I payed $75 for a monthly transit pass. I think it's fair to expect some baseline standard of customer experience that doesn't have me asking if I'll need to make a self defense plea in court later.
I love that Chicago has trains and proximity to an L station is one of my top considerations when I look for housing. I just want to take the Blue Line without getting catcalled or accosted by a crackhead every other time.
The left needs to be more serious about antisocial behavior on or around public transportation. Letting vital urban infrastructure be held hostage by unwell or malicious people to the point that most people actively avoid using it is not a progressive position.
View of tall buildings in West Chicago in snow.
The Fulton Market District (Chicago West Side) in snow.
A cool looking tall building in West Loop.
A cozy little enclave with string lights, tables, and brickwork in West Loop.
I explored West Loop for the first time on my Birthday tonight. It looks ugly on Google Maps but is unbelievably gorgeous in person.
I'll pop in occasionally if there's a major event and it's genuinely worse than I imagined. The scary part is that teenagers still use it, and soon they won't be old enough to remember when it wasn't like that.
Imagine teaching high school. My "no food in the classroom" policy lasted a little over a week. Kids get a full class period for lunch and still eat full meals in my room.
So. Many. Snacks.
Being in an original band with serious musicians who have a similar artistic vision to yours is great. Highly recommend.
Doing some reading on the Internation Fixed Calendar. It would make scheduling so much easier. If you wanted to schedule for a Saturday, it could only be the 7th, 14th, 21st, or 28th. If you see a deadline on the 25th, you'd know intuitively that it's a Wednesday.
I just did the math and realized that a calendar year could be evenly divided into 13 months of 28 days (4 weeks) with one extra day. Why have we done this yet?
Guy in a hot dog costume saying "We're all trying to find the guy who did this".
Elon's PR strategy right now:
Fair enough I guess. I'd probably do the same if I came across a comment knocking extended range guitars or digital amplification systems. It just feels like a wierd quirk of a well intentioned social media feature.
Something weird about the custom feeds feature on here is that you'll make a snide comment about something you don't think about much, and someone you've never met who really, really cares about that thing will start beef with you.
Here's how these things should be on a user friendly computer in 2026:
Step 1 - Install Runescape
Step 2 - Install Discord
Step 3 - Run Runescape
Step 4 - Run Discord
Step 5 - Call gf
None of these should require dealing with AI co-pilots or tinkering/running scripts. Hope that clears things up.
The closest thing to that is probably Linux, but I don't want to need a computer science degree to boot up Runescape and call my gf on discord at the same time.
Every time my classroom instruction is interrupted by an unskippable ad on a short video, I take a moment to remind my students how much money the district gives to Google every year. The least they can do is give us ad free service on teacher accounts during school hours.
This won't mean anything to people outside of a very specific niche but the Odeholm Audio Thall Amp sounds sooo good. I need to figure out how to work this into a live rig.
CNN is bought out. She served on a school board that was looking out for the families (which is literally their job) and you're reporting it like it's relevant context?
That scene was playing in my head for weeks. It really makes you think about how writers weaken the narrative impact by making a character dislikable before offing them. BCS never pulls punches to be more digestible, and I respect the hell out of it.
Abolishing ICE the next chance we get is the moderate position. Working for ICE after February 2025 should be flagged on every future background check.
It's reassuring that having a filling meal after a period of dieting is actually not enjoyable. It indicates that healthy portions won't leave me feeling cheated after I lose the weight.
I can't stand that there's not much of an alternative for networking for musicians besides Facebook. If we all switched to LinkedIn (not a great site, but not actively destroying democracy), it would function so much better.
That sounds amazing! I'll need to try it
What is it with teachers unions electing the worst people to lead them? It has to be some sort of psyop.
Microsoft operates under the assumption that PC users are either bozos who just need to send emails or tech wizards who are willing to learn the ins and outs of their computer to do more advanced things.
Apple seems to understand that even their more advanced users want something that just works.
Microsoft, here's an idea:
If your product doesn't work well, DON'T FORCE IT ON ALL YOUR USERS! That is how you lose even your most loyal customers.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Microsoft forcing Windows 11 despite all the audio issues for musicians is making me seriously consider switching to a Mac.
More recently, I commented on how the Blue Line has actually gotten kinda bad and how we should do something about the few dozen unwell people harassing riders constantly.
After that, my feed was flooded with mugshots of Black men and photos of missing white women.
Meta is literally the worst about this. Early in my transition, I started to get either outwardly transphobic content or trans related content with lots of contention in the comments.
Once in a while I'll check on Twitter when there's a major news event. I still can't believe how bad it's gotten. The worst part is that it's still the standard over BlueSky.
Chronically cynical grad students were definitely the worst part of music school. We get it, you made a bad career decision as a teenager and you only stuck with it because of sunken cost, and now you're making it everyone's problem.
