The US Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow provides me with a long-awaited opportunity to clean out the closet under my stairs so an orphan kid more boxes will have room to stay there. I also may finish the Iain Banks novel I started two weeks ago, thereby finishing The Culture. (Don't worry, I have over 100 books on my to-be-read bookshelf; I'll find something else to read.)
Meanwhile:
- Even though I, personally, haven't got the time to get exercised about the OAFPOTUS's ridiculous threat to impose crippling (to us) tariffs on our three biggest trading partners, Mexico's president Claudia Sheinbaum used our own government's data to call bullshit on his claim that Mexico hasn't done enough to stop the flow of drugs into the US: "Tragically, it is in our country that lives are lost to the violence resulting from meeting the drug demand in yours."
- The UK will start requiring all visitors (even in transit) to register with their new Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme as of January 8th—similar to how the US ESTA program has worked for the last 16 years.
- Evanston, Ill., my home town, wants to protect bicyclists on one of its busiest streets, which of course has a bunch of stores panicking. (Note to the merchants: bike lanes don't hurt business, and in fact they encourage more foot traffic.)
- John Scalzi mourns the loss of Schwan's Home Delivery and it's bagel dogs.
Finally, as I mentioned nearly five years ago, today's date is a palindrome if you happen to study astronomy. The Julian Day number as of 6am CDT/12:00 UTC today is 2460642. Happy nerdy palindrome day!
Hotel to terminal, 7 minutes (Lyft); through security, 10 minutes. Boarding in an hour. Now I just need the coffee to work its magic...
I'm also tickled that the ex-POTUS will now be called the Once And Future POTUS. At least for a couple of months.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:
Finally, 35 years ago today I called my college roommate into our dorm room to watch live as Berliners took sledgehammers to the Wall. We didn't know what it meant other than we'd won the Cold War. Too bad we were still decades away from Aaron Sorkin's prescient words, "we'll see."
* "It is difficult to get a man to understand a thing when his salary depends on him not understanding it."
I filled out my ballot yesterday and will deliver it to one of Chicago's early-voting drop-offs today or Monday. Other than a couple of "no" votes for judicial retention (a bizarre ritual we go through in Illinois), I voted pretty much as you would expect. I even voted for a couple of Republicans! (Just not for any office that could cause damage to the city or country.)
Meanwhile, the world continues to turn:
- Matt Yglesias makes "a positive case for Kamala Harris:" "[A]fter eight tumultuous years, Harris is the right person for the job, the candidate who’ll turn the temperature down in American politics and let everyone get back to living their lives. ... [I]f you’re a normal person with some mixed feelings about the parties, I think you will be dramatically happier with the results that come from President Harris negotiating with congressional Republicans over exactly which tax breaks should be extended rather than a re-empowered Trump backed by a 6-3 Supreme Court and supportive majorities in Congress."
- Eugene Robinson excoriates CNN (and by implication a good chunk of the MSM) for covering the XPOTUS as if he were a normal political candidate and not, you know, an election and a Reichstag fire from crippling the modern world: "Oops, there I go again, dwelling on the existential peril we face. Instead, let’s parse every detail of every position Harris takes today against every detail of every position she took five years ago. And then let’s wonder why she hasn’t already put this election away."
- Ezra Klein spends 45 minutes explaining that what's wrong with the XPOTUS isn't just the obvious, but the fact that no one around him is guarding us from his delusional disinhibitions: "What we saw on that stage in Pennsylvania, as Trump D.J.’d, was not Donald Trump frozen, paralyzed, uncertain. It was the people around him frozen, paralyzed, uncertain. He knew exactly where he was. He was doing exactly what he wanted to do. But there was no one there, or no one left, who could stop him."
- James Fallows, counting down to November 5th, calls out civic bravery: "There are more of us than there are of them."
- Fareed Zakaria warns that the Democratic Party hasn't grokked the political realignment going on in the United States right now: "The great divide in America today is not economic but social, and its primary marker is college education. The other strong predictors of a person’s voting behavior are gender, geography and religion. So the new party bases in America are an educated, urban, secular and female left and a less-educated, rural, religious and male right."
- Pamela Paul points out the inherent nihilism of "settler colonialism" ideology as it applies to the growing anti-Israel movement in left-wing academia: "Activists and institutions can voice ever louder and longer land acknowledgments, but no one is seriously proposing returning the United States to Native Americans. Similarly, if “From the river to the sea” is taken literally, where does that leave Israeli Jews, many of whom were exiled not only from Europe and Russia, but also from surrounding Muslim states?"
- Hitachi has won a $212m contract to—wait for it—remove 5.25-inch floppy disks from the San Francisco MUNI light-rail network.
- American Airlines has rolled out a tool that will make an annoying sound if a gate louse attempts to board before his group number is called. Good.
- SMU writing professor Jonathan Malesic harrumphs that college kids don't read books anymore.
Speaking of books, The Economist just recommended yet another book to put on my sagging "to be read" bookshelves (plural). Nicholas Cornwell (writing as Nick Harkaway), the son of David Cornwell (aka John Le Carré), has written a new George Smiley novel set in 1963. I've read all the Smiley novels, and this one seems like a must-read as well: "Karla’s Choice could have been a crude pastiche and a dull drama. Instead, it is an accomplished homage and a captivating thriller. It may be a standalone story, but with luck Mr Harkaway will continue playing the imitation game." Excellent.
President Jimmy Carter turned 100 today, making him the first former president to do so. James Fallows has a bit of hagiography on his blog today, and the State of Georgia has declared today "Jimmy Carter Day." I hope I make it to 100, too, but I don't expect the State of Illinois to declare that day a public holiday.
