Could I be more excited, even if I’m posting here a day later than intended? I’d love to find out. My story, “Matt Bellassai’s guide to drinking (and whining) your way to the top,” made the cover of the Chicago RedEye today. As someone who lived in Chicago for 12 years and who read that paper (and yelled about the crossword puzzle) nearly every day, this is just amazing. Even Bellassai is excited, and he’s in Los Angeles tonight as a nominee for a People’s Choice Award for Best Social Media Star. You can read more about him at the article (plus the fun sidebar where we cast his inevitable biopic), and see some behind-the-scenes exclusives that didn’t make it in over at my blog.

Some other links I’m loving lately:

• The New Yorker visited El Alto, Bolivia, the world’s highest city, where architects are creating the most amazing Art Nouveau indigenous sci-fi.
• I keep reading ISIS thinkpieces, and Aeon’s “ISIS Is a Revolution” has stayed with me a long time. Pair with the New York Times Magazine‘s long look at secular Kurds fighting to build their own kind of utopia.
• Over the holidays, I fell deep into the world of cooking and baking shows and documentaries, particularly The Great British Bake Off. That led to some poking through Netflix, which led to Jiro Dreams of Sushi (many years late), which led to find this amazing article from Bon Appetit: “Are All the Top French Chefs Freemasons?“
• My j-school profs spent December singing the praises of Spotlight, and I have to agree with their assessment. The New York Times wrote an interesting piece on what makes journalism movies good, both artistically and in portraying journalism, and how those don’t always match up.
• World War II is what got me into journalism (thanks, Studs Terkel), so any oral histories that shed light on that period in the period’s own voices is 100% my jam. I finally listened to the Radio Diaries episode “Fly Girls,” about female pilots in the WASP program. If you spotted me on the subway crying with my headphones on, this is why.