#data center chicago

[loislane-ana]

Newsfeed Today: Chicago Restaurants, Boston Typewriters, NYC License Plates, Robotic Firefighters, Data Centers

[feminist-space]

"Artists have finally had enough with Meta’s predatory AI policies, but Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run, anti-AI social platform, Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users within the last week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts.

Instagram is a necessity for many artists, who use the platform to promote their work and solicit paying clients. But Meta is using public posts to train its generative AI systems, and only European users can opt out, since they’re protected by GDPR laws. Generative AI has become so front-and-center on Meta’s apps that artists reached their breaking point.

“When you put [AI] so much in their face, and then give them the option to opt out, but then increase the friction to opt out… I think that increases their anger level — like, okay now I’ve really had enough,” Jingna Zhang, a renowned photographer and founder of Cara, told TechCrunch.

Cara, which has both a web and mobile app, is like a combination of Instagram and X, but built specifically for artists. On your profile, you can host a portfolio of work, but you can also post updates to your feed like any other microblogging site.

Zhang is perfectly positioned to helm an artist-centric social network, where they can post without the risk of becoming part of a training dataset for AI. Zhang has fought on behalf of artists, recently winning an appeal in a Luxembourg court over a painter who copied one of her photographs, which she shot for Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam.

“Using a different medium was irrelevant. My work being ‘available online’ was irrelevant. Consent was necessary,” Zhang wrote on X.

Zhang and three other artists are also suing Google for allegedly using their copyrighted work to train Imagen, an AI image generator. She’s also a plaintiff in a similar lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway AI.

“Words can’t describe how dehumanizing it is to see my name used 20,000+ times in MidJourney,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “My life’s work and who I am—reduced to meaningless fodder for a commercial image slot machine.”

Artists are so resistant to AI because the training data behind many of these image generators includes their work without their consent. These models amass such a large swath of artwork by scraping the internet for images, without regard for whether or not those images are copyrighted. It’s a slap in the face for artists – not only are their jobs endangered by AI, but that same AI is often powered by their work.

“When it comes to art, unfortunately, we just come from a fundamentally different perspective and point of view, because on the tech side, you have this strong history of open source, and people are just thinking like, well, you put it out there, so it’s for people to use,” Zhang said. “For artists, it’s a part of our selves and our identity. I would not want my best friend to make a manipulation of my work without asking me. There’s a nuance to how we see things, but I don’t think people understand that the art we do is not a product.”

This commitment to protecting artists from copyright infringement extends to Cara, which partners with the University of Chicago’s Glaze project. By using Glaze, artists who manually apply Glaze to their work on Cara have an added layer of protection against being scraped for AI.

Other projects have also stepped up to defend artists. Spawning AI, an artist-led company, has created an API that allows artists to remove their work from popular datasets. But that opt-out only works if the companies that use those datasets honor artists’ requests. So far, HuggingFace and Stability have agreed to respect Spawning’s Do Not Train registry, but artists’ work cannot be retroactively removed from models that have already been trained.

“I think there is this clash between backgrounds and expectations on what we put on the internet,” Zhang said. “For artists, we want to share our work with the world. We put it online, and we don’t charge people to view this piece of work, but it doesn’t mean that we give up our copyright, or any ownership of our work.”"

Read the rest of the article here:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/06/a-social-app-for-creatives-cara-grew-from-40k-to-650k-users-in-a-week-because-artists-are-fed-up-with-metas-ai-policies/

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

By Bill Shaw

The latest wastewater surveillance data show that the COVID-19 pandemic has entered its tenth wave in the United States. Last week’s spike in wastewater was the highest percentage increase in transmission in almost three years, though these figures could be revised downwards and the full severity of the wave will only become clear in the coming weeks. One reason for the rapid jump appears to be a later start for the “winter surge” than is typical, and thus the virus could be quickly rising to a level that has now become typical for this time of year.

The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) model estimates that 1.6 percent of Americans are presently infected and capable of transmitting the virus to others. That is 1 in 64 people and represents nearly 750,000 new COVID-19 cases per day. That means that on a flight of 100 people, there is an 80 percent chance that at least one person is infectious; on a flight of 300 people that rises to a 99 percent chance.

This level of transmission exceeds the levels for 73 percent of the duration of the pandemic to date. Given the known incidence of Long COVID, the current levels of transmission are generating an estimated 200,000 new cases of Long COVID per week.

Not a word about this latest COVID-19 wave has been uttered by the Biden administration or any major outlet in the corporate media. The entire political establishment is in agreement on the need to enforce the pro-corporate policy of “forever COVID,” in which the working class and broad layers of society as a whole are condemned to unending waves of mass infection, death and debilitation with Long COVID.

The PMC model projects that the current winter surge could peak between New Year’s Day and January 7. Because COVID-19 transmission followed a completely different pattern in 2024 than any other year of the pandemic, it is more difficult to forecast transmission during the current surge. This year’s summer surge was unusually late and sustained, while also declining abnormally rapidly, and the lull between the summer and winter surges was atypically long.

The latest data on test positivity and emergency department visits from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show both these indicators on the increase. Hospitalizations and deaths are typically lagging indicators, and although they have not yet increased, they are likely to rise as well in the coming week or two.

The new XEC variant continues to increase as a percentage of COVID-19 infections, now estimated at 44 percent, compared to 33 percent a week ago. It is now the most common variant, having surpassed the KP3.1.1 variant per the most recent data.

Given the total absence of governmental support for the renovation of infrastructure to ensure that indoor air is purified in public spaces, the only defenses against COVID-19 continue to be vaccines and non-pharmaceutical measures, such as social distancing and masking. Vaccination additionally protects against the most adverse outcomes of COVID-19, including death and hospitalization, while providing moderate protection against Long COVID.

Unfortunately, misinformation coupled with the potential expense of paying for a costly vaccine have resulted in extremely low vaccination rates for COVID-19. Per the latest CDC data, only 21.0 percent of American adults reported that they have received the latest vaccine released at the beginning of the Fall. Coverage of children is even worse at 10.6 percent, or approximately half the rate of adults.

Dr. Alexander Sloboda, medical director of immunizations for the Chicago Department of Public Health, said:

There’s still a lot of misinformation, disinformation, particularly around the COVID vaccine, so just trying to overcome the misinformation, disinformation that’s out there with correct information is what we’re trying to do. Obviously, it’s a kind of an uphill battle.

In another development this week related to the science of COVID-19 treatment, a study from 2020 that purported to show that hydroxychloroquine was an effective treatment was finally retracted. According to the journal’s retraction notice, the paper was pulled because of ethical transgressions and major flaws in methodology.

