I'm having a few people over for a BBQ this evening, several of them under 10 years old, and several of them dogs. I've got about 45 minutes before I have to start cutting vegetables. Tomorrow will be a quiet day, so I'll just queue these stories up for then:
- Not a group to pass up risible hypocrisy, Alabama Republicans have defied the US Supreme Court's order that they create a second majority-Black district in the state, preferring just to shuffle the state's African Americans into a new minority districts. This leaves African Americans with 27% of the population and 14% of the Congressional representation, and the state Republican majority wishing it could just go all the way back to Jim Crow instead of this piecemeal stuff.
- Surprising no one who understood that former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) cared less about governing than about enriching his pals (and himself), the Foxconn semiconductor factory that Wisconsin residents subsidized for $3 billion has not, in fact, created 13,000 jobs yet. Probably because it doesn't exist yet, and may never.
- James Hansen, who first warned in the 1980s that human-caused climate warming had already started and would accelerate if we didn't cut greenhouse gas emissions, thinks "we are damned fools" for needing to experience it to believe it.
- The Chicago city council plans to pass legislation raising the minimum wage for tipped workers to the general minimum wage of $15.80 per hour, up from $9.48 today. This doesn't address how anyone could possibly live on $32,000 per year in Chicago, let alone $19,000 a year at the lower wage.
OK, time for a quick shower and 15 minutes of doing nothing...
It's Tuesday afternoon, and I think I'm caught up with everything in the way of me ploughing through some coding at work the remainder of the week. At some point, I might even read all of these through:
Finally, North Korean troops detained a US soldier after he intentionally crossed the demarcation line in the Joint Security Area, apparently after deserting while en route to the US for unspecified disciplinary measures arising from a separate incident. When I visited the JSA in 2013, a tour guide told me that this happens occasionally, and the North Korean army rarely gives the person back. Not sure life in a North Korean prison beats an other-than-honorable discharge from the US Army, but what do I know?
Just a few items for my reading list:
- The Supreme Court's Republican majority have invented a new doctrine that they claim gives them override any action by a Democratic administration or Congress.
- John Ganz thinks all Americans are insane, at least when it comes to conspiracy theories.
- Chicago's Deep Tunnel may have spared us from total disaster with last week's rains, but even it can't cope with more than about 65 mm of rain in an hour.
- Oregon's Rose Quarter extension of Interstate 5 will cost an absurd amount of money because it's an absurdly wide freeway.
Finally, for those of you just tuning in to the multiple creative labor actions now paralyzing the film industry, the Washington Post has a succinct briefing on residuals, the principal point of disagreement between the suits and the people actually making films.
Sea-surface temperatures around our embarrassing southern peninsula have passed 32°C, significantly warmer than normal:
Not only is Florida sizzling in record-crushing heat, but the ocean waters that surround it are scorching, as well. The unprecedented ocean warmth around the state — connected to historically warm oceans worldwide — is further intensifying its heat wave and stressing coral reefs, with conditions that could end up strengthening hurricanes.
Much of Florida is seeing its warmest year on record, with temperatures running 2 to 3°C above normal. While some locations have been setting records since the beginning of the year, the hottest weather has come with an intense heat dome cooking the Sunshine State in recent weeks. That heat dome has made coastal waters extremely warm, including “downright shocking” temperatures of 33°C to 35°C in the Florida Keys, meteorologist and journalist Bob Henson said Sunday in a tweet.
Such warm water temperatures “would be impressive any time of year, but they’re occurring when the water would already be rather warm, bringing it up to bona fide bathtub conditions that we rarely see,” Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami and hurricane expert for Capital Weather Gang, said in an email.
The marine heat wave will likely make this year's hurricane season more active and more powerful, and cause continued above-normal temperatures in the Caribbean and southern US.
Monday was the hottest day on the planet in 125,000 years. Yesterday was hotter:
Tuesday was the hottest day on Earth since at least 1979, with the global average temperature reaching 17.18°C, according to data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction.
Tuesday’s global average temperature was calculated by a model that uses data from weather stations, ships, ocean buoys and satellites, Paulo Ceppi, a climate scientist at London’s Grantham Institute, explained in an email Wednesday. This modeling system has been used to estimate daily average temperatures starting in 1979.
“This is our ‘best guess’ of what the surface temperature at each point on earth was yesterday,” he said.
Instrument-based global temperature records go back to the mid-19th century, but for temperatures before that, scientists are dependent on proxy data captured through evidence left in tree rings and ice cores. “These data tell us that it hasn’t been this warm since at least 125,000 years ago, which was the previous interglacial,” Ceppi said, referring to a period of unusual warmth between two ice ages.
