built this from the city's public 311 records, oct 2025 through sep 2026. potholes, rats, graffiti, street lights. every ward has a report card and the raw data is downloadable. curious whether your ward's number matches what you see on your block. chiwardboard.com

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53175437

The early voting for the Midterms is now available in many places. You can early vote at a polling place: https://www.eac.gov/voters/register-and-vote-in-your-state

Or you can use mail-in voting: https://www.eac.gov/voters/national-mail-voter-registration-form

It's highly recommended to avoid election day voting in person, and vote early.

Crossposted from https://sh.itjust.works/post/67878980

Crossposted from https://news.abolish.capital/post/83159

Event Description: One year after Midway Blitz, social movements across Chicago continue to fight deportations and detention.

At this panel discussion you’ll hear from people organizing against ICE in cities around the country, including a member of the #Minnesota15, as well as organizers from Chicago and Durham, NC.

Bring a friend, coworker, or neighbor! Social at a nearby bar to follow panel discussion.

When: Friday, October 9th | 6:30 – 8:00 PM

Where: Pilsen Community Books – 1531 W. 18th St., Chicago, IL. 60608

La discusión se llevará a cabo en inglés con interpretación al español.

The post Event Announcement: Resisting ICE – Strategies from Minneapolis, Chicago, and Durham appeared first on Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

From Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation via This RSS Feed.

Crossposted from https://news.abolish.capital/post/83116

Amelia Schafer
ICT

MILWAUKEE, Wisc. – Indigenous people were promised access to housing, jobs and other resources in exchange for moving to large metropolitan areas as part of the Urban Indian Relocation Act of 1956.

Seventy years later, one Native-led group in Chicago is working to finally fulfill some of those commitments.

This fall, construction should conclude on a 45-unit affordable housing project at 2909 W. Irving Park, aimed at addressing one of the city’s Indigenous population’s largest concerns: housing.

“We wanted to bring additional resources into a community that’s been severely underserved in Chicago,” said Pamela Silas, board chair of Visionary Ventures, the non-profit behind the building’s construction. “There’s a long history of activism here.”

Chicago has seen the highest rent increases among the nation’s top metro areas recently, experiencing a 3.1 percent annual rent increase as of June 2026 according to the Illinois policy institute. For years now, Native Americans in Chicago have struggled to find affordable housing, with half of all Indigenous renters qualifying as “rent burdened,”  a term referring to households spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent.

“This serves that missing middle where families are struggling with rent burden, and we’re hoping this property will allow some stability for those families that are also providing leadership and preservation for culture for our community,” said Silas, who is Menominee and Oneida. “Things are getting tougher in Chicago for renters and particularly low income renters. …There’s been a lot of pressure on renters in the city of Chicago over the past few years.”

The City of Chicago contributed significantly to the building’s construction, including $6 million in funding from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Housing and Economic Development Bond, $950,000 in permanent supportive housing funds and $2.5 million in low-income housing tax credits, according to the City of Chicago.

“Promises were made over 50 years ago to provide housing, and the city came through for us,” Silas said.

Because of its use of city tax credits, the building is open to all eligible Chicagoans, not just American Indian and Alaska Native residents. To make sure the Native community is still served, organizers have spent four years networking in the community to identify interested people.

A model of the upcoming affordable housing unit Jigzibik Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood demonstrates its unique Indigenous architecture. Credit: Courtesy of Visionary Ventures

“We are affirmatively marketing to one of the most underserved communities in Chicago,” said Shelly Tucciarelli, executive director of Visionary Ventures.

The building, called Jigzibik: At the River’s Edge, is just the first step in Visionary Venture’s multilayered plan to increase urban Indigenous housing accessibility, organizers said. Two more housing projects are already under way, one in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood and the other in West Allis, Wisconsin.

Units in Jigzibik are meant for Chicagoans earning at or below 60 percent of the Area Medium Income which is $35,580 per year for an individual or $50,760 per year for a family of four. The building offers a mix of three bedroom, two bedroom, one bedroom and studio apartments.

Visionary Ventures was formed to address the Indigenous community’s housing crisis, said Tucciarelli, who is Oneida and spent 20 years working for the Illinois Housing Development Authority.

