The Daily Parker

A coronal mass ejection late last week caused Kp7-level aurorae last night that people could see as far south as Alabama. Unfortunately, I missed them, though some of my friends did not. Fortunately, NOAA predicts that another mass of charged particles will hit around 6pm tonight, causing even more pronounced aurorae for most of the night. This time, I plan to get to a dark corner of the suburbs to look for them.

Meanwhile:

• ProPublica has an extended report about how the OAFPOTUS uses pardons and clemency far more corruptly than Harding, Jackson, or Reagan could imagine. (Madison, Jefferson, and the rest of the founders could imagine it, however, and they did not like it one bit.)
• John Judis thinks "the 8 dissenters did Democrats a favor:" "I believe that as the shutdown dragged into Thanksgiving, and as more jobs were lost, social services suspended, and planes grounded, the public would have begun blaming the Democrats more because — let’s face it — they had initiated the shutdown. The polls also showed that far more Democrats than Republicans felt affected by the shutdown."
• Brian Beutler wonders whether the divergence between people's perception of the economy and reality has more to do with the fracturing media landscape than with people's ability to intuit reality the same way economists do: "Our collective, manic emphasis on the cost of things has both made people upset, and given people a peg to hang their political frustrations on—but people did not become upset over nominal prices in some organic way. Democrats shouldn’t convince themselves that if they manage to lower prices, they’ll be assured more victories, or that if Trump manages to get costs down (perhaps with the help of the Supreme Court) he’ll become politically invulnerable. They certainly shouldn’t convince themselves that all things unconnected to prices are politically inert."
• Amanda Nelson reminds us that in 2008, the wealthy people who got wealthier even as the housing market collapsed and impoverished millions weren't stupid; they just didn't care. And neither do the authors of Project 2025.
• The $1.5 billion Illinois just pledged to transit projects fundamentally changed the vision of passenger rail across the region, according to the High Speed Rail Alliance.
• Chicago has issued the first permits for construction of the new O'Hare Concourse D, the first new concourse built at the airport since Terminal 5 opened in 1993. Construction could complete as early as 2028.

Finally, the OAFPOTUS's latest demented assertion about crime on the "miracle mile shopping center" left people baffled and also led to city council member Brendan Reilly (D-42), whose ward includes the Magnificent Mile, clapping back: "My suggestion to President Trump: spend more time focusing on your struggling real estate investments, especially the 70,000 square feet of vacant retail space that has remained un-leased since the opening of Trump Tower, 16 years ago...."

Before I get to the best form of public transit available in the US, let's everyone say hello to my sister's dog, Omen:

Omen is a whippet. Good. (She's quite devo-ted to him.)

Anyway, this is how I got from the BART to the start of my 5.5 kilometer walk on Saturday:

If you take the Powell and Hyde line, the best part comes at the corner of Hyde and Lombard, at the top of Russian Hill. Just look at this view, and imagine seeing Alcatraz, Angel Island, and Tiburon directly ahead! (I have seen them from here. Trust me*.)

During my walk, I got to the end of the fog bank just before the Bay Bridge, and caught these cool lighting effects:

* OK, don't trust me. Here are two other photos I took from the same spot, the top one in April 2005, and the bottom one in May 2012:

You know, I probably won't be online much Friday through Sunday. I should try to do that more often.

• The OAFPOTUS pretty much guaranteed that Zohran Mamdani will win today's New York City mayoral election by endorsing former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, which I'm pretty sure Cuomo didn't want either.
• Brian Beutler chastises the Democratic Party for "the scourge of wimpiness." I am tempted to send him a strongly-worded email.
• US Rep. Jan Schakowsky's (D-IL9) departure from the US House has led to so many candidates running for her seat] in the March 2026 primary, it's hard to figure out who's who or what they stand for.
• Amherst College political science professor Javier Corrales outlines how Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro has woven the fates of the country's elites together to ensure that their literal survival depends on his political survival.
• Thirteen years after the USDOT and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania spent $77 million building two off-ramps into Chester, Pa., that the community didn't ask for, absolutely no benefits have accrued to the city. As Charles Marohn reminds us, this is "the predictable outcome of a transportation funding system that rewards appearance over impact."

Finally, Block Club Chicago spent the day at one of the last 24-hour-diners in Chicago, which happens to be just 2 km from my house. Now I know where to go if I'm craving a burger at 4am.