Even though numerous scientists immediately spotted and exposed the flaws of the study, it took four years of campaigning before the journal editors finally relented and retracted the paper this month. In fact, a lead author on the study, Didier Raoult, at one point threatened legal action against the whistleblowers who challenged the study. One of the journal editors was a co-author of the study, likely a factor in the long time period between the paper being discredited and it being retracted.

The scientific discourse over the study included subsequent identification of additional serious methodological flaws in 2023. Recently, three of the study’s authors wrote a letter to the journal requesting a retraction, acknowledging that no confidence could be placed in the “results” and stating explicitly that they no longer wished to be associated with the paper.

Notably, Raoult has so far had 28 papers retracted, including this one. Raoult leads the French Hospital Institute of Marseille Mediterranean Infection (IHU). Overall, 32 papers authored by IHU members, including Raoult, have been retracted. Investigations are underway on at least 100 more papers by this group, mostly due to concerns that the studies violated ethical standards.

The discredited hydroxychloroquine study spawned massive misinformation promoting the drug as a treatment for COVID-19. The most infamous episodes involved then-President Donald Trump, who in a period of two months in 2020 made 11 tweets about unproven therapies for COVID-19 and mentioned them 65 times in White House briefings. Trump repeatedly referenced this now-retracted study, even after it had been discredited. During that time, purchases of hydroxychloroquine on Amazon surged by 200 percent.

With Trump returning to the presidency and having nominated a slate of anti-science quacks to every public health-related leadership position in the federal government—overseen by the notorious purveyor of anti-vaccine disinformation Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—the working class must heighten its vigilance against medical misinformation and follow the advice of principled scientists. Any one of Trump’s nominees is damaging, but collectively it will be catastrophic when their pseudo-science becomes official policy.

Official policy under Biden already is criminally permitting the pandemic to continue to cause death and disability virtually unchecked. The constant emergence of new variants, including at least three major new variants this year alone, is a product of the dismantling of public health measures to contain the virus. Protecting the public’s health requires more than just vigilance. The working class must organize on its own political program to replace capitalism with socialism, a social system that prioritizes human health over private profit.

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - January 8-14

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles!

1. In Chicago, all city buildings now use 100 percent clean power

“As of January 1, every single one of [Chicago’s municipal buildings] — including 98 fire stations, two international airports, and two of the largest water treatment plants on the planet — is running on renewable energy, thanks largely to Illinois’ newest and largest solar farm.”

2. California Rice Fields Offer Threatened Migratory Waterbirds a Lifeline

“Cranes need nighttime roosting sites flooded to a depth of about 3 to 9 inches, so they can easily hear or feel predators moving through the water. [... Bird Returns pays] farmers to flood their fields during critical migration periods [... and] provide foraging sites by leaving harvested rice or corn fields untilled, so cranes can access the leftover grain.”

3. New York Climate Superfund Becomes Law

“[Funds recovered “from major oil and gas companies” will be used to pay for] the restoration of stormwater drainage and sewage treatment systems, upgrades to transit systems, roads and bridges, the installation of green spaces to mitigate city heat islands and even medical coverage and preventative health programs for illnesses and injuries induced by climate change.”

4. Austin says retooled process for opening overnight cold-weather shelters is paying off

“[... T]he city's moves to lower the temperature threshold to open shelters and announce their activation at least a day in advance were the result of community feedback. [Shelter operators also passed out hot food.]”

5. Helping Communities Find Funding for Nature-Based Solutions

““From coastal oyster reefs to urban stormwater greenways, nature-based solutions are becoming the new normal.” That’s because these types of projects are often less expensive to build and have additional community benefits, such as improving water quality or creating parkland.”

6. Saving the Iberian lynx: How humans rescued this rare feline from extinction

“Back in the early 2000s, fewer than 100 individuals roamed the wild, including only 25 reproductive females. [...] Conservation staff [...] shape these cats into resourceful hunters and get them ready for life outside the center. [...] They’re fine-tuning captive-breeding routines, improving veterinary procedures, and pushing for more wildlife corridors.”

7. Biden cancels student loans for 150,000 more borrowers

“The 150,000 new beneficiaries announced Monday include more than 80,000 borrowers who were cheated or defrauded by their schools, over 60,000 borrowers with total and permanent disabilities and more than 6,000 public service workers[...] bringing the number whose student debt has been canceled during [Biden’s] administration to over 5 million[....]”

8. PosiGen wins another $200M for lower-income rooftop solar

“PosiGen offers a ​“no credit check” [solar panel installation to] those with a higher percentage of their income going to power and fuel bills[....] “somewhere between 25 and 75 percent” of the consumer’s monthly energy savings could come from efficiency measures such as sealing heating and cooling leaks, replacing thermostats, and installing LED lights[....]”

9. Indigenous communities come together to protect the Colombian Amazon

“At this year’s COP, Indigenous peoples celebrated the [protection of] traditional knowledge, innovations and practices[... and] the Cali Fund, which ensures that communities, including Indigenous peoples, receive benefits from the commercial use of [...] genetic data derived from the biological resources that they have long stewarded.”

10. How the heartland of Poland’s coal industry is ditching fossil fuels - without sacrificing jobs

“[Katowice, a former coal city] committed to reducing CO2 emissions by 40 per cent compared to 1990, prioritising investments in green infrastructure, and promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency. [...”]The gradual departure from heavy industry did not bring high social costs in our city,” says Marcin Krupa, Mayor of Katowice City.”

January 1-7 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[askvectorprime]

Dear Vector Prime

How did Tyran cluster's Howlback fight Bumblebee? What kind of mission was she on?

Dear Retro Reconnaissance,

Following the battle at Half Dome, Soundwave and Bumblebee clashed several more times throughout the early ‘90s. During that time, Soundwave disguised himself as a van, and was experimenting with subtler means of manipulating human minds than direct blackmail. In Detroit, together with his Pretender partner, Doombox, he infiltrated the techno scene, promoting his shows on the nascent worldwide web, and using a combination of music, psychedelics, and hypnosis to influence the behaviour of club goers. From there, he began distributing mini-cassettes to susceptible individuals with government connections, hoping to gain access to isolated federal networks. Bumblebee was able to uncover and dismantle the scheme, thanks to the help of Dairu and Zauru—but with exception of Garboil, all of Soundwave’s minions were able to escape, amongst the dozens of tapes being copied and circulated within the subculture.

Bumblebee finally settled the score with Soundwave during the Battle of Chicago, turning the tables right as the Decepticon was about to execute him. In the aftermath, the Autobots were forced back into hiding, but Bumblebee nevertheless continued to protect humanity from the shadows. While on the road, the Autobots tracked a Decepticon energy signature to Silicon Valley. There, Doombox had leveraged his Princeton connections to get in on the ground floor of a music streaming startup, and had secured a small data centre. It turned out that, before his death, Soundwave had spent years seeding the internet with viruses, tiny shell scripts that each contained some fraction of his own programming. And in a data center at the heart of the Bay Area, industrial servers were collecting and processing petabytes of concert recordings, music reviews, playlists, listening data, mashups, and the lingering consciousness of a digital ghost. Disguised as smartphones, Howlback, Buzzsaw, and Frenzy (who had escaped Seymour Simmons’ basement after the ex-agent’s rather hasty emigration to Cuba) were able to totally control the actions of the company’s founders, and Bumblebee had no way of reaching them without breaking cover. But when it became clear that they intended to turn the entire city into a new body for their master, he convinced Ratchet to help him destroy the data using an EMP blast. It was during this altercation that Howlback fought Bumblebee one-on-one, seeking revenge for Garboil, Ravage, Laserbeak, and of course Soundwave—in her UAV mode, she had him effectively pinned down, until a reckless dive-bomb brought her within reach of his new energon axe. After that, he was able to keep Frenzy and Buzzsaw busy just long enough for Ratchet to wipe the last traces of Soundwave from existence.

Alas, this brief exposure was what ultimately allowed Cemetery Wind to track down and murder Ratchet, with Lockdown’s help. As for Doombox… well, startups come and go. With access to such a heady mix of personal data, cryptocurrency, nootropics, and warm bodies, I cannot imagine he found it difficult to steal a new identity, slip into a life that was waiting for him and his cronies. Rumor has it that they are creating new life, in Silicon Valley… a form of life designed not to live on that planet, but on the next.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Rachel Leingang at The Guardian:

To hear Donald Trump tell it, America’s cities are in dire shape and in need of a federal intervention. “We’re going to rebuild our cities into beacons of hope, safety and beauty – better than they have ever been before,” he said during a recent speech to the National Rifle Association in what has become a common refrain on the campaign trail. “We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation, Washington DC.” Trump has for years railed against cities, particularly those run by Democratic officials, as hotbeds for crime and moral decay. He called Atlanta a “record setting Murder and Violent Crime War Zone” last year, a similar claim he makes frequently about various cities.

His allies have an idea of how to capitalize on that agenda and make cities in Trump’s image, detailed in the conservative Project 2025: unleash new police forces on cities like Washington DC, withhold federal disaster and emergency grants unless they follow immigration policies like detaining undocumented immigrants and share sensitive data with the federal government for immigration enforcement purposes.

Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, an extensive document breaking down each part of the federal government and recommending changes to be made to advance rightwing policy, was created by the Heritage Foundation, with dozens of conservative organizations and prominent names contributing chapters based on their backgrounds. This part of the project is another Republican attempt at a crackdown on so-called “sanctuary” cities, places around the country that don’t cooperate with the federal government on enforcing harsh immigration policies.

[...]

The threat of withholding federal funds

Republicans, cheered on by Trump, have worked to make immigration a key issue in cities across the country by busing migrants from the US-Mexico border inland, to places run by Democrats like New York, DC and Chicago, overwhelming the social safety net in these cities. The idea of using federal funds granted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to force immigration changes are included in a chapter about the Department of Homeland Security, written by Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s former deputy secretary of homeland security.

The chapter’s initial recommendation is to dismantle DHS entirely, create a border-focused agency comprised of other immigration-related organizations and farm out the rest of its components to existing agencies (or privatize them, in the case of the Transportation Security Administration). It’s not directly clear whether the aim is to use all Fema funds – including those that help cities and states in the immediate aftermath of an emergency like a tornado or flood – or large grant programs for things like emergency preparedness. One line in the chapter says “post-disaster or nonhumanitarian funding” could be exempt from the immigration policy requirements. The chapter also suggests that cities and states should take on more of the burden of financially responding to disasters.

[...]

One of the conditions Project 2025 suggests is requiring states or localities to share information with the federal government for law and immigration enforcement, and specifies that this would include both department of motor vehicle and voter registration databases. This is of particular interest in many cities because 19 states and Washington DC allow undocumented people to get drivers licenses, the Niskanen Center, a thinktank that delved into the project’s immigration aims, points out. These licenses help with public safety by decreasing the potential for hit-and-runs and increasing work hours, among other benefits, the center writes. If a city or state is forced to choose between issuing licenses and then sharing this information for use by immigration authorities, or accessing emergency funds for their whole population in a crisis, it’ll be tough for them to deny Fema money, said Cecilia Esterline, an immigration research analyst at the Niskanen Center.

Donald Trump’s war on urban cities is part of the wretched far-right Project 2025 plan, including crackdowns on sanctuary cities.

See Also:

The Guardian: What is Project 2025 and what does it have to do with a second Trump term?

[eretzyisrael]

By Diana Bletter

In a world first, researchers at the Hebrew University have discovered a distinct cellular pathway in the brain that indicates markers for future onset of Alzheimer’s disease, some 20 years before symptoms would be exhibited. This early detection could eventually lead to a treatment to prevent the degenerative disease.

“The study shows that Alzheimer’s disease is not just a form of accelerated aging but follows a different cellular path,” said Prof. Naomi Habib, and PhD students Anael Cain and Gilad Green of Hebrew University, who led the team of researchers at Columbia, Harvard University, and Rush Medical Center in Chicago.

Now that research has found the “molecular markers,” she said, “we can predict if an individual is on the cellular path to healthier aging, or a path to Alzheimer’s.”The video player is currently playing an ad.

This discovery will help lead toward appropriate treatments.

“We now believe we know what’s driving the disease, but we need to prove that changing the response would reverse that,” she said.

Using a data set from the prefrontal cortex of 437 aging brains, the researchers mapped 1.65 million brain cells and showed that these cellular changes — that start at least 20 years before the first signs of dementia — determine the fate of the aging brain and the progression of Alzheimer’s Disease.

The study was published last month in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature.

[makingspiritualityreal]

Basics of Astrocartography - Ascendant Matters!

For those who haven't heard of Astrocartography, it is an astrological concept, that talks about how living in different parts of the world can activate different placements in our chart, which influences your perception and life experience. Of course, that is calculated based on individual birth data, so the same places will feel differently to different people based on their perception and experiences.

If you want to check out your own map, you can do it HERE.

After many years of studying astrocartography and having the opportunity of living away from my birthplace in several locations, I have come to a conclusion on intuitive understanding of interpreting the planetary lines (colourful lines you see in the image above, each line is a different planet/aspect).

As you can see on the image above, planetary lines are in fact superimposed with the fact, that out ascendant changes based on our location. I was born a Scorpio rising (location marked by the cross) and so on this entire longitude my rising will stay the same (the pattern is flowy and circular since the Earth is an irregular orb). But if you move my location far enough away from the birth place, the ascendant will change, following in a stripe curvy pattern, just like the image above.

Within these patterns and waves, certain places pop up significantly through planetary lines, making specific towns in bigger areas centers for planetary focus.

Example - where I live right now on the West Coast of the USA, my ascendant changes from Scorpio to Libra. But more than that, in a specific location along the coast, my Jupiter line (the pink one right on the edge of the pacific) becomes active, as my Natal Jupiter in Libra now moves to the first house, with the ascendant change. If I moved somewhere in the middle of the USA, my Ascendant stays the same, but instead what is activated is my Moon Mars conjunction, now activating the 10th house, which is stronger than Jupiter in that particular area.

If I moved lets say to London, England, my ascendant would instead be in Capricorn, which would activate my Venus line, since my Capricorn Venus would move to the first house.

Fun fact is, you can have several planets activated if you have more planets in angular houses, or at least the same modality. For instance, staying on the Scorpio Rising Line, gives me a significant difference between my Sun line, which is located more in Eastern Canada and near Panama Canal, and my Saturn in the 4th house line, which goes directly through the Chicago area, yet the houses don't change so I'm still pretty much living out my basic birth chart.

I think sticking to the simpler lines is important, because looking at too many smaller ones will make you lose sight of what your life is going to be about in this given area. Even if you do look into more options, don't forget that the ascendant and main cardinal lines are what are going to be your main driving force in any location.

Remember, that God always sends you to where you are meant to be, and any location should be explored, not controlled. You will, however, have the most meaningful experiences under the influence of main lines, explained in this post, mixed with local space lines, which is something you will need to look into individually.

[secretsnowclub]

I found a weird old Gamecube survival horror game??? Can you help??

I’ve recently started collecting older video games, specifically all the survival horror games that I was too afraid to play as a kid. Now that I’m older and have a salaried job, it’s nice to be able to court that younger version of me and buy all the stuff my family couldn’t afford. Plus the games are fun. Everything from Resident Evil to Rule of Rose, Fatal Frame to Parasite Eve. I love being scared and these games work their hardest to do it and sometimes succeed.

Before I play them, I like to go on youtube and watch retrospectives, reviews, and old ads for them, so I can sort of get settled into the headspace and learn about the creation of them. But there’s one that I’ve stumbled on that I’m unable to find anything about. Almost like it came out of nowhere.

I found this game at a used game, movie, and music store just off the red line in Chicago. It’s called Soul Cemetery for the Gamecube. A survival horror game about a detective returning to their hometown to investigate the mysterious death of her father. It’s very obviously inspired by Resident Evil, featuring the tank controls, fixed camera angles, and similar graphics, not to mention the focus on zombies which wander the town. There’s also some Silent Hill influence with a heavy use of snow (instead of fog) and ambient music throughout. 

It seemed like a very generic sort of game after the opening cinematic and wandering around the opening area, but then it started to reveal itself as something more. The controls were straight forward but also had some interesting things about them. You aim and shoot like in RE, but there’s also a button to “hum,” which makes the detective slow her run to a walk and hum a tune, which changes with each area and sometimes changes within each area depending on exactly where you stand. 

There’s also a dedicated “smoke” button, which plays a unique (albeit short) cutscene where the detective smokes a cigarette and says a little something about the area, or what just happened. It almost feels like the journal mechanic that games like Life is Strange have, where the character recaps the last chapter in their own words, only you get to control when it happens and how often. 

Both of these things kinda took me off guard and drew me into the game in a way I didn’t expect. There are no save rooms or safe rooms like in a lot of survival horror games, so these two things were like getting a break for the spooky scary stuff whenever I needed it, while also getting to hear the thoughts of the character. 

This got kinda freaky when the detective started saying things about me during these moments. The game must read your memory card and system data or something because the further I got into the game, whenever she’d smoke she’d say stuff to me about how late I was up, or about the weather (possibly reading the month??? Idk if Gamecubes have location data). In the light of day these things aren’t that scary ig, but after getting killed by zombies after playing till 4 a.m. it was definitely giving me goosebumps.

It was extra creepy when the detective would do these things without being prompted. The further I got into the game, the more she would indulge in humming or smoking without me pressing the buttons. At first I thought maybe my hand slipped, but no, it’s almost like she has a mind of her own. And these self-indulgent moments were often the scariest.

I played through the entire thing in one sitting, it was maybe 5-6 hours. There were some obvious levels included in a lot of survival horror games, like a spooky motel with zombies, a dark forest with this weird moon spirit creature who is like the main bad guy of the game, and an empty town center where there’s a boss battle. About halfway through, the detective finds herself at her childhood home and that’s when shit really started to freak me out. I don’t know how to explain it other than her house had the same layout as mine? Maybe it’s just a coincidence because the game takes place in an unnamed midwest town, and maybe the houses here are just copy-pasted anyways. But it was spooky. Her living room was my living room, her bedroom was mine, the kitchen was mine. Even the spooky stairway into the basement was in the same place. 

Back in her parents room, her mom is a zombie. There’s no music. Just the looped MP3 of the zombie groans. Whenever you press the button to aim, the detective would hesitate and tell me not to do it. It was only after the mom had attacked and killed me once that I could actually return to the room and shoot the zombie. Immediately after, the detective took control and started humming this really broken, solemn tune. It felt so recognizable but I can’t figure it out. I did my best to record it here:

It’s been stuck in my head ever since.

After the run in with the mom zombie, the detective continues humming that tune, allowing me to walk slowly through the house. I returned to her bedroom and was able to “interact” with her childhood bed. The detective climbs in, the humming breaking up more and more until she falls asleep.

There’s a few esoteric and surreal images that flash on the screen. I didn’t expect them, so I couldn’t take pictures, and when I went and played through the game again, this entire section didn’t happen. Idk if it’s just like the order of events was different, or if it was how I killed the mom or how I explore after? Idk. But the images were these brutal close-ups of the mom zombie. Like, real photos, not just rendered. There were startling, and even if I can’t get them to pop up again, I feel like they’re still fresh in my mind.

The detective wakes up in her childhood bedroom after a second and is different. She’s a child. Her character model is smaller, she doesn't have her gun, and her entire control scheme is different. Most of the buttons are replaced with the “hum” thing, which has her doing that same haunting hum from before. As a child, she can still wander around the rest of the town, and it’s still overrun with zombies, now there’s just noway for her to defend herself.