Visionary Ventures collaborated with Full Circle, a midwestern non-profit affordable housing development organization, to bring Jigzibik to life.

“They [Silas and Tucciarelli] knew exactly what the community needed based on all of their personal and professional experience and all of the conversations that they are constantly having,” said Full Circle Chief Executive Officer Lindsey Haines. “We saw our role in that process to bring their idea to life.”

From there, Chicago-based architecture firm Canopy developed what would become Jigzibik, Haines said.

Shelly Tucciarelli, Executive Director of Native non-profit Visionary Ventures, poses for a photo at an informational booth for the organization. Visionary Ventures is leading several affordable housing development projects in the Great Lakes regions. Credit: Courtesy of Visionary Ventures

“We talked about housing not being transactional, but being a community built within the community,” Silas said. “We talked about spiritual needs and some of the design elements. We talked about how we saw (in) the long term that this brings visibility to a community that’s been very invisible in Chicago.”

Housing access was what actually drew the community together 70 years ago, Silas said. As a result of the Urban Relocation Act, a large number of Native American people moved into Chicago’s northern neighborhoods, settling in areas like Uptown. Living conditions were harsh.

Apartments that Indigenous people were able to live in were poorly maintained. In 1970, Menominee mother Carol Warrington was evicted from her home in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood, prompting the community to launch an occupation of the Chicago Cubs Stadium.

Decades later, rent increases are forcing Native people out of their communities once again, Silas said.

“The level of rent burden, the level of failures in applying for mortgage loans, there was some really abysmal data in there,” Silas said. “We saw that in our community there was a diaspora happening where they were being scattered all over, including surrounding suburbs because of the affordability issue. So it was tearing at the heart of the fabric of our community.”

But organizers know 45 units won’t solve the problem entirely, Silas said, but it’s why the project doesn’t end at Jigzibik.

Jigzibik will offer a gathering hall, fitness room, elder and youth programming, space for regalia making, and more. It will also offer a mix-use office space featuring American Indian employment resource, California Indian Manpower Consortium .

“We’re going to have a really good starting point there,” Haines said.

Additionally, Full Circle has reached out to local Native organizations in and around Chicago to build programming opportunities such as health checks and diabetes management services.

“We have a really large gathering hall space on the seventh floor with just beautiful views,” Haines said. “You can see the river, you can see downtown, and it opens onto a roof deck that we intentionally designed with Native plants, as well as space for people to garden. So it’s really going to be a unique feature to this building that we purposely designed with the feedback of the community in mind.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks in support of Jigzibik, the Native-led affordable housing project in Chicago during a June 2025 press conference. Credit: Courtesy of Visionary Ventures

The next two housing projects in development include an 80-unit structure in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood and the organization’s first Wisconsin-based project, a 55-unit structure created out of an old elementary school.

Visionary Ventures received tax credits in June from the State of Wisconsin to create the West Allis housing project, which will be two miles away from Southeastern Oneida Tribal Services, the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee-area branch office. The Oneida Nation has provided substantial contributions to the project, Silas said.

The group has also received support from the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation, that recently reacquired several acres of its ancestral homeland outside of Chicago.

Silas said Visionary Ventures is planning to reach out to other tribes in the Chicago area as well as tribes whose ancestral homelands overlap with present-day Chicago.

“Yeah, those ripple effects are what we know is possible when housing is built with a community in mind,” Silas said. “It’s not transactional housing. We’re not just paying rent to go into a building and go into your apartment, shut the door … It’s a beautiful thing.”

The post Chicago housing project aims to fulfill 70-year-old promise to Native people appeared first on ICT.

From ICT via This RSS Feed.

Crossposted from https://beehaw.org/post/28783579

NEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters) - McDonald’s is increasingly using artificial intelligence to guide menu prices across the U.S. and some global markets, a plan that aims to boost headquarters’ profit but risks alienating customers and attracting antitrust scrutiny.

One pricing factor supercharged by AI: an estimate of how much each store's patrons are willing to pay.

