The Daily Parker

Cassie and I hung out for a bit at Spiteful Brewery yesterday. She, of course, got pats and love from everyone. But the couple sitting next to us had a Land Camera, so she also got photographed:

These are now on display in my library.

The time since March 2021 has both dragged and flown. But I would have had a much worse time without this lovely mutt in it:

She adapted to her new situation well: I took this photo about half an hour after she came home.

I'm hoping for at least 10 more years.

The rain has stopped, and might even abate long enough for me to collect Cassie from day camp without getting soaked on my way home. I've completed a couple of cool sub-features for our sprint review tomorrow, so I have a few minutes to read the day's stories:

• Matt Ford doesn't think US Representative Marjorie Taylor (R-GA) wants secession so much as uncontested Republican rule, which, you know, is on brand for her and her party.
• San Francisco native Michael Moritz worries that one-party rule by the Democrats is hurting the city—and the Party. (Seeing a pattern here?)
• Stars & Stripes highlights a vignette from 1952, when then-Lt. Jimmy Carter helped Canada dismantle a failed nuclear reactor.
• Financial advisor Caz Craffy dissipated hundreds of thousands of dollars from Army life-insurance payouts in a case that highlights the Department of Defense's difficulties screening civilian advisors for soldiers, sailors, and Marines.
• Chester, Pa., a suburb just south of Philadelphia, drove itself into bankruptcy in part because of a useless $77m highway project.
• The Guardian outlines how Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific have spent millions on lobbying and propaganda to advance the kinds of business practices that led to the East Palestine disaster this month.

Finally, Friends of the Chicago Harbor Lighthouse hope to tap into National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act funds to turn their organization's namesake into a museum. That would be cool.

Cassie does not like staying inside because of the rain:

Christopher Hitchens may have pissed off a lot of people, but I can't dispute the wisdom of that quote. And today, we have a story out of (where else?) Florida, where a fundamentalist Christianist college woke up and discovered that one of the King's Singers "openly maintained a lifestyle that contradicts Scripture:"

The King’s Singers, a Grammy Award-winning British a capella vocal ensemble, announced Monday that their planned concert at Pensacola Christian College was abruptly canceled two hours before the show due to “lifestyle” concerns.

In a statement posted on their website, the group stated that the Feb. 11 concert was due to “concerns related to the sexuality of members of our group.”

“We have performed at Pensacola Christian College before and we entered into the engagement in the knowledge that this is a fundamentalist Christian Institution. Our belief is that our music can build a common language that allows people with different views and perspectives to come together.”

Pensacola Christian College provided a more in-depth justification for the cancelation in a social media post on Monday, stating that the college cannot “knowingly” endorse anything that violates Scripture.

I sincerely hope none of the faculty members there wears garments weaved from two different threads.

Because this sort of thing pisses me off, here's a photo of Cassie from Sunday night, after we walked hither and yon all day:

She has the right idea.

Yesterday, Cassie and I walked about 11 km and ended the day sitting outside at Spiteful Brewery. In February. Today the weather looks about the same (right now it's 12°C at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters), but between work and rehearsal tonight I can't just sit on my porch reading. Dang.

The forecast predicts it'll stay below freezing from Thursday night until Saturday lunchtime, but hey, it's still February. One March-like day during this stretch of April weather doesn't bother me.

Here we have a typical mid-March temperature profile for Chicago:

Of course, that's not from mid-March, that's today. It got up to 9.1°C at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters, without a cloud in the sky, and it looks likely to do the same tomorrow. Cassie got a 5 km walk earlier today and I plan to do 7 km tomorrow.

Consequently I won't spend a lot of time banging away at my keyboard this afternoon. Probably not much tomorrow, either.

I finished a couple of big stories for my day job today that let us throw away a whole bunch of code from early 2020. I also spent 40 minutes writing a bug report for the third time because not everyone diligently reads attachments. (That sentence went through several drafts, just so you know.)

