The Daily Parker

Naturally, the press had a lot to say about the largest protest in my lifetime (I was born after the Earth Day 1970 demonstration):

• As many as 250,000 people turned out for the downtown Chicago event, which included a procession that carried a 23-meter replica of the US Constitution, and resulted in zero arrests or reports of violence. (The video of the procession leaving Grant Park is epic.)
• David Graham of The Atlantic explains why the protests got under the OAFPOTUS's skin: "Trump’s movement depends on the impression that it’s unstoppable and victorious. ... Huge protests that demonstrate he is not invincible endanger his political success: They offer people who voted for Trump reluctantly or who have had second thoughts a feeling of camaraderie and hope, and give them a way to feel okay ditching him. ... Trump and his allies seem to grasp what Saturday revealed: The protests are popular, and the president is not."
• Brian Fife sees a paradox in the protests: "One could find this inspiring, so many disparate causes united under one banner. But for those of us who want to see tangible reform in the United States, the lack of clear messaging or policy recommendations—especially during a protest intended to inspire action—was disorienting."
• Josh Marshall disagrees, lauding "the subtle genius of 'No Kings'," saying the name itself is "a deceptively resonant name and slogan with the deepest possible roots in American history. This brings with it a critical inclusivity, which grows out of the name itself and the lack of those specific and lengthy sets of demands that often characterize and ultimately fracture such movements. ... The jagged and total nature of the onslaught against the American Republic creates a clarity: We all know what we’re talking about. You don’t need to explain. The imperfect but orderly and generally lawful old way versus this. And when you say “No Kings,” you’re saying I don’t want this. I don’t accept presidential despotism. I’m here ready to show my face and say publicly that I will never accept it."
• Brian Beutler has "22 thoughts on No Kings DC," of which: "I do not think it’s a coincidence that, as anticipation grew, and the GOP panicked and smeared, universities rejected Trump’s extortionate higher-education “compact,” and the Chamber of Commerce finally decided to sue Trump, etc. The days of proactive capitulation seem to be ending."

I looked for mainstream Republican reactions to the event but only heard crickets. The OAFPOTUS's own response, which I will not dignify with a link, would be grounds for invoking the 25th Amendment in any normal era.

Meanwhile, the vandalism continues:

• Workers have begun demolishing the east side of the White House East Wing as the OAFPOTUS continues to wreak historical violence on the Executive Mansion without Congressional—i.e., the owner's—approval.
• Writing in Harvard Magazine, Lincoln Caplan examines the damage that US Chief Justice John Roberts has done to the Constitution, tracing his legal career from Harvard Law through his clerkship under US Chief Justice William Rehnquist, another hard-right ideologue who, unlike Roberts, didn't have the votes to become his generation's Roger Taney.
• Jeff Maurer suggests that Democrats simply change the conversation about immigration and not apologize for our past policy misses: "I think that Democrats can craft a positive, forward-looking message on immigration that starts a new conversation without dwelling on the past. It would tell a story that happens to be true, which is nifty, because I prefer political narratives that aren’t a towering skyscraper of bullshit whenever possible. The narrative goes like this: 'America is rich, safe, and vibrant because we’ve always attracted the smartest, hardest-working people from around the world. We need an immigration system that attracts the best and the brightest for years to come.'"
• North Carolina, already one of the most-Gerrymandered states in the union, has passed a new congressional map they believe will give them a 10th Republican US House seat, with only three Democratic-majority districts in Raleigh, Durham, and Charlotte. (They've even managed to get Asheville to turn pink, based on 2024 election results.)
• Adam Kinzinger suggests encouraging Russia to end its war in Ukraine through the simple expedient of giving $2 billion of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine each day the war goes on.
• Julia Ioffe reviews the life of Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, Vladimir Putin's ex-wife.
• Molly White explains the October 10th crypto meltdown that destroyed $19 billion of Bitcoin holdings in just a few seconds.

And hey, I even read some non-political news in the past 24 hours:

• The Nielsen-Norman Group digs into the usability of Google's new AI Mode feature, which most people don't seem to know about.
• New Republic's Timothy Noah wonders if the propensity of failsons to piss away their inherited fortunes (like the OAFPOTUS before he began the biggest grift of all time) could help solve the wealth-distribution problem in the world.
• Whatever happened to the decommissioned Staten Island ferryboat that entertainers Colin Jost and Pete Davidson bought? Not much.
• Speaking of New York, Block Club Chicago compares Chicago's Bloomingdale Trail with Manhattan's High Line.

Finally, it warms my heart to read that Gen Z workers have the same attitude toward workplace "emergencies" that Gen X workers have always had. (Boomers and Millennials, WTF is wrong with y'all?)

