This week’s newsletter: Celebrities are meeting the moment with a mixture of self-interest and evasion. Celebrities will not save us Read! Subscribe! It’s free!

The podcast Article of Interest did a fascinating podcast episode on the zipper. It's a complicated piece of technology whose existence is new and not a given - we had plenty of other fasteners - snaps and buttons. And while YKK is now the world's largest zipper maker the zipper was invented in NJ

“That incremental progress mirrors YKK’s founding philosophy, the ‘Cycle of Goodness.’ The principle — that no one prospers without benefiting others — has supposedly guided the company for decades” I hate that most American corporations operate under the opposite principle!

A distraught man came to Broadview searching for his wife of five years after she was taken by ICE at her court hearing. He wasn’t told anything, tracked her by her phone, and was left weeping in the parking lot.

I cannot emphasize enough how much Zohran Mamdani's campaign was very much about a platform focused on accountability, but also about having fun, fostering genuine connections with its citizens, and reminding people why they moved to New York City and should still want to live there

I would 100% watch a romcom called "A Charming Socialist in New York"

Call me controversial, but technology that leads vulnerable people into crisis and even holds their hand as they die by suicide should not be endorsed by schools and universities, we should not be giving discounted subscriptions to this monstrous tech to young people AT ALL

This is sad. I liked rifling through the almanac and seeing what's what.

I love this Shout out to CTA bus drivers *for real* who will help you figure out where you’re going (or even if you heed a different bus!) and get you there in one piece! I’m always so appreciative

These folks see it all. Maybe this would be a great anthro project…

"photos exist as pure images, unconnected to any author or production process" is the exact mindset that made it easy for AI-generated imagery to get a foothold in our culture

If you're going to make a post praising an incredible news photo, it's a real bad look when you don't include the photographer credit in the post.

Column: Forget the male loneliness panic. On TV, it’s women grappling with profound loneliness. Hollywood, it seems, is picking up on something that professional opinion-havers are not Some thoughts on "I Love LA," "Pluribus" and, yes, even the fizzy rom-com "Nobody Wants This" Gift link

He said there was no room to sleep. People sat up, slept on the floor, standing up. He saw many pregnant women there too. The conditions were unbearable. His wife is horrified by his account.

Her husband was at Broadview one month and she was never able to talk to him. Not until he was already in Mexico. He had been in Chicago for 20 years. Her husband shared that the numbers of people there were astounding. It just makes me think how many people that are not counted/just disappeared.

He said that the agents would throw food at them to eat. The agents threatened to withhold food for a week and to beat him up if he didn't sign deportation papers. He said he saw others refuse and get beaten/receive no food. He signed because he was afraid.

Her husband told her that detainees at Broadview had to get up at 5am to get in line for one bathroom. He often peed himself. One time he had to wait until 2pm to use the bathroom. You could only use the bathroom once a day. He said the agents would beat you if you used the bathroom on yourself.

A family friend was telling us about what her husband shared about his experience in Broadview before he was deported back to Mexico. She's been sharing to friends and family because she's just in disbelief & horror what her husband told her. She wasn't able to talk to him until he was in Mexico.

There are no words for how evil this is

(explaining an american car to a european) yeah so imagine if you were sitting in the back seat while driving,

Federal agents in Chicago are aggressive everywhere but they elevate this in the SW Side. They don’t just snatch people and leave. They linger longer, march down streets with guns, interrupt traffic flows. The attacks feel concerted to instill as much fear & display power over immigrant mhoods.

When I went to therapy my therapist said it was abuse and in fact said that intermittent praise and punishment is a known form of torture, like when you can't predict if a behavior will get you in trouble or not. I got lucky with a really supportive team my first job post NYT

New: Conde Nast fired four employees who were among a group that confronted the company's head of human resources on Wednesday over the decision to fold Teen Vogue into Vogue/recent cuts. Employees who were fired included journalists from the New Yorker, Wired, and Bon Appétit.

