Dave Riley, bassist for the influential 1980s Chicago noise-punk band Big Black, has died. He was 59. According to his partner Rachel Brown, he had throat cancer. What a fucking great player, he was. And what a fucking great band. From Rolling Stone:

“Dave was a fantastic musician and a critical part of the Chicago music scene,” (Big Black guitarist Steve) Albini tells Rolling Stone. “He bridged the gap between raw enthusiasm and outstanding musicianship better than anybody else in our peer group and I always admired him for it...”

“When I think about Dave, I think of him onstage, sweating, rolling on his heels, his bass making a rhythmic shrapnel cloud, the densest object in a very heavy construction," Albini wrote in his statement. “Then I think of him after the show, still sweaty but relaxed, easy with his humor and in possession of an impeccably sharp wit, comfortable with himself, comfortable being the hinge-pin of the evening. I miss playing with Dave, and I miss hanging out with him. He was a handful, but like most people we describe that way, he was worth it. Rest easy.”

Below, Big Black (Riley on right):

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Cards Against Humanity asked Spencer Kelly to teach a computer to write mean, funny joke-cards for a new, AI-based expansion pack to the game; Kelly trained the popular GPT-2 generative language model (previously) on existing cards, and now the company is livestreaming a 16-hour competition between its AI and its human joke-writers, with a voting system to up/downvote the resulting jokes (at the end of the day, these votes will be "tallied up and thrown in the garbage"). You can choose to buy the resulting packs, and if the human team outsells the robots, it will receive a $5,000 bonus. If they fail, they will all be fired. Read the rest

After 11 days, Chicago's teacher's strike is at an end, with the city agreeing to the majority of the union's demands, including: higher pay, limits on class sizes, a nurse and social worker in each school, 120 new "equity positions" (librarians, counselors and restorative justice coordinators), bilingual/special ed educators, and five make-up days for teachers and students to compensate for part of the missed instructional calendar. Read the rest

The #RedForEd movement swept America in 2018 and 2019 as teachers in both "red states" and "blue states" staged massive -- sometimes illegal -- strikes, demanding a fair deal for themselves, their students, and their colleagues who drive buses, clean classrooms, and do other related work. Read the rest

A driver plowed through the Sears entrance of the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois this afternoon. The driver then continued on through the mall, destroying several kiosks and damaging storefronts before stopping. Read the rest

Joey Santore's YouTube channel Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't has meat-and-potatoes approach to the wonders of the natural world: it's direct, informative and often funny as hell. Recently, while out in the field doing what he does, Santore came across what appeared to be an abandoned coyote pup. Emaciated, and possibly showing signs of mange, it was in pretty bad shape. After a quick chase, Santore cornered the pup and, well, just watch.

With the pup in rough enough shape that Santore was able to catch it, I'm hoping for the best, but assuming the worst. If it survives, I'll be happily surprised. Fingers crossed for a bit of good news on this one. Read the rest

Police unions have systematized and perfected the process of ensuring impunity for crooked cops, ensuring that even the most violent, lying, thieving, racist, authoritarian cops can stay on the force; at the same time, apologists for police violence and corruption tell us not to blame the whole force for the bad deeds of a few rotten apples. Read the rest

Pangea was founded by Al Goldstein, a Deutsche Bank investment banker who quit to found a massive, intercontinental payday lending outfit; he tapped the investors that he enriched with his payday lending business to stake him $180 million and bought up thousands of low-rent buildings in Chicago's poorest neighborhoods (which are also Chicago's blackest neighborhoods). Read the rest

Update: Shona from Gig Workers Rising clarifies: "Gig Workers Rising isn't organizing the national day of action. Drivers in each of the 6 cities taking action are coordinating the day of action together. Drivers in LA with Rideshare Drivers United Los Angeles called a strike and asked other cities to take action on the same day. Gig Workers Rising supports and educates drivers who are organizing across the state. We are not organizing drivers."

On May 8, Uber drivers are organizing a nationwide shutdown of Uber, with drivers turning off their apps in protest over low pay: so far, seven cities' drivers are signed up: Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Minneapolis, LA and DC. Uber and Lyft have both slashed pay for drivers and raised prices as they try to assuage the capital markets. Read the rest

Children who end up caught in Chicago's policing and justice system are being outfitted with ReliAlert XC3 GPS ankle-cuffs supplied by the Track Group, who use them to log children's movements and to bark orders at them, as well as listening in on them. The children have to wear them 24/7 while on bail awaiting trial. Read the rest

Lori Lightfoot is Chicago's newest mayor, succeeding the notoriously corrupt establishment figure Rahm Emmanuel (who quit after two terms, triggering a race), and beating out Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who had been anointed by Chicago's legendarily unassailable Democratic machine as the next mayor. Read the rest

Are you in Chicago? Do you want 70, washed, empty Popeye Spinach cans? Craigslist has you covered: "Stacked in a pyramid, they look like a modern art masterpiece one might find at the Museum of Contemporary Art. I ate a bunch of spinach years ago and never threw the cans away, if you’re wondering WTF." (Thanks, Fipi Lele!) Read the rest

Last night's book tour event in Toronto was a smashing success! Thanks to everyone who came! I just checked in for my flight to Chicago for a weekend's worth of appearances at C2E2, and then on Monday I'll be at Berkeley Arts & Letters at 7:30PM with Richard Kadrey, then The Revolutionary Reads series at Ft Vancouver (outside of Portland, OR), and then the Seattle Public Library and finally a weekend of events at Wondercon in Anaheim. Come on out! (Image: Nikola Danaylov, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Radicalized is my next science fiction book, out on March 18 from Tor Books: it contains four novellas about the hope and misery of our moment, from refugees resisting life in an automated IoT hell to health care executives being targeted by suicide bombers who have been traumatized by watching their loved ones die after being denied care. Tor Books is sending me on tour with the book in the US and Canada and I hope you can make it to one of my stops! Read the rest

Jemel Roberson was working as an armed security guard at Manny's Blue Room Bar in the Chicago suburb of Robbins early Sunday morning when he asked a group of intoxicated men to leave the bar. The men came back to the bar and one with a gun began shooting. The 26-year-old security guard fired back and caught one of the men outside of the bar. He had the suspect down on the ground at gunpoint when two Midlothian police officers responding to 911 calls arrived on the scene. One of the officers shot and killed Roberson. Read the rest

After the 2016 elections, Scout.ai and a group of technology activists created Machine Learning President, designed for "scenario planning to game out how tech might impact future elections, as a way to think through the potential challenges and pitfalls that might eat away at democracy." Read the rest