Dan O’ Sullivan wrote a great longform piece for Chicago Magazine about the rise and demise of Joe Eto, a Japanese-American member of the Chicago mob in the 70s and 80s. With a huge cast of characters and a compelling narrative, this is definitely getting picked up for a movie or a too-long Hulu series. I mean, come on:

A few days after the hotel door mishap, there was another knock at room 127. Eto had arrived about 10 minutes earlier and was just settling into the count. Walter Micus, his slovenly flunky, got up to open the door. Standing there was a federal agent heaving a battering ram backward, caught in midswing. 

Micus took one look at the swarm of feds, fell to his knees, and vomited all over himself. FBI agents flooded the room. Eto was cuffed face-down on the floor. He remained stonefaced as agents helped him back up to his feet and began searching the room. 

In one of the last gasps of Vice’s Waypoint¹One of the only very good video game websites, Patrick Klepek takes a look at the battle between teachers who want students to learn and kids who’d rather dick around on their Chromebooks. As someone who is married to a middle school science teacher, I can verify a lot of the stuff here.

I really want Tinyview to succeed. I love the idea of a webcomics hub where my $5 each month goes to supporting the creators. So far, the site has been gag-strip driven for the most part (which makes a lot of sense) but I’d love to see more narrative work on there.

My entire field²I’m an SEO, if you didn’t know. is undergoing a bit of a sea change with the rise of machine learning and large language models (I refuse to call it AI, dammit.) Wired has a pretty good breakdown of this week’s I/O summit, where Google revealed a quite a few interesting tools.

I had no idea that the “We Buy Ugly Houses” thing was a whole franchise. Anjeanette Damon, Byard Duncan and Mollie Simon at Propublica do a deep dive into HomeVestors of America and how they are just the worst.