The last cold morning of 2025

Cassie and I went out right at sunrise (7:14—two more weeks before the latest one of the winter on January 3rd) just as the temperature bottomed out at -10.5°C (13.1°F) after yesterday's cold front. Tomorrow will be above freezing, Sunday will be a bit below, and then Monday through the end of the year looks like it'll be above. And the forecast for Christmas Day is 11°C (52°F).

Meanwhile, as I sip my second cup of tea, these stories made me want to go back to bed:

• As much as we want to ignore the OAFPOTUS, his vicious stupidity has real-world consequences we can't ignore.
• Anne Applebaum read the OAFPOTUS's National Security Strategy as "the longest suicide note in American history."
• The United States Dept of Defense skipped the Halifax International Security Forum this year, where attendees expressed that they can't ever trust us again after the past year's insanity.
• Chicago has lost several of its favorite vegetarian and vegan restaurants since the pandemic as middle-aged Millennials drift back towards meat.
• Writer Scout Brobst wonders, "why do movies keep repeating the same joke about the afterlife?"
• Jeff Maurer only liked five things in 2025, which seems like a lot to me.

Finally, the Chicago Bears football team have thrown a tantrum about not getting enough state money to move from Soldier Field (which the City built in 1924 and the City and State paid to renovate in 2002) to a new facility in suburban Arlington Heights, Ill. They're now threatening to move to Indiana. Oh yeah? You're a private, for-profit enterprise that has benefitted from my tax dollars as long as I've paid them in Chicago, and now you want more because you don't like the stadium we paid to renovate (and partially destroy) 23 years ago? Bye, Felisha.

Oh, and another thing: I had a really good conversation with one of the designers at my day job about the software I built from 2020 to 2024, and how I can tweak some small things about it to make it much more usable and modern-looking. I took what she said to heart and applied them not only to Weather Now but also to the blog engine I'm writing. Between all the PTO I have to take between now and January 5th and the actual holidays and weekends in between, you will very likely see the fruits of those labors very soon.