The Daily Parker

Here are the news stories that filtered through today:

• Netflix released viewing figures as part of its quarterly report to shareholders. Guess what their most popular show is?
• The New Yorker reviewed Chef Iliana Regan's autobiography, and now I might have to buy it before my next dinner at Elizabeth.
• Given WeWork's declining fortunes and enormous lease liabilities, what will happen to New York's real estate market if WeWork dies?
• With the Chicago Teacher's Union on strike, Greg Hinz asks, who will get the blame?
• Actor John Lithgow thinks President Trump is a horrible entertainer.
• David Graham thinks Tuesday's debate was boring, and unnecessary.

See? You thought more of the news would be bad.

Not too much:

• The Guardian asks, what happens if cities act to mitigate climate change but nations don't? Meanwhile, the New York Times shows where in the U.S. emissions are coming from.
• Josh Chafetz suggests the House should arrest Rudy Giuliani.
• Dan Lavoie asks, what if President Trump resigned?
• Ukraine's president talked to reporters yesterday for many hours.
• Closer to home, Greg Hinz examines the power struggle between the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Public Schools.
• The Navy Pier Bike Flyover, started in 2014 and scheduled to open in 2016 2017 2018 2019, will now open in 2020.
• A public housing project in Norwich, England, won the Royal Institute of British Architects' Stirling Prize.

And two algorithms I'm testing that should produce similar results are not. So back to the coding window I go.

My task this afternoon is to parse a pile of random text that has, shall we say, inconsistencies. Before I return to that task, I'm setting aside some stuff to read later on:

• The Chicago-area transit agency Metra plans to spend $2.6 bn over the next five years on fixing things. It can do this because Republican Bruce Rauner, who basically froze the state budget for his entire term, got booted out of office a year ago.
• The Trump Administration continues its assault on evidence-based research, for example gutting two USDA programs by moving their headquarters to Kansas City.
• The Atlantic's Mark Bowden interviewed dozens of top military officers who think the President is dangerous to our national security.
• It turns out, people support climate change prevention and remediation efforts even when they know the cost.

And finally, Crain's reviews five relatively-new steakhouses in Chicago. Since we probably won't eat steak past about 2030, these may be worth checking out sooner rather than later.

I was busy today, and apparently so was everyone else:

• Umair Haque deplores the "age of the idiot" in which we now live.
• The Washington Post reports that President Trump has spoken with Russian president Vladimir Putin 16 times, more than with any other world leader.
• Tim Murphy thinks Trump is more Andrew Johnson than Richard Nixon.
• Andrew Sullivan says, since Trump wants to be impeached, let's do it now.
• Elizabeth Warren deftly smacked down a right-wing troll.
• Irish writer Susan McKay asks Boris Johnson how it feels now that Ireland has more power than the UK.
• An unusual bit of architecture in Lakeview (the North Side Chicago neighborhood containing Wrigley Field) will soon be demolished.
• The University of Edinburgh has produced an interactive map of historic witch hunts in Scotland.
• Curbed explores how Los Angeles became "the land of strip malls."
• The New York Times explores how New York taxi companies took over Chicago's taxis, shortly before Uber and Lyft bankrupted the industry.

I'm sure there was other news today. But this is what I have open in my browser for reading later on.

October began today for some of the world, but here in Chicago the 29°C weather (at Midway and downtwon; it's 23°C at O'Hare) would be more appropriate for July. October should start tomorrow for us, according to forecasts.

This week has a lot going on: rehearsal yesterday for Apollo's support of Chicago Opera Theater in their upcoming performances of Everest and Aleko; rehearsal tonight for our collaboration Saturday with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony of Carmina Burana; and, right, a full-time job. (The Dallas Opera put their video of Everest's premiere on YouTube.) 

We also have a few things going on in the news, it seems:

• President Trump has decided on a strategy of singing to the choir about his impending impeachment, almost exactly the opposite of the strategy President Clinton chose 21 years ago.
• Meanwhile, his followers continue to threaten violence if their Dear Leader is removed from office.
• Washington Post society columnist Roxanne Roberts takes a look at Justice Brett Kavanaugh's slightly-less-social life in Washington a year after his brutal confirmation hearings.
• ARCGIS has an interactive map showing where Chicago-area municipalities get their water. (I did not know how far out suburbs took water from Lake Michigan.)
• A study appears to show that eating beef isn't as bad for you as once thought; but it's still horrible for the planet.

