This demonstrates one of the key findings of my own work on creating and dissolving local govts. We create laws (or govts) for a purpose, but never consider what to do when that purpose isn’t there anymore. Legislatures should clean things up periodically, but they have no incentive to do so.

Well worth your time.

In my experience, few Tyler implementations go as planned (frankly, few ERP implementations go as planned regardless of vendor), so this delay should have been anticipated and planned for. The fact that it wasn’t when hundreds of other govt depend on this revenue is unacceptable.

I added a “via” field to my @obsidian.md default clipping template. Because you should know who, if anyone, recommended something to you. And if it’s good, maybe drop them a line and say thanks—particularly if it’s helpful to working something out.

Real talk: urban liberals, by and large, don’t send reporters credible death threats when said reporter says something mildly uncomfortable about them.

@escapecollective.bsky.social thoughts: what if Tadej won all three grand tours and just rode off after the Vuelta, never to be seen again? I’ll take it further. What if he wins all three, doesn’t stop at the last stage of the Vuelta, keeps riding, gets in a car, and disappears into oblivion?

My wife is watching White Christmas for the first time, and this one of the first times I cannot read her.

School boards matter as members' policy priorities—but not their demographic and professional identities—drive major shifts in spending, leadership, and student achievement, from Barbara Biasi, Minseon Park, John D. Singleton, and Seth D. Zimmerman www.nber.org/papers/w34590

SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, GREG. I welcome a society organized around Sour Patch Kids.

The STAR bond program that will allow the Chiefs to move across the state line to Kansas City Kansas has become a giant credit card for all the communities of Kansas. It has really brought out my inner Grinch! www.kansascity.com/opinion/read...

App recommendation, if you're on a Mac. If you're annoyed by something that macOS does, chances are you can tweak it with this app. My two favorites: actual cut and paste of files, and clicking an app on the dock turns it grey and hides all instances of the app.

In case you don’t know the geography of Kansas, the bottom portions are the richest parts of Kansas—hands down. If they don’t want this, there’s a good chance of it not happening.

Folks, battleships have a lot of stairs. And I don’t even go on the biggest ones! I guess I don’t have to workout today.

I’ve apparently lived in the Midwest long enough that I’ll take endless fields of corn and beans over endless the pine forests of the South any day.

Called it, sorta.

It’s always wild to me that the moonscape that is Mont Ventoux is man-made. It was systematically stripped of its trees for shipbuilding starting in the 12th century.

Negative split VO2 max intervals, 8x4 minutes. 🤮 How’s your day? (I secretly love these.)

In case you’re wondering how in-demand some local govt jobs are, a not insignificant number of places (and a lot are smaller) are hiring executive search firms for assistant department head jobs.

I'm trying to get better at tagging all my references in Zotero so I can find things faster. I have references sorted into folders, but that leaves out a lot of cross-cutting things. I finally managed to get a query to show me untagged references. 1,004. 🤢

Every time I even think about the news.

"No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law" Article 1, Section 9.

Something tells me the Whiting or Hammond Bears doesn't have the same ring. (East) Chicago Bears.

Not quite sure I’d call it rural (DeKalb is in the Elgin Metro Division of the Chicago CSA), but if you take Roosevelt out of the city for long enough, you’ll run right into this. On the left before the train tracks.

Niche, but could be helpful for some of you. iPad mini, this app, USB-C-to-HDMI mini capture dongle—headless server monitor, when you need it (I often do). Or you can use it as a remote camera monitor. Or with a Switch.

Things I should be doing: Grading Things I am doing: Going through a massive infrastructure upgrade on my home server

For some reason, I have been thinking about how I would explain my tech stack to someone else (no idea why). It used to be horribly complicated. Now it's just R/Positron, Obsidian, Things3. I can do nearly any project with just that.

Always fun when the feels like temp outside never gets above 0°F (-20°C).

Between this and Tyler buying up all the other public sector enterprise software companies, there’s a huge need for publicly funded or FOSS public sector IT infrastructure. If FEMA wasn’t a mess, they’d be perfect to lead something like this (on the public safety side).

I'm catching up on some older, bookmarked pieces. This one, from right before the incorporation of Starbase, TX, is a fascinating time capsule.

👇

I was attempting to build this another way (using a 3rd party app with a subscription), so the newly added (for Catalyst supporters, soon(ish) to everyone else) functionality in Obsidian mobile is very welcome. Capture quick notes and images, then append them to a specific note.

The beta of @obsidian.md mobile added quick add to bookmarked notes via Apple Shortcuts. I have been looking for ways to streamline conference notes. So, now I can bookmark a conference note, run a shortcut, and append text (and images via some icloud trickery) to a note without opening the app.

It is odd that IL hasn't even attempted to comply with Hennepin. Even more so because the General Assembly has done other things to reform the tax lien process, but left the sale component out.

This is a bit like discovering `plot.title.position = "plot"`

I ignored the strip.clip argument in #ggplot2 for way too long 😲 Combined with a small negative margin tweak, you can place facet labels inside each panel. A tiny trick that makes small multiples feel so much cleaner. 🔵 no manual coordinates 🔵 inherits theme styling 🔵 scales nicely when resizing

Oh hey, new KOTOR game.

I have gotten so annoyed with the many BibTeX interpreters that I just write the code. I know the rules roughly, but that doesn't stop shenanigans.

This is a Cleanshot X (a screenshot and screenshot annotator app) appreciation post. Creating lectures is much easier when I can combine a screenshot and annotations in a single step.

Special district dissolution (in Lake County, IL) in the news (opinion). Drainage districts are a weird one in IL—largely a rural land management thing (preventing flooding of farm fields), but also exist in more urban areas for historical reasons.

The joke is on them. The roads in Indiana already aren't being paved. (Quite literally. There's a stretch of 65 with signs that say something to the effect of "your tires aren't flat, it's the road.")

It'll be very interesting to see which places decide to adopt a local grocery tax once revenue starts flowing to those that adopted before the Oct 1 deadline for the Jan 1 disbursement. Mundelein creates local 1% grocery tax — but revenue won’t arrive for months

Am I finally going to learn how to use OBS for real? Missing @lukestein.com on here for this stuff.

It's really insane that this little launcher app is so good. I really don't get it.

I built this whole Apple shortcut to look through my calendar, find the next Zoom meeting, and join it (plus turn on my light and start Audio Hijack). And that functionality is just built into the Raycast calendar app/applet/whatever.

Phenomenal.

Call for papers: The annual Municipal Finance Conference @brookings.edu (July 2026) . Looking for papers on the muni bond market and state and local fiscal and economic policy issues. www.brookings.edu/centers/the-...

🔥🔥🔥 ❤️ Chicago