illinois irredentist | currently reading : absalom absalom | it’s still there
chicago
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the fundamental rule of our era is that everything is political, except politics, which is entertainment
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the united states is the only developed nation without universal healthcare and today we did something no developed nation has ever done before: we moved further away from universal coverage
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i think you should buy your own groceries
I think Instacart should give you the option of what shopper you want.
I also think that people should rate them and if you get too many requests wrong maybe you should Idunno. Not be picked to shop for groceries. Like get pushed to the bottom of the queue.
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when you’re the dean of a community college and you have good news and bad news
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like a month ago one of my friends convinced me to switch from men’s body wash to women’s and no joke it has been the single largest increase in my quality of life of the last 3 months
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while haiti is in the news so much this week maybe we should all take a moment to discuss the fact that their economic destitution is entirely due to being forced to spend ~80% of their federal budget every year for 150 years on reparations to france for freeing the slaves
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just had a crazy revelation: you can eat in the airport after your flight too
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at a party this weekend a girl who i just met, after talking to me for 20 minutes told me “i think we’re close enough now that i can say this but i think you’re on the same trajectory as anthony bourdain” and it’s been rattling around my brain like tinfoil in an mri
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okay but carmel, indiana is an obscenely wealthy inner circle suburb of a major midwest city. the average household income is $181k, which is similar to zurich. it’s one of the wealthiest places on earth
most Europeans have no idea how poor they are vs the Average Midwestern American
Community note
Important Context: Carmel, Indiana, is an outlier when comparing wealth across America. Carmel's average household income (AHI) is $181,667, significantly higher than the American AHI of $80,610 and Indiana's AHI of $76,910.
census.gov/library/public….
worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/indi
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by the age of 26 you should be able to have a pleasant conversation with any person of any age and if you can’t that’s a skill issue
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3 most famous chicagoans:
1) barack obama
2) oprah winfrey
3) the literal freakin pope
3 most famous philadelphians
1) rocky balboa (fictional)
2) benjamin franklin (dead)
3) benajamin netanyahu (evil)
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this makes it sound like they have extra hearts to go around and just didn’t give her one but there are substantially fewer hearts than patients! we prioritize those likeliest to survive the procedure & its grueling aftermath—susceptibility to disease is one factor in ‘surviving’
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i (apparently) have a final exam today for a class i did not remember i was enrolled in and do not need to graduate. let’s see how it goes!
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is there an actual argument that lab grown diamonds are meaningfully worse beyond the fact that they’re “unnatural”?
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northern european roommate will NOT let me run the ac at night bc “it’s bad for you.” it is 102 degrees here buddy i don’t care if it’s bad for you (it isn’t) ill die before i suffer thru that heat
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genuinely stunning how geopolitically destabilizing the failed invasion of ukraine has been
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they don’t but that’s not what they’re selling. most universities have brilliant faculty but only at elite ones can you be classmates with a kennedy. it’s obvious in everything from small class sizes to career services to the student body itself: the network is the product
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just heard someone say “yall” in a british accent. choking. sobbing. throwing up. THIS is cultural appropriation
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why does like every third trump cabinet nominee have an incredibly strange & cruel story involving a dog?
Never forget that Trump’s new AG nominee, Pam Bondi, took in a family’s St. Bernard when they were displaced after hurricane Katrina, and then refused to return him. The family had to sue, and it took 16 months before the dog was returned to them. Deplorable.
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hm. perhaps the FDA is important after all
New potential explanation for “what’s happening in America in 2025”
ALT Image titled “Products to Avoid.” Shows two protein powders that exceed Consumer Reports’ safety threshold for lead exposure. On the left: Naked Nutrition Vegan Mass Gainer (315 g or 6 scoops per serving) at 1,572% of CR’s level of concern for lead per serving, with 0 servings per week limit. On the right: Huel Black Edition (90 g or 2 scoops per serving) at 1,288% of CR’s level of concern for lead per serving, also with 0 servings per week limit. Each product includes a red semicircular gauge showing percentages far beyond daily and weekly safety limits.
