There's so much eye-opening stuff in the 300MB UP-NS STB filing, but a big one are the two railroads' 2024 traffic density maps, which really show how much more concentrated NS' network is as legacy PRR from Chicago. Almost every new intermodal service will bypass Chicago for southern lanes

NYT when a trans man wants to take testosterone: 😡😡😡😡😡 NYT when a cis woman wants to take testosterone: 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

Abandoned small-scale grain elevator+power line stretching into the distance=telltale signs that a Midwestern interurban was Once Here. Here, the Fox & Illinois Union Rwy, outside Morris, IL hickscarworks.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-... www.google.com/maps/@41.430...

This is what they’re comfortable doing on camera, not enough people internalizing that part.

Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

Santa has returned to his chrysalis, his grim work done. Soon new Santas will emerge from the husk, driven only by their lust for jolliness

no place in hell hot enough

DON’T. PRINT. LIES. IN. THE. NEWSPAPERS. Every damn day. It’s exhausting.

I knew Bluesky would find the Deep Space 9 connection

Hallmark make the movie challenge where a girl from a small town goes to the big city for the holidays and has her perception permanently altered by a James Turrell light installation at the contemporary art museum

If Vince Guaraldi had known the actual A Charlie Brown Christmas assignment: "Compose iconic score that people will love forever," he could have been intimidated. Instead, "Write music for weird show CBS might not even air" probably freed him up to do his best work.

Here's to all the Chicagoans who showed up for our modern Mary and Joes this year, with street corner whistle watches and everyday mutual aid and gas masks at Broadview. In a very dark year we made our own light with and for each other. Merry Christmas y'all.

Some Christmas Eve content from Chicago’s 2nd ward alderman

the other thing i post every xmas is this about charlemae hill rollins, an influential chicago librarian and her anthology “christmas gif’,” a collection of stories, poems and recipes from black authors (i think the langston hughes poems were new) www.chicagomag.com/city-life/de...

BREAKING: sparked by a mass exodus of X users in protest of a new function that feeds images to Generative AI for other users to edit, for the first time since April 8th, Bluesky gained more than 55,000 new users in a day. There are still 6.5 hours to go before the @bskycheck.com counter resets.

john waters' 1995 christmas card with steve buscemi as him

charlie brown christmas gave me unrealistic expectations about moody searchlights

CBS destroying a brand they built up over the course of like 100 years for one criminal idiot is a pretty funny bit

laughing my ass off at what my mom renamed our family group chat tonight

looked like there was a soil sampling rig in use today at the empty lot across from the congress theater

I count 10 cities in 2025 that are on track to have the fewest murders since at least 1970. Newark is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1956 (though only have data through Oct this year) and San Francisco is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1942.

Given the ludicrous decisions handed down by the court thus far, how much is this them drawing the line at the National Guard specifically and how much is some of them finally realizing which way the wind is blowing and that Trump is a loser and increasingly a liability?

jesus the Palm Beach Police really sought arrest warrants against underage Epstein victims for coming forward and cooperating, and (purported) admitting to crimes, and it caused the victims to become uncooperative with the federal investigation

no notes

that the Whos celebrate Christmas suggests some knowledge of Christ, but whether this is our anthropic Christ or a distinctive Who-Christ remains obscure; some have argued Christianity was introduced to them during their refuge with Horton, which of course turns us to the matter of Elephant Religion

I've always loved this concrete building at 326 S. Milwaukee Ave. Libertyville, but don't know any history beyond its construction in 1985. It's currently vacant after housing a bicycle shop for years.

if I had started pocketing a nickel every time we as journalists conceded a bad faith argument in good faith in order to appear objective but ended up actually deferential… actually yeah I’d be rich

this game is an escort mission for the colts. they have to gain yardage in small chunks and wait for philip rivers to walk up to the line. every couple minutes he spits out some dialogue like "hurry – we have to reach the satellite uplink so we can deliver evidence of the ambassador's wrongdoing"

This second term feels like a gruesome Make A Wish

About 25 of these memorials went up in Rogers Park over the past few days, marking the spots where our neighbors were abducted by armed, masked government agents. This sign is at the end of our street. You don’t have to go far to find another one.

My Neutral Milk Hotel cover band that performs in Detroit Pistons jerseys is called Ron Holland, 1945

watching the CECOT 60 Minutes segment that CBS suppressed, it’s striking that Weiss specifically called out as unnecessary some of the most rigorous investigative work in the segment, including an explanation of how it was done (by human rights researchers)

there wasn't a ton in the production file for this postcard of the kohl & madden factory (now the south loop binny's), but i guess it was mildly interesting that the customer (ink manufacturer) asked to remove the jefferson street streetcar tracks

60 minutes CECOT segment. Recorded through my browser. HD quality. Not phone. Spread it around. If you're press, it's yours. Go nuts. It's streaming on a Canadian website, but there is no telling for how long. www.filemail.com/d/wkcdttnacp...

Watching the spiked 60 Minutes episode on YouTube, thanks to @phillewis.bsky.social. It's not like the Trump admin didn't have its say. At about 4:15 mark, there is footage of Trump saying CECOT was "great facilities, very strong facilities" www.youtube.com/watch?v=lenF...

Interesting 180° difference in how the Illinois AG handles wage theft versus, say, “organized retail theft,” which includes a multi-agency “task force,” $5 million per year to cops for spy tools, a PR machine, & tons of low-level arrests for property crimes, while biz owners stiff workers & walk.

i remember hearing that the beer temple building was once a theater, and i guess the shape is still there, but interesting to stumble upon confirmation

should chicagoans start walking around like people from las vegas and arizona, “but it’s a dry cold”

I love tossing a “thanks boss” to the bus driver to give em a little boost for our journey.

We've got a book of toxic wallpaper that can kill (arsenic I think). It was made as a reference to avoid toxic wallpaper but I guess when they made it they didn't think about the fact that the samples were also toxic

Green Card holder, living in the U.S. since she was 11, put in ICE detention for 5 months because she bounced a check decades ago.

Sajewski Music Store, 1227 Milwaukee Ave 📸: Carl Fleischhauer, 1977 this is that building whose neglect by an asshole landlord almost killed a woman when the facade fell off in 2022

Chicago just sold off its unpaid ambulance bills to debt collectors, to pay for an 8% increase in the police budget

the one thing that i don't think Bari Weiss (the fucking moron) recognizes is the fact that if there's one the press loves, it's about reporting on internal reporter drama

Worth noting, I guess, that inside of a year we've gone from administration officials taking selfies of themselves at CECOT and bragging about how it's hell on earth to now getting their horrible little media worms to kill stories about it

Recall that Byers is the reporter who, according to Ryan Lizza, was the only one out of a dozen who was willing to print a negative story Nuzzi was trying to plant about him

The CTA told me traffic keeps wasting bus operator time so I asked how many bus operators they have and they said they just go to the job fair and get a new operator afterwards so I said it sounds like they're just feeding bus operators to traffic and then bus riders started crying.

Perhaps we should film a debate between a concentration camp guard and an abandoned toilet over whether CECOT is good. Brought to you by Bank of America.

Absolutely no one is worth the bullshit that comes along with all this. Especially with the insane bullshit the administration and ICE is bringing to Chicago every day