Chicago was great! Chicago was so great. I expect to have a lot more to say on that topic, but all in good time. However, one big reason why I chose to go — in addition to the fact that I lived there for 12 years and missed it and my people — was the Theo Janssen Strandbeest exhibit and demonstrations. I found out about them in about 2003 and have been dying to see them in person ever since. What a great coincidence that the Chicago Cultural Center would be hosting them for three months, free to the public!

What a great coincidence that the one day I was able to get downtown to see them was Pulaski Day, a holiday about a Polish cavalryman who fought for the Americans during the Revolutionary War and somehow didn’t make it into Hamilton. Kids get out of school, public buildings are closed and I am forced to come back to Chicago before May 1, when the installations ends. What a hardship!

Meanwhile, I’ve seen so many histories of the GOP and why it’s imploding in this particular way right now that I’m going to leave that narrative where it is, but there’s been too much good writing on Trump voters to leave them out entirely.

• Namely, you need to read “The Rise of American Authoritarianism” by Amanda Taub for Vox. Want some cold hard data? This might send a chill up your spine.
• I can’t deny that I love the existence of @DeepDrumpf — he’s really the perfect candidate for the @horse_ebooks treatment.
• In Greece, where refugee problems aren’t quite so abstract, the Washington Post spent some time with the people trapped between flight, retreat and starvation.
• WNYC is working on “audiograms” to make audio more shareable; meanwhile, engineers are sound-mapping Byzantine churches, an even cooler project than the already-cool Museum of Endangered Sounds.
• I feel myself wanted to fall deeper into comics, particularly since I’m coming to them as a writer before a user of visual language. Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is writing the upcoming Black Panther run for Marvel, shares how he’s learning visual language and the beats of comics writing. (Not to mention the title itself, already promising, is looking very, very cool.)

XKCD is great, so I’m just going to leave you with this, which speaks for itself: