The Daily Parker

Weather Now release 5.0.9330 came out this afternoon. The only difference is the way it stores weather lists.

When you go to the site, it shows you the weather in a short list of places from around the world. If you register by logging in with a Microsoft account, you can personalize this list. Previously the app stored this personalized weather list as part of the user's profile and stored the system default list (shown to unregistered users) as a simple configuration setting.

This release moves weather lists to their own data structure, so that (a) administrators can edit the system default list on the fly and, eventually, (b) users can have multiple lists. This also means the app now has a designated weather list editing page.

Next up on the feature roadmap:

• Create and edit multiple weather lists per user
• Choose which weather lists to show on the main page
• Show normal and record temperatures for some US stations
• Show historical climate data for some US stations

That said, I have another major project that will take precedence over these updates, so I don't expect another Weather Now release until late fall or even early winter. And if you want to see a new feature on the app, let me know in the comments.

Just look at that cold front, wouldn't you? And notice how the dewpoint dropped hardly at all:

The same thing happened at the official Chicago station at O'Hare, where the temperature dropped from 31°C to 22°C in 15 minutes, while the dewpoint went up. At least the forecast predicts tomorrow will be lovely.

In a related note, the OAFPOTUS's and the Republicans' 40% reduction in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stopped the agency's Atlas 15 project, which will have a ripple effect through urban planning and disaster management for decades:

The tool is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlas 15 project — a massive dataset that will show how often storms of a given duration and intensity could be expected to occur at locations across the United States. The project was intended to be published in two volumes: one that would assess communities’ current risks and a second that would project how those risks will change under future climate scenarios.

The release of Atlas 15 had been long awaited by civil engineers, regional planners and other groups that use NOAA’s precipitation frequency estimates to develop regulations and design infrastructure. Many parts of the country rely on decades-old data to determine their rainfall risks, and there is no authoritative national dataset of how rainfall and flood threats will rise in a warmer world.

But work on Atlas 15’s climate projections has been on hold for months after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ordered a review of Volume 2 this spring, according to current and former NOAA officials with knowledge of the project.

The review of Atlas 15 is among a number of efforts by the Trump administration to curb climate science. The administration dismissed the scientists responsible for writing the National Climate Assessment — a congressionally mandated study typically published every four to five years — and dismantled the program that oversees the reports. In a budget document submitted to Congress last month, Trump proposed zeroing out funding for NOAA’s climate research and eliminating many of the agency’s laboratories and institutes.

Do you know that more Republican voters live in areas negatively affected by climate change than Democratic voters? Neither did they.

We cannot comprehend the damage this administration has already done to the United States. And they plan to do so much more.

I've gotten some progress on the feature update, and the build pipeline is running now, so I will take a moment to read all of these things:

