An additional perplexity to this moment of local politics high strangeness is that we get notifications of upcoming Community Meetings but they're done in such a bizarrely roundabout fashion that I am considering actually bringing it up to my Alderman at some point.
The meetings are technically not "public" (don't get me started). If you're in the local community and on your Alderman's radar, you get an email about the video meeting which includes an explanation of the meeting, a link to the meeting, and a blurb about who to contact for questions.
The problem is the email isn't...text. There are visibly embedded links, there's formatting, but it's a .jpg image embedded in the body of the email. It's just like...a screengrab. Nothing is clickable. So in order to attend the meeting you have to download the image and enlarge it (the text is very tiny) and then hand-type the URL for the video call into a browser. Which, it's not like that's an hours-long process, but it does seem to be a pretty unnecessary barrier to access.
I suspect it's that the original message is coming from the BACP (Business Affairs and Consumer Protections) office, with an official City of Chicago seal and such, and someone in the Alderman's office is just screenshotting it. But surely you could just copy-paste the text and attach the screenshot of the actual document.
Local politics are wild. My friend A jokingly suggested that I should run for Alderman myself, which led to an extended riff session on what specific bribes I would be most interested in, because it's not IF a Chicago politician is corrupt, it's just HOW.
(I actually really like my Alderman, it's just, the joke is too good not to make.)
Beware of the Leopard
I have been thinking about that scene in Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy a lot, lately.
For those unfamiliar:
‘But the plans were on display . . .’
‘On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.’
‘That’s the display department.’
‘With a torch.’
‘Ah, well the lights had probably gone.’
‘So had the stairs.’
‘But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur, ‘yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.’
