By Samuel Becher/The Conversation

Most of us will have entered into consumer contracts with large companies and ticked a box to confirm we understand the terms and conditions without bothering to read the fine print.
We accept standard form contracts when using social media, booking flights, opening a bank account, subscribing to a gym or renting a car. In all these cases, companies offer pre-drafted standardized agreements that are non-negotiable.
At the same time, consumers are legally assumed to have read the terms and conditions of their contracts. Because of this “duty to read,” consumers are held responsible for the written terms of their agreements, regardless of whether they read them.
But while consumers have the legal burden to read their contracts, companies do not have a general duty to offer readable ones. As our research shows, most of them are incomprehensible.

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Posted on February 5, 2019

By J.J. Tindall

Treadwell at the DuSable Museum
In the early ’90s
We got stoned
Out of our living gourds –
Me, G.F. Fox and Seamus
(Representing West Town,
Ravenswood & De Paul) –
And made a drive south to
The DuSable Museum
Of African American History.

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Posted on February 4, 2019

By Sabeel Ahmed

As the temperature dipped to -8 degrees Tuesday night, a Morton Grove family went door-to-door in their neighborhood posting letters offering help neighbors in their time of need during the bitter cold weather.
The family is offering any help that any neighbor needs, from getting a ride to pick up groceries, medicine from a pharmacy or the removal of snow.
The letter closes with a heartwarming offer for neighbors to drop into the residence of the Ahmed family for a hot cup of tea and samosas.

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Posted on January 30, 2019

By The Chicago Cultural Alliance

Forgotten Forms features artists Edra Soto and Yhelena Hall, whose work investigates our relationship with everyday objects in context of neighborhood identity and our responsibility to creating and recreating it – revealing a much greater story about neighborhood identity, placemaking, and city life.

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Posted on January 29, 2019

By The U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service

Harvest Food Group, a Chicago establishment, is recalling approximately 47,332 pounds of Not Ready-To-Eat (NRTE) chicken fried rice products due to misbranding and an undeclared allergen. The products contain milk, a known allergen, which is not declared on the product label.
The NRTE chicken fried rice items were produced on Nov. 12, 2018, Dec. 4, 2018 and Dec. 5, 2018. The following products are subject to recall:

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Posted on January 25, 2019

By The U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service

Custom Made Meals, a Denver establishment, is recalling approximately 7,954 pounds of chicken skewer products due to misbranding and undeclared allergens. The products contain coconut, a known tree nut allergen that is not declared on the product label.
The Red Chili Orange Chicken Skewer items were produced on various dates from Sept. 27, 2018, through Jan. 10, 2019. The following product is subject to recall:

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Posted on January 22, 2019

By J.J. Tindall

The Umpteenth Ward
“Forget It, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Every January morning here
The light is all vertical,
Shooting low from a late rising sun,
A seething head poking out of its lair,
Nervous like a fugitive.

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Posted on January 21, 2019

By The U.S. Postal Inspection Service

“Fishing tools” and how they are used to steal mail!

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Posted on January 14, 2019

By Thomas Straka/Wiscontext

In the early 1950s, the Walt Disney Company moved beyond animated cartoons to nature films. When creating movies like Bambi, Disney brought in live animals for its artists to study, and even had natural science lectures to educate the animators. Walt Disney himself developed an interest in conservation and launched a series of 13 documentaries titled “True-Life Adventures.”
The series focused primarily on the fading frontier, conservation and nature. These films were some of the first of their kind, and served as inspiration for many entries to the genre.
Environmental awareness, at least relative to cinema, can also be traced back to the “True-Life Adventures” series. The first film in the series was Seal Island (1948), set in the Alaskan frontier. Russia and Japan had just signed a treaty on seal hunting and that is likely what caught Disney’s attention.
Seal Island ran for 27 minutes; too short for a feature and too long for a short. Theaters weren’t interested, but Disney managed to get it into a friend’s theater, qualifying it for Academy Award consideration. It won an Oscar for best documentary short subject, and so the series was off and running.
It was at that point Madison became part of nature film history.

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Posted on January 11, 2019

“What a year it was – package devices, natural disasters, scams, and more. Here’s how the U.S. Postal Inspection Service kept the mail safe in 2018.”

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Posted on January 8, 2019