With the unusually late colors we have this autumn against the much earlier sunsets that started yesterday (before 4:30 pm from November 15th to December 31st, ugh!), things have remained tolerable. It will snow eventually; we'll have a freeze eventually; but for now, I'll just enjoy it.

I didn't enjoy these things, though:

• Humans formed governments in the first place to feed people; the OAFPOTUS and his village of idiots have failed at that basic task.
• Architects who have looked at the paltry plans and Goebbels-inspired model of the White House Ballroom cannot fathom why it's the size of a convention center.
• It's not that Nick Fuentes is a Nazi sympathizer, racist, sexist, misogynist asshole—he's probably all of those things—but he's also a nihilist bullshit artist.
• My party really has to stop nominating old faux-centrist dickheads for public office and get behind the people who can actually win.
• Global warming may not make your city warmer on a specific January day, but it might make your city get 20 centimeters of rain in one day.

In one bit of good news, the Illinois legislature restored $1.5 billion to state transit agencies, which means the CTA and Metra will live to fight another day. Included in the legislation was an end to parking minimums within 800 meters of public transportation hubs or corridors. I hope this encourages developers to build density where it's needed.

I just got back from a 30-minute walk with Cassie in 22°C early-autumn sun. We suffered. And now I'm back in my home office and she's back on the couch. She will spend the next several hours napping in a cool, breezy spot downstairs, and I will...work.

I will also read a bit, which is a skill that I'm glad Cassie does not have after encountering the day's news:

• It's official! The June jobs report showed a decline in US employment for the first time since December 2020, making President Biden the only president in history to have 48 consecutive months of job growth during his term.
• Dan Rather adds his voice to the chorus advising Senate Democrats to actually bring a knife to the knife fight they're about to have over a looming government shutdown on October 1st.
• Meanwhile, the OAFPOTUS continues driving the United States into a Perónist-style economic collapse for no reason other than his own incompetence. Paul Krugman worries that the OAFPOTUS's cratering popularity might not be enough to stop this.
• Matt Ford castigates Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts (R) for doing exactly what he tells other judges not to do: defying Court precedents. Jen Rubin rounds up reports of lower-court Federal judges saying similar things: "This intra-judicial fight is just the latest installment in the MAGA justices’ record of misbehavior and overreach."
• Pro Publica spent 15 hours with Leland Dudek, who oversaw the looting of the Social Security Administration after being illegally installed as part of the DOGE team by the Clown Prince of X.
• Jeff Maurer wishes people had known that RFK Jr is completely mental: "if only there had been signs that he’s an unqualified loon with out-of-the-mainstream views."
• Bruce Schneier questions the benefits of "AI in government," at least in the US.
• Because of Earth's axial procession, the Zodiac has shifted almost a full sign to the right in the last 2,000 years, making me a Leo and not a Virgo! (It's almost as if star signs are nonsense.)

Finally, the Chicago Dept of Transportation has published plans to designate Wellington Avenue a bike greenway from Leavitt Ave in North Center to the lakefront path. The project will include protected counterflow bike lanes on one-way segments of Wellington, traffic calming, signage, and a number of other features to protect bicyclists. The greenway will allow bikes to avoid Belmont and Diversey, two busy streets that aren't fun to ride on. CDOT expects to finish the project this fall.

Oh, and today is the 50th anniversary of Welcome Back, Kotter premiering on ABC. Let me tell you I'm Gen X without actually saying the words, right?

I have a chunk of work to do this afternoon, but I'm hoping I can sneak in some time to read all of these:

• Dan Rather cheers on the Democratic Party for finally finding the fight.
• Francis Fukuyama says: move over Berlusconi; the Clown Prince of X has done considerably more to harm Western civilization than you ever did.
• David Daley puts responsibility for the exploding fight over Congressional maps squarely on US Chief Justice John Roberts.
• Jennifer Rubin wants us to stop using the word "guarantee" when we don't mean it—which would include every single time the OAFPOTUS utters it, obviously.
• Matthew Yglesias points out that mothers leaving the workforce has very little to do with "tradwives" and everything to do with "the economy."
• Rick Harnish and Theo Anderson argue that Illinois needs to expand and improve Metra if it wants to lead the quantum computing revolution: "Converting Metra to electrified regional rail is the key."
• Yascha Mounk asks "how we got the Internet all wrong."
• Meghan Daum looks on with some amusement at the new feud between New Yorker culture critic Doreen St Félix and conservative activist Christopher Rufo.
• Ellen Steinke, writing for Streetsblog Chicago, argues while that getting former Chicago Transportation Authority president Dorval Carter, Jr., out of the agency ended his reign of incompetence, the impending $771 million shortfall in State funds will keep his successor from fixing the damage.
• Paul Krugman argues that consumers are paying more because data centers are demanding so much more electricity than even a couple of years ago, to the point of creating the giant pin that will burst the AI investment bubble without regulation.

