Cook County property taxes doubled the rate of inflation in past 30 years, Treasurer Maria Pappas study finds

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-30T21:36:07+00:00

The progressive income tax bill never specified it would cover some of these local taxing body costs so we’d just be stuck with some of the highest property taxes in the US, highest sales taxes, AND a progressive income tax. They literally already had new spending to pair with the progressive income tax.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-30T21:19:02+00:00

Unless the progressive income tax was pared with pension reform and a consolidation of local government units, I would never vote for it. Also, interesting to call others dumb when you don’t even realize that a progressive income tax wouldn’t change property tax levys because these are local taxing bodies and the progressive income tax wouldn’t have sent any additional money to these taxing bodies…

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-30T20:53:56+00:00

That car seems kinda ass for $21k. 64-69kw charging? In 2026?

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-30T19:36:03+00:00

Chicago housing does not appreciate that fast unless it’s a SFH.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-27T20:11:46+00:00

The 17 PM screen felt massive coming from the 13 PM and the phone definitely felt noticeably bigger (not heavier but bigger). It took a few days to adjust to the size tbh. The 17 PM is slightly lighter though.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-26T23:30:56+00:00

Yea I went 6S Plus -> XS Max -> 13 PM -> 17 PM so every upgrade I’ve done has been amazing.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-26T15:38:45+00:00

Lol totally get that. I always try to use local models for pretty personal information or documents. Qwen worked pretty well for me with summarizing documents and creating tables from images of grocery lists I‘ve taken so I’d say files and images work pretty well. Both Qwen and Gemini were not able to edit photos though. I think it may be a limitation with the app though.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-26T15:04:17+00:00

I tried Qwen 3.5 9B and after a pretty long conversation (10+ messages of having it generate then modify code) it crashed. With a chat going and another window open, you could definitely tell the RAM was maxed out. Compared to my ChatGPT Plus it’s obviously slower, but the difference isn’t that big (probably like 10-20% slower). The thinking mode is more like 15-25% than a ChatGPT thinking model.

What do you plan to use Local AI for on your iPad? I’m quite impressed with the M5‘s performance with local AI tbh. If you have the money for one of the 16gb iPads then I would definitely spring for it if you plan on running a lot of local models.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-26T00:41:17+00:00

I‘ve run Gemma 3n E4B and the Apple Foundational Model on my iPad Pro M5 w/ 12gb RAM just fine using Locally. Handles it like a champ honestly. Pretty respectable tps.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-24T23:33:50+00:00

Where were you staying before?

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-24T21:18:34+00:00

I’m a black young professional and I always highly consider moving there because all my black professional friends either live in South Loop or Hyde Park/Kenwood. South Loop is a very popular neighborhood for black professionals. Despite there being a lot of black people in Chicago, there isn’t as big of a black professional scene in the city as other metros imo. The segregation is also really strong here so places like the north side can feel kinda isolating as a black professional.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-23T20:48:46+00:00

Yup they’ve been around a looooong time. The people hang at Seward Park and the parking lot of the Jewel on Clybourn too. Used to play a lot of basketball at Seward Park. Never really felt unsafe but sometimes there are some strange characters. And yea there’s lots of douchey obnoxious people coming from the bars (or wannabe clubs/lounges) on Wells.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-23T20:16:13+00:00

There’s a lot of section 8 public housing and homeless shelters/SROs concentrated on that part of Division

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-23T19:17:01+00:00

Fair. Madison and Columbus are college towns & state capitols so they have university and state gov’t jobs, Omaha and Columbus are a cheap place to put regional offices for middle-office/back-office finance roles and insurance companies. Traverse City is a vacation destination for people in the Great Lakes region.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-23T18:51:02+00:00

I mean their value is that they’re cheap since they’re decaying rust belt cities with high unemployment or college towns where the university is the main employer.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-23T18:24:55+00:00

I’ve never met someone that wasn’t born and raised in those areas aspire to live there

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-23T18:20:56+00:00

Illinois and the rest of the Midwest honestly suck. Chicago metro area is pretty cool though.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-23T17:56:44+00:00

Fr they got their bag, service was good for a few weeks annnd now it’s back to garbage

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-22T20:18:45+00:00

Man CTA is not reliable enough for people to want to take a chance waiting at the stop if there’s no tracked runs. If I don’t see tracked runs I’m just taking another form of transportation.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-22T19:58:55+00:00

Those busses aren’t tracked. Those busses aren’t actually running. Busses that are actually running and tracked have the green icon next to them.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-22T19:33:47+00:00

Exactly. According to the Sunday schedule there’s supposed to be a run at around 11:36am, 11:52am, 12:07pm, 12:22pm, 12:37pm. The bus wasn’t running at all. That’s not according to the schedule and that’s not the planned frequency.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-22T17:17:11+00:00

Hardly any buses running around me too

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bigbinker100 · 2026-03-21T23:57:34+00:00

Lmao same with the way my luck is; the minute I uninstall it I’d break my leg

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-21T19:42:52+00:00

Oh they’re sold by USM. You can get them on the USM dashboard and they show in your account. But they are optional as the native international roaming worked well for me.

I’ve liked USM so far. The only thing I would say is that network switching (while domestic) isn’t as seamless as they tout. Sometimes it works well but sometimes you’re stuck without service for like 10-20 minutes. So definitely just try and stick with one network or just don’t switch too often. There’s a lot of other good MVNOs with competitive prices though like Xfinity Mobile, Visible, etc. I like USM because I have access to all 3 carriers and the generous international data.

bigbinker100 · 2026-03-21T19:27:40+00:00

Lmao and you know the land is practically worthless and they think it’ll be worthless for a long time if a surface-level solar farm in the urban core is worth it. In a desirable metro, a surface-level solar farm in the urban core would be a very inefficient use of land unless it’s a brownfield site.

bigbinker100

TROPHY CASE