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$181k per year is around the 83rd percentile for american family incomes. if your family makes $181k you are not “regular middle class”—you make more money than ~5/6 american households
$181k is literally regular middle class.
Community note
The 2023 median household income was $80k. $181k was in the top 20%
census.gov/library/public…
Middle class is defined as between 2/3 and double the median income ($80k). $181k is more than double, and would only be considered middle class in very affluent suburbs (like Carmel) where data is skewed.
pewresearch.org/short-reads/20
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wow a persecuted group is experiencing a stark drop in voluntary self identification?
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so crazy fun fact about ihn yo-han (born john alderman linton): he was the FIRST EVER person to be granted south korean citizenship as an adult
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jd vance hasn’t sent a single tweet since this one, four days ago. before this he tweeted almost every single day dozens of times a days for the past several years
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my skin is just like so much softer and clearer & the women’s body wash smells 10x better. just dubs all around. what the fuck is in the men’s shit that it’s just not doing anything
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good. god.
"My family is being ripped apart, and I firmly believe this phenomenon is central to why." trib.al/Veq6gHW
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i still can't believe that pinochet led one of the most brutal dictatorships in latin american history for nearly 30 years, then he just,, decided to hold democratic elections because the pope told him to, lost badly, and retired
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genuinely does anyone have an explanation for why this isn’t moving the market?
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kinda insane that 7 of the first 9 presidents were fully bilingual (6 of them spoke french and van buren spoke dutch as his first language) and no subsequent president has been bilingual except FDR
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so like english is just the lingua franca of the entire internet now isn’t it
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are you people fucking stupid
Senate Democrats agree to allow President-elect Trump to fill four (!) pending appeals court nominations.
foxnews.com/politics/senate-…
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the republican assumption that most gov jobs are either graft or make-work corruption is truly telling. most highly qualified gov workers are passing on tons of money to pursue service, but that fundamental unselfishness is so alien to the republican psyche they assume the worst
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there is a narrow path here to jd vance being the first world leader to get excommunicated since juan perón
MAJOR BREAKING: Pope Francis has written a letter to US Bishops saying he’s following “major crisis” of “mass deportations;” takes on Vance saying “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan”
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an electricity shortage in THE UNITED STATES in 2025, he literally is speed running great depression 2
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not to dunk on this guy in particular, but lots of americans outside nyc/chicago/dc have been in my mentions describing places as having good transit in a way that mostly serves to expose the fact that they don’t know what good transit is
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apparently while napoleon was on elba he effectuated a series of economic and administrative reforms that were so effective, the island’s GDP & quality of life nearly doubled in 10 months. as a result almost every able bodied male on the island joined his army
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the REAL id thing is so funny. you’ve had TWENTY years to get one. ostensibly you’ve had to go to the dmv at least 4 times in that period why didn’t you get one one of those 4 times?
Community note
The Real ID Act was passed in 2005, but states did not start issuing Real IDs until years later. California, for example, only started issuing them in 2018.
dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-an
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i asked her to explain and she just said “you’re gonna see and do everything there is and there will be nothing left and then you’ll anthony bourdain yourself”
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syria’s collapse, armenia/azerbaijan, eastern european anti russian sentiment, an increasingly lonely/isolated iran, conflicts in central asia, sweden and finland in NATO. all directly downstream. one of the single worst decisions of all time
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you may be asking: if you didn’t wanna take it and don’t need it to graduate, why on earth did you take it? reader, i forgot
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this also led to an american invasion and occupation of haiti in 1911 when they couldn’t make even the interest payments on the reparation debt, which they were not free of until 1947. to this day neither france nor the us has made any reparation payments
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haiti was the wealthiest nation in the new world in 1790 ! even surpassing the united states and argentina! the last two centuries of suffering were forced upon them by imperial powers as punishment for freeing slaves
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it’s actually not that easy to guess other ppl’s preferences but you know who does know your preferences? you do! go the fucking store
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oh! right! the deal is i had enough total credits to graduate but you also need 9 per quarter, so i had to add another class for this last quarter, which i do not need to pass only to be enrolled in
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they were forced to buy the freedom of every slave they freed in the peace treaty. one of the great injustices of all time
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we cannot ever recover as a country from this heinous episode without severe consequences for every single person involved in this depravity. an american nuremberg is, at this point, a bare minimum
🚨 NEW: Kilmar Abrego Garcia has officially detailed the torture he endured inside El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison.
