new: last week, the cook county board signed off on sheriff tom dart's request to nearly double the size of his flock license plate reader network. it came despite revelations the agency worked with the controversial company for years without an agreement and as other cities are ditching the tech.

My writing teacher was really interested in why I keep writing about health insurance instead of writing about being sick. We talk about exploring things that "hold a charge" and A LOT is about health insurance. We were wondering if that was me struggling to write about being sick...maybe.

I'm reviewing a draft of this thing I wrote and am really excited to share when it's released but here's a stat I forgot about and am sitting with this morning: 44 of IL's 102 counties are more than 90% non-Hispanic white.

This Weds May 20th, attend a free webinar about hosting zine programming in your library! "Cut, Paste, Create: Designing Memorable Zine Workshops" will include tips for running the most exciting, accessible, & engaging zine programs possible. washstatelib.libcal.com/event/16793329 📚 #zines

get Flock out of your community, now. once again grateful to City leadership for finally seeing the light, even if y’all did ignore us when we warned you about this shit before you installed it.

DENALI* HAS PUPPIES!! *not me. The National Park I'm named after.

Happy first day of filing for Chicago School Board candidates. Of the 20 member seats, half have more than one candidate who filed on day 1. Of the ten seats that currently have one candidate filed all are filled by incumbents, 5 appointed & 6 elected. Only 1 district has no incumbents filed (mine).

Right now I'm running and refining a little thing I wrote that I use to look at blue state primary candidates and pull large donors of theirs who also donate to the NRSC and the NRCC (party committees that help keep Republican majorities in the Senate and the House.

LETS DO THIS!!!!

If you're reading this, my cat and I have boarded a one-way flight out of the United States. The Trump administration wrongfully denied my work permit renewal; after months of demanding that they follow the law, we have run out of legal recourse, and I have no choice but to leave the country. (🧵)

We are watching the movie GOAT and they are correct that the real villains in sports are team owners and your own aging body.

If anyone has thoughts and recs about things to do in and around Yellowstone, let me know! We are going in July and today is the day I finally sat down with all the travel guides and did a bunch of planning.

There's a person in a hot dog costume at Chicago Dogs games who has always been super nice to my kids and today I found out that she is just a super fan and she does this for the love of the game. I thanked her profusely bc we need more of this in the world.

It started with just 3 Flock cameras in the city of Verona, Wisconsin. Now the county board is shutting down dozens more Flock cameras used by the sheriff.

I found this album on vinyl while cleaning out an abandoned house with some friends and hung it on the wall of my bedroom as a teenager bc it was so obviously a cursed object. Used to always joke it would make a great triple album with Frampton Comes Alive bc I was 15 and gross.

When your phone autocorrects a typo of "How are you doing" To "How are you FOIA"

My employer is hiring a senior editor for higher education! The office is based in New York but we're fully remote (I'm in comfy sweats in Maryland rn) Here's more info, DM me if you have any questions! Deadline is 5/28, please repost and share: hechingerreport.org/jobs/

new: without any debate, the cook county board of commissioners votes to approve a $1 million expansion of sheriff tom dart's flock license plate reader network. this comes even after revelations dart ran the program for years without a contract. voting no: commissioners anaya, vásquez, stamps

Detroit’s transit bus schedules are often out of sync with school bus schedules, resulting in long commute times for many students, an Outlier Media analysis found.

Life as a non PhD researcher...

Today I asked a doctor, a pastor, and a mom from around the block if I will ever be ok (open ended) and they all had great stuff to say. Sometimes you have to ask a question you know no one can answer to get answers you don't know how to ask for.

We're back for the 3.9th annual AANHPI Ride for Solidarity with our friends at Family Style Run Club. We're riding from Ping Tom Park to Asia on Argyle. 8:45a Meet up 9:10a Departure from Ping Tom Park 9:45a Lincoln Park Zoo 11:00a Arrival at Asia on Argyle

At the doctor and today is the first time I heard about having a "prepay" for an appointment. The consent to treat form also let me know I should ask all providers if they work for my medical group bc sometimes there are providers who don't and insurance won't cover it. Great job, everyone.

Whenever I work somewhere for over a year I start trying to talk them into letting me write a demography piece and it almost always works.

