Bebo, Chicago Rat Czar 🐀

Please, please let M3 release the word cloud from the open-ended Paul Vallas question in this poll 🙏

aw man i wish i could tonight but i have to stay home and watch the wttw chicago stories episode on legendary blizzards

hell yeah

Some Cook County Board commissioners skip more than 20% of their meetings A WBEZ analysis of board meeting records revealed two incumbents with primary challengers scored among the worst truancy rates in this term.

Your $102K/year Cook County commissioners can decide to "excuse" themselves from their own meetings - and some are doing that 20% of the time or more chicago.suntimes.com/2026/03/06/c...

Hundreds of local canadidates' election signs planted in a grass median in Chicago stretching back for a block.

This is Chicago's version of spring flowers

SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? - Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26

NO - 41%
YES - 38%
UNSURE - 21%

You should never ever listen to someone who says protesting and being arrested is not risky or dangerous or in general not a big deal - the state has the power to ruin your life and they will actively threaten you with just that if it’ll help their case.

Accountability is good

Okay it's time, I have to fill out my ballot this weekend. Just saw Schakowsky is not running for reelection, anybody heard anything about the IL9 primary?

Y’all mind if a white boy does a little unreliable narrating

A tree map of candidate and independent expenditure spending in Illinois '09 as of March 6th 2026 the chart is arranged hierarchically by candidate followed by whether the money is candidate spend independent expenditure spend and the independent expenditure spend is divided into spending in support of and spending in opposition to. Right off the bat you noticed that the largest spend is on Laura fine and Laura fine has no spending opposite her if I did this right but that the IE support she has is larger than any other candidate spend in this visualization it's the next largest candidate spend is Biss and it looks like his candidate spend is a little less than half of the total spend on him but that he has more independent expenditure money spent against him than in support of him as Matthew's first chart shows cat has the largest candidate spend and very little independent expenditure spend but what there is is spent against her adding in the independent expenditure money makes the other five candidates in this visualization shrink down to less than a quarter of the spend and of those candidates the only one with independent expenditure spending is Phil Andrew who has a little bit in favor

I was sketching it out and then was like you know what let me just look at it in an area chart. I colored it by candidate and made the independent expenditure spending a little bit lighter with opposition spending very light.

That would look something like this

nope nope and sure

The evidence is frankly damning

More Patriot missiles used in Middle East in 3 days than in Ukraine since 2022, Zelensky says President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated that Ukraine is ready to provide drone interceptors in exchange for missiles, though he did not specify which countries could be involved.

This is a fucking travesty.

“In just three days of fighting in the Middle East, more than 800 Patriot missiles were used — more than Ukraine has received throughout the entire Russian full-scale invasion.”

(A year’s worth of production or more, btw)

kyivindependent.com/over-800-pat...

New Record in Cooperative Paul Vallas Cyberbullying Speedruns Any%: 2 Hours, 20 Minutes

Today I Will Look The Burrito Man In The Eye and other stories of manifesting success

A reminder about the importance of funding local media

Image of Dale Earnhardt with the caption "Critical Race Theory? Brother, Every Race Is Critical".

I know it's a minor issue, but as part of a larger "Truth & Reconciliation" moment, I want this guy's identity to be revealed and then get dragged in front of the cameras and be forced to explain why being able to say slurs made him a better banker.

This is the tech equivalent of painting a picture of a lion, then fleeing in terror.

“MS NOW confirmed” will always read like Ms Now is an intrepid anonymous gossip columnist to me

Thinking about doing a documentary where I eat Small Cheval every meal for like two weeks under the guise of trying to “understand white Chicagoans”

I just dropped of my mail-in ballot at an early voting location

Cope and seethe, bitches

Northwest Siders Inundated With Campaign Flyers As State Senate Race Heats Up Some neighbors are fed up with their mail getting clogged with campaign ads. Political consultants argue mailers are effective at raising candidate awareness, especially in a competitive 20th Distric...

The Plan: Inundate these very same people with campaign flyers, but from a dozen fake shell organizations this time.

blockclubchicago.org/2024/03/14/n...

A massive burst of outside spending resulting in overflowing mailboxes containing your face, largely within the boundaries of a district where excess mailers became A Thing™ in the last election becoming your closing message is such a poetic way for Jaime Andrade to be hoisted by his own petard.

I’ve got an idea of what can replace it… that’s right, a small cheval

Noem is gone, but DHS remains a weapon to be pointed at all those who resist the authoritarians in office.

It was the same funding bill the Republicans already put on the floor, so it deserved the same vote the second time around: HELL NO. Funding DHS is funding our own destruction.