Not always bad news, you know?

Sometimes I read fun stories that don't make me want to move to a cottage on the west coast of Ireland:

• Tiny Moldova has stood up to Russia for years now, and its resistance keeps on going strong.
• Union Pacific's Big Boy No. 4014, the world's largest remaining steam locomotive, will be at the Union Pacific Training Center in West Chicago on Wednesday. It's just a $10 Metra day pass to get there.
• AI slop is overwhelming music streaming services.
• On the other hand, John Judis had an AI success when it helped him diagnose and fix a wifi problem. LLMs are pretty good at that sort of thing, in my opinion.
• And Robert Wright sees Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on AI as a watershed moment.

Actually, there are a few bad-news stories too:

• A sharp decline in 30-year bond prices means that creditors holding US debt no longer see it as the safest investment on the planet, and that's not good for us.
• Dan Rather is heartbroken by the evisceration of 60 Minutes.
• Atelier, the Michelin-starred successor-in-spirit to Iliana Regan's Elizabeth in Lincoln Square, closed this week after two years of struggling to attract diners.

Finally, tonight's full moon is actually a blue moon and micromoon, as the moon hit apogee yesterday and it's the second full moon this month. It's unfortunately a little cloudy today in Chicago, but if it clears up tonight, I'll try to get a photo of it rising over the Lake. Moonrise here is at 20:16 tonight, just two minutes before sunset. The moonrise azimuth (126.6°) means I will see it rise over Dune Acres, Indiana:

Well before that happens, however, Cassie and I will take a really long walk. It's a 5 km challenge weekend for Garmin, and wouldn't you know it, Spiteful Brewing is now 4.2 km from my house by the shortest route. But if we swing past Jimmy's Pizza Cafe on the way, it's 6.1 km. This will also be a good chance to finally test out my building's dog wash facility, because if I recall correctly, Cassie last had a bath in April.

The Moon will also rise tonight almost as far south of east as it ever does, because we're still close enough to the last major standstill (January 2025) for its range of geocentric declination to be touching plus or minus 28 degrees.

That's a good shout. Sadly, the forecast tonight is overcast skies, so we won't really see it. Happily, the odds are pretty good that I'll get brilliant moonrises over the next 10 months living here.