Matt Drance

Still looking to speak with SNAP recipients! 🚨

I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

Donate to Support the Fired Four: Alma, Ben, Jake, Jasper, organized by Louryn Strampe On November 5, 2025, Conde Nast management illegally fired four union l… Louryn Strampe needs your support for Support the Fired Four: Alma, Ben, Jake, Jasper

On Wednesday, Conde Nast management illegally fired four union leaders. While our union fights these illegal dismissals, the “Fired Four” have been left with no severance or COBRA coverage. Please donate to help cover their living expenses at the link below.

Bill is the preeminent John Hughes expert. I learn something every single time he writes about him.

[Avengers reverse the Snap and have all their heroes and all of Wakanda's army arrayed against Thanos]
Cap: "Okay *now* we surrender"

Let’s table that for now and I promise we will look at it in December

Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…

“No matter how unhinged the position you’ve taken, or paid someone marginally credentialed to sketch out on your behalf—“Can Woman Think?: We Investigate,” “Is the Negro a Man: A Reconsideration”—that opinion will, by virtue of such provenance, possess all needed evidentiary gravity for the Times.”

Panera’s moderately caffeinated lemonade was loosely associated with 2 deaths before it was taken off market.

This article alone has 4 examples of ChatGPT encouraging young people to commit suicide, and OpenAI’s own public stats estimate over a million users discuss suicide with ChatGPT each week.

Why Strava, Letterboxd, Beli, and other niche social media apps are having a moment - The Boston Globe The apps serve as both a personal diary and a tight-knit social network that some users prefer over larger sites networks that they believe have grown toxic.

This story in the Boston Globe that quotes @ethanz.bsky.social reminds me of the fascinating story over the last decade of how to moderate dopers who cheat their way onto the leaderboards of online sports platforms like Strava (1/n)

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/01/b...

Report: Meta earns about $7 billion a year on scam ads Meta reportedly made a lot of money off of fraudulent ads, according to the company's own internal documents, a new report claims.

Meta earns about $7 billion a year on scam ads, report says - mashable.com/article/meta... madness...

Line after extraordinary line in here from Judge Ellis. Thank you Heather for reporting.

Outlanders out now on Nintendo Switch! ✨💫

Town-building strategy game, populated by hard-working, charming folk in search of a simpler life. Some just want to survive off the land, others want to create amazing things

Play now! https://loom.ly/gIVQ_Z8

The Algorithm Holds a Ugly Truth Sometimes It's Our Bad Institutional History of Bad Habits.

"Your HR just rejected 45 women over 40 using AI…out of 47 applicants. You didn’t notice because the algorithm said ‘not qualified.’ And you didn’t bother to double-check. AI doesn’t eliminate bias. It automates it at scale."

#bias #psychology #sociology #equality

substack.com/home/post/p-...

The Science of Chilling Effects

How can we know if a law or policy has chilled people’s free expression? Can we use science to find out?

Excited to join @penney.bsky.social, author of a new book on Chilling Effects, & @katygb.bsky.social on Dec 10th to discuss the science of civil liberties

knightcolumbia.org/events/the-s...

Donate to Help Laid-Off Teen Vogue Staffers Recover, organized by Lexi McMenamin More than half the team at Teen Vogue was laid off this week by our parent co… Lexi McMenamin needs your support for Help Laid-Off Teen Vogue Staffers Recover

thank you for the outpouring of support!

those of us laid off from Teen Vogue yesterday are now sharing our GoFundMe to help us cover our emergency expenses now that we've lost our incomes, as we get back on our feet.

Audrey, Too: FFC Interviews Ellen Greene - FILM FREAK CENTRAL by Walter Chaw I was a full-grown man before I understood completely the grace of Audrey. Audrey, as interpreted by the legendary Ellen Greene in Frank Oz’s big-screen adaptation of the Off-Broadway m...

FFC interviews Ellen Greene, star of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS and the new short film BEATRIX IS INVISIBLE, by Walter Chaw (@mangiotto.bsky.social). filmfreakcentral.net/2025/11/audr...

Crying for Freedom: Peter Watkins at 90 Radical British filmmaker Peter Watkins was briefly tipped by the BBC before The War Game made him a controversial pariah. But he persisted — and now, at 90, he is a hero of liberated, formally remark...

If I said the last of the great twentieth century British film directors died last night, and very few people even remembered him by the time of his death... would you know what I'm talking about?

tribunemag.co.uk/2025/10/cryi...

The Top 25 horror movies from the first 25 years of the 21st century Here are some choice picks to fill up your autumn nights with eldritch thrills.

For @unclegrambo.bsky.social and @deciderdotcom.bsky.social, I drop the Top 25 horror films of the 2000s just in time for Halloween. decider.com/2025/10/31/t...

The Xitter Exodus and What it Means for the Disability Community Disabled and chronically ill people have long used Twitter/X for community, fundraising, companionship and support. With folks leaving in droves - where will we go and how can we stick together?

Twitter/X will delete all heuristics and allow its AI bot Grok to determine what you see on the platform.

This should be a death knell

The chronic illness community have expressed concerns about leaving. The spoons required for migration. Losing networks of care.

My guide to help:

"Friends" is a beloved American sitcom that aired from 1994 to 2004, following six young adults—Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe—living in New York City. The show explores their friendships, romances, careers, and personal growth over ten seasons.

Outlanders will be available on November 6th with DLCs: Heir of the Roads 🏜️ Flood and Fire 🌊 Life of Yolotli 🌱 and Home is where the heart is 💌
You can get them individually or in the DLC Bundle at 10% off ❤️

Add it to your Wish List if you haven't already: https://loom.ly/gIVQ_Z8

Similarities between copycat mass shooters and their role models: An empirical analysis with implications for threat assessment and violence prevention Although an important subset of mass shooters has admitted copying previous shooters, there has been almost no empirical research on the similarities …

This is your semi-regular reminder that media & social media attention to mass shooters (including people who threaten suicide at prominent events), inspires copycats.

Anyone thinking about covering or amplifying such stories should weigh if and how to do so

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

YouTube video by Vanity Fair ILM's VFX Secrets Behind Star Wars, Transformers & More | Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair asked me to talk about visual effects, and it was my great honor to show off some of ILM’s terrific work over the years.

Todd Vaziri on Vanity Fair VFX
youtu.be/ERKEsIzTFas?...

I sincerely believe this is the most important building block of leadership. Giving power or influence to a person without these qualities will yield and entrench bad results.

Get more from Film Freak Central on Patreon creating in-depth reviews of new films and Blu-rays.

15 reviews this month and more on the way. I know times are tough and we're lo-pri, but if you like what we've been doing at FFC and can spare it, please consider subscribing to our Patreon - www.patreon.com/flmfrkcentra... - or donating to the site - www.paypal.com/donate?token... Bless.

History repeats itself. Nothing ever changes.

Unreal.

Nothing good ever comes from that school

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same mother having distinct genomes and morphologies.

It's never occurred to me that it IS an assumption. This is the most astonishing start to a paper I've read in years:

"Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring. Here, we report a shift from this norm in Messor ibericus, an ant that lays individuals from two distinct species."