In a federal court filing, he says he:
– Lost 31 pounds in two weeks
– Was forced to kneel for 9 hours straight
– Was beaten with boots and batons
– Had no mattress, no bathroom access, and no windows
– Was told: “Whoever enters here doesn’t leave”
Now ask yourself: Why is this model being praised by Trump-aligned officials as a “solution” for crime in America?
🧾 Full story via @joshgerstein & Politico: politico.com/news/2025/07/02…
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it is my most dearly held belief that to become an american all you need to do is stand with both feet on our soil and say truthfully “i wish to be an american”. my second most dearly held belief is that anyone opposed to this is fundamentally unamerican
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maybe no amount of technological progress can change the fact that medieval peasant brain is the default state of the average person
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the bear is crazy because it’s so obvious that everyone involved loves chicago more than anything but it’s also reasonably clear that they haven’t spent like a ton of time here especially in the neighborhoods that don’t have michelin restaurants
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the fundamental problem with american politics is that everything is better now than it was in 1990 or 2005 and absolutely no one wants to hear that
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coming to terms with the fact that there’s just no political constituency for public transit in the united states
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my Nuanced Take on this is that while this guy is an absolute idiot and should definitely have to pay some kind of comically large fine, 12 years is a fkn insane prison sentence for any non-violent crime and the us embassy would be right to throw a fit about it
An American dad faces 12 years in prison for having a tiny bit of hunting ammo in his carry on bag in Turks and Caicos.
He could miss his son growing up over this.
Do not visit there until he’s sent home. Let @TCIPremier know what you think about this!
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birthright citizenship is among the most compelling pieces of evidence for new world supremacy
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the sole mission of basically every single human since the invention of agriculture has been to acquire enough wealth/skills/resources to stop farming
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guy who sticks around ohare after his flight bc he just loves airport food (it’s me and the food is the eggplant milanesa from frontera)
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something legitimately broke during the pandemic imo and now a stunningly high portion of people are a high selfishness low openness antisocial crazies
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the deep south has levels of racial polarization you typically only see immediately prior to ethnic cleansing
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in a parliamentary system he’d have lost a vote of no confidence for like 3 different reasons by now
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i think the more remarkable fact is that carmel, indiana is straight up one of the wealthiest places on earth. it is the 2nd wealthiest suburb of our 34th largest city in our 30th wealthiest state, yet with only 100k ppl it has a higher gdp than like jamaica, lebanon or the congo
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eric adams is legitimately insane and literally committed treason in exchange for airline miles. he’s also the only nyc mayor in ~50 years to make progress on two of the biggest issues the city has: trash & housing
will the eric adams era of nyc be regarded as “he may have been corrupt, but he gave us trash cans” or something different
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how is AOC consistently the only competent & clear sighted member of this party
The Supreme Court has become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control.
Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.
I intend on filing articles of impeachment upon our return.
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getting loads of these messages so i’m just gonna answer one here: no it doesn’t! this is not true! all of this is a conspiracy theory cooked up by crazy shut-ins! please sign up to be an organ donor—it saves lives
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always fascinated when you can see state lines on maps like these––look at west virginia, arkansas, and mississippi in particular. that's the effect of public policy
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to me this sounds like it’s a problem with the market not catching up more so than the product itself? but i could be wrong!
on the energy front, is the environmental implication not still less than mining (in the most ethical manner)?
