The Daily Parker

More photos from last weekend. I mentioned The Samuel Palmer in Shoreham, Kent, where I stopped after my hike through the Kentish Downs. I didn't mention that I had a delightful cheese plate for dinner, because cheese:

Then I got to experience four Chicago blocks' worth of an English country road at 10:30pm getting to the railway station:

On Saturday, I walked along the Regent's Canal on my way to the Southampton Arms:

Which remains, as ever, one of my favorite pubs in the world:

I will return to all of these places in due course.

I will definitely make time this weekend to drool over the recent photos from the James Webb Space Telescope. It's kind of sad that no living human will ever see anything outside our solar system, but we can dream, right?

Closer to home than the edge of the visible universe:

• Josh Marshall highlight's a reader's note explaining how the historic conservatism of the Executive Branch legal team won't work any more.
• The President's conservatism doesn't work either, as recent polls and Democratic-party frustration will show you.
• Eugene Robinson says Republican candidate for US Senate from Georgia,  former football player Herschel Walker, has a "combination of utter ignorance and total confidence, which challenges even that of the former president."
• David French declares flatly that our Constitution isn't working.
• Julia Ioffe explains how the Russian penal system (don't call it a "justice system") means bad news for everyone who enters it, especially people with political value like Brittney Griner.

Finally, an F/A-18 slid right off the deck of the USS Harry S Truman and into the Mediterranean, which will probably result in a short Navy career for at least one weather forecaster or helmsman.

Even though it seems the entire world has paused to honor HRH The Queen on the 70th anniversary of her accession, the world in fact kept spinning:

Blogger Moxie Marlinspike wrote about their first impressions of web3 back in January. I just got around to reading it, and you should too.

• On the same topic, a group of 25 security professionals, including Grady Booch, Bruce Schneier, and Molly White, wrote an open letter to Congress advocating for serious regulation of cryptocurrencies.
• What's Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's strategy in Ukraine? Wait us out. (It helps that he gives no thought to anyone's life but his own.)
• Closer to home, Jelani Cobb writes about "the atrocity of American gun culture."
• The US Navy's last conventionally-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, has arrived in Brownsville, Texas, for dismantling. Apparently Chicago didn't want an aircraft carrier museum for some reason.
• Chicago has bungalows, L.A. has dingbats, Amsterdam has canal houses, and Dublin has over-basement row houses.
• Bloomberg suggests the Elizabeth Line could prompt a whole re-map of the London Underground.

Oh, and plastic recycling doesn't work, and probably can't.

And here, a propos of nothing, is a photo of St Boniface Cemetery I took this morning:

I popped out to San Francisco this past weekend, then had a ton of things to work on today that precluded posting any of these photos.

So, from south to north order, starting with Moss Beach, including a WWII-era anti-aircraft bunker on the left:

Just a short way from there is what used to be a scary section of the Pacific Coast Highway, now a bike trail:

The Powell end of the Powell & Mason cable car, at Market St:

The Ferry Building:

Looking up California St. from Sansomme:

Transamerica Pyramid:

And the MUNI F line at its terminus in North Beach:

Now that I've got a few weeks without travel, performances*, or work conferences, I can go back to not having enough time to read all the news that interests me. Like these stories:

• The Economist examines how Putin might be punished for war crimes in Ukraine.
• Max Boot wonders why Tucker Carlson still loves his old Uncle Vlad.
• The IPCC says we have eight years to cut greenhouse emissions by 50% or the planet will pass the 1.5°C warming threshold no matter what else we do. Welp.
• Via Bruce Schneier, criminals have started phishing data providers for sensitive information by pretending to be law enforcement.
• Michelle Goldberg wonders why Republican politicians are suddenly afraid of...furries?
• Tom Scott explains how Britain knows what time it is, and a British comedy show takes Denmark to task for not pinning their clocks to UTC.
• As part of his promotional tour for his new novel Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi has given us the short story "Grizzly Bear Conflict Manager."

Finally, Michelin has handed out its 2022 stars for Chicago. Nothing surprising on the list, but I now have four more restaurants to try.

* Except that I volunteered to help a church choir do five Messiah choruses on Easter Sunday, so I've got two extra rehearsals and a service in the next 12 days.

Bonus update: the fog this morning made St Boniface Cemetery especially spooky-looking when Cassie and I went out for her morning walk:

I took Cassie for a 40-minute walk around Lexington's historic district on the way back from Berea:

The light really wasn't great, so I didn't take a lot of photos. Plus Cassie has a way of adding motion blur to every photo I shoot.

Two weeks ago I attended a conference by the Chicago River, which had dye left over from St Patrick's Day. Add a passing fire boat and it's Christmas in March:

Editing photos on my phone doesn't always produce the best results. Faster, cheaper, better, pick two, right? Fortunately I have Adobe Lightroom at home, and deploying software yesterday took a long time.

Here are my re-edits. Better? Worse? At the very least, they're all correctly-proportioned (2x3) instead of whatever I guessed on my little phone screen.

Thursday's sunrise at Nicura Ranch:

Berea College:

One of the ranch's permanent residents:

Down the road from the ranch:

Cinnamon, who rather preferred that I keep Cassie outside the pasture, thank you very much:

I've got a couple more from the past two weeks I'll post after lunch.

I'm hard at work on a presentation for my company's annual Tech Forum, which is next week. Meanwhile I've got two performances of Bach's Johannespassion this weekend, with our orchestra rehearsal this evening. Oh, and we change the clocks on Sunday.

So in lieu of anything more interesting, here's a photo I took of Chicago's St Boniface Cemetery on Tuesday morning:

Cassie and I took a walk by Montrose Harbor on Sunday afternoon at just the right time:

And yesterday, at my downtown office, I also got the timing right:

Winter begins tomorrow, but we can still enjoy the last few days of autumn.

I finally got a chance to re-edit some of the photos I took in London last weekend. Here are four from Thursday, in chronological order.

Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich:

Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn:

St Paul's Cathedral, west façade:

Blackfriars Bridge: