Events

I got an update today from Metra about the Ravenswood Union Pacific North station, after sending an inquiry last week. Before I get to that, let's take a look at photographic evidence that we've had to use the "temporary" platform north of Lawrence Avenue for just under 12 years now: That's the Google Street View from July 2011 showing that Metra has already closed the 1950s-era inbound platform (on the left) and opened the "temporary" platform (on the right). I took these two photos a week ago, but I...

Two stories, related only in the self-perception of their protagonists. First, this morning Fox "News" announced that Tucker Carlson uttered his last bigotry for them on Friday: A reason was not immediately provided. “Mr. Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st,” a statement read. “Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named.” The shock announcement ends Carlson’s meteoric rise at Fox News...

I moved to my house exactly six months ago today, but only this past Saturday did I unpack the last box. I had asked two different carpenters about building in bookshelves in what I designated a library even before I moved in. Both carpenters ghosted me after taking measurements. (Great business practices, guys.) So in January I went back to 57th Street Bookcase in Evanston, from which my mom and I had gotten bookshelves at various times going back to the mid-1990s. The bookcases arrived Friday...

This weekend involved about 5 hours of dog walks, including 2 with another dog, a disruption to Cassie's environments (new bookshelves, details later), an art fair, and my friend's two toddlers (ages 2 and 4). We're both pooped. Cassie literally. I know what she ate yesterday, and I'm so glad I got to see it again today.

As professional narcissist Elon Musk threatened, on Thursday Twitter abruptly ended their verified "blue check" program. Suddenly, Twitter users had no way to know for sure whether tens of thousands of government agencies, celebrities, journalists, and other people whose jobs depend to some extent on their credibility, were who their Twitter accounts purported to be. It only took two days for someone to hoax the City of Chicago: Impostors posing as Chicago government officials, including Mayor Lori...

How my week is going so far. Wednesday evening: Yesterday evening: You can hear Weird Al on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! this weekend.

Emma Camp, an assistant editor at Reason, initially found an autism diagnosis comforting, but now has second thoughts: In many online circles — particularly those frequented by young, white, middle-class women like me — certain diagnoses are treated like a zodiac sign or Myers-Briggs type. Once they were primarily serious medical conditions, perhaps ones of which to be ashamed. Now, absent social stigma, mental health status functions as yet another category in our ever-expanding identity politics...

First, because it's April 20th, we have a a couple of stories about marijuana: Daniel Wolfe calls on cannabis sellers to pick names that actually provide brand differentiation. Cannabis companies here in Chicago (and, one expects, elsewhere) provide buses to private events to get around public-consumption laws. (The Daily Parker owns shares in Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries.) Second, because it's the 21st Century, we have a collection of articles about the end of democracy: Thomas Edsall...

Freelance writer John Carpenter (a "husky man of 60, with the approximate flexibility of a rusty old tractor") explores some of the abandoned railroads that now have bike paths on them in the Chicago area: Chicago is teeming with them — rail trails, I mean. Once extolled by the poet Carl Sandburg as the “player with railroads and the nation’s freight handler,” it remains a national railroad hub. That means there are bike paths along existing lines, like the Green Bay Trail beside Metra’s North Line, and...

WBEZ reporter Michael Gerstein went out to the IKEA in Schaumburg, Ill., to test our transit system and its navigation apps. It went fine, but Gerstein had an unusual experience: Major construction projects have snarled the Kennedy Expressway and the Blue Line’s weekend service, so my editor sent me on a 29-mile odyssey to Schaumburg. The idea was to test how Chicago’s regional transit agencies (CTA, PACE, Metra) work with each other and how many apps, trackers and planning devices I’d need to use to...