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Freezing the Red-Purple Modernization funding is really bad ...but freezing the Red Line Extension is the best thing anyone can do for Chicago. It's one of the nation's most wasteful transit proposals and the debt from the cost overruns will choke the CTA's operating budget

This always happens. Philhellenic (weebs for Greece) officers who fought in the Napoleonic Wars and went to help Greece during its independence war were shocked and dismayed to find that actual Greeks were illiterate ragamuffins rather than disciples of Plutarch.

Did some research on Frank Lloyd Wright's prefab work. In 1901, Wright argued that machines should free humans for design work, not replace craftsmanship. That idea became an obsession. His first real attempt was the American System-Built Homes in 1911, which used factory-precut lumber shipped to sites for assembly. He drew 960+ sketches and 30 variations. He tried selling them through a dealer network like cars, starting at $2,750. His business partner was skimming payments, and when WWI hit and froze material production, Wright sued him and walked away. Only about 20 were ever built. In the late 1930s, he tried again with Usonian homes. These were simple, flat-roofed houses with radiant-heated concrete slabs and carports instead of garages. About 60 were built, but the cost of construction always creeped too high. By the 1950s, Wright admitted his "affordable" buyers were upper-middle-class. His next attempt was Usonian Automatic (1950s), which used interlocking concrete blocks that homeowners could theoretically DIY. One house required 48,000 individually cast blocks. Only seven were ever built. These photos look like jail cells to me (see photos below). His last attempt was a partnership with builder Marshall Erdman. He produced three prefab designs, and buyers were required to submit topographic maps for Wright's approval. He died in 1959 before the third design was built. Wright's vision of a standardized skeleton and infinite customization never found its market. It's essentially the same problem today's modular housing startups are still trying to solve.

Dating is the one area where racial biases and hierarchies become exceedingly transparent. The facade of liberalism dissolves completely when it comes to intimate relationships. This isn't going to change regardless of your scolding struggle sessions. Accept it and move on.

as I have been saying for 2 weeks.....and in recent days all of the "experts" are saying, this would be the most suicidal military move... 1. Iran is not going to just allow a convoy of MEUs with a few thousand Marines through the straits to get to the island. We are in a war, they will sink them 2. An airborne assault out of Kuwait, or a fucking airborne parachute drop as the other option is ridiculous 3. The island is 15 miles offshore from the mainland...literally in fucking MORTAR range at least.....drones and missiles and artillery will just pound the tiny "excursion" of troops on a tiny island that has no bunkers, no where to hide 4. Zero logistical support for any troops that actually get there What the fuck are we doing?

Katharine Hepburn jumped four times into Venice’s canals for Summertime. That night, her eyes burned, itched, and watered. She contracted rare chronic conjunctivitis that stayed with her for life. Director thought it wouldn’t look real if they used double.

Last fall, as my 86-year-old father-in-law lay dying of cancer at his home in Lakeland, Florida, the pool guy told my wife—who was tending to her dad—that he was owed $2,000 for past services. He claimed that he’d left my father-in-law’s check “out in the rain” and it had been ruined. Although distraught over her father’s situation, my wife is a sensible person and asked to see the “ruined” check before writing a new one. Weeks pass, and the pool guy starts to get pretty aggressive about demanding payment, before he finally produces the “ruined” check on which he also claims to have spilled ink (!)—and shows her many other similarly “ruined” checks. My wife logs into her father’s bank account and sees that the check—in perfect condition—had been cashed by the pool guy months earlier. So he’s obviously trying to take advantage of her vulnerable situation to scam her. We were outraged and concerned that he’d pull this stunt on others, so we immediately contacted the Polk County Sheriff’s Department. We were assigned a Detective to whom we presented the evidence: emails demanding payment, the copy of the bogus “ruined” check, and the bank’s copy of the intact check that was cashed. Alas, they’ve now ghosted us since we last reached out 3 months ago asking for an update. And that brings me to my point: I don’t know what’s happened in our country, but our law enforcement agencies and prosecutors seem more interested in doing their paperwork than in actually enforcing the law. I hope we can change this before people stop bothering even to bring wrongdoing to the authorities’ attention, as has happened in many other countries. The rule of law requires enforcement of the law!

Like I said two weeks ago, The Gulf is essentially in an existential crisis if the Iranian state now does not collapse, As they would be entirely repriced as at the whims of whoever runs Iran just firing missiles at them whenever. So it seems like the UAE is pivoting towards fully joining the war and escalating it. There’s tons of capital there that’s becoming quite Asian-curious, and their goal is to try to nip that in the bud earlier than later.

