Every one of us possesses a unique intelligence far more interesting than what passes for intelligence with large lanugage models. One part of my unique intelligence is wrapped up in the 1984 Chicago Cubs. open.substack.com/pub/bibliora...

The answer to the mystery may or may not be important but the investigation is a fun read

Just topped 1900 items added to the Logan Square Preservation archive of neighborhood photos & other ephemera hub.catalogit.app/logan-square...

I was puzzling over one of these fun Earth sculptures in the playground by Soldier Field. The cities highlighted on the spiral path around the park seem to be in line N-S and E-W around the globe, but the hot dog icon does not represent Chicago...

A new city to add to the list of miniature cities around the world www.wurlington-bros.com/DC/minicitie...

55 years ago today, construction started on San Francisco's iconic Sutro communications tower #otd

Make your own miniature of Cleopatra's Needle, which debuted today in 1881 in Central Park, more than 3000 years after it was created in Egypt buildyourownnewyork.com/free.html

110 years ago today, the Palace Preservation League hosted a celebration to build interest in preserving the temporary Palace of Fine Arts after the Panama–Pacific International Exposition ended

Spend Pancake Day with a pancake sketch tour across the USA: mnmuseumofthems.org/Pancakes/ind...

New from me, at @vqr.bsky.social: a few years ago two people contacted me about a TEDx talk I once gave, “The Art of Haunting.” When I replied I’d never given a TEDx talk, things just got weirder. On AI, ghosts, what it means to tell a story, and what Italo Calvino saw coming 60 years ago. Enjoy!

What is this, a skyscraper for ants? For more than 35 years, Columbian Model & Exhibit Works made miniature models of Chicago's planned architecture. But with leadership nearing retirement and advances in digital modeling tech, the longtime business recently shut its doors for good.

Last minute to celebrate Abraham Lincoln with an outsized birthday cake for his birthday Feb 12, 1809

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken. Hundreds of kids are still detained. We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

More 45th Parallel markers are in an exhibit at the Minnesota Museum of the Mississippi mnmuseumofthems.org/45th/index.h...

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

No-longer-standing Prentice Women's Hospital opened 50 years ago today. Rebuild a mini version at www.buildyourownchicago.com/free.html

Pinball trek to Galloping Ghost

From the 1960s, five London vehicles to cut out & make. www.presentandcorrect.com/blogs/blog/c... A double decker bus, a mail train, a black cab, a news truck & a post van.

150 years ago today, photographer Joshua Beal climbed the east tower of the unfinished Brooklyn Bridge to shoot five overlapping images creating a spectacular panorama portrait of Manhattan www.youtube.com/watch?v=-334...

Today is the anniversary of the unusual meeting between Elvis and President Nixon in the Oval Office in 1970

Happy 45th birthday to the National Building Museum, created by an act of Congress and signed by President Jimmy Carter today in 1980!

A visit to the Rocks For Fun Cafe before Thanksgiving

60 years ago today, 10-year-old William Blasio stole a motor boat from the dock below Marina City with a plan to return to Ohio where his family had once lived. Hard to imagine heading out on Lake Michigan if the weather was wintry like today!

120 years ago today, the terrible Mataafa Storm began, sinking more than 20 ships on Lake Superior and leading to the construction of Split Rock Lighthouse to make shipping safer on the lake

Lots of new additions to the Stone Faces Gazetteer tracking locations of anthropomorphic rocks around the world: www.mnmuseumofthems.org/Faces/index....

:(

Edward George Bruton's velocipede. (1889) by Robert Pittis Scott, from Cycling Art, Energy, and Locomotion. Source: @bpl.boston.gov‬ / Internet Archive https://pdimagearchive.org/images/42416fac-8760-470d-9f9d-179adddfa187 #patents #technology #bicycles #engineering #cycling #vehicles #inventions

Cardboard 2-flat miniature spotted at Project Onward’s cardboard show. Love the little butterflies!

All of Manhattan made of balsa wood and styrofoam

Missed this anniversary yesterday: On Nov 18, 1755, an earthquake hit Boston, knocking down the iconic grasshopper weathervane off Faneuil Hall

Miniature room sculpture by artist Itzi Licona at Intuit Art Museum

Last warm day till spring in Humboldt Park

#OnThisDay Nov 8, 1898: The Kensington Runestone is "discovered" on Olof Ohman's farm near Alexandria, Minnesota. Its engravings tell of Vikings who traveled here in 1362. Scholarly consensus classifies it as a hoax, but there remain true believers convinced the stone is authentic.

On this day in 1910, excavation began for the 792-foot Woolworth Building, then the tallest in the world

Happy Halloween! Would you ring the doorbell of this haunted paper house?

Happy Halloween! Would you ring the doorbell of this haunted paper house?

I hear people all around me saying, “They are going to crash the economy. Surely they don’t mean to crash the economy.” I beg to differ. This is curated failure. jesspiper.substack.com/p/i-know-exa...

was wondering why all the honeycrisps we bought the past two years, even from the fancy local grocer, were mushy, mealy messes and i guess this is a legitimate thing, unfortunately www.seriouseats.com/how-honeycri...

My god. Look at the “Major Events Timeline.“ We are living in hell. www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-wh...

A silly little papercraft project I designed for this weekend's upcoming International Paper Modelers Convention in Sterling, VA. Print one and build it at: ipmc-info.org/free.html

In stunning development, sinking of Titanic no longer world’s largest metaphor

Out on the street among hundreds of thousands marching for Liberty #papercraft #papermodel #statueofliberty #nokings

A drawing of a “BRAIN WORM” on a street sign in Uptown

“There’s no indication that Vance has divested from AcreTrader, and there’s every indication that that investment remains in place.” civileats.com/2024/09/18/j...

#OnThisDay Oct 8, 1956: Southdale, the first fully enclosed shopping mall in the world, opens in Edina, Minnesota. Architect Victor Gruen, later realizing his invention had not lived up to his utopian vision of a car-free public square, became the biggest critic of malls until his death in 1980.

a person at Treasury gave Defector a rundown of how this process—which appears to be against the law—was expedited in order to avoid public scrutiny defector.com/treasury-dep...

Here is how the first Peanuts comic strip appeared in Charles M. Schulz's hometown newspaper, The Minneapolis Star, 75 years ago today, Oct. 2, 1950. With an accompanying introductory article but missing one panel of the strip.

The first Peanuts strip by Charles M. Schulz was published on October 2, 1950.

Chicago, Illinois, 2025: "They had the Black people in one van, and the immigrants in another van." "They was bringing the kids down, had them zip-tied to each other." "I kept asking, 'What is the morality?' One of them laughed. He said, 'Fuck them kids.'" abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chi...

I wrote about the experience of government of, by, and for people who have been driven insane by screens. (This is a gift link, please Consider Defector if you are interested in subscribing to a website) defector.com/the-united-s...