How is it October in two days? As in, how is it already a full month into autumn and O'Hare is reporting a higher temperature than Phoenix?

Meanwhile:

• Incumbent New York City mayor Eric Adams has dropped his re-election bid as polling reveals that most of the city actively despises him. Josh Marshall shrugs, but runs the numbers on a possible victory by former governor Andrew Cuomo.
• Paul Krugman warns that the Republican spending bill the Democrats are currently blocking in the Senate would cause massive increases in everyone's health insurance premiums next year.
• Brian Beutler wants the Democratic Party to pick new, better fights to get people on side, instead of continuing the same focus-group-tested crappy messaging it can't seem to shake.

Finally, if you've ever visited Chicago, you'll know that we have a lot of brick construction here. (In fact, the current Inner Drive Technology World HQ is the first place I've lived in Chicago that didn't use bricks.) It turns out, a guy named Will Quam will give you a guided tour of Chicago's brick structures for a small fee. What would Chuck Rainey say?

I figured, maybe today I'll lead with something fun instead of the usual:

• Organizers report that they are close to finalizing a deal with the Chicago Park District to open the second-largest dog park in the city, directly adjacent to Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters 1.0. (Of course, I haven't lived there in 20 years and they don't allow dogs, so this is merely something interesting.)
• Matthew Yglesias pointed this morning his readers to "a common-sense Democrat manifesto" that he wrote last November; I'm still digesting it. (What do we want? Moderation! When do we want it? As soon as we have consensus!)
• Jeff Maurer won't attend "your dumb little civil war for dorks," thank you very much.

Oh, wait. I don't have anything else today. Maybe that's why I feel so relaxed?

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?

This weekend, I expect to finish a major personal (non-technical) project I started on June 15th, walk 20 km (without Cassie), and thanks to the desperation of the minor-league team on the South Side of Chicago, attend a Yankees game. It helps that the forecast looks exactly like one would want for the last weekend of summer: highs in the mid-20s and partly cloudy skies.

I might have time to read all of these things as well:

• Jeff Maurer, who watched (some of) this week's televised cabinet meeting so we didn't have to, really hates this season of The Apprentice.
• Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (D) thinks the OAFPOTUS's "fascist capitalism" will ultimately bring down his regime.
• Jennifer Rubin asks, why is the OAFPOTUS administration trying to kill everyone?
• Paul Krugman likens our current economic situation to Wile E. Coyote not noticing he's run off the cliff.
• The Chicago Sun-Times has a map of all the lead pipes in the city. (I'm happy to learn that all of the water lines leading to my house are lead-free.)
• Rachel Janfaza wants to change the conversation around how the kids today use AI. Kyla Scanlon also dug into attitudes towards AI in the workplace.

Meanwhile, my birthday ribs order got delayed. One of the assistant butchers backed into a meat grinder, so they got behind in their work. He was the biggest ass in the shop until he recently got unseated, so I don't feel too bad for making him the butt of my jokes.

G'nite.

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.

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.)

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.

I'll get to the ABBA—sorry, OBBBA—reactions after lunch. Right now, with apologies, here is a boring link dump:

• The Clown Prince of X is in the "finding out" phase, learning what happens to oligarchs who cross autocrats.
• Adam Kinzinger calls out the bribe that Shari Redstone's Paramount/CBS agreed to pay the OAFPOTUS to settle a bogus libel lawsuit stemming from a 2020 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris.
• After the US and Israeli attacks on Iran temporarily shut down Internet connectivity in the country, hundreds of pro-Scottish independence social media accounts went dark in what I'm sure the Iranian Government will call a bizarre coincidence.
• The UK Royal Family have decided to decommission the Royal Train, a version of which has carried the UK Head of State around the country since 1869.
• Cook County will open the first of 120 planned modular houses in Chicago to kick off a $12 million push for more affordable housing in the county.
• The Chicago Board of Education refused to hand over $175 million that it owed for pensions last year, leaving the city with an unexpected $161 million general-fund deficit.
• Richard Day tells Chicago Streets Blog what everyone has been saying since the pandemic: the Chicago Transit Authority needs to resume enforcing its own rules of passenger conduct again.
• Yesterday was the 90th birthday of the first Grant Park summer concert.
• Josh Marshall remembers Bill Moyers.

Finally, does a healthy adult really need to drink 4 liters of water per day? Well, it depends on a lot of things. National Geographic debunks this and five other myths about hydration.

And just because she's so pretty, here is a gratuitous photo of Cassie:

Note: I started this post at 8:30 am but got interrupted by work and HOA stuff.