During the age of the token, one of the more difficult challenges for New York's transit system was “slugs.” A slug is a coin or object that resembles the shape or weight of a genuine currency. Some riders would avoid payment by fooling the turnstile or farebox into accepting slugs as paid fare.

I worked on a cool thing with some great colleagues and now it's out. This brief is about early childhood integrated data systems and why we should treat them like public infrastructure instead of tech/tools. (Sometimes I write stuff that isnt posts!)

And this is coming on top of years of elevated inflation. Grocery prices are up more than 30 percent since the pandemic began. Overall consumer prices are up even more than that.

Even worse than just dropping coverage: "More than one in five people who enrolled in health insurance through HealthCare.gov during open enrollment and in the weeks immediately following were dropped from coverage for failing to pay their first month’s premium" Up from 12% last year, a big jump.

Last I heard Illinois will be counting people at home in its next redistricting. Does anyone know if this is going to happen?

modern “data-driven” policing is predicated on the surveillance of our communities in the name of safety and accountability. police say “trust us” as they roll out invasive technologies with no guardrails or evidence that they even work. chicagoreader.com/news/reader-...

“Co-workers wouldn’t eat with him. They would say, ‘You are impure, untouchable.’” NY bill confronts caste discrimination at work & in public institutions, reports @yashicadutt.bsky.social. South Asian New Yorkers spoke of losing jobs or being turned away from places of worship because of caste.

some really, really exciting news. we're hiring a two-year reporting fellow to cover higher ed in NYC but especially CUNY!! come work with me and dive into an amazing, complicated and under-covered beat

🚨NEW: The Supreme Court has vacated the second Milligan decision and remanded the case to the district court for reconsideration in light of Callais. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

1) Find your Cook County commissioner by clicking below, then 2) let them know you oppose Dart's covert expansion of automated surveillance

It's not surprising that our sheriff is trying this, but the county board still has a say, so it's not too late. If our local elected officials can't see the inherent dangers in a massive expansion of AI-enabled surveillance during this rise of authoritarianism and fascism, what's it going to take?

Tom Dart do your actually-existing job challenge: failed once again

Milestone, the company that owns Briefcam, also runs live surveillance video of Texas election officials claiming that it's a "perfect example" of surveillance tech solving "real world challenges" Except that this large tech expenditure is fueled by the desire to cast doubt on election integrity

new: sheriff tom dart is quietly pitching the cook county board on two new surveillance systems that could be approved as soon as thursday. dart wants $2 million for a software that uses ai to monitor the jail’s cameras for drug use and nearly $1 million for more flock license plate readers.

I told somebody today that I liked their "intellectual discernment" and I feel like we don't hype people up enough for this trait

"The gleeful victimization of poor people in America feels very very bad to me as a person who is very into Jesus Christ" is something I am on the record saying.

Hang out with me and Ben Joravsky while you're Mondaying around!

Dinner at Super H Mart bc these fools know I love a supermarket food court

There's a 3 square mile area around my house that includes FIVE different districts for elected school board (1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A). On top of that district boundaries are different than the last election (last time there were 10, each with 2 sub districts and now each sub is an election district).

"TODAY IS A DAY FOR MOMS TO RELAX BUT THEN THERES NO ONE TO HELP AND I DONT KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING." - exhausted crying 5 year old

This Mother’s Day, nearly 150,000 mothers will spend the day apart from their children. 58% of all women in U.S. prisons are mothers. 80% of women in jails, including many who are incarcerated awaiting trial simply bc they can’t afford bail. Read: www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/03...

Let the record reflect that I do not consume energy drinks and also this is exactly my vibe.

CDPH has undergone MAJOR restructuring including dismantling the dedicated Maternal, Infant, Child and Adolescent Health division they rolled out in 2023. They've cut back so much and what I had heard is that it was bc grant $$ ran out.

My dad is a civil engineer who specializes in emergency management, I study public administration, and my son is super into meteorology. Stuff like this gets all of us flipping out at once and let me tell you none of us are well people.

So much of this is nuts. The 1970 California fire season is a big part of FEMAs origin story. Also the flood insurance recs here come almost directly from talking points and lobbying from the National Association for Realtors.

We just went to Lowe's to get lightbulbs. For Mothers Day my husband is replacing a bunch of lightbulbs in our house bc all our lights are slowly burning out and I can't see things well and at some point I realized this is sort of the plot of Gaslight (but not really).