Mike Vachow

Study: Few People Read What They Share Research suggests that sharing articles makes us feel more knowledgeable, even if we are not.

Stands to reason, this piece suggests, as almost half of social media posters haven't read what they post. Just a loop of un-meaning.

Pretty sure the dudes who will backfill for Khamenei will be some real charmers.

One of my most grumpy-niche opinions is that social media’s only genuine value is its promotion of clever smartassery.

Exhibit A

Mackinac Bridge falling ice could close span. Find out how to get alerts Warmer weather and gusty winds could cause dangerously large chunks of ice to fall from the cables and towers, bridge authority says.

“the bridge authority is concerned that sheets of ice up to the size of a garage door, or ice spears up to 20 feet long could fall hundreds of feet”

In case driving across a 5 mile long bridge isn’t terrifying enough.

The entrance to the Newberry Library in Chicago

At the Newberry as a gaping tourist and to deposit BIL who is actually here for research

Margo Price with her band on stage at the Metro in Chicago.

Margo Price, last night, at the Metro in Wrigleyville.

My BIL sent us some Nueske products for Christmas. Now all other bacon seems pathetic.

Right Livelihood In The Polycrisis The impossibility of purity doesn't let us off the hook for trying

@anya1anya.bsky.social asks an important question: what is your livelihood’s moral footprint?

I can’t help but remember that an attempted regime change in Tehran was like the fantasy position of the fringiest group in Dick Cheney’s Circle 20 years ago

Crystal observation: 2 regimes where women and girls are disposable, trading pieces at best

Possum’s good, too, and usually free.

The Washington Post and the tragic decline of newspapers And, just maybe, of climate journalism.

Chris Mooney, former leader of WaPo’s climate desk who was wise enough to see it coming a few years before Bezos, wrote this piece a few days ago—in case you really want to sink into depression.

Rural Missouri is quickly becoming a new battleground over data center development The fight over new data centers in Missouri may have started last year in St. Charles and St. Louis, but the battle has spread from urban and suburban areas to more rural parts of the state. CRG, the ...

These cats are evil—going after financially distressed, disused city sites and “out of sight” rural locations. Y’all aren’t using that river, right? Unimaginably cynical.

This is how you do it.

Plus, run don’t walk to hear Ethan Leinwand play!

Plus, check out that photo!

The tray/basket system (IRL or digital) achieves the illusion of organization, and sometimes that's the best you can hope for.

Very interesting. Columbus was pretty much the only Midwest city that was growing in the last 15 yrs.

I'm flying out of town tmrw afternoon, which has triggered the calendar Tetris effect through today and up to the minute I leave for the airport.

My kids both had the same 2nd grade tchr whose classroom, courtesy of floor plan reconfiguration over decades, had 3 radiant heat units. Kids and tchr had to layer down to summer shorts and tees in the dead of Chicago winter.

*peek

Don't forget to take a peak in the beer aisle. Chimay Grande Reserve popped up last month at my local for $7/bottle.

Detroit News published a similar piece a few weeks ago. Their research showed that if you looked for violent felony convictions, the number is vanishingly small: .01% of all detained by ICE for at least 24 hrs last year, something like 13 people.

A statue of an anonymous baseball player entitled “The Player” that stands at the home plate entrance to Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies

You’re finally getting some ballpark statues, hopefully replacing the home plate placeholder. Progress!

Saw him speak in Ann Arbor in 1986, then Jerry Rubin a few weeks later. It was an upside down time in Ann Arbor. Our professors were Tom Hayden holdovers, and the students were Sherman McCoys in waiting.

Would be perfect symmetry to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s freedom from an addled king by freeing ourselves from another addled king.

Must read: you will see nothing funnier and more hopeful today, reassurance that the world still
contains creative, hilarious, collaborative, whimsical people.

We moved to Chicago from New Orleans, broken hearted, and went back to NOLA 3 or 4 times a year. There were a bunch of 9:00 directs from ORD that would put you at Mandina's just as they were opening for lunch. Like catching a bus.

A handmade Valentine from a toddler.

First Valentine from my first grandchild. Meteor, space debris, lightning, whatever, could take me out right now—wouldn’t matter.

ORD gets an understandable bad rap from people from out of town, but for Chicagoans, it's pretty swell to be able pick from a jillion flights a day to just about anywhere. Was a rude change when we moved to STL and pokey lil Lambert Field.

The Burren Reaches Deal to Stay in Davis Square After Redevelopment Proposal Threatened Displacement | News | The Harvard Crimson The Burren, an Irish bar and music venue in Somerville that draws many Harvard students, will return to Davis Square after reaching an agreement with the developers behind a project that had put its l...

The Burren, an Irish pub just a few doors down, is also excellent. Both Dragon and Burren were at the heart of a development controversy that threatened to put both out of business, Sommervillians threatening to chain themselves to the front door, etc. Now resolved.

Almost exact same math in MI. Over the year, of 263K people that ICE had detained for at least 24 hours, one one hundredth of one percent had felony convictions, half of those were violent felonies—about 12 people. Detroit News did a piece on it a few weeks ago.