Events

Welcome to stop #34 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: One Lake Brewing, 1 Lake St., Oak ParkTrain line: CTA Green Line, Austin Time from Chicago: 21 minutesDistance from station: 200 m Carved out of a 1920s-era bank building right on the border with Chicago, One Lake Brewing has an unusual, multi-level space with a pleasant rooftop beer garden, good food, and great beers. On Sunday, a friend and I trekked out to Oak Park to try a few beers there. From right to left in the photo above, I tried the...

Smoke from the wildfires out west reached Chicago yesterday: It’s not unusual for smoke from various regions to reach northern Illinois, especially from larger fires, according to Mark Ratzer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Chicago-area office. Smoke from fires hundreds of miles away can billow high into the atmosphere and get carried to other regions by jet streams and winds aloft, causing cloudier skies and slightly cooler temperatures. Mid- and upper-level winds were carrying...

Just a few of the things that crossed my desktop this morning: Astronomers have detected phosphine gas in the clouds on Venus, which is a strong indicator of life. Astronomers have also detected a ping-pong-ball-sized black hole orbiting the sun, getting as close as 133 kAUs in its orbit. An aircraft made a precautionary landing on an Interstate in Tennessee, and got a full police escort on take-off. No one was hurt. Car manufacturers are teaming up with insurance companies to share data on almost every...

The sun came out today for the first time since last Sunday, it seems, so I plan to spend most of my day outside. But I have these to read as I sip my morning tea: Historian Mark Bray lists "five myths about antifa." An NPR-PBS investigation has found that the oil industry has lied for decades about plastic recycling, meaning most plastic you toss in your recycling bin just gets buried with your trash. Robin Wright asks, "is America a myth?" What do gender-reveal party disasters tell us about ourselves?...

When you ran out on me six months ago, I thought I would never see you again. I looked everywhere, high and low, north and south, but I couldn't find you. I went online, searching even the darkest corners of the web to see if someone—anyone—could deliver you to me, but alas, no one could, not for any price. I nearly gave up hope of ever holding you again. And then today, there you were! You and your sisters, sitting in the last place we met almost a year ago, looking just like the first time I saw you....

Here we go: A wildfire currently burning north of Sacramento has become the largest in California history. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr Anthony Fauci doesn't expect us to get back to normal until "well into 2021." Law professor Rosa Brooks reviews Bob Woodward's Rage and finds nothing surprising. The Kissimmee Star Motel outside Orlando, Florida, is a case study in the state's abrogation of its basic duties to its citizens, or the apotheosis of the Calvinist ethics...

"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...