WHAT F’NHAPPENED THIS WEEK? August 28, 2026
WHAT F’NHAPPENED THIS WEEK?
August 28, 2026
Apparently seven days is enough time for Illinois to start auditioning for Tornado Alley, the United States Department of Education to accidentally compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler, the president to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” MapQuest to enter international diplomacy, Chicago to discover that adding more gambling might annoy the company building its giant casino, and the United States military to remind everyone that sometimes the darkest stories involving government deserve the least joking.
Then there’s crypto.
Foreign money.
AI chips.
A former American intelligence asset facing deportation.
A $70 million cigarette.
A $53 million lawsuit involving stolen human remains.
A cannabis drive-thru.
A store in Paris devoted entirely to butter.
And somehow both Chicago baseball teams entered the end of August playing games that actually matter.
We also ate cheese curds, went to an inflatable safari, got glittered, went to a collaboration at Graziano’s, watched a movie that somehow became the unofficial prequel to a completely different movie in Joe’s head, heard from Samsung, went back for Oreo pudding, started another weekend wandering around Chicago and discovered that apparently a Texas Twinkie has absolutely nothing to do with a Twinkie.
In other words:
We F’nAround.
And somewhere during all of that, Mike and Joe finally figured out what to do with the podcast.
Going forward, the F’nAround podcast is for guests.
That doesn’t mean Mike and Joe suddenly ran out of shit to talk about.
Quite the opposite.
We just realized there isn’t much reason to manufacture an hour-long podcast every time something catches our attention.
Interesting person?
Podcast.
Interesting story Mike and Joe need to talk about on camera?
Short or social video.
Something that deserves real digging?
Standalone article.
Everything else that happened during the week?
You’re reading it.
Every Friday, What F’nHappened This Week? becomes our version of the Sunday paper arriving two days early after drinking an unhealthy amount of energy drinks and coffee.
Chicago.
Illinois.
National news.
World news.
Government.
War.
Money.
Cannabis.
Sports.
Entertainment.
Food.
Things we did.
Things we found.
Things Joe couldn’t stop researching.
Things that actually matter.
And things that absolutely do not matter but are far too fucking weird to leave out.
There isn’t going to be an artificial word limit.
Some weeks may be quick.
Some weeks may become a small newspaper.
Apparently this is one of the latter.
So…
What the fuck happened this week?
F’NCHICAGO
Illinois Has Had 207 Tornadoes This Year
Friday morning’s Chicago Sun-Times came with a fairly alarming front-page question:
THE NEW TORNADO ALLEY?
And underneath that question was a number that makes the headline considerably less dramatic than it initially sounds.
Illinois has recorded 207 tornadoes and counting in 2026.
The previous state record?
That was set only two years ago.
Illinois’ historical annual average is closer to 50.
And this is now the third consecutive year Illinois has experienced a triple-digit tornado season. (Chicago Sun-Times)
So yes.
207 is a lot.
Enough that “What the hell is happening?” is a perfectly reasonable question.
Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as simple as somebody moving the Tornado Alley sign from Oklahoma to Illinois.
Meteorologists have observed a geographical change in severe-weather patterns. Illinois and Indiana have already recorded their highest tornado activity since modern National Weather Service recordkeeping began in 1950, while portions of the traditional Great Plains Tornado Alley have been comparatively quiet this year. (Chicago Sun-Times)
Climate change may contribute to the environment producing severe storms, but scientists are careful about saying climate change simply equals “more tornadoes.”
Warmer oceans can pump additional moisture into the atmosphere.
Researchers have documented increases in conditions favorable for severe thunderstorms farther east.
But radar, satellite data and storm surveys have also become dramatically better at identifying weaker or short-lived tornadoes previous generations might never have counted.
So the current answer is essentially:
Something is changing.
We can measure parts of it.
We’re still figuring out exactly why.
But when a state accustomed to roughly 50 tornadoes has 207 before the season is finished, severe-weather geography suddenly becomes more than an academic question.
It becomes an insurance question.
A building-code question.
An emergency-preparedness question.
An infrastructure question.
And for communities that historically did not think of themselves as living in Tornado Alley, potentially a question of whether yesterday’s preparation is adequate for tomorrow’s weather.
Shedd Rescued 8 Belugas. Then Peekachu Died.
There was some genuinely sad news out of Shedd Aquarium this week.
Peekachu, a 23-year-old beluga whale, died suddenly Tuesday, only about two weeks after arriving in Chicago.
Peekachu was one of eight belugas transferred to Shedd from the shuttered Marineland facility in Ontario, Canada, part of a much larger and unusual effort to find new homes for dozens of whales after Marineland closed.
Shedd said Peekachu had initially been doing well following the move before experiencing a sudden medical emergency.
That makes the timing particularly difficult.
Moving an animal that large across an international border is already an enormous logistical and veterinary undertaking.
Doing it as part of an emergency relocation involving dozens of belugas is something else entirely.
And then losing one almost immediately after getting her to Chicago is a reminder that “rescue” doesn’t necessarily mean the difficult part is over.
The remaining whales continue being monitored at Shedd.
For a city where the aquarium has been part of generations of childhood field trips, Peekachu had barely arrived before Chicago had to say goodbye.
F’NGAMBLING
Chicago Rolled the Dice Against Its Own Casino
This has become one of our favorite examples of why sometimes the interesting part of covering government isn’t predicting exactly what will happen.