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he’s also the first westerner to pass their medical licensing exam and, regrettably, a fascist
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american cities would gain so much by treating transit as infrastructure instead of welfare
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people smoking or playing loud music on public transit should be physically removed if they don’t stop
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whats the reason thai food is so big in the us but just hasn’t really taken off anywhere else in the world? is it literally just the government funding thing?
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cant believe nyc is gonna pay mckinsey millions of dollars to invent the dumpster
BREAKING: @NYCSanitation hires @McKinsey to do a comprehensive study on what NYC needs to finally get trash off the sidewalk (couldn't we have just called the mayor of Barcelona?): nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/10/…
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i’m sorry it costs FIVE billion american dollars to build 32 elevators??? $156 million PER ELEVATOR??? what on god’s green earth are we doing, building them out of solid gold???
Five years into its accessibility plan, the CTA hasn’t added a single elevator. The estimated price tag has more than doubled to $4.9 billion.
trib.al/y4tE97m
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what would happen during the 4.5 day jill stein presidency?
Percentage of Votes for President:
Trump - 49.8 (R)
Harris - 48.3 (D)
Presidents in the White House:
R -1
D-0
The system does not proportionally represent Americans. Trump should've won 727 days of the term, Harris 706 days, and the third parties 28 days.
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yeah, you got me, the "quiet part" is that i think continuing to have a federal government that, idk, protects my clean drinking water and doesn't put immigrants in concentration camps is more important than increasing attendance by 50% at the de-colonial summer camp or whatever
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luke farritor is being demonized because he is a demon. there are thousands of people who are dead because he killed them. if he’s a truly a brilliant, compassionate & sensitive man this article is the least of his concerns, the largest of which will be living with what he’s done
Incidentally, this was my entire statement. Decide for yourself if it was excerpted fairly.
Luke Farritor is a brilliant, compassionate and sensitive man. I have complete faith in the integrity of his work for DOGE. I am deeply concerned by the ongoing demonization of him and his colleagues by members of the press. Democrats and Republicans alike have recognized the need for rationalization of the federal government's excessively profligate spending for as long as I've been alive. We are indescribably fortunate to have talent of Luke's caliber working on this problem - a task I understand he is essentially volunteering for. He could easily earn $10m/year base salary at any of a dozen AI labs in San Francisco, but instead his salt-of-the-Earth American patriotism has driven him to Washington to work on a problem that poses an existential risk to the survival of the United States, at considerable risk to himself and his family. I urge you to be extremely restrained in your reporting.
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republicans hate poor people & for the first time this century democrats weren’t able to protect the voters from the consequences of their actions re: healthcare. lord have mercy. so many people are going to suffer
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oh MY GOD??? how was this allowed? in what totally insane crazy psychodrama is this line of questioning admissible in a real court of law?
she was convicted 10-1 in a murder trial??? what do you mean the uk has non-unanimous murder convictions?? and the defense can’t communicate w the press? god
Community note
The jury unanimously found her guilty of murdering Child O.
chesterstandard.co.uk/news/national/
Community note
The notes to Rule 25.11 of the Criminal Procedure Rules explain that leading questions are only prohibited for examination in chief, not cross-examination, which this is.
legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/759/
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ashamed to admit i’m starting to enjoy this newsom schtick
BIRD-BRAIN TREY GALLAGHER (A SO-CALLED FOX "NEWS" HOST THAT NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD OF) SAYS MY POSTS ARE “CHILDISH” AND “UNBECOMING” OF A LEADER — CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? MANY ARE SAYING FOX ("EDIT THE TAPES") NEWS SHOULD CANCEL HIS PATHETIC LITTLE "BEDTIME SHOW" IMMEDIATELY. THEY ARE CALLING IT THE MOST BORING PROGRAM IN CABLE HISTORY. TOTAL SNOOZE FEST! SAD!!! — GCN
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okay but a bill to do this passed the senate without opposition and just died anyway. the house never even took it up! where did it go? why is no one talking about this? this nightmare could have already ended!
i am officially a single-issue voter and that issue is eliminating daylight savings time once and for all
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