Bigline of storms came through. Tornados south of the metro Chicago area. I think there were some pretty big storms up near the Wisconsin border. My area, northwest of the city, just got some rain. Last night was worse, with some pretty significant winds. Some nice weather coming our way for the next few days.
W
wtg
@wtg
Posts
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Are our Chicago friends staying safe? -
Ken Salazar has a book coming outFor nearly four years, Ken Salazar — the U.S. ambassador to Mexico under former President Joe Biden — grew increasingly frustrated with the White House’s border plan.
Salazar says he begged for a “border czar” to run point on interagency coordination; he never got one, and instead, the moniker was inaccurately and problematically affixed to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. He asked for the White House to openly call it a border “crisis”; the designation came too late.
Salazar became so distraught that by July 2024, three weeks after Biden’s disastrous presidential debate performance, he decided to take matters into his own hands: “I should run for president,” Salazar told himself, according to his forthcoming book, a copy of which POLITICO obtained before its July 28 release date.
“There was political failure to understand the reality of the crisis at the border, and the political consequence it would have on Democrats in the 2024 election,” Salazar told POLITICO.
Salazar doesn’t want his party to repeat the past. His book, Borderlands: My Fight for an Inclusive America, is part-memoir, part-manifesto. Salazar — the former Interior secretary, Democratic U.S. senator, and Colorado attorney general — makes a case for what he calls “a new North American alliance,” in which the U.S., Canada and Mexico integrate their supply chains, jointly patrol their shared borders and promote cultural and educational exchanges. He sees it as a revival of former President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress.
But the book is also a warning to future 2028 Democratic presidential candidates.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/11/ken-salazar-biden-border-security-2028-00958607
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A prankster on the National MallThe U.S. Department of the Interior said on Thursday it is investigating what appeared to be a large tracing of "8647" into the grounds of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
A Reuters photographer atop the Washington Monument saw the apparent marking in the grass near the World War Two Memorial shortly before authorities arrived at the scene. It shows the numbers eight, six and seven, but a four is not clearly defined.
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Socioeconomic factors and children's brainsThe most powerful factors affecting a child's brain development involve socioeconomic opportunities, according to a study in the journal Science.
The analysis of more than 2,300 9- and 10-year-olds found that environmental factors ranging from household income to education to neighborhood quality are associated with brain differences that can clearly be seen in MRI scans.
The researchers also found that preteens who'd grown up in neighborhoods with lower incomes and limited social support had brain differences associated with less sleep and more stress.
"Something is going on in these neighborhoods," says Scott Marek, the study's first author and an assistant professor of radiology at WashU School of Medicine. "We need to find out how socioeconomics is becoming biologically embedded."
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Rahm 2028?Will Rahm Emanuel run for president? New Hampshire bike ride fuels speculation
While Emanuel hasn't made any formal announcement about his plans, his New Hampshire bike ride gave him a chance to introduce himself to the state's notoriously picky voters before the rest of the field swoops in after the November midterms.
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Hydrogen, hydrogen, who's got the hydrogen?Every kilogram of hydrogen doing useful work in America right now came out of a factory. Most of it gets cooked from natural gas in industrial plants, the cleaner kind gets split from water with electricity, and both routes share the same basic problem: somebody has to build the molecule before anybody can sell it. So the idea that you could skip all of that and simply pump hydrogen out of the ground, the way Texas pumps crude, has spent years living in the “sounds great, call me when it’s real” folder.
It now has a date on the calendar. HyTerra, an Australian-listed explorer drilling in rural Kansas, and Prometheus Hydrogen, an Illinois company that stores the gas in solid form, signed a collaboration agreement in late February to run a complete geologic hydrogen supply chain from one end to the other: out of the rock, through purification, into storage, onto a truck, and into the hands of a commercial end user. The target, according to Hydrogen Central, is completion before December 1, 2026. Nobody anywhere has ever billed a customer for purified hydrogen that came out of the ground. If these two pull it off, that sentence stops being true before New Year’s.
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Hey WTF profs, is it this bad?I'm also wondering about the younger kids in primary and middle school. Maybe @dolmansaxlil can weigh in with that perspective.
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Hey WTF profs, is it this bad?As Gen Z ditch books at record levels, students are arriving to classrooms unable to complete assigned reading on par with previous expectations. It’s leaving colleges no choice but to lower their expectations.
One shocked professor has described young adults showing up to class, unable to read a single sentence.
“It’s not even an inability to critically think,” Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor of great books and humanities at Pepperdine University, told Fortune. “It’s an inability to read sentences.”
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Some thoughts from Elliott AbramsAmericans’ faith in Trump will decline if he cannot bring the Iran conflict to a sensible conclusion, while the loyalty of congressional Republicans is being tested by his solipsism.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
Let’s not exaggerate: Yeats’s lines do not yet describe the Trump administration and its foreign policy. But the direction now, in the 17th month of his second term, is toward confusion and failure.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/06/in-trumps-second-term-things-start-to-fall-apart/
Non-paywall version:
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Another home question (rugs)Totally agree with @steve-miller and @mik .
FB Marketplace is a great place to find used furniture.
There's nothing like scoring a deal on something you really want and that you only pay 20% or less of retail for...it's like a treasure hunt!
wtg, on the other side of the acquisition curve. As someone once said to me..."You spend the first forty years of your life acquiring stuff, and the next 40 years getting rid of it." I didn't get it when they said it, but I definitely do now.
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Bugs and black mold@daniel has talked about this. Happening in many places.
Bugs and black mold: What some mobile home park residents see after investors buy in
NBC News interviewed 20 residents of mobile home communities in four states. They described worsening conditions and conflict after takeovers by big companies.
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60 Minutes@Piano-Dad Small world.
Where he is now.
https://bulletin.kenyon.edu/article/one-of-us-lou-weiss-78/
Notable:
Most influential Kenyon class: Poli sci with John Agresto changed my life. I entered that class as a liberal and left a (bleeding heart) conservative.
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2-8A Rutland GateIt was Britain’s most expensive house. Why is its only resident a homeless man who lives on the porch?
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/10/homeless-man-porch-rutland-gate
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Martha Gellhorn's D-Day reporting'I locked myself in a toilet until we were afloat': The woman who stowed away on a ship to report on D-Day
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260608-the-woman-who-sneaked-into-the-d-day-landings
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Another home question (rugs)Is there a WB Mason store near you?
They do seem to be in FL, but they are footnoted.
*Locations in this state serve
as distribution for Masonville
headquartered customers only
Same for my state. what does it mean?
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Another home question (rugs) -
Greek ChurchesHas anyone noticed how many diners are owned and run by Greeks?
Lots of restaurants owned by Greeks around here, including a tapas restaurant here in my town. Well, it was a tapas bar for many years but recently the Greek owners closed it and it re-opened as a...wait for it...Greek restaurant! Real Greek food, that is, not Greek diner food.
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Another home question (rugs)@steve-miller I meant to ask if you can recommend office chairs. I want something strong and ergonomic. I don't want Amazon Basics. Maybe $400 give or take?
Steelcase, at a used office furniture warehouse. Indestructible and can be repaired. I bought one at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store near me. Think I paid $30 for it.
We also have a Herman Miller Aeron chair that my friend Pat left behind when she moved out of state. It's great, too. Harder to find on the cheapo market (and they're pricey when new), but you might score one on FB Marketplace, Offer Up, or craigslist.
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Best optical illusionsSome old, some new.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-optical-illusion-ever
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Scary devicesHow a USB-connected speaker can infect a PC without ever being touched
Seller of the Sound Blaster Katana V2X doesn’t consider the behavior a vulnerability.