#tribune building

[pwlanier]

The Chicago Tribune Column, Chicago, Michigan Avenue

Designer

Adolf Loos (Brünn 1870 - 1933 Wien)

Date

1922

Albertina

[tmblrfuckingsucksass]

Stunning view of downtown Chicago

[satturn]

the most roastable man in all of elysium

[rabbitcruiser]

Clouds (No. 851)

Chicago, IL 

[subsidystadium]

Minnesota United FC had grand plans outside their new stadium in 2016. Now? Not so much

It is 2016. Local leaders in St. Paul, Minnesota were debating whether to give millions of taxpayer dollars to Minnesota United FC to help with the construction of a new soccer stadium, named Allianz Field. This included a mixed-use development around the new stadium. In 2016, the owner of Minnesota United FC showed the city council a 33-page master plan that outlined a “series of public spaces,…

[ikeameatballspoisonedme]

I didn't realize how much I loved Titus until I spent 2 hours figuring out why in this run he kept dying at the tribunal......

[mihotose]

ive done three full playthroughs of this game in a week and yet every time i find my motor carriage it makes me sick to my stomach

[retropopcult]

Eclipse watchers squint through protective filters as they view an eclipse of the sun from the top deck of New York City's Empire State Building, 1932.

(source: San Diego Tribune)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

SoCal Gas spent millions on astroturf ops to fight climate rules

Today (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

It's a breathtaking fraud: SoCal Gas, the largest gas company in America, spent millions secretly paying people to oppose California environmental regulations, then illegally stuck its customers with the bill. We Californians were forced to pay to lobby against our own survival:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article277266828.html

The criminal scheme is spelled out in eye-watering detail in a superb investigative report by Joe Rubin and Ari Plachta for the Sacramento Bee, which names the law firms and individual lawyers involved in the scam.

Here's the situation: SoCal Gas is California's private, regulated gas monopoly. They are allowed to lobby, but are legally required to charge their lobbying activities to their shareholders, and are prohibited from raising customer rates to pay for lobbying.

The company spent years secretly violating this rule, in the sleaziest way possible: working with corporate cartels like the California Restaurant Association and BizFed, the monopoly paid BigLaw white-shoe firms to procure people who posed as concerned citizens in order to oppose climate regulations that are essential to the state's very survival.

The bill topped $36 million – and it was illegally charged to its customers, the Californians whose immediate health and long-term survival these efforts opposed. SoCal Gas refuses to disclose the full extent of the spending, as do its lawyer-procurers, who cite legal confidentiality and a First Amendment right to secretly seek to influence policy in their refusal to disclose their profits from this illegal conduct.

The law firms involved are a who's-who of California's most prominent corporate fixers, including Reichman Jorgensen and Holland & Knight. The partners involved have a long rap sheet for anti-climate dirty tricking, most notably Jennifer Hernandez, notorious in climate justice history for an incident where activists claim she posed as one of them, infiltrating a campaign to force corporate despoilers to clean up their pollution in order to sabotage it, while secretly on a wealthy, prominent landowner's payroll.

Hernandez claims to care about the environment and says that her longstanding, corporate-funded, extensive campaigns and lawsuits against state environmental regulations are motivated by concern over their impact on working people. Her firm, Holland & Knight, denies serving SoCal Gas in opposing gas regulations, but it received $594k in ratepayer dollars, and submitted comments opposing the rules on its own behalf. Those comments were nearly identical to the comments submitted by SoCal Gas.

Hernandez also represents an obscure organization called The Two Hundred for Home Ownership in "a flurry of lawsuits" over California Air Resources Board rules on pollution, seeking to overturn the state's landmark climate change regulations.

Two Hundred for Home Ownership was founded by Robert Apodaca, who told the Bee that Hernandez's work for him is pro bono and not funded by SoCal Gas, but his entry into the fray occurred just as SoCalGas was founding an astroturf group called Californians for Fair and Balanced Energy (C4BES), which pretended to be an independent organization, disguising its relationship with SoCal Gas.

Apodaca is also founder of United Latinos Vote, an organization that had been largely dormant for seven years, not receiving any donations, until 2018, when the California Building Industry Association gave it $99k. The CBIA is a large-dollar recipient of donations from SoCal Gas, and its CEO insists that it was not acting on SoCal Gas's behalf when it made its unpredented donation to Apodaca.

The CBIA donation to United Latinos Vote was forerunner to a flood of corporate donations from the likes of Chevron, Marathon and Phillips 66. Shortly after receiving this cash, United Latinos Vote ran a full page ad in the LA Times, accusing the Sierra Club of pushing for anti-gas appliance rules that would harm working class Latino families.

This ad, in turn, featured prominently in advocacy by the SoCal Gas front group C4BES, funded with $29.1m in ratepayer money, which it then spent seeking to link clean appliance rules with anti-Latino racism. A quarter of California's carbon emissions come from home gas use.

SoCal Gas is regulated by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), which tolerated this mounting illegal conduct for many years, even as the company circulated internal memos as early as 2015 discussing its plans to oppose electrification in the state on the basis that it constituted "a significant risk to our business."

But last year, CPUC fined SoCal Gas $10m. Now, CPUC's Public Advocate office has filed a damning, extensive report on SoCal Gas's unlawful conduct, seeking $80m in rate cuts to compensate Californians for the funds misappropriated to protect the company's shareholder interests:

https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M517/K407/517407314.PDF

Additionally, the Public Advocate is demanding $233m in fines for the company's refusal to allow investigators to audit its books and discover the full extent of the fraud.

SoCal Gas is the nation's largest utility, but (incredibly), it's not the dirtiest. That prize goes to Ohio's FirstEnergy, which handed $60m in ratepayer dollars to state politicians in illegal bribes in exchange for coal and nuclear subsidies and cancellation of state climate rules. That scandal led to GOP speaker of the Ohio House Larry Householder being sentenced to 20 years in prison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery_scandal

There is something extraordinarily sleazy about using ratepayers' own money to lobby against their interests. SoCal Gas and its Big Law enablers have funneled millions in Californian's money into campaigns to poison us and boil us alive, and they did it while using workers and racialized people as human shields.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/19/cooking-the-books-with-gas/#reichman-jorgensen

Image: Maryland GovPics (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdgovpics/6635539089/

Jackie (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/79874304@N00/197532792

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[livesunique]

The courthouse building for the Tribunal de Commerce,

Paris, France,

Built between 1859 and 1865 on a design by architect Antoine-Nicolas Bailly, inspired by the Renaissance Palazzo della Loggia in Brescia. It was ceremoniously inaugurated by Napoleon III on 26 December 1865.

Credit: Bon Voyage Cleo

[brilho-design]

Fórum João Mendes por João Otavio Dobre Ferreira

[creeperthescamp]

i think one of the least used concepts in elder scrolls lore is its nebulous relationship to truth.

like something i do actually appreciate about that cunt kirkbride's writing in morrowind is that the mythology of the tribunal is allowed to be relatively ambiguous and there's room for poetry and fable and unreliable narrators. there's a strong general tendency in both fandom and dev to interpret lore quite literally and treat every text as reliable sources of fact about tamriel even when the text is like. fiction or written with a clear bias towards certain factions or prejudices.

the main example I'm thinking of is the 'notes on racial phylogeny' lore book. it's literally just racist pseudoscience and in a real life context would be considered unreliable and deeply offensive. but in tes, i rarely see anyone stop to actually consider that perhaps this lore isn't really a factual study of how bodies work but about how the imperial empire categorises the people it colonises and justifies it's supremacy. there's so much focus on determining the rules and metaphysical aspects of the world that there's no consideration that the way factions like the empire see the world is inherently flawed.

it's fun to think of a world where stars are literal holes punched in the fabric of the sky, or that water is made of memory, but i also think it would be a much more fun and flexible world if these theories are considered to be just a few of many lenses that people in tamriel use to try to understand their world. some of my favourite pieces of lore and world building are things like 'cherims heart of anequina' that imply a rich world of culture and art; i love the idea that tamriel has art and art critics and people who discuss ideas for other purposes than trying to figure out what's The Only True Lore.

[tmblrfuckingsucksass]

Highrises - photos by Chris Hytha

[rabbitcruiser]

Clouds (No. 794)

Chicago

[macmanx]

Had dinner at this cute historic news building turned restaurant.

[btsvt-bar]

FEVER

pairing ꩜ journalist!mingyu x afab!reader x journalist!wonwoo

synopsis ꩜ a promotion at work, the new political reporter and a few bottles of wine. writing for a prestigious newspaper can be much more exciting than it seems. it all depends on who your co-workers are.

content/genre ꩜ frenemies with benefits, threesome, smut (18+ mdni)

author's note ꩜ not proofread . comments are apreciated! lmk if you wanna be tagged on part 2 ♡

warnings under the cut!

part one | part two

warnings ꩜ smut, threesome, anal sex, oral (m. receiving), masturbation (f. and m. receiving), cum swallowing, double penetration, alcohol consumption, tipsy sex, sex in the workplace, voyeurism, tit sucking, jacuzzi sex, protected sex. lmk if i forgot something important.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・

chapter one

The newsroom of the largest newspaper in the city of Chicago and the Great Lakes region was exactly what one could expect: true chaos. Phones ringing all the time, people talking loudly, papers scattered in the corners, journalists typing at full speed to deliver their articles in time… the place was a huge mess, but you wouldn't trade it for the world.

You walk quickly among the dozens of tables scattered irregularly across the 6th floor of the building. Being the responsible for the entertainment and arts column, you needed to submit an unfinished article in less than two hours.

The click of your white scarpins were practically inaudible over the cacophony of the room. A little out of breath, you arrive at your table and drop your red bag on the dark wooden tabletop with an audible thump, drawing Kim Mingyu's attention.

The black-haired man looks away from the screen in front of him and starts analyzing your outfit. From the pants tight enough to outline your ass perfectly, the refined silk blouse showing just enough cleavage and the small crucifix that rested near your throat. Mingyu lets out a sigh, he hadn't been with you in bed for three hours and he already wanted to drag you back.

"Did you lose something here on my desk, Kim?" you question in a mocking tone when you notice him staring. Of course you wouldn't miss the opportunity to tease him.

"Not really" he responds by getting up and slowly approaching you. A roguish smile tugs at his mouth. "You, on the other hand, lost a pair of lace panties at my place."

"Mingyu!" you shriek and slap the man's strong chest.

"Relax, darling. No one listened." he informs with a wink. "Would you like a coffee? You look tired, didn't you sleep well?"

The worst part of spending the night with him was his inflated ego the next day.

"You are ridiculous."

In a completely childish act, you throw him a middle finger. Mingyu laughs and leaves to grab a coffee for the two of you.

If one asked any Chicago Tribune employee who y/n y/l/n and Kim Mingyu are, they would, undoubtedly, say "the biggest rivals who have ever worked here".

The two of you had been on the newspaper's journalistic team since the beginning of college. You started together as interns, and since then fought like cat and dog. You weren’t sure, but you thought your enmity started with an argument in the archives room. You just knew that "hating" Kim Mingyu in front of everyone was as natural as breathing.

What most people didn't know was that you don’t replicate Tom & Jerry's behavior when you are alone. Protected from curious eyes, you enjoyed your time in a much more pleasurable way.

Literally.

You hated the term "friends with benefits" to describe what you had with Mingyu. Yes, you were friends outside of work. And yes, you had sex occasionally. But you hated people's need to label things, so you preferred to think of Mingyu as just a friend. The "frenemies" dynamic worked well, both sides were comfortable with it.

And that was enough for now.

"I already added sugar. Two small spoons, right? "Mingyu declares as he approaches to hand over the mug filled with steaming coffee.

"Yes, thank you." you offer a grateful smile and take a small sip of the dark liquid.

You weren’t even surprised that he knew how you had your coffee, you’ve had many breakfasts together.

"Good morning!" Yunjin, your best friend, greets you with a beaming smile. "Have you seen Dino?" the youngest questions as she approaches you. "I need to get a file from his computer."

You look back at your friend's table and notice his backpack on the sideboard, but the man himself was nowhere to be found.

"Lipinski asked him to go to her office about twenty minutes ago." Mingyu responds without looking away from the computer screen. "I have no idea why."

You frown at the information.

"Weird." Yunjin comments when turning on her own computer.

"He’ll be back" you state with a shrug.

"Is he being fired?" Yunjin freaks out.

"He wasn't fired. "Mingyu laughs, amused by the situation.

"And how are you so sure?"

Mingyu points something behind you. You turn your head in sync with Yunjin, and see Dino walking towards the three of you. And he wasn't alone.

The man accompanying Dino wore a black suit, white t-shirt and a dark blue tie with white stripes. He was taller than Dino by a good few inches and, even in a suit, it was noticeable that he took care of his physique and probably went to the gym regularly. However, what left you and Yunjin flustered was his beauty.

"Guys, meet our new political journalist." Dino introduces the man.

"Jeon Wonwoo." says as he extends his hand to Yunjin, who was closer to him.

"Yunjin, fashion and lifestyle." the woman introduces herself by taking his hand.

Wonwoo addresses you with expectation in his eyes. His eyes, you notice, are striking and intense. The kind that seems to be able to read your soul with just one look.

"y/n, entertainment and arts."

Suddenly, you feel like the room is too hot.

Maybe it was because of the man in front of you, who was undeniably handsome and seemed too good to be true. Or maybe it was his baritone voice. You hadn't expected the deep, husky tone that came out of his full, heart-shaped lips.

You bite her lower lip to contain a sigh and shake his hand eagerly.

"Mingyu, sports." His face contorts a little, as if he’d already decided that he didn't like Wonwoo.

"Nice to meet you all" Wonwoo says with a friendly smile and adjusts his glasses over his elegant nose.

"Your table should arrive tomorrow." Dino says, drawing everyone’s attention. "You can use mine for today, I'm going to do some field work and I'll be out all day." the youngest explains as he gathers his belongings and puts them inside his backpack. "Now, I need to take you to HR. Let 's go".

Wonwoo agrees and leaves his backpack on the table. The two head to the elevator hall with Dino explaining more about how the newsroom works.

"I call dibs!" you exclaim as soon as you’re sure Wonwoo can’t hear you.

"Hey, not fair!" Yunjin whimpers.

"You already have Dino"

"And you already have Mingyu."

"Dibs… on what?" Mingyu raises his eyebrow when asking. He wasn't even sure if he even wanted to know what the two of you were talking about.

"To fuck him." Yunjin responds as if it was obvious, gesturing with her hand at the same time. "The new guy is pretty hot, if you ask me."

"Your bad taste scares me."

Mingyu's handsome features contort into a frown. He knew he had no right to be jealous of you, but he couldn't help it. It was difficult, even more so when it directly affected his ego. The thought that he might no longer be the only one to have your attention made him slightly irritated.

"Are you jealous?" you tease as you give the man a knowing look.

"He's dying of jealousy." Yunjin says in disbelief. "I never thought I would see Kim Mingyu like this."

"In your dreams, darlings." he says with a mocking tone and goes back to work. "I need to finish my article".

You exchange a glance with Yunjin and you two let out an amused laugh. You take a sip of your almost cold coffee and risk one last look in Mingyu's direction.

The man was frowning and pouting like a toddler being denied something for the first time.

"Don’t be like that. I promise you’ll always be my favorite." you smile flirtatiously.

Totally out of character, Mingyu offers a shy smile.

"You make it sound so sweet when you lie to me" he snorts and you laugh at the comment, finding the whole situation funny as hell.

Everyone returns to their tasks, but the slight irrational jealousy remains in Mingyu’s thoughts. He lets out an unhappy sigh, feeling extremely stupid.

The brunette takes a few deep breaths in an attempt to refocus on finishing the basketball game schedule he needed to deliver. For now, that’s all he could do.

chapter two

It was Wednesday and the Chicago Tribune newsroom was practically empty. You, Mingyu, Wonwoo and two other journalists were the only ones there.

You feel like you’re being watched and look around, finding Mingyu staring from his desk, his bottom lip casually caught between his teeth. You could practically hear his mind engines turning.

You were very angry at him the night before. Out of jealousy, Mingyu was a total dick to you and to Wonwoo at the company dinner. However, after you shouted at him for around 20 minutes and he fingered you in the backseat of his car, you calmed down a bit. You still pretended to be mad, but you weren’t one to really hold on to grudges.

"I need your help in the archives room. "Mingyu says, shaking you out of your own thoughts.

"Is it difficult for you to find a file on your own?" you tease, tilting your head mockingly.

Mingyu smirks.

"It would be easier if the person who organized it had a decent system, my dear." he teases, remembering why you supposedly hated each other. The man gets up and says: "Let's go, I don't have all day".

You roll your eyes at him, but stand up anyways. He leads the way, and the two of you leave an unaware Wonwoo behind.

Mingyu opens the heavy wooden door and lets you get in first. The lights flickered a few times before stabilizing. Several silver shelves filled with white folders were scattered around the place, as well as some wooden tables and chairs. In the right corner, they had a copy machine and other stationery items that could help journalists' research.

You walk a few inches to the first shelf and only then realize that Mingyu didn't say what he was looking for. "What do you want to find?"

"Archives about the 1958 World Cup."

"Hm... I don't know if we'll have much on the subject" you state as you walk towards the shelves at the end of one of the aisles. "This is the stupidest thing to find around here, why would you even… " you’re cut off when Mingyu turns you around to face him.

He presses you against the low sideboard against the back wall of the room. Your eyes widened, not understanding what was happening. Mingyu runs his large hand across your cheek. He wets his lips, staring at yours eagerly.

"Is it okay if I say ‘shut up and kiss me’?"

You roll your eyes, but grab the man by his tie and pull him in for a kiss. Mingyu lets out a sound of approval, satisfied with your attitude. He lifts you and places you on the sideboard, positioning himself between your legs.

Mingyu raises his hands to your ass and squeezes hard, bringing you even closer. You tangle a hand in his hair, while the other one lightly scratches his nape just the way you knew he liked. Your tongues caress each other with dexterity, having already done this hundreds of times.

The kiss wasn't at a desperate pace with a hint of anger, like it was the last time you hooked up. It seemed like Mingyu wanted to prove a point. He kissed you as if he wanted to mark you as his. And you loved it. The world seemed to disappear when you kissed like that. An earthquake could happen, none of you would notice.

The man separates your lips and starts distributing wet kisses across your jaw and neck. You let your head fall back, giving him more space to explore. Mingyu opens the buttons on the black blouse you wear and notices you weren’t wearing a bra. He lets out a grunt as he raises his strong hands calmly; touching you gently. Too gently. You start to get impatient, knowing you didn't have much time before someone else showed up.

Mingyu wraps his lips around your right nipple, making you let out a soft moan. He gives it a few seconds of attention before moving on to the other and repeating the same process of giving small licks and pulling away with a gentle brush of his teeth. He kisses up from your boobs to your neck, his hands stripping you out of your black skirt in the same rhythm.