The details of how that pricing system works, its extensive use of AI, the company’s regulatory concerns and the tensions with its franchisees haven’t been previously reported. For this story, Reuters reviewed screenshots of the company ​pricing engine taken in August and interviewed nine sources with first-hand knowledge of the burger chain’s strategy.

McDonald’s pricing engine uses machine-learning algorithms to continually analyze data from millions of daily transactions across McDonald’s nearly 14,000 restaurants and generate what the company calls “the optimal price” at each location for each menu item, from Big Macs ‌to discounted coffee for seniors.

The engine has widened existing price differences for the same product between restaurants, including from neighborhood to neighborhood within the same area, three franchisees told Reuters.

Crossposted from https://news.abolish.capital/post/82997

On Thursday, the Chicago White Sox returned to the postseason in October 2026, twenty-one years after winning the 2005 World Series, by eliminating the Houston Astros in the wild card round, the same rival they defeated in that historic final.

RELATED:

Major League Baseball Season To Kick Off in 50 Days

With this result, the franchise recovers a scene that seemed to belong to another generation of baseball and opens a new stage whose inevitable point of reference is the championship that put an end to 88 years of waiting.

The last time the White Sox played in October was on October 26, 2005, when they sealed the World Series by sweeping Houston 4-0 and closing a title that had not come since 1917. Two decades later, Chicago returns to the final phase in 2026 after eliminating in the wild card round the same team it defeated in that World Series, in a cycle that connects two distant moments in the club’s history.

In 2005, the White Sox were a franchise looking to break a historic curse; In 2026, its return to the playoffs turns that championship into the inevitable reference point of a new stage. The contrast is also observed off the field of play: when Chicago won the title, the iPhone did not exist, Instagram and WhatsApp did not exist, TikTok was years away and YouTube had barely begun to function. Facebook had just been created and social networks had not yet transformed sports consumption.

Tristan Peters on the mic pic.twitter.com/uGc45lFVTR

— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) October 2, 2026

The fan followed the games on television, radio or the written press; The statistics came mainly through broadcasts and newspapers, a video did not go viral in seconds and the mobile phone was far from being the screen from which today you can practically follow an entire season.

Venezuelan Ozzie Guillén managed the White Sox when that team won four consecutive games in the World Series to become champions. In October 2005, Shohei Ohtani was eleven years old, Aaron Judge was thirteen, and Mike Trout was fourteen; none had debuted in the Major Leagues. Barry Bonds, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodríguez and Ichiro Suzuki were some of the great figures of that time, while Albert Pujols began to build a historic career.

Twenty-one years have passed since that night. During that time, the protagonists, analysis methods, technology, broadcasts and the way in which fans follow baseball changed. One generation of ballplayers retired and another reached the Major Leagues; The children who celebrated that championship are now adults.

Some of the fans who went to the stadium in 2005 can return, now accompanied by their sons or daughters, to witness how these White Sox will face, starting this Saturday, the Cleveland Guardians in their search for a new ticket to the Major League World Series.

#Venezuela | The moment a baseball game was stopped after the powerful earthquake in Venezuela.

A Major League Baseball game at the University Stadium in Caracas was abruptly halted amid the strong earthquake that shook central Venezuela on Wednesday.#teleSUREnglish pic.twitter.com/Rq2p5DAfR7

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) June 25, 2026

From teleSUR English via This RSS Feed.

Crossposted from https://sopuli.xyz/post/52333327

businessinsider.com Library's viral 'Bye, Bye AI' event will take AI off your phone Katie Notopoulos 10–12 minutes This small town librarian offers a 'Bye, Bye AI' class to take AI off your phone. Now everyone wants in.

Katie Notopoulos

By Katie Notopoulos

You're currently following this author! Click to unsubscribe from email alerts. Senior Correspondent covering technology and culture

Smiling person with purple glasses sits at a table with an Apple laptop beside a “Bye Bye AI” sign. Shea Wert, library director of the North Chatham Free Library, will be holding a "Bye Bye AI" event to help people turn off AI features on their phones. Shea Wert

North Chatham, a hamlet in upstate New York halfway between Hudson and Albany, doesn't have much going on. You have to go to the next hamlet over for a store or restaurant. There's a church, a post office, and a small public library with only about 800 cardholders.

