The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Cooler and cloudier with a chance of hypocrisy

Today's weather feels like we might have real fall weather soon. Today's XKCD kind of nails it, too—not the weather, but the calendar.

In addition to nice weather, we have a nice bit of elected-official hypocrisy, too: the president of the Chicago Teachers Union got caught sending her son to a private school, and giving a really crappy explanation for it.

In other news:

  • A jury took all of four hours to convict right-wing intellectual grifter Peter Navarro of contempt of Congress for ignoring the January 6th Committee's subpoena.
  • Josh Marshall yawns at attempts to have the XPOTUS barred from the ballot on 14th Amendment grounds, even while conceding that's exactly what the section 4 of the Amendment is for.
  • Even though they've attacked abortion rights, sex education, books and movies that feature independent women, and pretty much anything that empowers women and girls, the not-at-all-misogynist Republican Party now wants to end no-fault divorce, allowing as it does women to leave the "covenant" they made with their abusers.
  • Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told US Representative and contender for "Dumbest Person in Congress" Jim Jordan (R-OH) to go—sorry, she essentially said "bless your heart" in a delightful response to his threats of Congressional oversight.
  • Julia Ioffe looks at the increasing cynicism of Africans and their rekindled affection for violent coups d'état.
  • Veteran writer Tom Fontana ("St Elsewhere", "Oz," "Homicide: Life on the Street") reflects on his 4th writers strike in 40 years, and how pissed off he is.
  • Strong Towns highlights a mapping tool to demonstrate how much of your city comprises parking lots. Unless you live in New York, San Francisco, San Juan, Washington, or Chicago, it's pretty grim.
  • The National Hurricane Center warns that Hurricane Lee will reach category 5 before dissipating, but fortunately looks likely to miss more-populated areas—though Puerto Rico could get tropical storm winds early Sunday morning.
  • National Geographic profiles Ann McKee's extraordinary work researching chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which cripples and kills US footballers more than people admit.

Finally, an old friend traveling back from Burning Man to Montreal plans to crash at my place on Saturday evening. I have two days to read up on the desert full of moop, Cory Doctorow's assertion that this Burn really was different, and the evidence that climate change played an outsized role in the muddy hell at Black Rock City this year.

Last hot weekend of 2023, I hope

The temperature has crept up towards 34°C all day after staying at a comfortable 28°C yesterday and 25°C Friday. It's officially 33°C at O'Hare but just a scoshe above 31°C at IDTWHQ. Also, I still feel...uncomfortable in certain places closely associated with walking. All of which explains why I'm jotting down a bunch of news stories to read instead of walking Cassie.

  • First, if you have tomorrow off for Labor Day, you can thank Chicago workers. (Of course, if you have May 1st off for Labor Day, you can also thank us on the actual day that they intended.)
  • A new study suggests 84% of the general population want to experience an orchestral concert, though it didn't get into how much they want to pay for such a thing. (You can hear Händel's complete Messiah on December 9th at Holy Name Cathedral or December 10th at Millar Chapel for just $50!)
  • An FBI whistleblower claims Russian intelligence co-opted Rudy Giuliani in the run-up to the 2020 election—not as a Russian agent, mind you, just as a "useful idiot."
  • Rapper Eminem has told Republican presidential (*cough*) candidate Vivek Ramaswamy—who Michelle Goldberg calls "very annoying"—to stop using his music in his political campaign.
  • The government of Chile has promised to investigate the 3000 or so disappearances that happened under dictator Agosto Pinochet, though they acknowledge that it might be hard to find the ones thrown out of helicopters into the sea, or dropped down mine shafts. And with most of the murderers already dead of old age, it's about time.
  • Julia Ioffe wonders when the next putsch attempt will get close to Moscow, now that Prigozhin seems to be dead.
  • About 70,000 people continue to squelch through ankle-deep mud at Black Rock City after torrential rains at Burning Man this weekend. (I can't wait to see the moop map...)
  • University of Michigan Law Professor Nicholas Bagley had a cogent explanation of why pharmaceutical companies don't want to negotiate drug prices with Medicare. (Hint: record profits.)
  • Switching Chicago's pre-World War II bungalows from gas to electric heating could cut the city's GHG emissions by 14%.
  • Molly White's weekly newsletter starts off with some truly clueless and entitled behavior from Sam Bankman-Fried and gets weirder.
  • Zoning laws, plus the inability of the Portland, Ore., government to allow variances in any useful fashion, has condemned an entire high school to send its kids an hour away by bus while the building gets repaired, rather than just across the street to the community college many of them attend in the evenings. (Guess what skin color the kids have. Go on, guess.)
  • A group of hackers compromised a Portuguese-language "stalkerware" company and deleted all the data the company's spyware had downloaded, as well as the keys to the compromised phones it came from, then posted the company's customer data online. "Because fuck stalkerware," they said.
  • Traffic engineers, please don't confuse people by turning their small-town streets into stroads. It causes accidents. Which you, not they, have caused.
  • Illinois had a mild and dry summer, ending just before our ferociously hot Labor Day weekend.
  • James Fallows talks about college rankings, "which are marginally more encouraging than the current chaos of College Football."