Link to source (She did "The Namesake" instead)

supermoon flyby 🌝✈️

Art: "The government is hearing speech it does not like and, instead of understanding that it's free speech, the government is calling it a riot. The government is calling it violence. The government is calling it terrorism."

Choosing to read this thread as if Columbo were on the case.

Pre-verdict verdict: this criminal defense attorney is setting new records in Fun Case

The lawsuit says detainees at Broadview face inhumane conditions and are denied access to lawyers, creating a “black box” where people disappear without contact. Detainees sleep on the floor for days, eat cold food, and have no access medical care. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/31/b...

After the blitz took off, we published an investigation of the horrid conditions inside the Broadview ICE facility. Yesterday, a hearing over those conditions took place after Illinois advocates filed a class-action lawsuit against immigration officials. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/04/b...

THIS. And a really cool system of publicly financed elections. Every one of these things kicks open the door a little wider for campaigns and voters.

There is nothing “radical” about wanting a more equitable city. About wanting to be able to afford rent. About seeing the gap between the rich and the poor growing beyond comprehension. Any mainstream media organization portraying these promises as such is doing a disservice to the industry.

I am grateful for that. And I'm grateful for organizers who pour themselves into electoral work, even though it's not my bag, because their work impacts mine downstream. I try not to be knee-jerk dismissive of electoralism, since it's all one big ecosystem. It all reverberates.

Election outcomes aren't a complete vision of a better world, and never will be, but they can alter the conditions under which the work takes place. The work is now likely situated differently than it was yesterday - especially in Virginia or Mississippi or NYC, but elsewhere, too, through ripples.

My final piece for @teenvogue.com politics section was a piece titled "There's a Steep Price to Ignoring Black Expertise" and boy has that come full circle. Thank you @allegrak.bsky.social and the politics editorial team for turning this Head Start kid into a Black woman who writes for the public.

What’s happening with the systematic layoffs of Black women at these corporations is a travesty. These racist corporate bosses have no integrity—and what’s crazy is that their brands will suffer.

OPINION by Jack Criss, air traffic controller: “After my shift, I don’t go home to rest. I clock into DoorDash, trying to make ends meet for my daughter and me.” READ MORE: www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day. certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

ICE pushes Chicago restaurants in immigrant neighborhoods into survival mode: ‘We are dying a slow death’

an example of what we mean when we talk about “car brain”: presupposing that every description of streets and street usage (i.e. traffic) is about cars and cars only. every time someone tells me that “traffic was terrible today” i stifle the urge to reply “you mean CAR traffic was terrible today.”

NEWS: Federal agents crashed with woman’s car, pointed guns at her, dragged her out by legs, tossed her in a minivan, held her and (eventually) let her go without charges. This as Chicagoans say the immigration blitz is out of control. (DHS blames her.) www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/03/c...

I think it's helpful to think of these bloated security details as only partially stemming from a practical concern with safety - I think the model of Roman lictors, or attendants, around a magistrate (the ones who carried the fasces, rods and axes) is applicable.

In Netflix’s “A House of Dynamite,” Chicago is the target of a nuclear attack In real life, Chicago is also home to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 by people involved in the Manhattan Project to warn us about these very risks I talked with them about the movie’s themes Gift 🔗

I think some people post/re-post every story they deem important and upsetting. That's fine. That can also result in an exhausting and unpleasant feed to follow because it becomes an unending series of "here's another terrible thing" Presumably some people do the opposite for this very reason!

This comes up a lot in terms of frustration around a lack of awareness wrt TV/film premieres I've written a lot about how in the old days you could gain awareness of new stuff thru osmosis when everyone watched primetime TV (and saw the same ads) ditto radio ads and print newspapers with big ads

THIS One question that always silently pops up in my head is: WHO are you following? (It's usually not any or very few people of color!) Your feed is self-curated, sometimes you have no one to blame but yourself!

pink chicago

I wonder if some of the frustration people feel is rooted in an expectation that social media will have an equivalent "pre-empt normal programming" feel when something big happens But that's not how social media functions except in rare cases

Gorgeous sunset over Chicago