Events

It was warm enough last night to leave a couple of windows ajar, which lets in fresh air along with every sound in the neighborhood. Also last night, an idiot cardinal found a convenient streetlight, stepped out of the shade, and said something like, "You and me, babe, how about it?" He started his serenade a little after 4 am, according to my Garmin sleep report, and continued well into the morning. I don't remember ever wishing for a cat as much as I did around 5. Remember this little ode? Yeah....

We start this morning with news that US Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), for whom I voted all 5 times he ran for Senate, will not run for re-election in 2026. He turns 82 just after the election and would be 88 at the end of the term. I am very glad he has decided to step aside: we don't need another Feinstein or Thurmond haunting the Senate again. In other news: Vice President JD Vance outlined a proposal to reward Russia for its aggression by giving it all the land it currently holds in the...

I thought I was done with last week's cold, but no, not entirely. So I'm spinning my wheels looking at code today. I want to be writing code today, however. My brain wants to be three meters west and three meters down from IDTWHQ (i.e., in my bed). I will note that Columbia Journalism professor Alexander Stille just came to the same realization Josh Marshall came to over nine years ago, that the OAFPOTUS resembles Benito Mussolini in all the ways that matter: The comparisons between Trump and...

Michael Tomasky takes the educated-elite-leftist view that, somehow, the OAFPOTUS actually bamboozled 77 million voters—twice: How many times did Trump say he’d end that war on the first day of his presidency? It had to have been hundreds. I saw a lot of those clips on cable news over the weekend, as you may have. He did not mean it figuratively. You know, in the way people will say, “I’ll change that from day one,” and you know they don’t literally mean day one, but they do mean fast. But that isn’t...

Yesterday Cassie and I took a 9 kilometer walk through the Lincoln Square and West Ridge community areas. If she got tired, she didn't admit it, at least not until we stopped for a beer: Otherwise, not much to report, other than I started Agency, William Gibson's sequel to his novel The Peripheral. It's really good. I'm already a third the way done and should finish in a day or two.

The American Revolutionary War began 250 years ago today when Capt John Parker's Minutemen engaged a force of 700 British soldiers on the town green in Lexington, Mass. Just over a year later, England's North American colonies declared their independence from King George III with a document that you really ought to read again with particular focus on the King's acts that drove the colonists to break away. It was almost as if they believed having a temperamental monarch with worsening mental-health...

Welcome to stop #127 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Explorium Brewpub Third Ward, 143 W. St. Paul Ave., Milwaukee 2 (of 5) stars Train line: Amtrak, Milwaukee Intermodal Station Time from Chicago: 89 minutesDistance from station: 150 m The best thing about Explorium is its proximity to the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, as it took me less than 5 minutes to get to my train home despite taking a couple of photos along the way. Otherwise it's a loud, TV-covered entertainment zone that could be...

On Monday, Jeff Bezos' company Blue Origin (the one with phallic space ships) sent an all-female "crew" into low orbit for ten minutes, pretty much demonstrating everything wrong with 2020s America: Blue Origin's all-female crew, which included pop star Katy Perry, completed their trip into space Monday morning. Along with Perry, the crew included Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos' journalist fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, who is also a helicopter pilot. Speaking after touchdown, Perry said she brought a daisy...

The era between the end of World War II and now is an aberration in world history. At no other time have so many people enjoyed a middle-class existence, with most—at least in the OECD and adjacent countries—able to afford all of life's necessities, like a house, decent health care, adequate nutrition, and leisure time. This general prosperity is what people like the OAFPOTUS and the Clown Prince of X want to end, and for no other reason than they want more for themselves. The unprecedented attack on...

Welcome to stop #126 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Wizard Works Brewing, 231 E. Buffalo St., Milwaukee 4½ (of 5) stars Train line: Amtrak, Milwaukee Intermodal Station Time from Chicago: 89 minutesDistance from station: 900 m Once you find the door to the 19th-century office building housing this quirky magic-themed brewery, head down the stairs and grab a seat. My Brews Buddy and I enjoyed the place thoroughly, though we would prefer it had fewer TV screens. We shared a flight and went back...