Feeling overwhelmed with all of this. LISTEN. Another Louisiana resident (Marshawn is the only name we have) testifies against the state’s racial gerrymander, speaking truth to power up and down the hearing room and predicts how this story will end. Speak your truth, fight and believe.

Route 66 begins at East Jackson Boulevard and South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, where a brown sign hanging 12 feet high on a light post tells people they’ve reached the venerable road’s threshold.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the designation of Route 66! Here's the Castle Car Wash on Ogden Ave in the Wurlington Press 3D Viewmaster reel www.wurlington-bros.com/VM/index.html

🧵 It was created to connect us, a fused chain of existing roadways many unpaved that stretched 2,448 miles across 8 states and 3 time zones, starting steps from Lake Michigan in Chicago and ending near the Pacific Ocean and Santa Monica’s famed fishing pier. Route 66, “The Main Street of America.”

Built by Joseph Keene in 1889 as headquarters for the Chicago Spring Butt Company (!)

Saturday night smelt fishing

Our society has a massive blind spot when it comes to how dangerous these giant trucks and SUVs are to everyone outside of them.

The U.S. Senate is voting today on an unprecedented move to strip mining prohibitions from an area near the Boundary Waters.

Little house, little traffic jam on Halsted Street

"A study, published in February, has found that over the past several years, traffic fatalities in the United States increased by nearly 15 percent on the same days as the biggest album releases from artists like Ms. Swift and Bad Bunny."

Great sign alert

Hope to see you tomorrow at the McKinley Park library! www.eventbrite.com/e/1982550123...

Happy Birthday to Natalie de Blois, born 105 years ago today, architect of 270 Park Ave, built in 1960 and demolished in 2021

We’re excited to introduce our newest lake inspectors. 🐟 Bluegill 🐟 Bass 🐟 One extremely judgmental catfish Through our new Fish Cam Inspector Program, they’ll be monitoring Illinois waters 24/7. They’ll be keeping an eye below the surface and reporting any suspicious activity.

It's finally happening!

Discovery of Luray Caverns in miniature + the real thing

Today in 1981, Chicago mayor Jane Byrne moved into the Cabrini-Green public housing project as a short-lived publicity stunt

Washington Monument sundial says 3pm

Postcards from the funicular family from around the world at the top of the Duquesne Incline

World’s largest coffee pot in Bedford PA

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