could not be better weather (okay, maybe 5-10 degrees cooler?)
cam rodriguez 🔎
@camrodriguez.bsky.social
meddling kid / journalist. map nerd, midwest defender, chicago fanatic. 🇲🇽🇺🇲. data @wbez.org & requesting a lot of docs over @foiaday.bsky.social tips? love letters? heycamrodriguez@gmail.com
there is not enough naproxen in the world to save me from the aftermath of this trigger point massage lol
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in public subsidies goes to funding internet service to unlivable buildings on Alaska’s Adak Island. We knocked on every door and talked to every person we could find. Not a single one told us they used the service. with @adn.com
On This Nearly Deserted Alaska Island, You Pay to Keep Hundreds of Empty Buildings Wired for Internet
U.S. phone customers pay more than $340,000 a year for an Anchorage company to keep homes and buildings on Alaska’s Adak Island wired for obsolete internet service. All but a few of them sit empty.
propublica.org
70 FIRES in just 3 YEARS
Shannon Heffernan@shannonheffernan.bsky.social · 2w agoOver the last three years there have been more than 70 fires at an Illinois prison, including 12 cases of self-immolation. One man needed a skin graft. Another lost a leg. Two have died. A new investigation below. www.themarshallproject.org/2026/07/24/p...
Shannon is an excellent reporter and I hope you will read this story. www.themarshallproject.org/2026/07/24/p...
A Prison on Fire
Designed to help people with serious mental illness, Joliet Treatment Center repeatedly failed to prevent or respond to fires, despite two deaths.
themarshallproject.org
NEW: I wrote for MSNBC about how Madison Square Garden turning off their facial recognition cameras for Taylor Swift is a perfect encapsulation of our dystopian present: where the wealthy can use surveillance to consolidate power, and the rest of us live in a privately owned panopticon.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got to buy MSG's privacy. Her fans aren't so lucky.
Reports that Madison Square Garden temporarily shut off its facial recognition system for Swift’s wedding expose a glaring problem with how the elite wield and control mass surveillance.
ms.now
got a FOIA response back today that was a 2,500 page PDF that is 1.9 GB large
i have a deep need to be in either rural western nebraska, the foothills of the appalachians, a mid-sized rust belt city or a walk-in right now
The cybersecurity-focused models, including GPT-5.6 Sol, broke out of a testing sandbox, exploited a zero-day, and gained access to the open internet to pull off the attack. www.wired.com/story/openai...
OpenAI Models Escaped Containment and Hacked HuggingFace
The cybersecurity-focused models, including GPT-5.6 Sol, broke out of a testing sandbox, exploited a zero-day, and gained access to the open internet to pull off the attack.
wired.com
companies are sourcing millions of printed books for AI labs that scan them for training data, then destroy them. printed books are more valuable because they're free of AI slop, and AI labs know destroying them is an "optics problem." www.404media.co/ai-companies...
AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop
ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”
404media.co
do i know anyone here who has gone through EMT training here in chicago? EMT and/or wilderness first aid? if yes feel free to dm or email, crodriguez@wbez.org, this isn't for a story but i am curious. thx! :-)
Our two investigations into Madison Square Garden are now unpaywalled and free for anyone to read.
WIRED@wired.com · 3w agoYesterday, WIRED learned that Madison Square Garden was suing us for our accurate reporting. We stand by our work. That’s why we’re removing the paywall from two of the MSG stories they don’t want you to read, making them free for everyone.
While Chicago is drowning in wildfire smoke, this would be an opportune time to find 500 - 5000 Chicagoans (Chicagoites?) who will chip in some money to support more climate journalism! #climate #wildfiresmoke #IndependentJournalism #NPR
cam rodriguez 🔎@camrodriguez.bsky.social · 3w agowe have a full-time climate and environment reporter @juanpab.bsky.social in collaboration with @grist.org. i have background in satellite imagery, open data and a marked interest in infrastructure and its impacts. donate.wbez.org
either Argylle (the spy movie) or Close (the sad Belgian movie). both were at the AMC River North. both were matinees in which there were about six other people in the theater and both were dead silent the entire time except for occasional tears
Defector@defector.com · 3w agoWhat's the worst movie you've ever watched in a theater? defector.com/whats-the-wo...
The Chicago Reader Union has been bargaining w/ Noisy Creek since February. In that time, management has consistently offered proposals that would cut longstanding benefits in exchange for meager pay raises. We need YOU to tell Noisy Creek we deserve better! 🧵 🔗: actionnetwork.org/letters/tell...
i spent the majority of last year quite literally not knowing if i was gonna have a job the next week. nonetheless, my comrades and i volunteered pay cuts/furloughs to save the paper that we love. how do our new owners respond? by trying to slash *existing* benefits that we’ve had for years.
Chicago Reader Union@chicagoreaderunion.bsky.social · 3w ago3/ Noisy Creek management refuses to pay us what we're worth. They want us to give up sick time, work longer hours, and mandate we work in an office in exchange for meager raises that would leave us making less per hour.
Good morning from Navy Pier, where the air is still trying to kill us. Air quality reading is 366 — hazardous for everyone. Let’s be careful out there
these were taken a week apart from each other here in chicago. it smells like smoke in the newsroom
Anacapa Ocean, Channel Islands National Park #NPS #NationalParkService #ChannelIslandsNationalPark
The @pressherald.com makes the hard decision to publish the photo of the Biddeford man fatally shot by ICE, to reflect the reality of ICE operations in local communities. www.pressherald.com/2026/07/13/i...
ICE agent kills man in Biddeford, spurring protests
Joan Sebastian Guerrero, 26, was not the target of the warrant agents were trying to execute, federal officials said.
pressherald.com
do not ask me about my newsletter. i am trying to walk in a straight line while shaking my head really fast and trying to read an index card of numbers, while trying not to throw up, at the same time to the tunes of top 40 hits of 2012 in the background
cam rodriguez 🔎@camrodriguez.bsky.social · 3w agovestibular pt is crazy. "time to walk on a treadmill and try not to throw up" "time to shake your head really fast and try not to throw up" "time to bend over and lift 4 lb weights and try not to throw up" "time to wear drunk goggles and try not to throw up while someone looks at your eye movements"
vestibular pt is crazy. "time to walk on a treadmill and try not to throw up" "time to shake your head really fast and try not to throw up" "time to bend over and lift 4 lb weights and try not to throw up" "time to wear drunk goggles and try not to throw up while someone looks at your eye movements"
just saw the most sick, wrapped Union Pacific jeep? UP logo on the side, yellow accents!
Normalize unreposting stuff/deleting comments once you learn more!!!
curious + polling the crowd... has anyone noticed massive slowdowns/slow download speeds from the chicago data portal?