In other news:
Finally, yesterday the UK turned off its last operating coal-fired power plant, ending a 142-year run of burning coal to generate power. XKCD points out that in those 142 years, the UK burned the equivalent of about 3 inches of its land surface generating electricity.
And of course, I'll watch the Vice-Presidential Debate tonight at 9pm Eastern, but I don't plan to live-blog. Reactions tomorrow, though.
Other than the hotel debacle, I'm having a pretty good time in the UK. Yesterday I went out to Berkhamsted to do Walk #1 in The Home Counties from London by Train Outstanding Circular Walks (Pathfinder Guides):
I followed that up today by getting lunch in Borough Market, then walking back to King's X:
(The maps are in French because I set my phone to French to practice in advance of my arrival in France tomorrow.)
The weather yesterday and today has been spectacular, to boot.
Another nice bit of news: I'm now less than 1,000 miles from lifetime Platinum status on American Airlines (with courtesy Sapphire status on another dozen airlines):
That should flip over 2 million lifetime miles when I get back to Chicago.
And now: a shower, a quick kip, and (I really hope) a pork bap at the Southampton Arms.
The last time I took American 90, like this time, I stayed overnight near O'Hare so I could sleep an hour longer on the day of the flight. Unfortunately, last time I had a rehearsal the night before, so I didn't even get to the hotel until 11pm.
Last night I was asleep by 9 and woke up (mostly) refreshed just before 5 this morning. I even got a few thousand steps in that walker's paradise*, the Rosemont Entertainment District. From the hotel, to O'Hare, to checking my bag, to getting through security: all of that took only 20 minutes. And now I'm watching the sun rise over Chicago in American's Flagship Lounge, because Platinum status, baby!
I did not, however, feel it appropriate to avail myself of this particular lounge benefit at 7am, nor did I accept the mimosa the server just offered me:
Tomorrow (or maybe tonight if I get there† early enough) I'll do some real walking. Tomorrow's forecast calls for partly cloudy skies and a warm-ish 25°C—perfect for a 10-kilometer walk in the countryside.
Updates as conditions warrant.
* Walk score: 53.
† Walk score: 99.
In about 23 hours I should be taking off from O'Hare on my favorite flight, American Airlines 90, the best flight I've found to snap into a European time zone in just one night. People tend to prefer the evening flights that get to Heathrow the next morning so they "don't lose a day," but I've found that even when flying business or first class (and thus getting actual sleep for a couple of hours) I lose the first day in Europe anyway. Sleeping on planes just sucks.
American 90, on the other hand, takes off from Chicago before 9am (most days) and gets to Heathrow before 22:30 (most days). That's still early enough to catch the Tube or Elizabeth Line, though on a couple of occasions I've had to catch the Night Bus. More important, for 48 weeks of the year, 22:30 in London is 16:30 in Chicago. Assuming I get to the Tube by 23:00, I'll be at my hotel before midnight and asleep before 2. Next morning, I'm totally fine.
I also like that the flight rarely sells out. Just look at my good luck tomorrow:
My whole row is empty, and so is the one in front. Even if they sell half of those seats in the next 22 hours, I expect they won't fill the middle seats in our row, with aisles and windows still available nearby.
Even though the flight works great for jet lag just because of its schedule, I still got up wicked early this morning to help the process along. Cassie and I took a 5½-kilometer walk around the neighborhood and caught Our Lady of Lourdes just as the sun came up:
Not a bad way to start the day.
A few weeks ago I planned a PTO day to take a 25 km walk tomorrow along the North Branch Trail with pizza at the end. (I'll do my annual marathon walk in October.) Sadly, the weather forecast bodes against it, with scattered thunderstorms and dewpoints over 22°C. But, since I've already got tomorrow off, and I have a solid PTO bank right now, I'll still take the day away from the office. And autumn begins Sunday.
Good thing, too, because the articles piled up this morning, and I haven't had time to finish yesterday's:
Finally, Washington Post reporter Christine Mi spent 80 hours crossing the US on Amtrak this summer. I am envious. Also sad, because the equivalent trip in Europe would have taken less than half the time on newer rolling stock, and not burned a quarter of the Diesel.
The forecast still predicts today will be the hottest day of the year. Last night at IDTWHQ the temperature got all the way down to 26.2°C right before sunrise. We have a heat advisory until 10pm, by which time the thunderstorms should have arrived. Good thing Cassie and I got a bit of extra time on our walk to day camp this morning.
Elsewhere in the world:
Finally, Garmin has released its latest fitness watch that doubles as a freaking Dick Tracy wrist phone. I mean, first, how cool is that? And second, how come it took 90 years after Dick Tracy got one?
Garmin has a feature on some of its watches that helps you avoid jet lag by coaching you on sleep times and other things at various points around a trip. This morning, my watch advised me to get lots of light between 7am and 9am (Seattle time). So I have ensconced myself in the best-lit room available to me in the SEA-TAC terminal, with windows on three sides. Just one problem:
Since arriving, I've heard that the city "really needed" the non-stop rain and gloom Seattle has "enjoyed" since the evening before I got here. The last time I visited, Seattle had temperatures 10°C below Chicago's in the one cold snap of the winter—only for Chicago to have near-record-breaking cold the day after I got home. It's hard not to take this personally...
I've got a short connection in Dallas this afternoon and an upgrade on the DFW-ORD segment, so I don't anticipate posting again until tomorrow. But I've got a Brews & Choos Extra Stop coming then, so check back soon.