Things that changed yesterday

Now that I've had a good night's sleep and the sun is out for the first time all year, I have the energy to start reading the news again. On January 2nd, most of the stories are about things that have changed since Wednesday:

• Chicago had 416 murders in 2025, the lowest number recorded since 1965 when the city had 620,000 (23%) more people.
• In 2025, the hottest temperature recorded at Inner Drive Technology WHQ was 34.3°C (93.7°F) on June 23rd; the coldest was -20°C (-4°F) January 21st. Officially at O'Hare, the temperatures were 34.4°C (93.9°F) and -22.2°C (-8°F), respectively.
• MTV, which used to stand for "Music Television," shut down its last music-only channel Wednesday night, signing off with "Video Killed the Radio Star," the song that inaugurated the network on 1 August 1981.
• The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority introduced a bunch of new fare rules and payment options starting this Sunday, eliminating the Metro card in favor of tap-to-pay trips (free after the 12th trip in any 7-day period!) and paper tickets on the Long Island and Metro-North Railroads. (I'm tossing around the idea of visiting NYC for a weekend this winter. I do miss it.)
• Illinois now allows physician-assisted suicide and cocktails to go (unlikely to be used by the same people), requires group insurance plans to cover IVF and other medical procedures, mandates libraries keep Narcan on hand, lets 7th and 8th graders enroll in high-school-level classes for credit, requires Medicaid to cover and pharmacists to dispense contraceptives and day-after pills, and designates the soybean as the official state bean.
• The following works entered the public domain in the US yesterday: Betty Boop, As I Lay Dying, Silly Symphonies, the films All Quiet on the Western Front and Animal Crackers, the songs "I Got Rhythm," "Georgia On My Mind," and "Dream a Little Dream of Me," the original recordings of "Yes Sir, That's My Baby," "Everybody Loves My Baby," and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," and paintings by Piet Mondrian, Theo Van Doesburg, and Paul Klee. In some parts of the world where the copyright term is only 50 years after the author's death, the works of Hannah Arendt, Chiang Kai-shek, Rod Serling, and Thornton Wilder are no longer protected. In Europe and the UK (life +70 years), Dale Carnegie, Albert Einstein, Charlie Parker, and Arthur Honneger entered the public domain.

I will now shift my attention to the new blog engine, where I have two more stories to complete for comment moderation before I publish the link to the dev/test environment here. Stay tuned.