I felt kind of stuck and frustrated with this as the zombies kept killing me and I didn’t like hearing the MP3 child scream over and over again, so eventually I turned the Gamecube off and on, and when the game loaded up, the detective woke up in her childhood bed as an adult, like none of that stuff happened. I was able to continue the game but was unable to beat the final boss. I think there was something I had to do as a child to be able to? But I don’t know. The game was very confusing at that point and, like I said, when I tried to replay it, the child-thing didn’t even happen. 

I think if the game has a guide or even just, like, any information online I could have made sense of it. It’s a weird take on survival horror that really did get under my skin, I just wish I could finish it, or at least figure out what some of the weird stuff in it was doing or trying to do. If you played this game when you were younger, were there any guides you followed? Or do you remember anything? The only thing I was able to find was a shitty scan of the game manual, but even that I’m having a hard time deciphering…

Any help is appreciated!

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

I will be curious to read the vituperative denials of the validity of this article's analysis, which is pasted below the cutoff:

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” That question, first posed by Ronald Reagan in a 1980 presidential-campaign debate with Jimmy Carter, has become the quintessential political question about the economy. And most Americans today, it seems, would say their answer is no. In a new survey by Bankrate published on Wednesday, only 21 percent of those surveyed said their financial situation had improved since Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, against 50 percent who said it had gotten worse. That echoed the results of an ABC News/Washington Post poll from September, in which 44 percent of those surveyed said they were worse off financially since Biden’s election. And in a New York Times/Siena College poll released last week, 53 percent of registered voters said that Biden’s policies had hurt them personally.

As has been much commented on (including by me), this gloom is striking when contrasted with the actual performance of the U.S. economy, which grew at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the most recent quarter, and which has seen unemployment holding below 4 percent for more than 18 months. But the downbeat mood is perhaps even more striking when contrasted with the picture offered by the Federal Reserve’s recently released Survey of Consumer

The survey provides an in-depth analysis of the financial condition of American households, conducted for the Fed by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Published every three years, it’s the proverbial gold standard of household research. The latest survey looked at Americans’ net worth as of mid-to-late 2022 and Americans’ income in 2021, comparing them with equivalent data from three years earlier. It found that despite the severe disruption to the economy caused by the pandemic and the recovery from it, Americans across the spectrum saw their incomes and wealth rise over the survey period.

The rise in median household net worth was the most notable improvement: It jumped by 37 percent from 2019 to 2022, rising to $192,000. (All numbers are adjusted for inflation.) Americans in every income bracket saw substantial gains, with the biggest gains registered by people in the middle and upper-middle brackets, which suggests that a slight narrowing of wealth inequality occurred during this time. In particular, Black and Latino households saw their median net worth rise faster than white households did—though the racial wealth gap is so wide that it narrowed only slightly as a result of this change.

A big driver of this increase was the rising value of people’s homes—and a higher percentage of Americans owned homes in 2022 than did in 2019. But households’ financial position improved in other ways too. The amount of money that the median household had in bank accounts and retirement accounts rose substantially. The percentage of Americans owning stocks directly (that is, not in retirement accounts) jumped by more than a third, from about 15 to 21 percent. The percentage of Americans with retirement accounts went from 50.5 to 54.3 percent, a notable improvement. And a fifth of Americans reported owning a business, the highest proportion since the survey began in its current form (in 1989).

Americans also reduced their debt loads during the pandemic. The median credit-card balance dropped by 14 percent, and the share of people with car loans fell. More significantly still, Americans’ median debt-to-asset, debt-to-income, and debt-payment-to-income ratios all fell, meaning that U.S. households had lower debt burdens, on average, in 2022 than they’d had three years earlier.

The gains in real income (in this case, measured from 2018 to 2021) were small—median household income rose 3 percent, with every income bracket seeing gains. But that was better than one might have expected, given that this period included a pandemic-induced recession and only a single year of recovery.

The picture the survey paints, then, is one of American households not only weathering the pandemic in surprisingly good shape, but ultimately also emerging from it in better financial shape than they were going in. And that, in turn, points to the effect of the U.S. policy response to the crisis: Stimulus payments, enhanced unemployment benefits, the child-care tax credit, and the moratorium on student-loan payments boosted household income and balance sheets, helping people pay down debt and increase their savings. In the process, these policies mildly narrowed inequality.

The U.S. government’s aggressive response to the pandemic, including Biden’s stimulus spending, also helped the job market recover all its pandemic-related losses—and add millions of jobs on top. The resulting tight labor market has been a huge boon to lower-wage workers. In fact, because the Fed survey’s income data end in 2021, it understates the income gains for the bottom half of the workforce, and the shrinking income inequality they’ve produced.

Hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers (who make up about 80 percent of the American workforce) rose 4.4 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2023, for instance, ahead of the pace of inflation. And this was not anomalous: Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, crunched the numbers and found that real wages for that same sector of workers are not just higher than they were in 2019, but are now roughly where they would have been if we’d continued on the upward pre-pandemic trend.

The reason for this is simple: Low unemployment has translated into higher wages. As a recent working paper by Dube, David Autor, and Annie McGrew shows, the tight labor markets of the past few years have given lower-wage workers more bargaining power than in the past, leading to a compression in the wage gap between higher-paid and lower-paid workers. Of course, that gap is still immense, but the three scholars found that the wage gains for lower-paid workers have rolled back about a quarter of the rise in inequality that has occurred since the 1980s.

So what should we take away from the Survey of Consumer Finances data, and from Dube, Autor, and McGrew’s work? Not that everything is fine, but that public policy and macroeconomic management matter a lot. Enhanced unemployment benefits, the child-care tax credit, the stimulus payments—these things materially improved the lives of Americans and helped set the economy up for a strong recovery. If the policy response had been less aggressive, the U.S. economy would be in worse shape now. This is something you can see by looking at Europe, where economies are growing far more slowly and unemployment is higher, while inflation is no lower.

Key to this story is the fact that lower-wage workers in particular would be worse off, because they have been among the chief beneficiaries of the low unemployment created by the robust recovery. It’s a useful reminder that stagnant wages are not an inevitable result of American capitalism: When labor markets are tight, and employers have to compete with one another for employees, workers get paid more.

So, even allowing for the high inflation we saw in 2022, no one could really look at the U.S. economy today and say that the policy choices of the past three years made us poorer. Yet that, of course, is precisely how many Americans feel.

Although that pessimism does not bode well for Biden’s reelection prospects, the real problem with it is even more far-reaching: If voters think that policies that helped them actually hurt them, that makes it much less likely that politicians will embrace similar policies in the future. The U.S. got a lot right in its macroeconomic approach over the past three years. Too bad that voters think it got so much wrong.

[newx-menfan]

NYX #7 Review

*Spoilers!*

The issue starts with Synch returning to NY….

