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Well, some of it is interesting, anyway: Adam Kinzinger uses the Great Drone Panic of 2024 to remind us how right-wing media spin people up over nothing. O'Hare may reclaim its title as the World's Busiest Airport if the Federal Aviation Administration confirms flight-tracking company AirNav Radar's statistics next month. Sam Kahn explains "how the New Yorker became irrelevant." Duke evolutionary anthropology PhD student Hannah Salomons conducted a study of how puppies learn that has recently been...

Elon Musk had a lot going for him when he started his first company: rich parents, being white in Apartheid South Africa, malignant narcissism, etc. Like other well-known billionaire charlatans, he has had his share of spectacular successes, and still decided to find his own little corner of the Peter Principle. So let it be with Twitter: Some might say Elon Musk, who last week became Twitter’s official new owner, has buyer’s remorse. But that implies he had actually wanted the thing before he bought...

Few people in the history of broadcasting have managed the heights of soulless putrefaction that Alex Jones has achieved, and I'm including Father Coughlin and that German guy who opened the 1936 Olympic Games. Jones, I would argue, has even less moral fiber than those other two, because he does it all for profit, to such an extent that he would rather take a multi-million-dollar legal loss on the chin than reveal anything about how his broadcast business actually works: Conspiracy theorist and Infowars...

It's every other Tuesday today, so I'm just waiting for the last continuous-integration (CI) build to finish before deploying the latest software to our production environment. So far, so boring, just the way I like it. Meanwhile, in the real world: In a symbolic but meaningless vote, all but 5 Republican members of the US Senate voted to let the XPOTUS off the hook for inciting an insurrection against, well, them, as this way they believe they get to keep his followers at no cost to themselves. If this...

I have meant to post this for a while: a list of the media I regularly consume. This may help visitors to the Daily Parker more easily decide whether something I post is crap or (more likely) researched more than the typical Internet meme. (The title comes from an essay by Mark Twain.) The impetus to post this came from my Facebook feed, which contained a number of suspicious memes and posts from close friends today. In each case it took me about 30 seconds to fact-check them and gently remind people to...

Did someone get trapped in a closed time loop on Sunday? Did I? Because this week just brought all kinds of insanity: Video emerged of the President acting like a teenager on too much Dr Pepper during the national anthem on Super Bowl Sunday. Margaret Sullivan's headline this morning: "Social media was a cesspool of toxic Iowa conspiracy theories last night. It’s only going to get worse." Yup. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker Tweeted that Illinois should lead off the next primary election cycle because...

But I will take the time as soon as I get it: Conor Friedersdorf thinks Tucker Carlson "has failed to assimilate." (So do I.) Daniel Drezner says we have "the worst of all possible Iran policies." (So do I.) Author TJ Martinson won't teach at a downstate religious college this coming year because, apparently, someone got around to reading his new novel. (I just put it on my "to be read" list.) Architect Greg Tamborino won an affordable-housing contest with a bungalow that can easily convert into a...

Writing for CityLab, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research fellow Aaron Renn warns cities against falling into the "branding trap:" Here’s a transit-focused video Atlanta made as part of its Amazon HQ2 bid, meant to convey that the city is home to “innovation” and is “business friendly.” It likewise showcases buses and subways as its means of ground transportation, even though only about 10 percent of the city’s commuters use public transportation, and ridership has been fading in recent years....

Via Crain's Chicago Business, Joe Ricketts is shutting down DNAInfo and Gothamist because the underpaid, overworked journalists there had the temerity to ask for better working conditions: A week ago, reporters and editors in the combined newsroom of DNAinfo and Gothamist, two of New York City’s leading digital purveyors of local news, celebrated victory in their vote to join a union. On Thursday, they lost their jobs, as Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who owned the sites, shut...

That the President hasn't condemned Russian interference in American politics demonstrates how unfit for office he and his associates are. Because Russian interference has real consequences. Via TPM, the Russians have had extraordinary success dividing Americans through social media: Last year, two Russian Facebook pages organized dueling rallies in front of the Islamic Da’wah Center of Houston, according to information released by U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican. Heart of Texas, a...

The Tribune has two sad stories this evening. First, the FCC has taken steps to end the main-studio rule—apparently to allow the Sinclair/Tribune deal to go through: The regulation, which was first adopted almost 80 years ago, requires broadcasters to have a physical studio in or near the areas where they have a license to transmit TV or radio signals. Known as the "main studio rule," the regulation ensured that residents of a community could have a say in their local broadcast station's operations. "At...

"A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot." —Robert Heinlein, Friday Montana's at-large congressional district will stay Republican after millionaire Greg Gianforte won yesterday's special election by 6 points. This is despite him assaulting a reporter Wednesday afternoon and being charged with the crime: The Republican candidate for Montana’s...

Laura Reston at New Republic has a good piece on how the Soviets Russian government is doubling down on its disinformation campaign against Western democracies: One of the most recent battles in the propaganda war took place on January 4, less than a week after President Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the Kremlin’s meddling in the U.S. election. The Donbass International News Agency, a small wire service in Eastern Ukraine, published a short article online headlined “MASSIVE NATO...

Nate Silver has compared pundit analyses of poll data to actual voting results and determined that the pundits get things consistently wrong and in the wrong direction: This French election was part of a pattern that I began to notice two years ago in elections in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Take the 2012 U.S. presidential election as an example. Most of the mainstream media concluded that the race was too close to call, despite a modest but fairly robust Electoral College lead for...

Things to read later: We're heading into our fifth day of record temperatures in Chicago. Since records began in the 1870s, we've had five days above 21C—two of them this year. Tomorrow should be similarly warm. Followed, of course, by normal February weather this weekend. James Fallows takes a break from his book to warn about President Trump's assault on the media. Brian Beutler suggests FBI Director James Comey should treat Donald Trump just the way he treated Hillary Clinton, if for no other reason...

Since December I've been the technical lead on an 18-person project at work, which has tanked my blogging frequency. I may return to my previous 3-posts-in-two-days velocity at some point. For now, here are some articles to read: Pilot Patrick Smith wades into the Trump travel ban, and also talks about the longest scheduled flights you can take. Charles Pierce, Jeet Heer, and Josh Marshall all boggle at President Trump's press conference earlier today. NCPC is predicting a warm spring in Chicago. That's...

Not even a full day after the debate and the reactions I'm seeing are across-the-board horrible for Trump. First, the usual suspects: Josh Marshall here, here, and here. From New Republic, Brian Beutler, Jeet Heer, and Ryu Spaeth. Paul Krugman. But the other side of the aisle doesn't seem happy either. Check out: Red State ("Desperately delusional Trump") Rod Dreher US News (with reactions from across the globe) Bill Kristol Fred Barnes Of course, it's not Trump's fault he tanked after 15 minutes of...

Via (of all people) Dan Savage, if you or someone you love watches Fox News, HearYourselfThink.org can help: The first step to freeing America from the toxic influence of the Right-wing Media Noise Machine is to pull back the curtain and expose it for what it is and for the harm it is inflicting on our culture, communities and Democracy. Fortunately, there’s plenty of ammunition to help us in this effort. We should take heart that we are seeing the beginning of a shift where Americans (including...