Finally, I'll just leave this Tweet from former labor secretary Robert Reich as its own little monument to the New Gilded Age we now inhabit:

Quick reminder about titles

Even though the United States Constitution prohibits the US or the States from issuing titles of nobility, the longing for lifetime honors still exists in certain status-conscious professions. Politicians, probably more than any other group of people, fit that description.

Despite the desire of every SES2 to retain his or her title long after being fired by the under-secretary just above in rank, really only three offices of the United States confer a lifetime title, and only by custom, not by statute:

  • President of the United States
  • Ambassador
  • Flag or General Officer in the Armed Forces

I'm prompted to post this reminder because some news stories about the death of Ambassador and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson today have omitted the adjective phrase "former New Mexico" from his identification. Since he won US Senate confirmation to become the US Ambassador to the United Nations in 1997, writers could refer to him as Ambassador Richardson or call him Mr Ambassador for the rest of time. But he wasn't properly addressed as "Mr Governor" at any time after leaving that office in 2011, or "Mr Secratary" after stepping down in 1998.

Addressing him as Mr Secretary, Mr Governor, or Mr Congressman when he no longer held office was not appropriate. Governor is a higher rank than Ambassador, so while governing New Mexico, he would have been referred to as Governor Richardson. (Oddly, though, leaving the UN for the Energy Deptartment demoted him a step.)

So, rest in peace, Ambassador Richardson. You were a statesman.

One quick addendum: In some cases it may be appropriate to address a retired military officer by his or her title. Note this does not apply to people who muster out before retirement. Generally, people who remain on active duty long enough to reach O6 (Navy, Coast Guard, or Public Health Service Captain; Army, Marine, or Space Force Colonel) will retire rather than quit. It's very unusual for people to retire as O3 or O4 unless they were prior-enlisted and served 10 years or more before commissioning, which is why you will probably never call a retired officer "Lieutenant Jones." A retired captain may be addressed as "Captain Smith;" the guy who signed his DD-214 after two contracts is just "Mr Smith."

Annals of the mafia state

Since today is the last Friday of the summer, I'm leaving the office a little early to tackle one of the more logistically challenging itineraries on the Brews & Choos Project. So I'm queueing up a few things to read over the weekend:

Finally, via Bruce Schneier, a report on Mexican food labeling laws, how manufacturers have gone to absurd lengths to skirt them, and how these fights are probably coming the US soon.

Pigeons roosting, etc.

A few of them have come home or are en route:

Finally, climate change has made your favorite hot sauce more expensive, and will continue to do so until pepper farmers adapt their vines to the new reality, or move them.

Ranked-Choice Voting fail choosing a lunch spot

I'm excited in general about ranked-choice voting as a way to reduce polarization in the US. But recently I had the experience of trying to organize a lunch for a group of people where almost every method of vote tallying failed in some way. To protect the guilty, the indecisive, and the body politic of the United States, I've changed some of the details.

I really hate organizing lunch.

The setup

A group of people wanted to go to lunch. They whittled the options down to three:

  • Lefty's Beef. Big beefy sandwiches and fries cooked in beef fat.
  • Moderato's. Expansive menu of OK food, but we go here all the time and most people have gotten tired of it.
  • Righty Tighty Vegan. Lots of kale, coconut milk, and things with almond butter.

Sigh. Already you can see some of the issues. The final choice will disappoint and possibly enrage one or more people.

The ballots

Six people sent their preferences, with 1 being their top choice:

Place Allie Bob Carrie David Elaine Frank
Lefty's 1 2   1 2 3
Mod's 2 3 2 2 1 2
Righty   1 1 3   1


At first glance, Righty Tighty Vegan got a plurality of first-choice votes—but unfortunately not a majority. Given that Allie and Elaine didn't even put Righty on their ballots suggests some, ah, strong feelings about the place.

So the organizer decided to try a different method of counting.

Instant-Runoff method

Most states and localities in the US that use ranked-choice voting go by the instant-runoff method. Each round, the algorithm removes candidate getting the fewest votes, and then promotes the remaining 2nd-choice votes to 1st. Rinse and repeat.

In what has become our Mittagskampf, this means we eliminate Moderato's (which only got 1 vote) and promote the two 2nd-choice votes for Lefty's to first-choice. Now the results look like this:

Place Allie Bob Carrie David Elaine Frank
Lefty's 1 1   1 1 3
Righty   1 1 3   1

Lefty's wins, 4 to 3! Awright, let's get some BEEF!

Well, I don't have to tell you how Carrie and Frank feel about this, or how confusing Bob can get when picking lunch. (He might be a Libertarian.)

Plus, we haven't really solved the problem of polarization in American politics.

Promote everything?

