Events

Of all the things in the New York Times today, the fact that a census found 2,373 squirrels in Central Park made my day. Parker's too, no doubt, though he has trouble comprehending numbers larger than 2.

I finally got 7 minutes to watch this. I'm still crying. But in a good way, unlike the people in the room: Enjoy.

Not that anything has happened lately... Now that we've all but declared war on Eastasia Iran, maybe we can remember for just a second how deadly accurate their missiles have gotten lately? Michelle Goldberg points out the obvious: we have arrived at the nightmare phase of President Trump's administration. Crain's notices craft beer sales have started to level off—possibly because people already drink about as much beer as they can hold—and says the sky is falling. Australia's unprecedented fires create...

Not that anyone was surprised, though many I'm sure were disappointed: A handful of marijuana dispensaries around Illinois halted recreational weed sales over the weekend and plan to remain closed to the public for part of the week as they deal with product shortages. Legal weed sales kicked off in Illinois on Wednesday, and customers spent almost $3.2 million at dispensaries that first day. It marked one of the strongest showings of any state in the history of pot legalization. Second day sales reached...

We're having unseasonal warmth in Chicago this weekend—5°C instead of -5°C as we'd usually get—so I spent a good bit of today walking around. And I'll continue to do so later. Also, I didn't really want to think about Iran. Come back tomorrow for more scary posts on the imminent end of the world.

Peter Nichols, writing in The Atlantic, points out the problem with President Trump's credibility gap: Trump faces the gravest foreign-policy crisis of his tenure at a time when his credibility has been shredded. It’s not yet known how Iran will respond to the killing yesterday of its military leader Qassem Soleimani, but the country is already vowing “harsh” revenge. A conflict that has been escalating steadily on Trump’s watch is at risk of erupting into an armed confrontation. In times of war...

Yesterday, the United States assassinated Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps and its elite Quds Force. While this may feel tactically advantageous, it makes no sense strategically. Even as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters today that the assassination made the world a safer place for Americans, his own department ordered Americans to leave Iraq immediately, and our forces overseas went on high alert. President Trump appears to have taken this...

Yesterday I spent a few hours at the Begyle Brewery Taproom and read about half of Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea. I just finished it. It delighted me, and I think it might delight you. So one book in two days? Maybe I can read 180 books this year? Not likely. A short novel by a playwright may not take a long time. But I'm only a third the way through Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, and I started that in June.

As marijuana sales became legal (-ish) in Illinois yesterday, budding demand became overwhelming demand even before the stores opened: Weed shops around the state opened at 6 a.m. to throngs of people. Cars packed the streets of a light-industrial park in Mundelein, home to the state’s busiest dispensary, Rise, owned by Green Thumb Industries. It’s one of the few that’s open in the northern suburbs. When CEO Ben Kovler arrived at 5:30 a.m., there were more than 500 people lined up in the parking lot....

Every part of the world has now entered the '20s. There is a "UTC-12" time zone for ships at sea traveling between 172°30'W and the International Date Line (180°E/W), which as you might imagine is 12 hours behind UTC. So at noon UTC on January 1st, it's midnight UTC-12, and the whole world has the new year on their calendars. The last inhabited places to get here were the Hawai'ian Islands two hours ago.