Events

"The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model" is worth the 10 minutes it'll take to read. Of course, after that, you'll be back in reality.

I've had an unusually busy (and productive!) day, so naturally, the evening reading has piled up: Adam Weinstein says the president "is the military-industrial complex", explaining something of his effect on active-duty military personnel. Ivan Krastev explains why the pandemic has not helped authoritarians as one might think it would. (Hint: authoritarians usually "solve" problems that they have created themselves.) Ed Yong thinks "America is trapped in a pandemic spiral." Graceland Cemetery in...

This is the view from Half Moon Bay, Calif., not far from the CZU Lightning Complex Fire, at 9am this morning: Update: The same reader sent this photo from noon PDT: Fires continue to burn all over the state despite some modest cooling from this weekend's record temperatures. The California Air Resources Board notes that the increased frequency and severity of these fires, like the increased frequency and severity of other weather-related incidents, comes directly from climate change. The image seems...

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany blamed the Obama Administration for promising a Covid-19 vaccine and not delivering. Since Covid-19, named in part for its discovery in 2019, didn't exist when either Obama or Biden last held office, the proper response to such an assertion is to laugh in her face. In the past, a White House spokesperson making up crap as she went along that could not possibly be true would have ended her career, for the simple reason she'd have no credibility and...

Yesterday, Woodland Hills, Calf., a neighborhood in Los Angeles, recorded its hottest temperature ever: As a historic heat wave left Southern California broiling, Woodland Hills on Sunday recorded an all-time high of 49.4°C, which the National Weather Service said was the hottest temperature recorded at an official weather station in Los Angeles County. It broke the old record of 48.3°C set in July of 2006 and was one of several records to fall on Sunday. The NWS said Riverside hit its highest...

Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for the Washington Post and former New York Times public editor, warns news agencies against adding to what will most likely be a chaotic election night: This time, with the stakes of the election so high, news organizations need to get it right. They need to do two things, primarily, and do them extraordinarily well. First, in every way possible, they must prepare the public for uncertainty, and start doing this now. Granted, the audience doesn’t really show up in...

With 58 days until the election, the noise keeps increasing. Here's some of it: Jeffrey Goldberg reports from multiple sources that the president referred to wounded soldiers as "losers" and "suckers" for serving the country. The administration moved quickly to lie about this. Andrew Sullivan calls the president a "metastasizing cancer." Catherine Rampell suggests ways to talk to right-wingers about the president's failures. Nick Martin asks, "how did 'if I die, I die' become this country's mantra?"...

As planned—exactly as planned, if I may pat myself on the back a bit—I took a walk yesterday. To wit: the first thing I did immediately upon turning [redacted] years old was to walk an entire marathon. And I did it in the Chicago Marathon course time of 6:30*: * Unfortunately, my course time was 7:11, which is 41 minutes too long. My goals were distance first and pace second, course time third, because I knew (a) my pace would be around 9:00/km and (b) I knew I'd need more than 10 minutes of rest along...

I woke up this morning to a beautiful early-autumn morning: 16°C, low humidity, clear skies, and a gentle breeze. Parker celebrated by eating a live cicada, which made the mistake of buzzing when he sniffed it. My plan today? Starting as close to 9:09 am as practical, I'm going to walk up to Lake Bluff, about 42 km. Full report when I recover.

My birthday is Saturday, but owing to leap years and that I was born early in the morning, I'm actually turning [redacted]—[REDACTED]!—at 9:09 am Chicago time tomorrow. See, Earth revolves around the Sun every 365.24217 days, you see, so if you take the time and date I was born ([redacted]-09-05T[redacted]) and add [redacted]*365.24217 days to it, you get 2020-09-04T14:09, give or take a few seconds. So today is my last day in my [redacted - 10]s. And yet I don't feel a day over [fraction of redacted]....