Lunchtime links

Today's beautiful sunrise has not brightened the news from around the world:

• The OAFPOTUS has successfully used his rancid personality to discourage foreign leaders from visiting, further eroding our international status and soft power.
• In a stunning demonstration that cryptocurrency's only customers are criminals and gamblers, Binance admitted that North Korean thieves made off with $6.3 billion this week in the biggest cryptocurrency theft yet recorded.
• Chicago's 138-year-old Heartland Alliance is shutting down, in large part because of the OAFPOTUS and Clown Prince of X making unlawful cuts federal funding to human services.
• The New York Times answers the question 60,000 runners will have this weekend: who actually measures the NYC marathon?

Finally, I'm traveling to the Bay Area next week, and one of the meetings I had planned to take there got cancelled due to a death in the family. I am sorry for their loss. At the same time, this gives me an entire day to myself with a full Clipper Card and an uncomfortable interval since my last Brews & Choos Project update in July. Since I'm once again staying in Millbrae, I checked out some breweries on the BART Yellow Line in Oakland and got recommendations from a friend of a friend who lives there.

But then it occurred to me: the whole point of a Clipper Card is that it works on just about every mode of public transit in the region. Like, for example, ferries and trans-bay buses. And the Sonoma-Marin Train. Which goes to Petaluma¹. Where Lagunitas lives alongside three other breweries, a distillery, and a cidery. So after a few minutes of research into schedules, mainly to confirm that I won't get stranded on the wrong side of the Golden Gate, I have planned an excursion to Sonoma County that might even include a 5-kilometer hike down the SMART Pathway.

So if the forecast of 23°C temperatures and sunny skies holds, the Brews & Choos Project might go on quite an expedition next week. Stay tuned.