If you paid taxes for 2025, you likely paid:

$124 — school lunch & nutrition programs
$49 — diplomacy to prevent wars
$19 — USPS
$19 — Federal Aviation Administration
$18 — national parks

and

$4,049 — weapons and war.

These priorities are hurting us all. We need change. #TaxDay

Rogers Park gets a new brick-and-mortar record store - Chicago Reader Plus: The Empty Bottle hosts release concerts by Mina Mills and Double Extra Large, the Black History Future Folk Symposium honors choreographer Katherine Dunham, and more.

I called up the owner of Chicago’s newest record shop, which opens in Rogers Park a week from Saturday. It’s stock includes a selection of records from Aadam Jacobs, the internet’s favorite live recording engineer (whose decades-long archive of concert recordings went viral last week)

“Why aren’t college students protesting” stories are almost always wrong (they are protesting), omit crucial context (they were brutally punished for protesting before), and somehow suggest that 19 yr olds have more moral responsibility than elected officials three times their age

A collection of roughly drawn orange lines all converging at a central point like an asterisk of text that says 'Claude'

Text from Kurt Vonnegut's 'Breakfast of Champions': This book is my fiftieth-birthday present to myself. I feel as though I am crossing the spine of a roof-having ascended one slope. I am programmed at fifty to perform childishly—to insult "The Star-Spangled Banner," to scrawl pictures of a Nazi flag and an asshole and a lot of other things with a felt-tipped pen. To give an idea of the maturity of my illustrations for this book, here is my picture of an asshole: [roughly drawn black lines converging at a central point like an asterisk] I think I am trying to clear my head of all the junk in there-the assholes, the flags, the underpants. Yes—there is a picture in this book of underpants. I'm throwing out characters from my other books, too. I'm not going to put on any more puppet shows. I think I am trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago.

I wish I could have sat in on the meeting where Anthropic decided the Claude logo should be Kurt Vonnegut's drawing of an asshole

So we are going to have a global carbon tax, supported by the US but administered by Iran...

We're on strike! Don't visit propublica.org on April 8

We’re on strike today! Support our fight for a fair contract by NOT visiting the @propublica.org website or engaging with ProPublica stories today.

Tell ProPublica’s management you won’t cross the picket line: actionnetwork.org/petitions/te...

The comment period to protect Chaco Canyon ends on Tuesday. They are giving less than a full week for public input on the desecration of one of the most holy places on earth.

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

I’m not religious in the least but even I thought, wow, on Easter, no less. Can’t wait to see how all the MAGA pastors and congregations rationalize this

I'm a bit of a broken record on this, but usurping the power of the purse isn't just one constitutional violation among all the many others. It is, uniquely and singularly, the death of constitutional government altogether. Game over, end of story, you now live in an autocracy.

BREAKING: Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service The headquarters is going to Utah. Every regional office is being shuttered. The research program is being destroyed.

the trump administration is selling this country wholesale to rapacious, extractive industries that will destroy our collective resources for private profit morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/breaking-t...

Or a Miami

Wilhoit’s law remains undefeated.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

“Trump Sucks!” sign in front of Trump Tower in Chicago

Proud of my 9-year-old’s protesting (and artwork)! This is what democracy looks like!

Rough when it’s all downhill after the leadoff guy

Illinois Tollway map

Our tollway system is fundamentally backwards: we charge drivers extra to skirt around the city and in the suburbs where there is no feasible transit alternatives, while letting suburban motorists drive straight in and out of the heart of the city for free, actively competing with Metra and the 'L'.

screenshot of a resignation letter expressing sadness at leaving NASA

My resignation letter

hope you don’t need anything that comes in [checks notes] plastic packaging

NIH grant terminations affected women scientists more than men, study finds A new paper shows that women, particularly those early in their careers, have been disproportionately affected by NIH grant terminations.

Shocking but not surprising, part million www.statnews.com/2026/03/23/n...

Mask off moment here from likely candidate for Chicago Mayor

Yesterday was summer glory, today I couldn’t make it more than a half at the Red Stars game with the cold & wind on the lakefront

Same thing on my college campus 😢 Reminds me of the Vonnegut quote about how everyone likes the glory of building things, no one cares about maintenance

Chicago summer is gone.

Reminds me of my last winter in the Boston area when we got 8 feet of snow and the mountains held on till June (I think? This was more than a decade ago)

🤔

CHICAGO SUMMER IS HEEEEEERE

Rogers Park for the win!

Ooohhheeee you know spring has arrived when the smell of mulch permeates the North Shore

Then it made its way to the basement and chasing it out of there turned me into a cartoon elephant afraid of a mouse

I can verify Rogers Park also has flying squirrels because one roomed in our attic for awhile