Finally, after complaints up and down the lakefront that the US Air Force Thunderbirds caused a sonic boom during Chicago Air and Water Show practice on Friday, University of Illinois aeronautics professor Matthew Clarke says that while none of the F-16s appear to have exceeded Mach 1, he is confident that part of one of the planes did. “Even though the global flow may not be faster than the speed of sound, there are places locally faster than the speed of sound, creating shock waves,” he said. “While I can’t say that the whole plane went supersonic, I can say — from the video — shock waves [were created] from parts of the aircraft.” The mini-sonic boom broke the lobby windows of four Lakeview high-rises but caused no significant injuries.

Also: I am beyond overjoyed that the National Weather Service predicts dewpoints below 18°C by Wednesday and below 15°C by Saturday. We have had the most uncomfortable summer that I can remember, with dewpoints at Inner Drive Technology WHQ lingering above 20°C since 10:30 Friday morning after a very brief respite on Thursday. If I have time this week, I'm going to analyze the data to see exactly how humid it's been here lately. But this prediction is delightful:

The United States will spend a generation or longer in the "find out" phase after the OAFPOTUS began a trade war against our most powerful adversary while simultaneously crippling our ability to win it:

You can see it in the economic numbers: China’s economy grew by an average of 5.3 percent in the first half of the year, America’s by only 1.25 percent. You can see it, too, in Trump’s failure to wring significant concessions from Beijing. Though most countries have acquiesced to U.S. trade bullying, China has not. In April, Trump hiked U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent. China retaliated with 125 percent tariffs on U.S. goods. Then President Xi Jinping ramped up the pressure by restricting exports of rare earth metals to the United States, which threatens to halt production of cars, fighter jets and other products.

While conciliating Beijing, Trump has been alienating U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific region with his capricious tariff threats. The latest to suffer is India, a key U.S. partner in confronting China. Trump announced Wednesday that he was hitting India with 25 percent tariffs, to be followed by additional sanctions to punish India for buying oil and gas from Russia. It makes sense to pressure India to reduce its economic relationship with Russia, but these blunderbuss tariffs threaten to undo decades of efforts by American administrations, including the first Trump administration, to draw India into the U.S. orbit. Now there are signs of a reconciliation between New Delhi and Beijing.

Trump’s attempts to close down Voice of America are another gift to Beijing. From Indonesia to Nigeria, Chinese state media is filling the vacuum left behind by VOA. Trump’s decision to walk away from the World Health Organization and UNESCO has also opened the door for China to increase its influence in those international organizations.

China’s Achilles’ heel has long been the fear it engenders with its aggressive behavior and lack of respect for other nations. Now, America is acting a lot like China and paying the price in global opinion.

Trump’s tariff hikes, budget cuts and immigration restrictions are weakening America and inadvertently strengthening its chief rival.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it strikes me that tanking the US economy would give billionaires and private equity the biggest gift in history and rapidly create an entirely rentier-driven, parasitic, stratified economy that, history tells us, would end in violence. So is that the end game? Or are these guys really that stupid? It's so hard to tell.

One thing, though: the more I hear about BYD cars, the more I want one. Unfortunately they're not for sale here—mainly because they're technologically superior to anything Tesla has, and a fraction of the cost. The free market doesn't apply when your friends need billions in profits.

So we'll protect Tesla and GM, while making it nearly impossible for either of them to build here because of the OAFPOTUS's asinine commodity taxes, making US consumers pay higher and higher prices for inferior products. Like I said: rentier economy.

If you've ever played Snakes & Ladders (Chutes & Ladders in the US) with a small child, or really any game with a small child, you have probably cheated. Of course you have; don't deny it. Everyone knows letting the kid win is often the only way to get out of playing again.