• Radley Balko looks at the creation of what looks a lot like the OAFPOTUS's Waffen-Shutzstaffel and says we've lost the debate on police militarization: "In six months, the Trump administration made that debate irrelevant. It has taken two-and-a-half centuries of tradition, caution, and fear of standing armies and simply discarded it."
• Linda Greenhouse condemns the pervasive cruelty of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Tom Homan: "Something beyond the raw politics of immigration lies behind the venomous cruelty on display, and I think it is this: To everyone involved, from the policymakers in Washington to the masked agents on the street, undocumented individuals are “the other” — people who not only lack legal rights as a formal matter but who stand outside the web of connection that defines human society."
• Paul Krugman explains more cogently than I did why the Republicans cutting NOAA will hurt everyone: "Trump’s cuts to scientific research aren’t about shrinking government and saving money. They’re about dealing with possibly inconvenient evidence by covering the nation’s ears and shouting 'La, la, la, we can’t hear you.' "
• The inconvenient evidence includes a growing realization in Mediterranean countries that their summer resorts are no longer habitable in the summer: "Across Spain, Italy, Greece, France and beyond, sand-devouring storms, rising seas, asphyxiating temperatures, deadly floods and horrific wildfires have year after year turned some of the continent’s most desired getaways into miserable locales to get away from."
• Ilya Shapiro, constitutional studies director at the Manhattan Institute, believes both the left and the right have got Amy Coney Barrett all wrong: "She’s an originalist with a strong devotion both to constitutional text and institutional procedure. But she’s also a stickler for prudence in the face of novelty. The one thing Barrett is zealous about is upholding the rule of law..."
• A group of mayors from the Chicago suburbs has decided they don't like the very same public-private partnerships between railroads and their surrounding areas that created many of the same suburbs: "Real estate could be the recipe for long-term fiscal sustainability for [the Northern Illinois Transit Authority, making some of the current revenue mechanisms only temporary and reducing the risk of a repeat of this year's fiscal cliff. [But y]ou can’t protest government overreach of private property rights, and then defend zoning in the same paragraph."
• At the same time suburban mayors rant against better transit, their residents have clogged half the side streets in Chicago to get around Kennedy Expressway construction this summer. Of course, better transit would obviate all those car trips that cause the congestion in the first place, but let's not think too hard about that.
• In some parts of the country, though, street designs from the Netherlands have become more popular as planners and citizens see how much safer they are for everyone.
• Patrick Smith takes a look at last month's Air India crash and fears the worst: "[I]f the [fuel] switches were moved to CUTOFF manually, the billion-dollar question is why? Were they moved by accident, or nefariously? Was it an act of absurd absent-mindedness, or one of willful mass murder, a la EgyptAir, Germanwings, and (almost certainly) MH370."
• Google announced a new partnership with electric truck maker Rivian to use Google Maps for navigation.
• New studies suggest that we have crooked teeth because our diet changed: "With softer diets came less mechanical strain on the jaw. Over generations, our mandibles began to shrink— a trend visible in the fossil record."

Finally, a number of commentators have experienced a healthy dose of Schadenfreude watching the OAFPOTUS's rabid followers turn on him, including Adam Kinzinger, Josh Marshall, Dan Rather, and of course, Jeff Maurer. It's not exactly "the blood of Marat strangles him," but as a centrist, I am enjoying this part just a little. (And in fairness, Kinzinger, a Republican, believes that the administration's policies will do more damage to the party than this nonsense about Epstein.)

I have to finish a feature today, and had a ton of meetings yesterday, which is why I missed posting yesterday. If I finish the feature before it gets dark I may even read a bunch of stuff that has piled up in my browser.

Until then...

Short lifespans have plagued tech more in the last 25 years than at any point in the past. I particularly hate when a bit of tech goes obsolete for no reason other than the manufacturer decided it doesn't want to support it anymore. I want to take the CEO by the lapels and remind them that they sold these products and they had better support them for a while.

Belkin has become the latest company to exit a product line that I have used practically since it came out. They announced today that they will cease all support for their Wemo brand of smart switches, a product line they launched less than 15 years ago. Their email to me this morning sounds about as corporate and bullshitty as you'd expect:

After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to end technical support for older Wemo products, effective January 31, 2026.

This decision was not made lightly. Over the last decade, since Belkin first launched Wemo in 2011, we’ve been committed to providing consumers with innovative, simple-to-use accessories for a seamless smart home experience. However, as technology evolves, we must focus our resources on different parts of the Belkin business.

We acknowledge and deeply appreciate the support and enthusiasm for Wemo over the last several years. We are proud of what we’ve accomplished in the smart home space and are grateful to our customers for welcoming Wemo into their homes. 

We understand this change may disrupt your routines, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

I have nine of the little bastards. "Disrupt your routines" means I have to replace the nine Wemo plugs with some other brand that works with Google Home. Fortunately I already have two Gosund switches (which I should point out have never disappeared from my Google Home app), and a 4-pack of 5G plugs from the same company will only set me back $42.

I thought this might happen when Google Home could no longer reach any Wemo switches through its app or voice commands last month. The outage lasted two weeks or so, during which time I had to hope that the automation I set up could turn them on and off, else I would have to reach under furniture in the dark until I could replace them.

Of course, the economics have to be a problem. There are probably a few million Wemo devices around the world, all of which have independent connections to the Internet and thus to Wemo's back end. That probably cost them tens of thousands of dollars per month to operate. How much does that cost per device, given that people likely keep their $29 smart plugs for years?

Gosund doesn't have that overhead as their products connect directly to Google Home. And Google has a pretty good likelihood of supporting its software for more than 15 years.