Synch arrives at the warehouse the NYX’s are currently inhabiting (told you guys- the pages in the preview were going to be the first few pages of this book!) and is apparently PISSED that Prodigy has set up basically a mutant center (feels like a HUGE overreaction…but whatevs…)

Synch is bugging because David’s powers essentially don’t have weaknesses like Synch’s does (Synch retains memories of the people he “synced” with) and feels that David isn’t considering how he’s endangering everyone. (If Empath really ISN’T brainwashing them…. I’m going to be a bit pissed because frankly this plot point is stupid and came literally out of nowhere, with zero buildup!) 

Synch basically has the same feelings Scott did about freeing Xavier in “Raid on Graymalkin”- that optimists like Xavier and David are slanting it so only one kind of mutant revolution can come out of “mutants vs humans” dilemma.

Meanwhile Bilal has been radicalized (who saw THAT coming! 😜), has taken? stolen? a glider, and attacks Ms Marvel; not realizing that it’s his cousin. (Feel like Goblin or someone needs to get those things copyrighted…are gliders like “ghost guns” in the Marvel-verse??? 🤪)

The writers DECIDE this plot is the better one to focus on…because this is basically more or less, now a “stealth Ms. Marvel solo”…

While Ms Marvel is fighting her cousin, Synch accuses David of being an egotist (true!) and they beat the shit out of each other. (Ironically “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell” came on my Spotify while reading this very moment 🤭)

AGAIN, the Hellion criticism comes up- Synch is undoubtedly one of THE MOST powerful mutants- I get there’s not a lot to “synch” to, but it makes zero sense for him to lose this easily to Prodigy.

Where I could UNDERSTAND the argument that Hellion’s ego compromised him… Synch isn’t Julian and doesn’t have his inflated levels of pride.

Dante cheers Prodigy on while he beats the shit out of Synch and Synch FINALLY syncs to Prodigy’s powers, while talking about his death…. (All of Laura’s ex’s have major trauma, I guess…)

Ms Marvel captures Bilal and he goes on this “purity” rant and that he will die for his cause (reeeaallllyyyy stretching the Islamic extremist stereotypes there, Marvel!😬)

Apparently Bilal was scanning Kamala to gather information for the truthseekers, but the data collected was incomplete.

Prodigy….somehow convinces Synch to see his way and stay…? (Really? That’s the climax?)

The issue ends with Kamala crying about her cousin (who never even APPEARED in previous Ms. Marvel issues or was mentioned 🙄)

Review:

This issue…wasn’t BAD. The problem WITH this book consistently IS that it has great ideas and great MOMENTS…but the overall EXECUTION is disappointing.

David and Everett BEING on opposite sides/viewpoints makes sense. Everett grew up in St. Louis, on the poorer economic scale- where David grew up in a middle class home in Chicago. Despite both being mutants and black- they have VERY different lived experiences, along with the similarity of experiencing trauma and death while with the X-Men.

Can I just say, that I really HATE how this era has written Synch 😒- no one can get his character right. Everett ISN’T an asshole. He literally WANTED to help impoverished communities in Gen X and was the “nice guy” of his team. This is just character assassination. 🙄

It’s not that I couldn’t believe Prodigy and Synch would have different ideologies- but this plot point feels so ham fisted and under developed.

It’s sad because I think this COULD have been an interesting examination into how Hellion and Prodigy, returning back to their fight in issue #4, are more similar than they will admit- both live and die by their ego and sense of morality.

The Bilal stuff is just pointless and poorly handled- I really DON’T understand why they dropped the quiet council/Hellion for…angry, extremist cousin? Who will ultimately be totally forgotten in the Ms Marvel books after NYX is cut? (Sorry but I don’t believe NYX will miss the chopping block at this point)

The ending was lackluster- there’s nothing in David’s speech that would convince Everett to GO WITH Prodigy’s way of advocacy… but a more believable ending would have required taking their time with the story and NOT doing the dumb Bilal plot point (same problem issue #4 had 🙄)

Again- I think the worst part about NYX is HOW MUCH I want to like it. It 100% had potential! But the final product is just always pretty unsatisfactory and surface level writing.

It’s not “X-Force” levels of snoozefest or even “X-Factor” levels of cringe… the SAD thing with NYX IS that it does HAVE its high points…only it’s followed by some really mediocre moments and endings.

What I will never truly understand is- WHY DOES Marvel CONSTANTLY DO THIS- they feature the NXM to help prop up whatever “character of the week” they’re promoting at the moment… and fans always feel unhappy because it’s NOT what they want….

Why not JUST do a straight NXM book, at this point??

They’re done this with Kid Omega…Eyeboy…Glob…Ms Marvel…X23…Baby Cable…ect

And NONE of it (except maybe Laura!) has ever been successful.

Just GIVE us a FUCKING team NXM book already!!

Theories:

I KNOW that I am going to HATE issue #8 guys…

The fact that it’s an event tie-in, guarantees that I am going to be 100% disappointed. (You are all going to have to hear my rant about why I hate comic book events! 😝)

Bilal is OBVIOUSLY going to try and murder Krakellion and somehow Kamala will hog the spotlight, while Laura is basically wallpaper 😒

Oh have the tables turned, I guess…

I guess on the bright side, considering how this issue went…they’ll at least be a couple diamonds in a pile of otherwise coal storytelling…😕

We will get one panel of Laura and Hellion, and the rest of the book will be Bilal drama 😜

[archinform]

The Lessing and Lessing Annex, Chicago

The Lessing (now The Commodore), 550 W. Surf St., Lake View, Chicago

The Lessing Annex (Now The Green Brier or Green Briar), 559 W. Surf St., Lake View, Chicago

The Commodore, view at Broadway and Surf St. Source: apartments.com

The Lessing (The Commodore) archival photo. Source: Chicago History, Spring 1985, p.30

I've always admired The Commodore, its severe facade of Roman brick with minimal ornament contrasting with its deep recesses and complicated footprint. I used to fantasize about living there; data about recent condominium sales put prices at $250,000-$300,000 for a two-bedroom unit.

Originally called The Lessing, the residential building was completed in 1897 at the northeast corner of Surf and Broadway, and designed by Edmund Krause.

New Yorker Herbert Croly observed in 1907 that while New Yorkers turned to Paris for models, Chicagoans favored simple, even modest exteriors. Chicago History, Spring 1985, p. 30

According to Carroll William Westfall, in "Home at the Top: Domesticating Chicago's Tall Apartment Buildings," Chicago History, Spring 1985, p. 21:

Multi-family dwellings, apartment and flat buildings, did not conform to nineteenth-century Chicagoan's cherished view of their town as a community of freestanding, single-family residences surrounded by fences protecting trees, gardens, and outbuildings. This image persisted long after Chicago had become a thriving commercial city and had ceased being merely a town.