While waiting for several builds to complete today, I happened upon these stories:

• The former co-CEO of @Properties bought 2240 N. Burling St., one of the only remaining pre-Fire houses in Lincoln Park, so naturally the asshole wants to tear it down.
• Robert Wright thinks former CIA Director William Burns' 2008 analysis of Russian President Vladimir Putin demonstrates how leaders should use cognitive empathy to understand people.
• Radley Balko debunks the right-wing idea that affirmative action had anything to do with Tyre Nichols' murder.
• Transport for London is expanding the Ultra Low Emission Zone to include all London boroughs as of August 29th. Cars that don't meet the standard will cost £12.50 to operate in the zone—or you can get money to scrap them.
• Apple watches keep calling 911 when their owners go skiing. Oops.
• Maybe parking garages will finally go away?
• WaPo has a map of all the snow we've gotten (or not gotten) this year.
• The new 4K restoration of Casablanca just went into my Amazon shopping cart.

Finally, a school district food service director ordered more than 11,000 cases of chicken wings worth $1.5m over the last three years, which the State's Attorney says never got to the kids.

And now, since the temperature has risen from this morning's -17°C all the way up to...uh...-11.4°C, I will now walk the adorable creature who keeps nosing me in the arm as I type this.

It got practically tropical this afternoon, at least compared with yesterday:

Cassie and I took advantage of the no-longer-deadly temperatures right at the top point of that curve to take a 40-minute, 4.3 km walk. Tomorrow should stay as warm, at least until the next cold front comes in and pushes temperatures down to -18°C for a few hours Thursday night.

I'm heading off to pub quiz in a few minutes, so I'll read these stories tomorrow morning:

• London plans to build an elevated rails-to-trails park through Camden, similar to Chicago's 606 Trail and New York's High Line.
• Julia Ioffe outlines how Russia's pariah status has hurt their ability to spy on the West, but says we shouldn't rule out Russian shenanigans as their failed invasion of Ukraine grinds on.
• Via Schneier, a government audit found that people suck at choosing passwords. But we knew that.
• Molly White read all the FTX subpoenas so you don't have to.
• The contractor responsible for bits of the CTA's Brown Line Flyover falling off claims to have fixed it.

OK, off to empty the dog, refill the dog, and scoot over to Sketchbook Skokie for a shellacking. (Our sports person can't make it tonight.)

Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Black Hammer Brewing, 544 Bryant St., San Francisco
Train line: Caltrain, San Francisco terminal
Time from Chicago: about 4½ hours by air
Distance from station: 600 m

I spent most of Monday in Palo Alto, Calif., one of the few places in California that has an actual commuter rail station. Caltrain's northern terminus, at 4th and King, is only three blocks from an actual brewery, so naturally I stopped in.

My $20 flight started with the Jaded River ESB (5%), a West Coast interpretation of English bitter ale that tasted good to me but had a stronger hop concentration than any Real Ale I've had over there. Next I tried their flagship Western IPA, the Kaleido APA (6%), which had a big flavor for something billed as an APA, with lots of hops and just the right amount of malt. I'm sure you can pick out the Cuddle Puddle NEIPA (6.1%), with all that hazy, Citra goodness, that actually tasted a lot lighter than I expected. I finished with the Vesuvio DIPA (8.1%), a huge beer that sneaks up on you before you get a small explosion of grapefruit, orange, and what I can only describe as Humboldt County mother nature.

Special mention goes out to this guy:

Growler—and what a name for a brewery dog—kept flirting with me before deciding that I didn't have any treats on me, even though my coat pocket smelled just like the bacon nibbles I carry for Cassie. So after someone put him on the barstool across from me, he stared. And stared. And willed me to bring him a treat. Because he knew that the bartender had a whole box of them, and at some point, I would crack and bring him one.

He was absolutely right.

Beer garden? Sidewalk, covered
Dogs OK? Clearly
Televisions? Two, avoidable
Serves food? BYO
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes