The most recent update, dated July 2, 2019. The city: Chicago.
Today: "Chicago mayor faces huge budget shortfall." Data points:
- deficit / budget gap for 2020: $1 billion
- nation's third largest city: annual budget of $10 billion
- servicing debt costs: $2 billion
- Chicago: largest net pension liability of any major US city: $40 billion
- the estimate had been ... $30 billion
- complaint: "wealthiest residents, wealthiest corporations need to pay their fair share."
By the way, that $40 billion pension liability. That's not the complete story. From the zerohedge link:
Chicago has four city-run pension funds that collectively face a $42 billion shortfall. The Chicago Public Schools’ pension fund is short another $24 billion.
In all, there’s a $70 billion shortfall in the city-based funds alone.
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Dinosaur Notes
(in progress)
The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, Steve Brusatte, c. 2018.
Permian-Triassic extinction: world's most severe known extinction event, 252 million years ago. A bit of irony:
- the frogs survived that extinction event, and are now facing another extinction event
The therapsids.
From wiki:
The Gorgonopsia ("Gorgon faces") are an extinct suborder of theriodonts. Like other therapsids, gorgonopsians were at one time called "mammal-like reptiles" in classical systematics; the term stem mammals or proto-mammals is currently preferred.End of the Permian: just before the age of dinosaurs -- 252 million years ago
- end of the Permian, top of the food chain:
- slimy salamanders bigger than dogs
- pareiasaurs: stocky beasts; four-feet; knobby skin, front-heavy build, generally brutish appearance; appearance of "mad reptilian offensive linemen
- dicynodonts: rummaged around in muck like pigs; sharp tusks to pry up roots
- gorgonopsians: bear-size monsters -- top of the food chain, eating pareiasaurs and dicynodonts
- just before the dinosaurs
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