Jesse Orr

The movie trailer is frankly unrecognizable from the book though.

Or like, an idiot’s read of it maybe.

It isn’t a bad read, seen through the lens of “A tragic - but hijink-filled tale of pathetic and deeply flawed local elites”

To be slightly fair Heathcliff as the abusive paramour may not really be abusive to Catherine in particular but just to most others - men, women, children - in his life who he has power over!

Reading Wuthering Heights and gotta say it I’m confused how they’re making a romance movie about this, when (~60% through) it seems best summarized as “BPD girl with a weak constitution and her abusive paramour screw up their own lives and also everyone else’s.”

Nope

Bike past this lot 2-3x a week!

Public policy experts: The hidden inequity in school funding? Illinois’ teacher pension funding structure Illinois will never truly achieve equitable school funding unless it fixes teacher pension funding.

Conor's not on Bluesky, but he's got a *really* good Op-Ed in the Tribune today about teacher pensions. www.chicagotribune.com/2026/02/06/o...

E.g, - on self-definition and identity!

Big echoes of Kaldellis’s theories of Byzantine / Eastern Roman / Greek identity here.

Also -!- the contrast between “Morea: a disconnected ruin run by bandits” vs. “The Peloponnese: a land of culture and thriving polities.”

Probably with similar populations in each epoch?

Reading both of these at the same time and lots of interesting nuggets / comparisons - among them, the questionable existence of “Greeks” as a useful category for at least ~1,000 years between these two events.

Of course, it's also good to just not make people do 100 page reports that no one reads for routine City business.

This is a great example of Good Abundance imo: EDSs are required of private entities, so one could think of shrinking their footprint as "cutting regulations." But bc the City relies on private nonprofits, etc, to build housing, it's really increasing state capacity! bsky.app/profile/rsda...

Sadly aside from 4200 N Hazel which has somehow *still* not shoveled... 😒

Got it!

A lot going on here so bear with me but...

Saturday and Sunday run way closer to their pre-covid numbers than weekdays do, especially in the summer and fall. They're much more sensitive to seasonality than weekdays.

Monday and Friday run slightly behind Wed-Thurs but follow the same annual trends.

Super interesting!

Are these stats in images 3/4 already month adjusted (Feb 2025 Saturdays are is ~60% of Feb 2017-9) or is it Feb 2025 Saturdays are ~60% of all average Saturdays?

Need a name for this mid-rise infill multifam typology all over wealthy urban developing world neighborhoods (Tehran, Hanoi, Mexico City, Lima): lobby half a story above grade, sloped garage to the side. Ugly, inaccessible, garage-driven, but ubiquitous – must be efficient for fitting a lot of cars.

Sanctions-busting hero Hamed Zarepoor has uploaded tons of new Google Street View shots of Tehran. He used to only have the main streets, but now there are lots of side streets. You can see what the city actually looks like, not just what architects wished it looked like:

chart

coming soon to @chicagocityscape.com: this chart showing new construction homes permitted per ward per year

the * asterisk indicates that the ward saw fewer than 100 homes in the 8-year period shown

Cumulative Bus Ridership

7-day moving average CTA Bus ridership 2022-2025

Chicagoland transit recovery

and bus ridership was nearly flat YoY.

Cumulative Ridership by year

CTA Rail recovery by branch

The rate of growth slowed down considerably last year.

For rail, the O'Hare branch was the only line making big YoY gains.

Do you have ridership recovery % stats broken out by day-of-week (and even better, both day of week and line?). Would love to see that table if you have it!

The sharp high income-low income border running N-S through Edgewater and Uptown just east of the lake is Broadway.

That's the context for the furor over the Broadway rezoning, which has come 90% from the dark blue tracts

(There is a remote option - this is a hybrid meeting - for people who want to have less fun and/or avoid frostbite on their way to and from!)

teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-joi...

Hoping to see some Uptown folks at tomorrow's meeting (5:30pm, 4737 N. Sheridan) about the Sarah's Circle Permanent Supportive Housing development tomorrow!

It’s tough and I don’t think that “double-loaded-corridor-slop” design should be illegal - but single stair is the first step here.

Buena Park Neighbors is great and they organize a lot of good neighborhood activities - there hasn’t been a zoning change request within their boundaries since the Cappleman era and housing politics in Uptown have changed a lot since then

Their standard is 1/8th mile and they aren’t interested in changing it

I think you’d be surprised how much of the barrier CTA is. We asked them to consider removing some bus stops on Clark as part of the bike lane project and they absolutely refused - even when we said *if* we did it we would take the heat and make it clear it was our idea.