Still, I'm quite annoyed. At least the new switches will probably stay connected to my automation more reliably.

Cassie had a solid night of post-anesthesia sleep and woke up mostly refreshed. The cone still bums her out, and the surgery bill bums me out, but at least she's walking at close to her normal speed. She gets her stiches out—and her cone off—two weeks from today.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:

• Very stupid people have allowed measles, which we functionally eliminated from the US in 2000, to infect close to 1300 people this year.
• Jennifer Rubin argues that the Department of Homeland Security provides neither “freedom from danger” or “freedom from fear or anxiety,” i.e., security.
• Former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers is ashamed of the OAFPOTUS's tax bill and what it will do to the most vulnerable Americans.
• George Will praises former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel for holding the center against the loony left.
• Echoing my own thoughts, Stephanie Bai wants people to stop throwing blame around for this past weekend's Texas floods. (The blame for future disasters, however, falls squarely on the Republican Party.)
• Paul Krugman lauds victories over NIMBYs that are starting to revitalize building in urban areas.
• Cook County's practice of stealing people's homes for non-payment of property tax will likely cost us hundreds of millions of dollars once the class-action lawsuit gets going.
• Strava has once again lost control of its subscribers' location data, this time outing the Swedish prime minister's bodyguards, and thus the PM himself. Oops. (In fairness, it might be that the bodyguards themselves failed to protect the data by posting workouts publicly.)

Finally, lightning bugs appear to have made a small comeback in the Chicago area after a few years of reduced numbers. Educational campaigns have encouraged people to leave leaf litter undisturbed whenever possible, to allow the critters to breed safely. A mild winter and wet spring also helped a lot.

I'll skip the usual political screeds today. Enjoy these:

• The Nielsen/Norman Group wonders aloud why the "Save" icon continues to be a 3½" floppy disk?
• Could this intersection redesign in Fairbanks, Alaska, have made the crossing worse than what came before? Oh yes, it could: "traffic improved partly because people now avoid the area altogether."
• Chicago Street Blog's Nik Hunder rode 230 km through all 77 Chicago Community Areas in this year's Tour de Chi on June 28th.

That's it. I have to continue refactoring a client-facing app until my 4pm meeting.

The temperature dropped 7.7°C in the last 90 minutes, and yet it still feels sticky. I had hoped to take Cassie to the beach one last time before her surgery Tuesday; unfortunately, the lines of thunderstorms accompanying the cold front did not allow it.

So, at least she'll get another decent walk today (she's already had over an hour, including a 5 km walk before breakfast), and tomorrow it looks like it'll be cooler and drier.

Also, I fixed a long-standing architectural problem with the way Weather Now handles weather lists for registered users (not yet in production though) that will enable users to add multiple weather lists in the future. As with all architecture fixes, however, it took a lot of running in place: 6½ hours and it works the same as before. (I hope to push these changes into production next week.)

I started today a bit earlier than I usually do because I woke up somewhere between dawn and my usual time of 6:30. So, with the extra morning time, the day still cool enough to enjoy, and the rain still about an hour away, I took Cassie on a 3½ km walk before 7am. Then I sat down and refactored how Weather Now stores personal weather lists. Sometimes you just have to run with your creative energy, you know?

Cassie needs another walk, and I've (mostly) finished the feature, so I'm now going to enjoy the rest of my holiday, and contemplate whether America will make it to 250 years old with most of its Constitution intact.

Somehow, tomorrow is July 1st. As far as I can tell, this is because today is June 30th, and yesterday was June 7th, and last week was sometime in 2018.

And yet, I have more stuff to read at lunchtime from just the last day or so:

• Josh Marshall distinguishes between the energy and engagement of the Democratic Party (i.e., the actual voters) and the torpor of the Party's leadership: "[It's] not a nightmare. Certainly not for the party. It may be a nightmare for some incumbents."
• The Washington Post digs into the data to figure out why restaurants inside airports converge on mediocre even while they have wildly different qualities in the real world.
• The Nielsen-Norman Group suggests a new rubric for assessing how different kinds of users work with a complex application.
• I have wanted to visit Fairbanks, Alaska, for a long time, but I never considered going there for a midnight sun baseball game.

And now, despite an uncomfortable 34°C heat index, I must walk Cassie.