Events

The Illinois State Treasurer sent out an email blast this week trumpeting the new ICash portal, which enables anyone to search for unclaimed property held by the State. Curious, I ran a couple of searches and discovered that yes, the State has money owed to me or to people whose estates I'm the beneficiary of. In total, I have four claims to lost property going back to 1999. Three of the people owed this money have died, most recently in 2007. But only one of the three estates has wound up, while the...

More children died from gunshot wounds in the US in 2020 than from any other cause, according to new statistics from the New England Journal of Medicine: Guns became the leading cause of death among children and teens in 2020, killing more people ages 1 to 19 in the U.S. than vehicle crashes, drugs overdoses or cancer. More than 4,300 died of firearm-related injuries that year — a 29 percent increase from 2019 — according to a research letter published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine....

Today we celebrate the big rock that gives us days in the first place. One out of 364 is pretty good, I guess. And there are some good stories on my open browser tabs: The Twisted Hippo Brewery has started looking for a new home, which they hope to open soon near their old location. The City of Chicago will soon stop charging car-jacking victims hundreds or thousands of dollars in towing and impound fees, which really is a thing here. Timothy Noah explains "Why Biden Had to Challenge That Trump Judge’s...

Authorities in Florida have charged a bride and her caterer with food tampering and the delivery of marijuana, both felonies, after they laced olive oil at the wedding reception with THC: Investigators estimated about 50 people attended the wedding reception. None of the guests interviewed said they knew there would be marijuana in the food. Now, Danya Svoboda and the wedding caterer, Joycelyn Bryant, have been charged with food tampering and the delivery of marijuana, both felonies, as well as...

Leading off today's afternoon roundup, The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman) announced today that Netflix has a series in production based on his game Exploding Kittens. The premise: God and Satan come to Earth—in the bodies of cats. And freakin' Tom Ellis is one of the voices, because he's already played one of those parts. Meanwhile, in reality: A consumers group filed suit against Green Thumb Industries and three other Illinois-based cannabis companies under the Clayton Act, alleging collusion that has driven...

How did it take until a year into the pandemic for someone to write this song? Art, software, writing, anything creative. It cost that much because it took me fucking hours.

I mean... Josh Marshall takes another look at the astonishing bribe Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler paid to Jared Kushner and concludes it's not just a one-off favor; it's an ongoing relationship. Joan Williams argues that Democrats need to look at the class and economic aspects of the Right's economic populism, and maybe perhaps argue (correctly) that blaming people of color just takes the spotlight off the super-rich who are stealing from the middle? US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) makes essentially...

Jessica Stolzberg hopes to follow the success of Washington, D.C.'s gas-powered leaf blower ban elsewhere: The gas leaf blower is by all measures, and without dispute, harmful — to the environment, to neighbors, to workers who carry them on their backs. These hazards have been the subject of countless articles. Local and national organizations work to educate and empower property owners, providing guides to alternatives. The fix is so easy. Electric leaf blowers are effective, available and affordable....

In a strange confluence of lunar calendars, today is Easter, and also the second day of Passover, and also the 17th day of Ramadan. So...Pesach Mubarak, He is Risen?

In what amounts to a bald-faced admission that a presidential debate requires both candidates have some public policy proposals to debate, the Republican Party announced today that it will withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates: In 1987, the Commission on Presidential Debates was established jointly by the Democratic and Republican parties to ensure that debates between the leading candidates for the President of the United States were a permanent part of the electoral process. Now, the...