Chicago History, Spring 1985, p.30

The story of The Lessing and Annex began with German immigrant Ernst Johann Lehmann, who began his career in Chicago by opening a small jewelry store on Clark Street. By 1874, he had been so successful that he moved his business to the prestigious corner of State and Adams. He called the new store "The Fair," a name that assured customers that they would be treated fairly. By 1882 The Fair store occupied every building along the north side of Adams between State and Dearborn Streets.

A short time later, the entire south half of the block bounded by Dearborn, State, Monroe, and Adams streets had been leased to The Fair in a deal amounting to a little over three million dollars. A great emporium would be constructed on the site, twelve stories high, costing two million bucks. The building would be the largest in the city and, in fact, the largest in the world devoted to merchandising.

Lehmann died in 1900 at age 50, 10 years after he suffered a mental breakdown, spending the remainder of his life in a mental institution. His wife, Augusta, via a male relative, gained control of the business. She also received the bulk of his wealth, estimated $10 miliion (about $331 million today). Augusta and the Lehmann clan had become interested in real estate before Ernst died. In 1897, the upscale Lessing Apartment building, designed by Edmund Krause, was completed at Surf and Evanston Street, now Broadway.

The Commodore, floor plan published in 1923

The Lessing was marketed to an upscale clientele and had 86 apartments, some of them with as many as eight rooms. Architect Edmund R. Krause broke the huge six-and-one-half-story complex into a series of projecting units with deep but narrow courts between them to provide light and ventilation. The Roman brick façade is organized into the classic three-part design of the Chicago School. Although there is a nifty oculus (a circular opening, especially one at the apex of a dome or structure), it is minimally decorated, centered at the top of each projecting bay. Digital Research Library of Illinois History

Oculus in the attic story

Entrance hall

Stairway

Interior views of The Commodore are available here

The quiet apartment building was disturbed in 1917 when a lurid tale of deceit and betrayal led to a murder that reads like a novel (see story below). 

MURDER AT THE COMMODORE IN 1917.

Shoots When She Learns He is Married. 

Dr. Louis H. Quitman Wounded by Cabaret Singer, May Die.

A video tour of The Commodore by sales agents is available on Instagram here

The Virginia Hotel, Chicago, was quite similar in design and simplicity to The Lessing.

Seven years later, the Lessing Annex was completed just to the south, facing The Lessing from across Surf.

The Lessing Annex

Apparently, the term "hotel" was sometimes applied to residential buildings that were not intended for short-term stays. "Fire proof construction, built 1902, steel and tile interior, brick exterior. The Green Briar was constructed of a different color of Roman brick than its neighbor across the street.

My photographs of the buildings:

Edmund R. Krause, architect

Edmund R. Krause was born in Thorn, Germany, on August 15, 1859, the son of William and Wilhelmina Krause. He studied architecture in Germany and came to the United States in 1880 at the age of 21. He began his architectural practice in Chicago in 1885 at the age of 25 or 26. For a brief time, he was in partnership with Frederick W. Perkins (1896) but, for most of his working years, he was a sole practitioner.... The American Contractor database that covers the period 1898 through and including 1912 shows that he designed 61 buildings. Of these, 25 (or 41 percent) were for either E.J. Lehman, the estate of E.J. Lehman or another Lehman family member. It is a great example of the importance of a major client to an architect. Another major client was the Fair Department Store. He designed six buildings for them – mainly warehouses or delivery stations – between 1904 and 1909. It appears that the large apartment building was his specialty, for he designed several. Most of them have been demolished, but one prominent commission still stands at the intersection of Surf and Broadway. Originally known as the Lessing Apartments, it was later renamed the Commodore and is now a condominium building. Designed in 1897 and completed in 1898, it originally had 75 apartments, 15 to a floor around a “U”-shaped central courtyard. Later, an Annex was constructed to the north using the same style yellow Roman brick. The Lessing Apartment Complex was one of the first, if not the first, large apartment building constructed north of Diversey. He also designed the 20-story Majestic Theatre building, at what is now 22 W. Monroe. It was subsequently renamed the Schubert Theater and, in 2005, was renamed the LaSalle National Bank Theater. George Rapp of the later firm of Rapp and Rapp designed the interior theater while working as an assistant to Mr. Krause. The building itself was recommended for Chicago Landmark status in 2005. To our knowledge, Edmund Krause designed only three structures in Edgewater: two houses and one commercial building. The first house he designed was at 1189-91 (now 6212) Winthrop. Cook County Recorder of Deeds records show his wife purchasing the lot on August 25, 1898. The permit for the house was issued the next month and he is shown as living in the house in the 1899 and 1900 city directories. It was a rather substantial frame house at 2,800 square feet. The Krauses sold the improved property on January 1, 1902. It was obviously a short stay. Edgewater Historical Society

Majestic Theater, Chicago, Edmund R. Krause, architect

[rjzimmerman]

How many of you get excited when you see a monarch butterfly? If you do, did you get excited as a kid, or is the excitement a function of their possibly pending extinction? If you do not, can you imagine a world without monarch butterflies?

Excerpt from this story from E&E News/Politico:

Judgment day approaches for the monarch butterfly.

Bound by a court settlement, the Fish and Wildlife Service is supposed to decide by early December whether the monarch warrants listing as threatened or endangered. Although the agency misses many Endangered Species Act deadlines, it appears determined to meet this one after several years of study.

“We wanted to make sure that we have all the best science available … and we wanted to make sure that we were able to gather all that information and make a quality decision,” said Nicole Alt, director of FWS’ Center for Pollinator Conservation.

With the migratory butterfly passing through dozens of states, a decision to list the species could be accompanied by the designation of an expansive critical habitat. Combined with other regulatory implications, this could make the long-delayed monarch listing call one of the most consequential actions in the history of the ESA. It also appears likely, some monarch experts say, given the bleak population trends that led FWS to conclude in 2020 that “monarch viability is declining and is projected to continue declining over the next 60 years.”

Despite the dire circumstances, a campaign to help the monarch butterfly has been advancing on multiple fronts but without a unified commander in chief. Rather, the monarch’s allies march under different flags that reflect a dispersed approach toward species conservation. Some study the insect, some set aside habitat and some tinker with new tools, all without reference to a species recovery plan that an ESA listing would mandate.

Consider:

From an urban office building, a program administered by the University of Illinois, Chicago’s Energy Resources Center has recruited energy companies, state departments of transportation and counties into conserving hundreds of thousands of acres as butterfly habitat on rights of way, such as the medians between roads.

