Events

Oh, where to begin? I'll start with the article of most use to actual people: Bruce Schneier outlines Zoom's sloppy security, bad privacy, and questionable labor practices that might make these things worse. (And yet, I'm probably going to subscribe today...) Jared Kushner, the Milo Minderbinder of 2020, has inserted himself in the White House Covid-19 response, and immediately made those efforts even less effective. (Note that Goldberg's column originally had the headline "Jared Kushner is going to get...

I missed an important one yesterday: on 2 April 2000, I moved back to Chicago from New York. And a less important one, but interesting nonetheless: On this day in 1860, the Pony Express started expressing. The Daily Parker will return to our ongoing festival of awful later today.

The Atlantic's Megan Garber looks at how the popular floorplan can make people crazy, which is what you get when architecture follows dudes liking TV shows with sledgehammers: The popular open layout, for example, eschews walls and other spatial divisions in favor of openness, airiness, “flow.” (“Look how everything flows!” Brian Patrick Flynn, the designer of HGTV’s Dream Home 2020, says in a promotional video.) On the plus side, an open floor plan allows for constant togetherness. On the minus side …...

More than 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance last week (including 178,000 in Illinois), following the 3.3 million who filed the week before. This graphic from The Washington Post puts these numbers in perspective: Hotel occupancy has crashed as well, down 67% year-over-year, with industry analysts predicting the worst year on record. In other pandemic news: Testing in Illinois shows about 20% of the 34,000 people tested have come up positive for SARS-CoV-2, which is about the same as...

Chicago Tribune architecture critic offers an alternative to sitting on your couch and bingeing Netflix: Here’s a suggestion: Go out for a stroll and take in some architecture. Walks are allowed under Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s stay-at-home order. You just have to be sure to maintain the social distancing that public health officials say is essential to halting the spread of the deadly virus. If you know where to look, you might come across something fabulous. Not too far from where I live, for example, is...

I had plans to do the Blogging A-to-Z challenge this year as I've done the last two, but reality intervened. In theory I have more time to write than last year. In fact I didn't have the energy required to plan and start drafting entries mid-March, for obvious reasons. Things have stabilized since my office closed on the 17th, and I've gotten back into the swing of working from home every day. But I feel like a full 26-post series this month would not rise to my own standards of quality for permanent...

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker extended the state's stay-at-home order through April 30th, which came as absolutely no surprise, as the state nears 6,000 total COVID-19 cases. Rush Hospitals predict 19,000 total cases in Illinois a week from now—far less than the 147,000 they predict would have shown up without the stay-at-home order. In other news: During the Obama administration, the Health and Human Services Department paid $14 million to a Pennsylvania firm to manufacture low-cost ventilators that we...

Goldman Sachs released an economic outlook this morning predicting GDP growth of -9% in Q1 and -34% in Q2, along with 15% unemployment by June 30th. Both Calculated Risk and Talking Points Memo believe the recovery will take longer than the slowdown. In other words, we won't have a V or an L but probably something more like a U with a wide bottom. I looked at some figures of my own. Looking at 4-week moving averages, as of Sunday my spending on groceries is up 37% from the period between January 27th...

Just a few articles of note today: The City of Chicago urges residents to call 311 to report non-essential business remaining open. President Trump admitted on "Fox & Friends" this morning that adopting common-sense election reforms would mean "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." (Unless, I suppose, they changed their policies to match the mainstream, right?) The Times reports on General Motors' efforts to produce 2,000 ventilators a month (an order-of-magnitude change from...

And now, Adult Storytime brings you Brenda's Beaver Needs a Barber: