Events

Yesterday was sunny and 25°C. Today it's not as sunny and not as warm, but still hike-worthy. So that's what I'm about today. Tomorrow it will rain all day, so expect more postings then.

Today I'll try to avoid the most depressing stories: The North Shore Channel Trail bridge just north of Lincoln Avenue opened this week, completing an 11 km continuous path from Lincoln Square to Evanston. Experts warn that herd immunity (a) is an economic concept, not a health concept and (b) shouldn't apply to humans because we're not herd animals. Wisconsin remains in total chaos today after the state supreme court terminated Governor Tony Evans' stay-at-home order, approximately two weeks before...

The bascule bridge over the Chicago River at Michigan Avenue turned 100 today. The Chicago Tribune has photos. Also: The Tribune explains how the various Covid-19 tests work, and where Illinois is in getting them to people. Seems I'm not the only one who thought a combination between GrubHub and Uber might not fit in with US antitrust laws. A new book says the US would lose a direct military confrontation with China, because they're set up to fight a different war than we are. Turns out, the 4-3...

Just when you thought the Republican Party couldn't become more anti-science and pro-profit (at the expense of workers), the Wisconsin Supreme Court just struck down Wisconsin's stay-at-home order on a 4-3 party-line vote. If only that were all: Jennifer Rubin points out that "Trump's abject hypocrisy shows us where he's failed." Not only has Trump "lost the plot," he "has no plan," according to two articles this week in The Atlantic. How is this news cycle different from all other news cycles? The US...

This is a wonky post about tax law and at the same time a pissed-off post about political advocacy under cover of "neutral" commentary that takes advantage of people's ignorance of a nuanced area of law. Bruce Willey, an Iowa-based tax lawyer, claims in a pearl-clutching post on Kiplinger that recent IRS guidance on Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness "could bankrupt small businesses:" On April 30, late in the evening — when few people were likely paying attention — the IRS released...

My day kept getting longer as it went on in a way that people living through the pandemic will understand. So I didn't have time to read any of these yesterday: The Chicago Tribune produced six charts that explain the pandemic's economic effects. Rolling Stone identifies the four men most responsible for our current calamity. The Washington Posts lists six takeaways from Dr Anthony Fauci's testimony before the Senate today. Consumer Reports helps you avoid Zoombombing. The New Yorker describes the...

So, this just happened: Are these the better angels of our nature? Nah, but they're still cool:

Harvard Medical School epidemiologist Julia Marcus argues that "quarantine fatigue is real," and it may be healthier to start relaxing self-isolation (for many people) than to continue it: Public-health experts have known for decades that an abstinence-only message doesn’t work for sex. It doesn’t work for substance use, either. Likewise, asking Americans to abstain from nearly all in-person social contact will not hold the coronavirus at bay—at least not forever. I’m not talking about the people who...

I read the news today, oh boy: Close to 2,000 former Justice Department and FBI officials called on Attorney General William Barr to resign, which he won't do because he's this close to total world domination. Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security Mary McCord agrees. Chicago will open six new Covid-19 testing sites around the city in an effort to get to 10,000 tests per day. Pilot-journalist James Fallows says "air travel is going to be very bad, for a very long time." Cranky...

So believes NYU media professor Jay Rosen about how President Trump will try to win this fall: The plan is to have no plan, to let daily deaths between one and three thousand become a normal thing, and then to create massive confusion about who is responsible— by telling the governors they’re in charge without doing what only the federal government can do, by fighting with the press when it shows up to be briefed, by fixing blame for the virus on China or some other foreign element, and by “flooding the...