Events

Sky Candy Studios in Minneapolis shot this amazing drone video to promote a local bowling alley in one take with no CGI: Minneapolis TV station KARE-11 does the "making of:"

Has this really been a full year? March 11th and 12th seem to be the days when everyone realized this was not a drill. John Scalzi: I was on the JoCo Cruise at the time and had intentionally avoided news up to that point, but then two things happened. One, people came up to me wanting to tell me about Tom Hanks contracting the COVID virus (people knew that I know him personally), and two, my editor Patrick sent me a cryptic email telling me that I should call him immediately. After reminding him I was...

President Biden just signed the largest relief bill in history: Doug Mills/New York Times President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package into law Thursday, his first legislative achievement since taking office less than two months ago, a measure to infuse billions into the U.S. economy and bolster funding for vaccines, testing and school reopenings. The package, which was unanimously opposed by Republicans in Congress, will also provide millions of Americans with $1,400 stimulus...

Welcome to stop #41 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Blue Island Beer Company, 13357 Old Western Ave., Blue IslandTrain line: Rock Island, Blue Island-Vermont (also Metra Electric, Blue Island)Time from Chicago: 20 minutes (Zone D)Distance from station: 800 m This entry might run a bit long, as Blue Island Beer Co.'s owner Alan Cromwell sat down with me for about an hour when I mentioned the Brews and Choos Project to him. And while we were talking, Jim Richert, president of the soon-to-open...

Chicago got up to 21°C yesterday, tying the record for March 9th set in 1974. It's already 20°C right now, close to the record 22°C set in 1955. In other news: One chart shows the difference between the XPOTUS's 2017 tax cut for rich people and President Biden's pandemic-relief bill, which he will sign into law tomorrow. Lou Ottens, who invented the audio cassette tape, died at the age of 94. A survey of Windows computers found that 26% of them have not applied the WannaCry patch after four years of...

This week in 2011 had a lot going on. Illinois governor Pat Quinn (D) signed legislation that abolished the death penalty in the state on March 9th, for starters. But the biggest story of 2011 happened just before midnight Chicago time on March 10th: On March 11, 2011, Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in its recorded history. The earthquake struck below the North Pacific Ocean, 130 kilometers (81 miles) east of Sendai, the largest city in the Tohoku region, a northern part of the island of...

Three reports of deaths today, two of them institutional. First, the one with the most relevance to me personally, one of the people most responsible for my sense of humor, died yesterday at 91: Norton Juster, the celebrated children’s author who has died at 91, stumbled into literature much as his most famous hero, Milo, stumbles into the marvelous world of wordplay and ad­ven­ture in the classic 1961 volume “The Phantom Tollbooth.” They were bored and entirely unsuspecting of the wonders that awaited...

As I mentioned in my post about Hailstorm Brewing that went out earlier today, you can have an excellent brewery with a TV-free taproom within 1500 meters of a Metra station and still qualify for the Brews and Choos project only on special dispensation. Because wow, getting from the Metra station to Hailstorm (and by extension, when I go later this spring, to Soundgrowler) might kill you. Here's the path from the Hickory Creek Metra stop to Brothership Brewing: It's short (just under a kilometer), along...

Welcome to stop #40 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Hailstorm Brewing, 8060 W 186th St., Tinley ParkTrain line: Rock Island, Tinley-80thTime from Chicago: 38 minutes (Zone E)Distance from station: 1.7 km The tl;dr on Hailstorm: Great beer, difficult location. I'll start with the beer. Since Hailstorm doesn't do flights, I only tried two of their 20-or-so selections, the Cumulus Hazy IPA (6.3%), and the Chasin' Waves West Coast IPA (7.5%). The Cumulus had delightful Citra flavors, with...

The CDC just released guidance on how vaccinated people should behave. It doesn't seem too surprising, but it also doesn't suggest we will all go back to the world of 2019 any time soon. In other news: Washington Post global opinions editor Karen Attah likens living in Texas right now to "an exercise in survival." The New York Times looks at where US Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) came from, without explicitly telling him to go back there. Crain's Chicago Business columnist Greg Hinz outlines what Chicago...