Because of the El Nino building in the Pacific, the normal seasonal warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, and human-caused climate change, we can expect more records as the summer goes on. Nice work, people.
Yesterday's rain in Chicago set a few records:
Sunday’s heavy rain poured upward of 200 mm in Berwyn, Cicero and Garfield Park, according to preliminary reports from weather officials, sending residents in search of supplies to clean up flooded homes.
The National Weather Service said that daily rainfall totals ranged from 75 to 175 mm in the immediate Chicago area after “extended rounds of heavy/torrential rainfall.”
The preliminary data came from radar estimates, personal weather stations and rain gauges. Official information will be released over the next few days, weather officials said.
O’Hare International Airport broke the record for daily rainfall on Sunday, recording 85 mm of rain. The previous record was 52 mm in July 1982.
Yesterday's rain didn't even come close to the record 24-hour rainfall that ruined a summer party I'd planned for weeks on 13-14 August 1987. That day we got 238 mm of rain and a flooded basement.
Because of yesterday's rain, poor Cassie only got 23 minutes of walkies yesterday—almost all of it in drenching rain. I went through two towels drying her off after each of her walks. And of course, because she was (a) being rained on and (b) couldn't smell anything, it took her way more time than I preferred to find where to do her job.
For my part, I really got a close shave on my step count:
Today we have blue skies, sun, and a forecast high of 23°C: perfection. (The AQI is down to 47, too.) I have to do a few hours of work for a freelance client and get a bag of kibble, but other than that, I plan to take Cassie on several walks worthy of my dog.
I've got tickets to see Straight No Chaser with some chorus friends at Ravinia Park tonight—on the lawn. Unfortunately, for the last 8 hours or so, our weather radar has looked like this:
I haven't got nearly as much disappointment as the folks sitting in Grant Park right now waiting for a NASCAR race that will never happen in this epic rainfall. (I think Mother Nature is trying to tell NASCAR something. Or at least trying to tell Chicago NASCAR fans something. Hard to tell.)
While I'm waiting to see if it will actually stop raining before my train leaves at 5:49pm, I have this to read:
I am happy the roofers finished my side of my housing development already. The people across the courtyard have discovered the temporary waterproofing was a bit more temporary than the roofers intended.
Chicago has an air quality alert right now as the World Air Quality Index lists us first (last?) in the world for worst air quality:
Canadian wildfire smoke pouring into Chicago has made its air quality the worst in the world Tuesday.
The World Air Quality Index ranked Chicago as the worst for air quality, with Dubai, Minneapolis, Jakarta and Doha, Indonesia rounding out the top 5. Chicago’s air is labeled an “unhealthy” 172 by the index.
The National Weather Service blamed the conditions and low visibility on the wildfire smoke that has wafted down from Canada and impacted large regions of the U.S. The service suggested limiting prolonged outdoor activities.
The problem is predicted to last through the day Tuesday.
I haven't seen air quality like this since I visited Los Angeles in the early 1980s:
A low cloud layer hung over the area until just a few minutes ago, but as you can see from this GOES-East image, we've got thick enough smoke that it almost makes now difference:
I just snapped this photo from my office door:
(I'd send up my drone but it's a bit too windy.)
People wonder what anthropogenic climate change looks like. Well, here it is.
I had a lot going on this morning, so I'm only now snarfing down a Chipotle bowl. Also, I'm going to have to read these things tomorrow:
- Over 100 candidates, including a dog, will stand for election in Toronto's mayoral election on the 26th.
- Writing for Mother Jones, Ali Breland thinks the content-creator rebellion at Reddit won't stop what Corey Doctorow calls "the enshittification" of online platforms.
- Similarly, private-equity debt has killed yet another good company making good products, Insta-Pot.
- After what insiders call a deliberate campaign by New York mayor Eric Adams to strip her of power, New York City's police commissioner Keechant Sewell abruptly resigned Monday.
- Despite yesterday's rain around Chicago, the drought in Illinois has gotten worse.
- Save the firefiles!
- Tinley Park, Ill., has launched a brewery trolley that technically puts 2 new breweries on the Brews & Choos list. (I had plans to return to Banging Gavel later this summer anyway, as they're about to open the Vogt House to the public.)
- The list of people excited about the NASCAR race in downtown Chicago keeps getting shorter.
Finally, today is the 35th anniversary of the best baseball movie of all time, Bull Durham. If I had time I'd watch it tonight.