The North Chatham Free Library has gotten a lot of attention lately, however, after a flyer for an upcoming "Bye Bye AI" event offering to remove the AI features from your phone or laptop went viral on Facebook, getting over 200 comments and 8,000 likes.

The poster was made by the library's sole full-time librarian, Shea Wert. Wert told Business Insider that she had made this event in response to community demand — and was surprised by the reaction from far-flung places.

"Do I live anywhere near this library? No. Am I in support of this? Hell yeah!" wrote one commenter.

Flyer titled “Bye Bye AI” advertises drop-in sessions about limiting AI features and internet privacy. The event flyer went viral on Facebook, getting comments from around the world. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1J7QUQUcU2/

"I had to look at the library's main page to see where Chatham is. I'm in central CA and wonder if we can have a digital guide that our own Mariposa County Library could use for a similar program?" wrote another.

"As someone in Ohio who just happened upon this post; will this be streamed or recorded?" someone else asked.

"As somewhere near Chatham, UK, I was a little confused at first Regardless, thanks Shea!" a jolly Brit wrote.

The library does weekly tech support drop-in hours, and in April it held an "AI for seniors" class that covered the basics of AI and LLMs. But this latest offering was something new. The idea was based on requests Wert had noticed from the community.

"There's just been enough patrons asking about certain things that bothered them, specifically Gmail auto replies and auto completes really frustrate people," Wert told Business Insider during a recent phone call. Want more Business Insider in your news feed?

Add BI in Google so our reporting is easier to find when you’re searching for what matters.

"I went to a presentation that another librarian was doing about this topic, and they had had success with it. And I was like, 'Okay, well, I've heard enough from my patrons that they're worried about this stuff or frustrated about this stuff that I might as well try to do one.'"

ai for seniros flyer The library held an "AI for seniors" class earlier this year that covered the basics. North Chatham Free Library

That other librarian, Hannah Cyrus, published a column in a journal of library studies, writing that "libraries have a role to play in facilitating patrons' rejection of technology, just as much as in their adoption of it."

Cyrus has offered a series of free classes for patrons, teaching them how to turn off or avoid AI tools on their phones and computers, with great success — and a much larger turnout than other tech classes. TechCrunch reported in July that Cyrus's article in the library journal inspired other librarians to reach out and ask for help running their own versions of the classes.

"I've heard from hundreds of librarians from all over the world asking for my presentation slides," she told Business Insider.

small white library building The North Chatham Free Library serves a tiny hamlet in upstate New York, with only about 800 library card holders. Shea Wert

One of the groups that reached out was a consortium of libraries for the Hudson Valley area, which included the North Chatham Free Library. Cyrus gave a webinar to a group of librarians, including Wert, about how she ran the "Avoiding AI" class.

In Wert's personal life, she admits to staying a bit of a Luddite, preferring to use a dumbphone. But she's not adamantly anti-AI and has used AI tools for work to draft outlines or write dense policy text.

"There have been some patrons that I know are using LLMs, and I'm happy to help them with it. I've helped them write better prompts, although that is far less common," she said. "It's more common that they haven't used it and they don't want to use it."

Both Wert and Cyrus said that most of the people who come in for help with AI or tech in general are older adults, who are often frustrated by new AI features on the services they already use.

The Bye-Bye AI event will take place next week, and Wert isn't entirely sure what to expect given the viral reaction on Facebook.

"I'm a little concerned based on setting it up as a drop-in thing that there'll be people waiting because I can only help so many at one time," she said. "But I don't know. If 20 people come, that would feel like a lot to me."

Read next

Katie Notopoulos

Katie Notopoulos

You're currently following this author! Click to unsubscribe from email alerts.

Katie Notopoulos is a senior correspondent at Business Insider who writes about technology, business, and culture. Previously, Katie was a tech reporter at BuzzFeed News and has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fast Company, and MIT Technology Review.

AI

Crossposted from https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/48375478

A solved cross-country cold case led detectives to take a closer look at the infamous Chicago-area Tylenol murders.

