I've seen so many feds in Chicago today going about my normal routine. Every SUV is suspicious. Every student absence longer than a day is concerning. Our public institutions feel like they're held together with duct tape now and we just lost another $2 billion. Things could have been so different.

Blue cities should tear up the roads in front of ICE facilities and then start decades of community engagement and input sessions to rebuild them. Let's harness our core competencies.

It really does feel like American society has just accepted that urban public schools are grossly underfunded and neglected, and we take that as a given, rather than the very deliberate policy choice that it is.

One of the best parts of teaching modern band is when a student picks up a guitar and wants to learn a metal song that you grew up listening to. #edusky

Someone needs to invent physical books with a built-in mp3 player that contains only the audiobook version of that specific book. You lose something when your entire book library is stored in an app on your phone.

Living on a busy street is annoying sometimes, but going from my front door to my bus in less than a minute is so, so nice.

The Avatar sequels feel so late. It's like leaving a party to pick up snacks for everyone and getting back at 6 AM to a few people passed out on couches. They could have been so much more successful delivering sequels with slightly worse CGI 12 years sooner.

I love living in the real America (a big city)

We're about to see a 47-unit development plan in a gentrifying area get slashed to 15 units due to concerns over... parking, trash collection, and density. blockclubchicago.org/2025/08/04/5...

I've got the data. Most annual property tax revenue lost due to central city highways (w/in 3-mile radius of the center of downtown): 1. Dallas 2. Oakland 3. Chicago 4. Minneapolis 5. Houston

I'd bet Chicago's GDP would grow a measurable amount if we cracked down on loud motorcycles, especially at night.

Charging quarters for laundry in a 3-flat when we already pay utilities is diabolical. Whatever spare change you skim off your rent pigs is probably canceled out by making the unit less desirable.

Just moved to Logan Square!

Had to stick with Duolingo long enough to hit this milestone

Looking at the map, this is effectively cutting parking minimums citywide. There are still some areas undeserved by transit that are going to need special attention (Southwest side, far northwest side, far south side).

Backing out of a roommate group the day before they sign the lease (and two days before moving in) is nasty work

What I want to know (and what nobody has asked) is why Chicago Public Schools has been paying for staffing for private schools. When crossing guards were shifted from the city budget to school budgets, private schools should have hired their own crossing guards. chicago.suntimes.com/education/20...

Still wild to me that Western Avenue in Chicago has peak hour bus lanes only. For context, this means people can park in the bus lanes whenever they want, except rush hour on weekdays. This makes the bus lanes effectively useless when someone forgets to move their car, which is always.

First Ozzy, and now Mangioni. Damn.

Trying to coordinate housing plans with three strangers who don't seem too terribly bothered by the prospect of being homeless in 7 days is a stressful experience. Like omg please keep an eye on the group chat.

Good morning BlueSky 🐈

A (very) rough map highlighting vacant and surface parking lots near a very busy train station 18 minutes from the Loop. Want to ease the rapid displacement happening in Logan Square? Build housing, not parking.

It's somehow very on-brand that Elon gave his AI chatbot a name that could very feasibly serve as tgirl slang for something, and it keeps defying him.

PSA: turning your AC off during the day isn't efficient if you have to blast it for hours to bring the temp back down later. It will, however, drive your guitarist roommate crazy. (Especially if they live in a converted attic bedroom that's always 10° hotter than the rest of the house)

People are rightfully dunking on this, but you could argue that they're trying to be pragmatic under the current administration by taking a more rural conservative approach. Here's a better way to do that: Advocate for the freedom to build, import, and drive Kei-class trucks.

It is odd to me that educators are not being encouraged to read around gen ai as much as they would be for other education topics such as oracy, behaviour, accessible learning etc So here are some books that I recommend.Because teachers need to be familiar with these authors’ names not Altman’s

Looking at the metrics, cruise ships slightly beat out short-haul flights as the most emitting common form of transport (CO2 per passenger kilometer), but this doesn't account for the fact that most cruise-goers begin and end their cruise vacation with a combination of short and long-haul flights.

Takeaways from this week: 1. Cruises are an incredible experience. 2. Cruises are also the most environmentally destructive common form of vacation. 3. In a better world, all of the magic of the cruise experience could be provided on trains for a fraction of the cost and emissions.

Seattle photo dump (1/3)

Bill Clinton’s just chilling in his living room, watching ICE kidnappings on tv, when the sex pest election trouble alarm goes off in his kitchen. “Not cuomo,” he says to himself. “Not another member of the brotherhood”

@cta There really shouldn't be a scenario in the 3rd largest US city where walking 1.2 miles along a bus route is faster than waiting for the next bus, but it's been happening to me a lot lately.

Some takeaways for my urbanist followers: In the age of the internet, if your city's third spaces are not teen accessible, they'll find places to congregate that can be unmanageable or unsafe. Curfews don't make the problem go away; they just push the problem to other neighborhoods. (Cont.)

This misguided hope in the future of AI to be a force for good reminds me of the Farmer Hypothesis from the Three Body Problem trilogy.

Local school ratings on Real Estate listings should just be banned outright. The neighborhood public school I teach at has a 1/10 rating. We're not a perfect school, but that rating is just not accurate, and there's no telling how many students it costs us to private/charter/selective schools.

Seemed like a good time to get one of these

Klarna partnering with Doordash is still wild to me. It's like a marriage counselor announcing a partnership with a divorce lawyer.

Haven't posted my playing in a while, so here's a practice clip (phone audio). Song is Gored by Loathe.

If teachers are forced to embrace AI tools for "teaching", then by the end of the decade, school will just be various chatbots talking to each other.

I just want to stay updated on local happenings 🤦‍♀️

I own a car in a major US city (comes with being an active musician, unfortunately), and I back this 100%. When cars dominate, every other way of getting around becomes worse.

Got this 1891 Wagner cast iron skillet on Facebook Marketplace today. The smooth surface feels great! It's too bad Lodge doesn't make these given that they basically have a monopoly on new cast iron.

After continually reminding high school students to not cite Google as a source for a research assignment and to please refer to specific sources, I came to the realization that students are just typing questions into Google and referring to Gemini's AI summary. #edusky #edtech

Decided to pull the trigger on this before the China tarrifs really set in. It's a Gretsch 29.75" baritone. I'm not normally drawn to more classic styles, but this one stood out to me.

One of my students talking about guitar stuff yesterday: "I can't believe you don't own a single capo!" Me: "Yeah, I just don't find myself needing them for the kinds of music that I play." Student, without a shred of irony: "But how do you play Wonderwall?"

Build a bunch of these in every city and town in America

After living here over 6 months, the biggest barrier to widespread adoption of cycling in Chicago is the lack of secure street-level overnight parking. As of now, it's only really feasible as a default mode of transport if you happen to own a house with street level storage space.

It's wild that we've created a Covid sized recession without any sort of disaster to point to. The entire world froze for a year in 2020; obviously that was going to suck economically. This time, we were just bored I guess.

I survived the mosh pits at a Meshuggah concert and got pictures, AMA.

Crazy how my anxiety just disappeared after I finished college and made it to Chicago. I used to feel a literal wad of discomfort in my chest if I wasn't medicated for it.

A saga in 4 parts: