Updates
- Originally published, November 13, 6:24 pm.
- November 13, 10:32 pm:
- The full District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals declined Donald Trump’s request to rehear a case in which a panel ruled that Congress may have access to Trump’s tax records.[1]
Domestic spying
Darryl Coote, “Judge rules against indiscriminate searches of smartphones, laptops,” United Press International, November 13, 2019, https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/11/13/Judge-rules-against-indiscriminate-searches-of-smartphones-laptops/1711573628714/
As of 6:59 am this morning, the low temperature at Pittsburgh International hit 12 degrees, which breaks the previous low temperature for the day set in 1911. #RecordLow #PAwx
— NWS Pittsburgh (@NWSPittsburgh) November 13, 2019
A point of order: According to Wikipedia, Pittsburgh International did not exist in 1911. “The new airport construction began in 1946 and opened in 1952.”[2] Unless a weather station existed at that site in 1911, the comparison is likely flawed. Their response:
We are comparing it to the entire Pittsburgh office climate record, which dates back to 1874. This record includes previous locations where the official Pittsburgh observation was taken, extending it beyond the existence of the airport.
— NWS Pittsburgh (@NWSPittsburgh) November 13, 2019
Which is all to say that it is a different location. Is this really a valid comparison?
— David Benfell, Ph.D. (@n4rky) November 13, 2019
It turns out they do have a methodology for dealing with this situation, although the Threadex page is, for me, uncomfortably vague about how they do it, and I would prefer to see specific information about how they extrapolate historical temperatures for the area now occupied by the Pittsburgh airport.[3]
So today, the roads were white from all the salt they’d laid down. Even though the roads were dry, it splattered onto the sides of my car.
It turns out that my car wash does an underbody treatment as part of their “ultimate” car wash. I have this on a monthly plan and I’ve been getting my car washed almost daily. Hopefully between that and the underbody treatment I got a few months ago, there won’t be too much corrosion. But this part is really sickening: I now know how all the horrible corrosion damage I’ve seen on cars around here got there. Even benign neglect would be catastrophic.
Donald Trump
Ann E. Marimow, “Congress can seek 8 years of Trump’s tax records, court order indicates,” Washington Post, November 13, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/congress-can-seek-eight-years-of-trumps-tax-records-appeals-court-rules/2019/11/13/b4fc8002-fc07-11e9-8906-ab6b60de9124_story.html
- [1]Ann E. Marimow, “Congress can seek 8 years of Trump’s tax records, court order indicates,” Washington Post, November 13, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/congress-can-seek-eight-years-of-trumps-tax-records-appeals-court-rules/2019/11/13/b4fc8002-fc07-11e9-8906-ab6b60de9124_story.html↩
- [2]Wikipedia, s.v. “Pittsburgh International Airport,” last modified November 12, 2019, 09:04 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_International_Airport↩
- [3]“[Threadex] Project Background,” Applied Climate Information System, October 2, 2019, http://threadex.rcc-acis.org/help/about.html↩