Crossposted from https://literature.cafe/post/35840602

I was just looking for a good Library of Things web UI for discovery and reservation and with some digging found this one from the Chicago Tool Library. Curious what other people have seen or used or if they had any experience with one before.

I didn't find a helm chart so that might become a project for me 😅 for whatever project I find. I'm just wanting something hands off, and straightforward for use with friends, my local maker space, municple library, and local college. So we can share/borrow stuff easier

Crossposted from https://lemmy.ml/post/53152441

Following an anonymous complaint in February, OSHA inspected the plant and fined Smithfield Foods $9,931.60 after observing workers’ exposure to “amputation hazards.” This was preceded by serious citations in 2021, 2023, and 2025.

Working in a slaughterhouse is extremely dangerous. In the US, there are approximately two amputations per week, primarily due to the industry’s poor working conditions and excessively fast pace.

[...]

As reported by KWQC, the leaders also acknowledged “community concerns” over a backlog of rendering material – animal waste, internal organs, and decaying meat – being stored outside the plant, causing a strong, unpleasant smell in the city.

A south suburban mayor allegedly ordered a village worker to perform an improper search of a law enforcement database, and when a whistleblower reported it to the Illinois State Police, he was fired.

“She told me: ‘I had no right. She was the mayor,'” Josh Watson told WGN Investigates.

Crossposted from https://lemmy.world/post/52273831

Note: The cop started dating the man's fiancee, and then started stalking him.

The cop's criminal defense attorney states in the video: "I think officers have the right to use the Flock system, at least in this point in time, to protect themselves and their families." He goes on to say "The legislature has yet to make misuse of Flock a crime."

Need some escapism? Bored with a few hours to kill? Like Gene Wilders voice?

Then you might find this documentary about the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair mildly interesting.

EXPO: Magic of the White City

JOLIET, Ill. (WGN) – Two members of the Joliet Police Department have been placed on paid administrative leave for alleged misuse of Flock Safety Technology.

The police department said the two members involved are a sworn officer and a dispatcher.

Police officials said once the discovery was made, the police department took administrative action and referred the incident to the Joliet Inspector General for investigation, as well as the Illinois State Police for an independent review.

“The Joliet Police Department recognizes the seriousness of these allegations, and we continue to review and strengthen policies governing the use of this technology and will enact department-wide audits to reinforce appropriate use and accountability. These efforts reflect our continued commitment to responsible policing, transparency, and maintaining the trust of the community we serve,” the police department said.

No other information on the alleged misuse was made available and the police department said the investigation remains ongoing.

CHICAGO (WGN) – Anglers and the businesses that serve them are noticing a quiet change in state policy that determines who can cast a line in Illinois lakes and rivers.

Over the last few days, Montrose Harbor was filled with boats and hopeful anglers looking to reel in a big one, but what you won’t find is anyone fishing who isn’t a U.S. citizen.

Stacey Greene’s family has owned Park Bait Shop since 1958 and the shop serves all your fishing needs.

You can even get a fishing license at the shop, but only if you’re a U.S. citizen.

In the end, Greene said none if it makes sense because the money made in the sale of fishing licenses goes back to restock fish in Lake Michigan and throughout the lakes of Illinois.

This world's fair was in the windy city, 1933 & 34. The theme was "A Century of Progress", celebrating the importance of science and technology. This was still in the Great Depression era, and everyone was desperate to find hope for a better future. > > > > The Zephyr streamliner made a (then) record breaking "dawn to dusk" run from Denver to Chicago in 13 hours, rolling into the 1934 fair on opening day. Considerable logistics went into it, such as diverting all other rail traffic to sidings, careful pre-inspection of every spike and grade crossing, and enlisting the Boy Scouts for traffic safety at crossings. The train reached speeds of 112 mph and averaged 77 mph over the entire run. > > > > The Homes of Tomorrow exhibit was not for flights of fancy, but instead showed homes designed to be mass produced from affordable materials. Several still exist today, although they have been moved out of the Chicago area. Here is one. > > > >

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, who grilled Supt. Macquline King at a hearing in June, is asking the school district to provide reams of documents, including any complaints about gender support plans and evidence of how the district is complying with recent Supreme Court rulings.