I’d like to extend a sincere apology to Joe Kent. I wasn’t familiar with your game, and I misjudged the situation.

My uncle was drafted into Vietnam. He was a door gunner in the 101st airborne. He was air support at hamburger hill. He came home with photos of rats in the drinking water; a bronze star for killing a teen that threw grenades in his jeep as he and his friends were trying to get clean water at a well. He resented the award. A lot. His friends died… for clean water. He didn’t think it was heroic at all. He ended up with kidney failure from said dirty water. He had photos, he had a documented bronze star… the VA STILL refused him because “it’s coincidence”. He is finally va connected. But again, how are these people doing this? Do they just spend all day at sick hall? How are these people not being kicked out for malingering?

I am looking for a volunteer surrogate mother to produce my 7th child, with option to convert to girlfriend within a 12 month window if desired. High intelligence preferred. All living amenities and needs covered. DM or jeanfrancois.gariepy@gmail.com.

There is a valuable lesson to be learned here— people with very little impulse control end up limited to a certain subset of jobs while people who can learn to understand social norms of their environment & have self control can advance further. Children see this as “being fake”

George Lucas traded $350,000 in directing salary for something Fox executives thought was worthless: the right to sell Star Wars toys. It was 1976. Over 40 studios had already passed on his script, including Disney. Fox only greenlit the project because they wanted Lucas for other films. Nobody at the studio expected to make money on a space opera with no stars, so when Lucas offered to cut his directing fee from $500,000 to $150,000 in exchange for merchandising and sequel rights, Fox said yes on the spot. Movie merchandise was a dead business. Fox had lost money on Doctor Dolittle lunchboxes a decade earlier. They thought they were getting the better deal. Lucas couldn’t even find a toy company that wanted in. Kenner, a division of cereal company General Foods, finally bought the licensing for a flat $100,000. Then Star Wars opened. Between 1977 and 1978, Kenner sold $100 million worth of toys off that $100,000 investment. They couldn’t make enough for Christmas ’77, so they sold empty boxes with IOUs inside, promising to mail the action figures later. Parents paid real money for cardboard and a promise. Nobody around the production saw any of this coming. Alec Guinness, who played Obi-Wan, privately called the script “fairy-tale rubbish.” But he was shrewd enough to negotiate 2.25% of royalties instead of a flat fee. About 20 minutes of total screen time earned his estate somewhere between $50 million and $100 million. Lucas himself was so convinced the film would flop that he offered Spielberg a bet while visiting the Close Encounters set: swap 2.5% of each other’s profits. Spielberg took it. That handshake has paid him around $40 million. And then the money started compounding. Lucas poured his Star Wars profits into ILM, the effects house he’d built for the film. When its computer graphics division got too expensive to maintain, he sold it to Steve Jobs in 1986 for $10 million. Jobs renamed it Pixar. Disney bought Pixar twenty years later for $7.4 billion. Then in 2012, Disney came back for the rest, buying Lucasfilm itself for $4.05 billion. Total franchise revenue today sits around $46.7 billion, over $20 billion from merchandise alone. The filmmaker 40 studios passed on is now worth $5.3 billion according to Forbes. Fifty years ago today, cameras rolled on a desert in Tunisia. The $350,000 pay cut that made it all possible might be the best trade in business history.

Work on BOB HOPE’s extraordinary Palm Springs home started in 1973 and was finally completed in 1979.

This really angered me… 😡

Marco Rubio has what it takes to be the 2028 GOP nominee. He would absolutely eviscerate whoever the Democrats put up as their nominee. He’s a bonafide generational political talent.

🚨 WATCH: Keir Starmer’s calls with Donald Trump are mocked in the launch of Saturday Night Live UK #SNLUK

Ta-Nehisi > Tucker He actually answers the question directly and gives the right answer. Tucker’s mishmash and “what do you mean by X?” is tedious. You actually can just say “no.”

Lau's getting her license back in three years and quickly transferred her real estate to some LLCs to alleviate the level of compensation she'd have to pay out A whole family was killed. This is not justice. She deserves more than just probation and a 3-year license suspension

The transformation of liberals into "progressives" since 2013 has seriously been the worst thing to happen to American culture in my lifetime. Just absolutely gutted so much of what was good about this country. End of a golden age.