I will now return to reverse-engineering a particularly maddening interface.

I'm surprised I ate anything today, after this past weekend. I'm less surprised I haven't yet consumed all of these:

• Harvard Law professor John Coates argues that "a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally-authorized power" constitutes an impeachable offense in its own right.
• The Chicago Public Library will stop fining people for overdue books, as long as you bring them back eventually.
• National Geographic digs into the Grimm Brothers' fairy-tale collections.
• Why is the USDOT cracking down on zebra-crossing art?
• London completely failed to block an east-end road to cars for even a full day.
• A 1958 women's magazine's list of 129 ways to get a husband had to have been a joke, right? Right?
• Bruce Schneier has some thoughts on supply-chain security.

Is it nap time yet?

...I might have time to read all of these:

• President Trump's new rule, announced by acting USCIS chief Ken Cuccinelli, could radically change who gets to become an American.
• This week is the 10th anniversary of Kanye West's unpardonable dick move against Taylor Swift.
• The UK banned a Philadelphia cream cheese advert because it portrayed a gender stereotype.
• David Dudley argues that the bad mayor in Stephen Spielberg's 1975 movie Jaws explains "all I really needed to know about cities."
• Blogger Charles Phipps provides 50 bits of evidence that we're now living in a Cyberpunk future.
• Ross Douthat argues that sometimes—albeit rarely—you need to take conspiracy theories seriously.
• Peter Brannen points out that, at some point our entire history will be a few millimeters of rock under an ocean, so debating the "anthropocene" is kind of silly.
• Apparently, Ayn Rand has a recruiting problem.
• Fox and Friends doesn't really understand how tariffs work, even though the network they work for seems to get it.
• Rob Sylvan has some great tips for using Adobe Lightroom.

And now, back to work.

A diverse flock this afternoon:

• FedEx will sever ties with Amazon as the latter builds its own logistics operation.
• Jennifer Rubin complains about the inanity of intra-party debates that miss larger issues.
• The #MeToo movement has changed the way film studios direct sex scenes.
• Alex Pareene expresses frustration with Washington reporters not talking about the blatantly obvious reason the president has gone after politicians of color.
• CityLab has a primer on the history and language of municipal zoning laws.
• How do websites keep you coming back, and keep you from leaving? They manipulate you.
• From last November, Topic discusses "hostile architecture" designed to keep you moving along, especially when "you" means "homeless."
• Finally, TNR reminds us that the Second Amendment is no more settled than any other bit of common law, so have hope.

Your coder will now resume coding his previously-coded code.

Queued up a few articles to read after work today:

• The Tribune has a short guide to Chicago's brewpubs aimed at the perplexed.
• Marvel has announced a bunch more superhero movies, coming on the heels of Avengers: Endgame becoming the highest-grossing film ever.
• Cranky Flier looks at Tijuana's new terminal—on the American side of the border.
• Nathan Heller asks, "Was the Automotive Era a Terrible Mistake?"
• Greg Sargent cautions the press not to buy into Attorney General William Barr's framing of former FBI Director Robert Mueller's testimony to Congress this week. (Josh Marshall calls Barr's letter to Muller "preposterous.")

Now, off to find food, then back to the mines.

Arborist William Bryant Logan takes a trip to the botanical hell that is the Fresh Kills Landfill, and finds something wonderful:

From a coyote’s-eye view, you could see what the trees were up to: Growth, failure, decay and the drip of acid water through the gravel were mixing a dirt out of the detritus. This hideous forest, I suddenly realized, was there to repair the damage done, and not at our bidding. Its intent was not to look good. Its intent was to stay alive, year by year, century by century, until at last it had recycled even the nylon stocking.

We know how long it takes most kinds of leavings to decay. Organic material goes quickly: cardboard in three months, wood in up to three years, a pair of wool socks in up to five. A plastic shopping bag may take 20 years; a plastic cup, 50. Major industrial materials will be there for much longer: An aluminum can is with us for 200 years, a glass bottle for 500, a plastic bottle for 700, and a Styrofoam container for a millennium.

The forest does not know this. It does not think. It just acts. Because it is so good at sprouting, resprouting, reiterating, and repeating the entire process, it can keep up the living and dying for as long as it takes, even if that is a thousand years. The trees are not conscious. They are something better. They are present.

It almost makes one want to visit the place. Almost.