iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ethan Freedman

@ethanpfreedman.com

13K followers 1.8K following 153 posts

Just be cool, man. Reporter: science, nature, agriculture, climate. Bylines at Scientific American, PopSci, Sierra, Slate, Fatherly, etc. He/Him. RTs =/= Endorsement. Opinions solely mine. Old posts delete en masse. Chicago www.ethanpfreedman.com

Posts Replies Media

Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 01/10/2026

Guy who has never heard of a squirrel:

A t shirt with a squirrel drawing on it for sale on ebay labeled as "bunny rabbit"

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 18/09/2026

In 1994, then-Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley announced plans to close the airport and build a park in its place. Northerly Island, where the airport was located, was owned by the Chicago Park District, which refused to renew the airport lease in 1996. 15] Due to the expiration of the lease, the city briefly closed the airport from October 1996 until February 1997, when pressure from the state legislature persuaded them to reopen the airport. 16]
On the night of March 30, 2003, Daley ordered city crews to make the runway unusable by bulldozing large
"X"-shaped gouges into the runway surface in the middle of the night.!?] This resulted in several aircraft being stranded on the ground at the airport; these were later allowed to depart from Meigs' 3,000-foot (910 m) taxiway.[18]
Daley stated during a news conference on March 31, "To do this any other way would have been needlessly contentious."19] Daley defended his actions by claiming it would save the city of Chicago the effort of further court battles before the airport could close. He also claimed the closure was due to safety concerns, particularly the post-9/11 risk of terrorist-controlled aircraft attacking the downtown waterfront near Meigs Field. 20]

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 18/09/2026

Downstream, the City of St. Louis, Missouri, grew more and more concerned about pollution of the Mississippi, its source of water, and threatened to file an injunction to stop the project.
The official opening day had been scheduled for January 20, 1900, but the Sanitary District dared not wait. On the morning of January 2, without prior public announcement, officials and members of the press gathered to witness the breaching of a small dam separating the Chicago River from the new canal. Two weeks passed before the canal filled completely, and on January 17, the controlling gates at Lockport were opened and the Bear Trap Dam lowered, allowing the complete reversal of the Chicago River at last, beating the injunction. In 1906, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Missouri v. The State of Illinois and the Sanitary District of Chicago, finding in favor of the District as no threat to St. Louis could be proven.

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 18/09/2026

Chicago: very pretty in the fog

A red-tinted city hides between dark trees in the fog, a lighted path winds in the foreground

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 17/09/2026

I've been keeping much of this under wraps, but wanted to share a little sneak peek of a big project I've been working on to bring more environmental journalism to Chicago. I'm really excited about this work –– and can't wait to share more information when the project officially launches this fall.

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 11/09/2026

Nighttime tennis and a big bean

Selfie with my tennis racket in front of cloud gate

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 10/09/2026

Whenever I read the name of the Seahawks stadium

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 09/09/2026

DK Metcalf is apparently an Antarctica truther? “‘Yeah, I’m a big conspiracy theorist,” Metcalf says with a smile. “Shout out to my quarterback.’” www.nytimes.com/athletic/756...

This may surprise you, but there is no unified theory on a secret civilization within Antarctica.
Most, though, relate in some manner to the (thoroughly debunked) theory of Hollow Earth, one that posits there are advanced civilizations that operate deep below the surface of our planet.
Depending on what offshoot of this theory one follows, this can be an ancient civilization or a cryptoterrestrial group, one that is both not human and superhuman. As the theory goes, the only entry point to that world is somewhere in the vicinity of the South Pole. That travel to Antarctica is difficult only fuels it.
"You can go to Alaska. You could go to the North Pole," Metcalf says. "But why not Antarctica? Why can't you just book a trip to Antarctica?"
You can, in fact, book a trip there. Antarctica tourism usually takes place between November and March, and most of it comes via ships leaving from South America and arriving around the Antarctic Peninsula, the northernmost arm of the

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 02/09/2026

First day I get to wear a **light jacket**

Little frog in a cozy wool coat and pants — caption “finally fall now I can really start dressin”

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 01/09/2026

One of my favorite bits from Wendell Berry’s Unsettling of America, 1977 — that you have to be with others, be in the world, connect to your surroundings, to really know yourself

The so-called identity crisis, tor instance, is a disease that seems to have become prevalent after the disconnection of body and soul and the other piece-mealings of the modern period. One's "identity" is apparently the immaterial part of one's being — also known as psyche, soul, spirit, self, mind, etc. The dividing of this principle from the body and from any particular worldly locality would seem reason enough for a crisis. Treatment, it might be thought, would logically consist in the restoration of these connections: the lost identity would find itself by recognizing physical landmarks, by connecting itself responsibly to practical circumstances; it would learn to stay put in the body to which it belongs and in the place to which preference or history or accident has brought it; it would, in short, find itself in finding its work. But "finding your-self, the pseudo-ritual by which the identity crisis is supposed to be resolved, makes use of no such immediate references. Leaving aside the obvious, and ancient, realities of doubt and self-doubt, as well as the authentic madness that is often the result of cultural disintegration, it seems likely that the identity crisis is a conventional illusion, one of the genres of self-indulgence. It can be an excuse for irresponsibility or a fashionable mode of self-dramatization.
It is the easiest form of self-flattery — a way to construe procrastination as a virtue - based on the romantic assumption that "who I really am" is better in some fundamental way than the available evidence would suggest.
The fashionable cure for this condition, if I understand the lore of it cor-rectly, has nothing to do with the assumption of responsibilities or the renewal of connections. The cure is "autonomy," another illusory condition, suggesting

that the self can be self-determining and independent without regard for any determining circumstance or any of the obvious dependences. This seems little more than a jargon term for indifference to the opinions and feelings of other people. There is, in practice, no such thing as autonomy. Practically, there is only a distinction between responsible and irresponsible dependence. Inevitably failing this impossible standard of autonomy, the modern self-seeker becomes a tourist of cures, submitting his quest to the guidance of one guru after another. The "cure" thus preserves the disease.

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 30/08/2026

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Ethan Freedman @ethanpfreedman.com · 28/08/2026

got em

Map of Lake Ontario except renamed Lake Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face
With stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space
To be where I have been

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