It turns out, Japan last week and the European Union this week both demonstrated mastery of that principle while negotiating "trade deals" with the world's largest toddler:

[I]f the US-EU trade relationship was more or less OK last year, why did Trump impose huge tariffs and leave many of them in place even after the so-called deal? Because he felt like it. You won’t get anywhere in understanding the trade war if you insist on believing that Trump’s tariffs are a response to any legitimate grievances. And he failed to gain any significant concessions, mainly because Europe was already behaving well and had nothing to concede.

So was the US-EU trade deal basically a nothingburger? No, it was a bad thing, but mainly for political reasons.

Two less discouraging aspects of what just happened: First, Trump appears to have backed down on the idea of treating European value-added taxes as an unfair barrier to U.S. exports (which they aren’t, but facts don’t matter here.) So that’s one potentially awful confrontation avoided, at least for now.

Second, if this trade deal was in part an attempt to drive Epstein from the top of the news, my sense of the news flow is that it has been a complete flop.

Still, if I were a European I’d be very angry at anything that even looks like Trump appeasement. The EU is an economic superpower, especially if it allies itself with the UK. It needs to start acting like it.

Oh, it will, I reckon. But for now, all the OAFPOTUS has done is to impose a 15% tariff on the United States in Europe and Japan.

Meanwhile:

• Dan Rather calls out the OAFPOTUS for (once more) enriching himself at taxpayer expense, and not just for spending $63 million on golf trips.
• Explaining to the Republican Party that we'll put down our guns when they put theirs down, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) warns that several large Blue states can also go full-Gerrymander, so maybe Texas should leave well enough alone.
• Crime has fallen dramatically in Chicago and other big cities across the US since 2020, and no one really knows why.
• Pro-Ukrainian hackers crippled Russian civil airline Aeroflot over the past weekend.
• Auto and traffic-safety writer Josh Max suggests that upping training and safety standards could reduce the 38,000 annual US traffic deaths, while ignoring the roles that road and city design play.
• The continued destruction of our environment under Republican administrations has led to the reddest districts in some places playing host to huge, noisy, climate-destroying AI data centers.
• On-premises Microsoft SharePoint Server installations suffered a catastrophic data breach in a zero-day attack starting Friday, which researchers say means any network with an on-site SPS instance exposed to the Internet must consider their user credentials compromised.

Finally, the New York Times has a look at Sesame Street's set design and how it has reflected changes in urban life over the last 56 years. "The show’s designers intentionally made the original set appear grungy, with garbage on the street, the brownstone spotted with soot and the color scheme appearing dull and muted. ... During a major redesign in the ’90s, the set introduced a new hotel and apartment building. The brownstone remained, and one of the show’s designers said it 'was meant to look like a survivor of gentrification.' After the show struck a deal to stream on HBO in 2015, the set appeared even shinier, newer and brighter." There's even a recycling bin next to Oscar's trash can. Sic transit, et cetera.

Leading off the news this afternoon, Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne died today at age 76. I am surprised he lasted this long, as he didn't exactly take care of himself over the years.

In other news:

• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has stopped the legislative process of the United States rather than vote on releasing details of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with the OAFPOTUS.
• Adam Kinzinger details the quiet cruelty of the OAFPOTUS's droogs.
• Tom Nichols points out that the OAFPOTUS has no theory of governance beyond "anger, fear, and, most of all, pettiness."
• Maryland police officers got away with at least 36 murders thanks to former Maryland Chief Medical Examiner David Fowler's interference in the death classifications.
• CBS cancelled its top-rated talk show, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, in a sop to the OAFPOTUS ahead of a proposed merger involving CBS's parent company, Paramount. (Jeff Maurer has a more nuanced take on this.)
• Paul Krugman bemoans the "enshittification and the bitterness of billionaire bros."
• The Chicago Transit Authority restored the Red and Purple Lines to full capacity and re-opened the four Red Line stations closed in 2021 for the Red-Purple Modernization Project.

Finally, NOAA released its findings on the meteotsunami and seiche that rolled over Lake Superior on 21 June 2025. The storm surge and seiche rebound caused lake levels to change by 2.2 meters over the span of three hours in some places, making it the largest such event in recorded history.

Oh, and Cassie gets her cone off almost exactly 24 hours from now. Photos when it happens.

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.)