Events

More than 200,000 people have died of Covid-19 since we started paying attention six months ago. Let me put that into perspective: The columns represent the total number of deaths for each event (blue) or per year (gray). The line represents those deaths on an annualized basis. At 400,000 deaths per year, Covid-19 now ranks as the third leading cause of death in the US for 2020 after cancer and heart disease. We're on course to have 133 9/11s or 12 times our usual number of car crash deaths just this...

Tropical Storm Zeta formed in the Atlantic on 30 December 2005 and almost became a hurricane on 2 January 2006. When Zeta finally dissipated on January 6th, it ended the most active Atlantic hurricane season in recorded history, and also one of the most destructive: category-5 hurricanes Emily, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma caused incredible damage and loss of life throughout the US. The season also included three unnamed tropical depressions and an unnamed tropical storm. That season, Tropical Storm Alpha...

Welcome to stop #36 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Alter Brewing Co, 2300 Wisconsin Ave., Downers GroveTrain line: BNSF, Belmont Time from Chicago: 48 minutes (Zone E)Distance from station: 800 m Ah, the suburbs. Sometimes you can find a brewery down a stroad and along another stroad in a light-industrial park on the outskirts of an outskirts town. Alter Brewing Company's Downers Grove taproom will never appear on the National Register of Historic Places. But it appears on the Brews and Choos...

The cartoonist and author behind Hyperbole and a Half has returned with a new book, which I should receive tomorrow. This news offsets pretty much all the other news from today: Author John Scalzi, who lives in a very red, rural county in Ohio, has a depressing report about mask-wearing in his area. Wisconsin is back on Illinois' shit-list for its rapidly-increasing Covid-19 case load. Olga Khazan says the 200,000 Covid-19 deaths (officially, as of today) signal a "failure of empathy." Wired has the...

The GOP panic to fill the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat makes three things absolutely clear: first, they expect to lose bigly in six weeks; second, they realize they're against public opinion; and third, they realize that public opinion is continuing to turn against them. In short, this is quite literally their last chance to get a SCOTUS seat for a generation. You know what? Everyone else is sick of their bullshit. We're going to win both houses and the presidency, and then we're going to...

Choral board meeting followed by chorus rehearsal: all on Zoom, and as president and generally techy guy, I'm hosting. After a full day of work and a 5 km walk. Whew. So what's new? David Corn advises the Democratic Party to "go nuclear." Greg Sargent views the malarkey from Republican senators and the president as unmasking their "vile game." The CDC abruptly withdrew guidance warning about the airborne spread of Covid-19, which could not have more obviously come from political interference. Democratic...

Welcome to stop #35 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Two Brothers Roundhouse, 205 N. Broadway, AuroraTrain line: BNSF, Aurora Time from Chicago: 81 minutes (Zone H)Distance from station: At the station In 1856, the nascent Chicago & Aurora Railroad built the first roundhouse in Illinois in the small city of Aurora. It served as a locomotive shop and storage facility until 1974, then abandoned, even as it won a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Flash forward to 2011 when...

In just the last week, three iconic Chicago restaurants have announced permanent closures: Southport Lanes, Fat Willy's Rib Shack, and Lawry's The Prime Rib. I'm having beer at Southport Lanes this afternoon and ribs for dinner Thursday. Lawry's, I'll see you before the end of the year.

The official death toll in the US for Covid-19 has passed a milestone Deborah Birx predicted back in March: In the predawn hours of March 30, Dr. Deborah Birx stepped in front of the camera on the White House lawn and made an alarming prediction about the coronavirus, which had, by then, killed fewer than 3,000 people in the United States. "If we do things together, well, almost perfectly, we can get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities," Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task...

Yesterday evening I wrote that the only appropriate response to the Republican Senate putting another Federalist Society pretty boy on the Supreme Court (or, really, anyone other than Merrick Garland) would be to revisit 28 USC §1, i.e., passing a simple statute to increase the size of the court and thereby dilute its right-wing majority. This was also Josh Marshall's first thought: We are here because of the Republican party’s increasing unwillingness to accept limits on political action. To up the...