The Daily Parker

Once every seven years (on average), Christmas and New Year's Day fall on successive Wednesdays. Most other Christian holidays get around this problem by simply moving to the nearest Sunday. I guess the tradition of celebrating the church founder's birthday on a fixed day relates to birthdays taking place on fixed days. So we get Wednesday off from work this week because, well, that's the day tradition says he was born. This is, of course, despite a great deal of evidence in their own holy books that he was born in the fall, in a different year than tradition holds, and with only speculation about which calendar ancient Judeans used at that point.

All of that just makes this a weird work week followed by an annoying work week. Weird, because with most of my new team in the UK, tomorrow's 10 am CST stand-up meeting will have relatively poor attendance (it'll be 4 pm in the UK), and I've decided to bugger off on Thursday and Friday. Most of my developers—especially the UK guys—simply took the whole week off.

At least the ridiculously light work load gives me time to read these while I wait for confirmation that a build has made it into the wild:

• The Economist ran a spot-on, must-read column on the 12th, explaining how the OAFPOTUS winds everyone up without actually doing anything he promises—or threatens.
• That said, Timothy Noah finds evidence that the OAFPOTUS and his government-for-billionaires cabinet has already started destabilizing the economy.
• Jennifer Rubin rolls her eyes at Democrats trying to find "common ground" with the OAFPOTUS: we're the goddamned opposition!
• Times education reporter Sharon Otterman interviews rare and embattled centrist Israeli and Palestinian students at UCLA.
• Paul Krugman, now writing on Substack after retiring from the Times, warns about America's growing gambling addiction and its threat to the economy.
• The City of London plans major roadway changes to promote more pedestrian and bike traffic.
• Drew Magary has his annual "hater's guide to the Williams-Sonoma catalog" that you must read over a nice casserole.

Finally, a while ago a good friend gave me a random gift of an Author Clock, which sits right on my coffee table so I see it whenever I'm sitting on the couch. She just sent me a link to their next product: the Author Forecast. Oh no! They found me! Dammit, take my money! Bam: $10 deposit applied.