Mulligan // What's Good: May 3, 2024
Fraud, nuclear weapons, and ethical conundrums.
Hello, good evening, happy Tuesday. I have been… delinquent. We are going to try to catch up. It will take some time and effort. Life has been busy. Good busy! But busy. The plan will be to try to aggregate content consistently and just push out catch-up newsletters as I have time / capacity, and then eventually we will be back on track.
The other issue is that Twitter seems to be increasingly less usable and useful. I spend less time on it (yay, I guess?) and it’s harder to find or see interesting articles. I have subscriptions to a bunch of other sources of news, but even then, I don’t know, a lot of shit is paywalled. Being an aggregator is a rough business these days. Thus the delays.
The Chicago Classic
As much as things change, they stay the same:
The Chicago Board of Ethics issued an additional $10,000 fine to city Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin Monday related to the firing of two top aides who alleged she misused taxpayer resources and pressured government workers to help her political allies.
The fine follows an inspector general investigation and a November probable cause finding from the board, which Conyears-Ervin was given the opportunity to rebut in the interim. In line with ethics board policy, Conyears-Ervin was not named.
The Chicago Classic, pt. 2
This story makes me think of the ending of an episode of Billions:
CHICAGO — A former Loretto Hospital executive is accused of helping to embezzle nearly $500,000 from the West Side safety-net hospital.
Heather Bergdahl, 37, has been charged with embezzlement, according to a criminal complaint released Monday. The charges come amid an FBI investigation into Loretto after Block Club Chicago and the Better Government Association revealed questionable practices at the hospital — including funneling vaccine doses meant for the city’s poorest people to places where Chicago’s wealthiest lived and played.
Bergdahl was arrested Thursday night when federal authorities learned she was sitting on a plane ready to take off for Dubai. Agents rushed to stop the flight and remove her, said a federal official who took part in the arrest.
Me sowing, me reaping
“Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck,” you might imagine Harvard saying:
More than 10 people have declined offers to serve as the keynote speaker for Harvard College’s annual Class Day, leaving the Harvard Alumni Association scrambling to find a speaker with less than two weeks until the ceremony for undergraduate seniors.
The potential speakers declined for a variety of reasons, including an unwillingness to affiliate with Harvard during a year of controversy, scheduling conflicts, and high honorarium requests, according to Senior Class First Marshal Fez S. Zafar ’24.
Honeypots
This story about fraud is, in some ways, every story about fraud:
Christy Browne was in a panic. The man on the phone said he was from the FBI. He warned her that drug traffickers had obtained her Social Security number and were using it to launder money. He said the FBI needed money to catch them.
“They told me not to go to local law enforcement,” Browne testified in court recently about the February 2020 call. The police were watching her and considered her a suspect, the man said.
Radiation
It’s just coincidental timing, he swears:
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer is taking a lot of heat online for recent decisions to close beloved studios like Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. Last night the long-time gaming exec was apparently exploring the wasteland in Fallout 76 when another player nuked his entire campsite.
“It’s not much too it I’ve been planning to catch him for a while now to see if he would agree to a fight,” user real1090jake told Kotaku over Twitter DMs. “Trying to take him down was just a personal goal for me after I finished the main quest line.” He shared some additional screenshots from the encounter which has been weeks in the making. “The Big General, Phil better not let me catch him,” real1090jake tweeted back in April.
Representation matters
Atelier is now added to my want-to-go list:
He moved to Chicago a little more than a year ago, but chef Christian Hunter has taken the city by storm, earning a Michelin star for his restaurant Atelier, receiving the Young Chef Award from the Michelin Guide along with a James Beard semi-finalist nomination, and being named one of Chicago Magazine’s best new restaurants. Hunter is currently the only Black chef in Chicago with a Michelin star, and one of only two Black chefs in the country with the honor.
Hunter grew up in Lexington, Kentucky with six siblings and a single mother, whose work ethic he inherited.
You deserve some good animal content
https://twitter.com/weirdlilguys/status/1790462242988732765
https://twitter.com/weirdlilguys/status/1789285478836961641
https://twitter.com/GatorsDaily/status/1788571871367098584
https://twitter.com/DontShowYourCat/status/1787691785793511752
https://twitter.com/GatorsDaily/status/1787554171526279392
https://twitter.com/twaniimals/status/1790498290854723886
https://twitter.com/dog_auras/status/1790298506797679102
https://twitter.com/raccoonhourly/status/1790494820261077454
https://twitter.com/mischiefanimals/status/1790464384013119892
https://twitter.com/dedgrl/status/1790367821320335839
https://twitter.com/twaniimals/status/1790437585778622581
Have a good week.
Addendums
In Stellar New Game ‘Animal Well,’ Even the Secrets Have Secrets. Labor Mobility and the Problems of Modern Policing. The Influential Conservative Group Making it Harder for Idaho Districts to Fix Their Schools. She Painted a Few Champagne Bottles. Then Came Meta’s Customer Support Hell. Probe Opened Into Allegations of Excessive Force by Chicago Police Officers During Pro-Palestinian Protests. Killer whales attack and sink sailing yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar — again.