This sucks :(

“Steel in the architect’s mental world,” 1931 ad for the consultancy for Steel Use, showing steel from churches to furniture and airports

There is some wild lightning arcing happening right now on the far south side

"Is this an actual political belief large quantities of real people in the real world could/do hold, or am I arguing with the same 500 extremely online people who annoy me, also an extremely online person, online," the most pertinent political question for every pundit/poaster in 2026

Exact Time, Ford City Mall

I brought my camera bag downstairs about two weeks ago and Sepa immediately claimed it as a perch, so I've been guilted into keeping it on the living room side table in perpetuity

earlier

I learned over the weekend that Gangnam Market inexplicably sells several varieties of cheese curds

If I had a million dollars to spend on a home, this one might just convince me to move back to Green Bay and pretend to care about the Packers. Somebody has poured massive money into this place, in a small city where this level of restoration work is uncommon to see. www.trulia.com/home/902-s-m...

I know it's coming every single time and it makes me cry every single time

thinking of getting together with 200 of my closest friends and riding motorcycles around your block

Firefox updated and rolled out a new feature (split tabs) that I clicked through to learn how to do because it's useful to me, and it occurred to me that over the last year or two of various software updates I haven't once felt compelled to follow the Learn More button because it's all been AI stuff

The new Boots Riley movie is soundtracked by tUnE-yArDs so sign me the fuck up

Hey Siri, find me a link to illustrate the fact that home ownership in China is more complicated than Certain People think.

Not the nicest way to talk about all the children of Lincoln Square's fortysomething former hipsters who had kids a little late because there was a moment in the early 2010s when they thought their band was gonna make it

I need a New Yorker to explain why West Midwood is north of Midwood and South Midwood is northeast of Midwood

lake forever problems for now

made a bot that posts the things people say that get them blocked

Squandered a perfect opportunity to say "touching grass"

One of the very worst things that can happen to one's legacy is that they become a highway in Chicago

Somebody has gone to great lengths to place hundreds of red Solo cups in the overpass fence spanning the Dan Ryan Expressway at 43rd to spell out an important message, and that message is "WHO TF IS DAN RYAN SIR?"

Important CST reporting on the AYAGDOS study at Northwestern:

Godspeed You Black Emperor! - F# A# ∞

Me outside during third false spring vs. me inside after third false spring goes away

LUMPY-JAWS GOING TO QUARANTINE

Yael's post demonstrates something about digital privacy/security that I think a lot of people miss: there is no right answer, just a series of trade-offs. And every person has to make their own decisions avout which trade-offs are worthwhile. blog.yaelwrites.com/options-for-...

Sometimes interesting buildings get built without fanfare, without a writeup. Like this unusual conversion of vacant medical suites into a large home and a small law office about five years ago - expanding on the existing building's lines and using similar brick to create a tower at one corner.

Presuming this DPD video series wasn't animated in house, who was brought on to put it together? I like the choice to cardboard boxify local vernacular building styles; it's cute.

Found some photos I took during Slow&Low in 2017. Not sure what film stock I was using with my K1000. I miss the fest being outdoors in Pilsen rather than at Navy Pier, but I get why a large indoor venue makes sense - especially since organizers shifted to holding the event later in the year.

Obviously the types of political action that I take at this moment in my life, surrounded by my particular cohort of peers, are good and right, and anybody taking different sorts of political action are wrong and ineffective, and if we all just did what my friends and I do everything would be better

Roseland Station post office (John C. Bollenbacher under the supervision of Louis A. Simon, 1935) has two siblings in Chicago - Pilsen Station and Logan Station - but none of them still have their original front doors. Roseland just got new doors after the previous set was damaged.

After a comedy of errors involving one dishonest eBay seller, one eBay seller who lost track of their inventory, and one honest eBay seller, I finally have a new pair of decent earphones just in time for my old ones to give up completely.

Grateful to live in a city where stuff happens but it's also still possible to rent an entire house for $1,500/mo

TIL about the history of Merrimac Park as "Kolze's Electric Grove"

Obsessed with this 1918 Program for IWW’s “GRAND PICNIC AND RE-UNION Of All the Radicals of the City of Chicago” H/T to @gldivittorio.bsky.social for sharing elsewhere

I'm getting ads for a touring event called MatchaFest and they're making me instantly crotchety because it looks like one of those events that's just a series of Instagram backdrops in a parking lot, where the actual thing that the event is ostensibly about comes second to posting about being there

In addition to being great factual reporting, this does a really good job of disambiguating all the things that get hustled in under the header of "AI," and the various sociotechnical and historical points at which that term has been used to mean those different things.

Really interesting use of workplace safety provisions in contract language by UNITE HERE Local 11 - whose membership includes many staff at SoFi Stadium and hotels serving the upcoming World Cup

Is that...oh my GOD

I wonder if Markiplier's audience is still mostly young people, or if it's devolved into a group of 25 to 35 year olds chasing the nostalgic melancholia of a school night stuck at home with no homework left to do and nowhere to go

"...we found that, nationally, two-thirds (66.25%) of all Somali noncitizens with an open immigration court case were scheduled for a hearing with a new judge on short notice."

you don't need AI to make a great graphic

"According to Ivan Man, a Century 21 realtor active in the neighborhood since 2008, the price per square foot of Chinatown retail space has risen on average from $70 to $96 per square foot over the past five years—a 37% increase."

Finally ran across this one neighbor who's notoriously cruel to people for no reason. Walking back to my house and I say "hi" on the sidewalk as we pass each other, and she replies "of all the places you could've chosen to fucking walk", like what? It's my block??? We're outside my house???

“A chatbot did not kill those children. People failed to update a database, and other people built a system fast enough to make that failure lethal.” Really well-written & thought-provoking piece around the human collateral of decades of “friction reduction” in military targeting.

This article has already gotten lit up all day for victim blaming scooter riders, but in particular I'm unhappy with how the interviews with family members get subsumed into that narrative. Their anger is clearly directed toward the driver who fled the scene, but that's not centered in the coverage.

Newly for sale in the neighborhood: this house has been in one family since the 1950s, very nearly half of its 143-year history. They're asking more than they're likely to get with the updates that a buyer will probably want, but it's one of the larger "skilled craftsman" Pullman rowhouse layouts.

"...the decision indicates that Parker and her son . . . have actually been living with the commissioner’s fiancé, Charles Bell, in a luxury high-rise in River North . . . her board materials were being sent there." The sloppiness of the situation offends almost as much as the fraud itself

Excited to put on my Technically A Public Official hat tonight and take some FOIAble notes for this Park Advisory Council meeting

Interesting question from @crayolapenguin.bsky.social: did anybody who worked on Le Voyage dans la Lune live to see man actually land on the moon?