"You can stop there." you pull the man by his dark locks when he tries to give you a hickey near your collarbone. You hated being marked in visible places.

"Sorry…" the look he gives you is warm and without the slightest trace of regret. His swollen lips pull back into a sly smile and you roll your eyes out of habit. With no more time to waste, the journalist opens the button on his own pants while you take care of removing your panties.

And that's when you see him. If Mingyu turned his face a little, he would see him too.

Precariously leaning on a file box, two hallways away, was Jeon Wonwoo. His eyes widen when he realizes that you discovered him there. You bite your lower lip and wink at him, making it clear that everything was fine.

Wonwoo lets out a breath, which he hadn't even realized he was holding until then. The man didn't intend to be there. He had gone to the files room after you, at Lipinski's request. He didn't expect to find his coworkers about to have sex.

And he didn't expect to want to stay there to watch.

Suddenly feeling bewildered, Wonwoo backs up until his back rests against the white cabinets that were adjacent to the bookshelf that hid him. He brings his right hand to his forehead and presses the space between his eyebrows with his fingertips.

The room was too hot, the black tie suffocated him, the tailored trousers felt like a prison. A little desperate, he runs his hand through his hair, removing it from his sweaty forehead. Your low moans pull him back to the reality of where he was and what was happening just a feet away from him. He straightens his body, ready to get out of there.

However, he can't leave without taking one last look.

Mingyu hid his face in your neck as he fucked you in a controlled tempo. You hugged him tightly, with your lower lip trapped between your teeth in an attempt to contain your moans.

As if they were magnets, your eyes soon meet Wonwoo's again. You smirk, amused to know he was still there.

With his hands shaking, the man lets out a tortured sigh and walks away, leaving the room as quickly and silently as possible.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・

"I need to say something." you declare as you try to adjust the black blouse on your body. It was completely crumpled, but whatever.

"Go ahead” Mingyu turns to look at you.

You open and close your mouth several times, unsure of how to start the sentence. As someone whose job was the use of words, you were definitely failing to communicate.

"I didn't want to talk when we were... " you interrupted the sentence, implying what they were doing. "Wonwoo saw us."

Mingyu stops trying to straighten his messy hair and looks at you suspiciously, as if you had just told him that you knew which numbers would be drawn in the lottery.

"And that’s a problem because…?"

"Why aren't you nervous about this? "you question, finding the man’s reaction weird.

You tilt your head, analyzing the man in front of you. He was strangely calm for someone who had just heard that the new nemesis had seen naked the woman he had been jealous of a few days ago.

"What do you think he's going to do? Go out and tell everyone he saw us here?" he rolls his eyes and tucks the hem of his white blouse into his pants. "As if."

"Of course not, you moron. I thought you would freak out for another reason."

"And what reason could that be?" Mingyu asks, holding your chin with his long fingers, forcing you to look at him.

"Nevermind."

Mingyu shrugs, it was in his best interest to leave that subject aside. You try to adjust your black skirt, unzipping at the back to make the process easier.

"How much did he see?" Mingyu asks himself as he leans against the sideboard, waiting for you.

"I don't know when he arrived, but I saw him before you... oh, you know."

"Before I fucked you?" Mingyu laughs loudly and you slap his chest, suddenly feeling ashamed. "Who knows, maybe he learned a thing or two…"

"You are annoying, Kim Mingyu." you let an amused smile escape your lips.

You turn around in a silent request for help from the man, who zips up your skirt.

"And you love it, my dear" Mingyu kisses your neck as he carefully pulls the zipper up. "Now, move that beautiful ass of yours. We have deadlines." he gives you a playful slap on the butt before heading to the exit.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.・。.・゜✭・

read part two!

tags ꩜ i hope you liked it so far!

@asscoups17 @wonvsmile @porridgesblog @gaslysainz @thepoopdokyeomtouched @sunset-sana @coupsgfsstuff @stagefrjghts @wonuwonder