OK, what if we promote all the second- and third-choice votes until we get a majority? After the first pass we get this:

Place Allie Bob Carrie David Elaine Frank
Lefty's 1 1   1 1 2
Mod's 1 2 1 1 1 1
Righty   1 1 2   1

Aha! Now we have Mod's with 5, Lefty's with 4, and Righty with 3. Except...still not a majority. And if we promote all the remaining 2s to 1s, we'll get Mod's 6, Lefty's 5, and Righty 4, which also doesn't seem fair.

To blazes with everything!

What happened here is that we the number of votes is a multiple of the number of options, so a deadlock is possible. Several other methods would guarantee a result of some kind, and incidentally favor Moderato's, but in no case would any of the choices break 50%. Basically, the Beef and Vegan camps will never agree on anything other than Moderato's, even though no one really gets excited about it.

However, unfortunately for some and to the delight of others, before we could figure out a fourth option, Gwen cast her vote and broke the tie. And then after Hank's and Irina's votes, we had another deadlock.

I really hate organizing lunch.

Wait, it's August?

While I fight a slow laptop and its long build cycle (and how every UI change seems to require re-compiling), the first day of the last month of summer brought this to my inbox:

  • Who better to prosecute the XPOTUS than a guy who prosecuted other dictators and unsavory characters for the International Criminal Court? (In America, we don't go to The Hague; here, The Hague comes to you!)
  • After the evidence mounted that Hungary has issued hundreds of thousands of passports without adequate identity checks, the US has restricted Hungarian passport holders from the full benefits of ESTA that other Schengen-area citizens enjoy.
  • The US economy continues to exceed the expectations of people who have predicted a recession any day now. (Of course, every dead pool has a guaranteed winner eventually...)
  • After an unprecedented 31 consecutive days enduring temperatures over 43°C, Phoenix finally caught a break yesterday—when the temperature only hit 42°C.
  • Jake Meador explores why about 40 million fewer Americans go to church these days than in 1995.
  • Remember how we all thought Tesla made cars with amazing battery ranges? Turns out, Elon Musk can't do that right, either.
  • American car culture not only gives us unlivable environments, but also discourages the exploration that people in other countries (and I when I go there) do all the time.
  • We should all remember (and thank) USSR naval Captain Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, who vetoed firing a nuclear-tipped torpedo at an American destroyer during the Cuban Missile Crisis 71 years ago.

Finally, Chicago historian John Schmidt tells the story of criminal mastermind Adam Worth, who may have been Arthur Conan Doyle's inspiration for Professor Moriarty.

A sense of place

Not Just Bikes shows the difference between places and non-places in ten short minutes:

Fortunately the part of Chicago where I live has a sense of place that he'd recognize, but you have to cross a stroad (Ashland to the east, Western to the west, Irving Park to the south, Peterson to the north) to get to another place like this.

I also can't help but think that a new culture will arise in a couple of millennia that will look at "the great American roads" as something to emulate. Maybe the Romans had culture critics arguing against expanding the 8-lane highways running through their cities too?

Atlantic thermohaline circulation wobbles

Back in 1990, journalist James Burke produced a documentary for PBS called "After the Warming," which looked back from an imagined 2050 to explain how and why palm trees came to grow in Boston. The framing device he used was to set the documentary as an explainer for an important report on the Atlantic thermohaline circulation study due to be released during the broadcast. I won't spoil it for you except to say as pessimistic as Burke was in 1990, he may have been, in fact, overly optimistic:

The Atlantic Ocean’s sensitive circulation system has become slower and less resilient, according to a new analysis of 150 years of temperature data — raising the possibility that this crucial element of the climate system could collapse within the next few decades.

Scientists have long seen the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, as one of the planet’s most vulnerable “tipping elements” — meaning the system could undergo an abrupt and irreversible change, with dramatic consequences for the rest of the globe. Under Earth’s current climate, this aquatic conveyor belt transports warm, salty water from the tropics to the North Atlantic, and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. But as rising global temperatures melt Arctic ice, the resulting influx of cold freshwater has thrown a wrench in the system — and could shut it down entirely.

The study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications suggests that continued warming will push the AMOC over its “tipping point” around the middle of this century. The shift would be as abrupt and irreversible as turning off a light switch, and it could lead to dramatic changes in weather on either side of the Atlantic.

The consequences would not be nearly as dire as they appear in the 2004 sci-fi film “The Day After Tomorrow,” in which a sudden shutdown of the current causes a flash freeze across the northern hemisphere. But it could lead to a drop in temperatures in northern Europe and elevated warming in the tropics, Peter Ditlevsen said, as well as stronger storms on the East Coast of North America.

Exactly: palm trees in Boston and the extinction of most food crops in Scotland, Scandinavia, and the Baltics. London in January may only have 6 hours of daylight but it rarely gets below freezing, even though it's at roughly the same latitude as Calgary. If the Atlantic stops bringing warm Caribbean water to the British Isles, the UK will have to invest in snow plows.

The main thing that Burke predicted in his film has come to pass, however: decades of inaction by politicians who have no incentive (other than having to live on the planet) for taking long-term action on climate change. And we're the worst offenders.

Calm moment before chaos

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...