced the statute of limitations by half, effectively cutting short several trials involving his businesses. He enjoyed parliamentary immunity, but in 2003 his government went further, passing a law granting him immunity from prosecution while he remained in office — in effect suspending his corruption trials.

By the time he finally resigned in 2011, amid a fractured conservative coalition and general national malaise, a good deal of damage seemed to have been done. Many analysts held him responsible for harming Italy’s reputation and financial health and considered his time in power a lost decade that the country had struggled to recover from.

On a totally different topic, while I traveled last week I read Death of the Great Man by psychiatrist Peter Kramer, a book journalist James Fallows recommended back in April.

OK, maybe not a totally different topic. You should read the book, though.

Corruption, War, and Crabs

Just a few stories I came across at lunchtime:

  • In an act that looks a lot like the USSR's scorched-earth retreat in 1941, Ukraine accuses Russia of blowing up the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnieper River, which could have distressing follow-on effects over the next few months.
  • A former Chicago cop faces multiple counts of perjury and forgery after, among other things, claiming his girlfriend stole his car to get out of 44 separate speeding tickets.
  • James Fallows explains what probably happened to the Citation jet that crashed in rural Virginia over the weekend after two F-16s scrambled to intercept it over Washington.
  • Molly White explains the SEC's case against Binance.

And finally, giant-sized coconut crabs may have stashed away the remains of lost pilot Emelia Earhart, and scientists think they know where.

Taking a day to catch up

Between my overflowing PTO balance and getting two "floating" holidays every year, I decided I have enough free time to extend my vacation by a day to get stuff done. I'm glad I did. Cassie provided her vet with a really good sample of...things that her day care needs to know about, I've done 3 loads of laundry and queued up a 4th, I've gone through the important receipts from the trip, and I've loaded all 740 photos up into Lightroom. I've also done some Apollo-related stuff, so some of today went to other people.

I still have stuff to do, so I'm not going to get to the photos today. Probably not until Friday or Saturday, truth be told. And I've got a freelance project for a local non-profit that I'd hoped to start on the flight to London but somehow didn't find time to do.

did finish four really good books, including The Rise of the Warrior Cop by police reporter Radley Balko; There Is No Antimemetics Division by British author and programmer Sam "qntm" Hughes based in party on some of his articles for the SCP Foundation (which you should absolutely start reading whenever you want to lose yourself in some fun and cool shit); techno-thriller Daemon by Peter Suarez; and Death of the Great Man by Peter Kramer. I recommend all of them, especially the last two.

I will now...waste some time on the Internet, and then go walk Cassie.

Alpine beauty? Yes, please

I took a quick trip to Berchtesgaden, Germany, this afternoon. I think it might be the most beautiful place I've seen in Europe:

I didn't stay too long, but I did get in a 2½ km walk that included part of a river path:

The whole area looks like Bavarian storybook hour:

To get there, you take a train from Freilassing, a nondescript town just over the German border from Salzburg. The train meanders through Alpine meadows at a slow but steady pace, passing through this kind of scenery:

I will pass through again and make sure to stay longer.

I did have a bit of an uncomfortable moment at the border. The German police held the train from Salzburg for a few minutes before letting us off, as four armed officers walked through from end to end. It was at about that moment that I remembered I left my passport in my room safe back in Austria. Turns out, they didn't check passports (both countries are in the Schengen area), but still. I do carry my passport card with me at all times overseas, but that's only proof of citizenship at US land and sea borders—and, crucially, at US consulates and embassies. But I don't believe the Bundespolizei would recognize it as such.

Not that I needed to worry. I just have to be more careful about that. (I did bring my passport book to Bratislava, for instance.)

Salzburg, yesterday evening

Wow, do I love European trains. They're fast, clean, and way less expensive than flying. Except they do fly, as my train from Vienna to Salzburg did for part of the trip:

That screen capture from my phone's GPS monitor shows us moving at 229 km/h (143 mph) roughly here.

And then I landed in Salzburg. It's cute. I might even say lovely. But it's tiny—only 150,000 people or so—so it doesn't rise to Prague-like overwheliming beauty.

But it's a lot less touristy than I thought. It turns out, Salzburg is a college town more than anything else, with apparently one of the best psychology programs in the German-speaking world, as my bartender told me last night.

Today I popped over to Berchtesgaden, Germany. That post will hit later tonight.

Quick photo dump, Vienna and Bratislava

There's a line in The American President, when President Shephard (Michael Douglas) is trying to intimidate lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Benning). He says, "the city planners, when they sat down to design Washington, D.C., their intention was to build a city that would intimidate and humble foreign heads of state? It's true. The White House is the single greatest home-court advantage in the modern world,"

Good thing Aaron Sorkin qualified it with "modern," because this is the summer residence of the Austro-Hungarian Emperors from the 1720s until 1914:

Contrast with this mix of Soviet-era and 19th century architecture just 50 km away in Bratislava:

Near the end of my walk earlier, I climbed these stairs to the train station, and it really felt like something out of a Cold War novel:

And this cute cafè is exactly halfway between my hotel and the nearest U-Bahn station:

OK, now I really need that shower and nap.

Willkommen in Wien

Europe really knows human-scale architecture. I'll have more on that later, but I just love this kind of thing (despite having to lug my bag up the stairs):

Tomorrow, more exploring, including possibly lunch in Slovakia.

Waiting for a train

Between check-out and my departure for Vienna I have about 2 hours to kill. I've had my caffeine for the day already, so I'm not hanging out in Wenceslas Square occupying space at a cafe. Instead, I decamped to the park across the street from the train station:

This might actually be the best thing I've done all week. And whether because either Prague has lax leash laws or no one cares about them, several random dogs have said hi today.

I'll be back here soon.