Putting "No Meetings" on my work calendar

First, an update on Cassie: her spleen and lymph cytology came back clean, with no evidence of mast cell disease. That means the small tumor on her head is likely the only site of the disease, and they can pop it out surgically. We'll probably schedule that for the end of June.

I have had an unusually full calendar this week, so this afternoon I blocked off three and a half hours with "No Meetings - Coding." Before I dive into finishing up the features for what I expect will be the 129th boring release of the product I'm working on, I am taking a moment to read the news, which I have not had time to do all day:

• Inae Oh reminds everyone that, while the Clown Prince of X may have departed his blatantly unlawful role in the White House after failing to achieve any of his stated objectives, he has nonetheless made everyone's life worse.
• Sherron Watkins and Cynthia Cooper, the two whistleblowers who blew up the spectacular frauds at Enron and WorldCom in 2001, warn that the GOP plans to make spectacular fraud great again by eliminating the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
• Jennifer Rubin laments the OAFPOTUS's foreign policy malpractice.
• The administration's shift of national-security assets toward Stephen Miller's pogrom against immigrants has hobbled our efforts to combat domestic terrorism, forcing the states to make do with far fewer resources.
• David Ignatius believes that "the way to end the Gaza war has been clear for nearly a year," but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to stop fighting for purely domestic political reasons.
• King Charles III's visit to Canada this week was "an audaciously disjunctive event," writes The Guardian's Martin Kettle. "[T]he modern British monarchy has stood up and demanded to be counted, doing something new and perhaps genuinely consequential."
• NPR's Steve Inskeep remarks on how his interviews with polarizing figures like US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Republican über-troll Steve Bannon have been received by other media outlets.

Finally, the city of Chicago has started formal negotiations with the Union Pacific Railroad to acquire an abandoned right-of-way on the Northwest Side—that Cassie and I walked on just a week ago and that my Brews & Choos buddy and I used to get to Alarmist back in November 2023. The project still requires a few million dollars and a few years to complete. Still, the city also is talking about building a protected bike lane along Bryn Mawr Avenue in the North Park and Lincoln Square Community Areas, which would connect the Weber Spur with the North Shore trail just east of the Chicago River. For the time being, the UPRR doesn't seem to mind people walking on their right-of-way, though technically it's still private property. But that trail will be really cool when completed.

And now, I will finish this feature...