On sprawling Fort Cavazos — formerly Fort Hood — in Texas, biologists prowl the grounds in search of adult monarchs as well as eggs and larva. Since 2017, they estimate they have collected information from more than 10,000 tagged adult monarchs and forwarded this data to another team of collaborators with the Monarch Watch program based at the University of Kansas.

From her Denver office, Alt oversees four geographically scattered FWS staffers and collaborates with others in and out of government. With yet another allied group called Monarch Joint Venture, for instance, the Center for Pollinator Conservation is supporting studies of drones and artificial intelligence in measuring milkweed distribution on wildlife refuges.

And, scattered as they are, the various monarch teams, researchers and advocates periodically gather for a meeting of the minds, as they did in the summer of 2022 for a first-of-its-kind Capitol Hill butterfly summit where Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced establishment of Alt’s pollinator center.

“It’s really been exciting to see the level of interest from lots of different sectors,” Alt said, adding that “different people want to work in different ways and in different spaces … and in the vast majority of situations they are all advocating for the same thing.”

Some conservation groups, however, want to see a more urgent focus on the problem, saying Congress needs to dramatically increase funding to help the monarchs truly recover. In letters sent last week to House and Senate appropriators, the Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental groups called on lawmakers to provide $100 million annually to restore 1 million acres of pollinator habitat in this country each year and another $30 million to preserve forests in Mexico where some of the butterflies spend their winters.

The groups noted how people over generations have heralded the black-and-orange butterfly’s “spectacular beauty and epic, life-affirming migrations.”

“Dedicating $100 million a year to monarch conservation gives these beloved butterflies a fighting chance at survival,” one letter said.

[tonguetyd]

literally annoyed that all coastal states (including my dumb glove shaped state) aren't 90% hydro/wind

i might not be an engineer but i am with you there

*drags soapbox out and jumps on top*

DO YOU KNOW HOW INFURIATING IT IS TO HAVE EVERYONE SAY “ELECTRIFY EVERYTHING” KNOWING FULL GODDAMN WELL THAT THE GRID 1) CANNOT SUPPORT IT AND 2) IS DRASTICALLY NOT BASED ON RENEWABLE ENERGY?!?!?!

Don’t get me wrong I love electric cars, I love heat pump systems, I love buildings and homes that can say they are fossil fuel free! Really! I do!

But it means FUCK ALL when you have!!!! Said electricity!!!! Sourced by fossil fuels!!!! I said this in my tags on the other post but New York City! Was operating on *COAL*!!!!! Up until like 5 years ago.

WE ARE SITTING IN THE MIDDLE OF A RIVER.

Not to mention the ocean which like. You ever been to the beach?! You know what there’s a whole hell of a lot of at the beach? Wind!!!!!!!! And yet we have literal campaigns saying “save our oceans! Say no to wind power!”

Idk bruh I feel like the fish are gonna be less happy in a boiling ocean than needing to swim around a giant turbine but. I’m not a fuckin fish so.

NOT TO MENTION (I am fully waving my hands around like a crazy person because this is the main thing that gets me going)

THE ELECTRICAL GRID OF THE UNITED STATES HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED ON LARGE SCALE LEVELS SINCE IT WAS BUILT IN THE 1950s AND 60s.

It is not DESIGNED to handle every building in the city of [random map location] Chicago being off of gas and completely electrified. It’s not!!! The plants cannot handle it as now!

So not only do we not have renewable sources because somebody in Iowa doesn’t want to replace their corn field with a solar field/a rich Long Islander doesn’t want to replace their ocean view with a wind turbine! We also are actively encouraging people to put MORE of a strain on the grid with NO FUCKING SOLUTION TO MEET THAT DEMAND!

I used to deal with this *all* the time in my old job when I was working with smaller building - they ALWAYS needed an electrical upgrade from the street and like. The utility only has so many wires going to that building. And it’s not planning on bringing in more for the most part!

(I am now vibrating with rage) and THEN you have the fuckin AI bros! Who have their data centers in the middle of nowhere because that’s a great place to have a lot of servers that you need right? Yeah sure, you know what those places don’t have? ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE TO SUPPORT THE STUPID AMOUNT OF POWER AI NEEDS!!!!!!!

Now the obvious solution is that the AI bros of Google and Microsoft and whoever the fuck just use their BILLIONS OF FUCKING DOLLARS IN PROFIT to be good neighbors and upgrade the fucking systems because truly what is the downside to that everybody fucking wins!

But what do I know. I’m just friendly neighborhood engineer.

*hops down from soapbox*

[rapeculturerealities]

Crisis pregnancy centers outnumber abortion clinics | WBEZ Chicago

https://www.wbez.org/stories/crisis-pregnancy-centers-outnumber-abortion-clinics/8a973ba6-2a89-45c2-aa04-5043d4d2804d

In Illinois, it might be common for women to encounter a crisis pregnancy center before an abortion provider because the centers are in far greater supply throughout the state, according to a WBEZ analysis of data provided by CPC Map Project at the University of Georgia and from the Abortion Finder directory.

Overall, there are nearly three times as many crisis pregnancy centers in Illinois than abortion providers, the analysis shows. Among the state’s 102 counties, there are 42 counties with crisis pregnancy centers and no in-person abortion providers. Only 12 counties in Illinois have abortion providers, and 23 of the state’s 36 abortion providers are in Cook or DuPage counties.

Michele Landeau, who runs Hope Clinic, an abortion provider in downstate Granite City, has also seen patients who’ve made prior visits to crisis pregnancy centers. In times of crisis, patients sometimes choose what’s closest, Landeau said. “If I find out that I’m pregnant, unexpectedly, and I Google, you know, abortion near me, and a crisis pregnancy center comes up first, and they’re 15 minutes away. And then an abortion clinic comes up second, and they’re four hours away, I’m gonna go to the crisis pregnancy center, of course.”

[mariacallous]

In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, return to office policies have become a central issue for employers and employees. Using data on 260 million resumes linked to information at Microsoft, SpaceX, and Apple, David Van Dijcke of the University of Michigan, Florian Gunsilius of Ipsos Public Affairs, and Austin Wright of the University of Chicago find that these companies “faced a significant outflow of employees after implementing a return to office mandate.” Employees with longer tenure at each company left more frequently in response to the mandate, increasing the proportion of employees with just 1 to 3 years of experience. The proportion of employees at the three companies who left for firms that weren’t startups (defined as companies with more than 50 employees) increased against a counterfactual with no return to office mandate, while the proportion that left for startups went down. The authors argue that return to office mandates can lead to a significant loss of human capital for firms, as it causes experienced workers to leave for large competitors.