It’s watching officials get warned about a consequence.
Watching them vote anyway.
Then waiting to see whether some version of the warning begins appearing.
Chicago spent years pursuing a permanent destination casino.
The city ultimately selected Bally’s, and the company began work on a roughly $1.7 billion casino, hotel and entertainment complex in River West.
Then Chicago opened the door to video gaming terminals.
Bally’s argued that the spread of VGTs fundamentally changed the gaming market underlying its agreement with Chicago and began “resetting the pace” of construction on non-gaming portions of the permanent development, including the hotel and other amenities. The casino itself remained targeted for an early-2027 opening. (Axios)
City Council did not appreciate that.
Twenty-seven alderpeople signed a letter demanding Bally’s resume construction and calling for a hearing. Bally’s responded that it would engage in an “open, honest and collaborative conversation.” (Bizjournals)
Which is corporate language for:
We are definitely having an argument, but everybody has lawyers.
The underlying question remains remarkably simple.
Chicago spent years saying:
Come here and build a huge gambling destination.
Then Chicago effectively also said:
By the way, we’re going to make gambling available in a lot more places.
You don’t have to oppose video gaming.
You don’t have to support Bally’s.
You don’t even have to believe Bally’s predictions are correct.
You just have to acknowledge a basic business reality:
Gambling dollars are not infinite.
Maybe VGT customers and casino customers are completely different markets.
Maybe convenience expands overall gaming participation enough that everybody wins.
Maybe neighborhood gaming cannibalizes part of Bally’s business.
Maybe the impact ends up negligible.
That’s why we’re watching.
Policy doesn’t end when City Council votes.
Sometimes that’s when the experiment begins.
Illinois Has Another Gambling Problem to Talk About
The Bally’s fight becomes even more interesting when placed beside another Illinois story from this week.
While Chicago continues debating how much gambling should be available and where people should be allowed to do it, Illinois is increasingly treating problem gambling as a public-health issue.
And those two conversations probably shouldn’t exist in separate rooms.
Illinois has expanded gambling dramatically over the last several years.
Casinos.
Sports betting.
Video gaming terminals.
Online wagering.
Lottery products.
And now Chicago is opening additional territory for VGTs while simultaneously depending upon a massive permanent casino to generate jobs, tax revenue and economic activity.
The policy conversation usually revolves around:
How much revenue will this produce?
There’s another side.
How much gambling can you make available before increased access begins producing increased harm?
That doesn’t mean gambling expansion automatically causes addiction.
It doesn’t mean casinos or VGTs should be prohibited.
Adults are capable of making their own decisions.
But if government collects revenue every time somebody places another bet, it also has an interest in understanding what happens to the people who cannot stop placing them.
That’s what makes the timing interesting.
On one side of Chicago’s gambling debate:
Are VGTs taking money away from Bally’s?
On the other:
What happens when gambling becomes available almost everywhere?
Maybe Chicago should be asking both.
F’NGEOGRAPHY
Lake Ontario Had a Rough Week
This story began sounding like one of those Trump remarks that might dominate social media for 12 hours and disappear.
Then President Donald Trump actually signed the order.
On Aug. 27, Trump directed the federal government to recognize Lake Ontario as:
Lake America.
The change applies to U.S. federal usage and federal maps.
There is, naturally, one geographical complication.
Canada is still there.
Lake Ontario is shared by the United States and Canada. Trump can determine what the United States federal government calls the lake.
He cannot force Canada to use that name.
He cannot force every private map provider to adopt it.
And he certainly cannot travel backward through centuries and change where the word Ontario came from.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the change, while Indigenous leaders emphasized that the lake’s historical name predates both modern countries. (Reuters)
So we now have the entirely normal situation where:
U.S. federal map: Lake America.
Canadian map: Lake Ontario.
Most of human history: Lake Ontario.
And because 2026 was not yet strange enough:
MapQuest got involved.
MapQuest Has Chosen Violence
Remember MapQuest?
Before Google Maps.
Before Apple Maps.
Back when getting directions meant printing six sheets of paper and praying you didn’t miss Exit 43B?
MapQuest publicly said it would continue calling the lake Lake Ontario and then leaned into the entire mess with a satirical name generator. (Business Insider)
So somehow one of this week’s geopolitical actors was:
MapQuest.
There are companies that spend millions trying to make themselves relevant again.
MapQuest apparently just waited until the president renamed a Great Lake.
Trump also suggested an ocean could eventually receive similar treatment.
The Atlantic?
The Pacific?
Apparently geography now requires software updates. (Reuters)
At this rate, Rand McNally should probably retain counsel.
F’NTRADE
The Lake Fight Is Really a Trade Fight Wearing a Funny Hat
The geography is entertaining.
The economics underneath it are considerably less funny.
Relations between the United States and Canada have deteriorated amid another major tariff fight, with Canada announcing retaliatory duties on about $20 billion worth of American goods beginning Sept. 8 after the latest U.S. escalation. (Financial Times)
That matters particularly around the Great Lakes.
The United States and Canada don’t simply buy finished products from each other.
Their supply chains are deeply integrated.
Automotive components can cross the border multiple times during manufacturing.
Energy moves across the border.
Raw materials move across the border.
Agricultural goods move across the border.
Supply chains don’t care whether a tariff makes for a good political slogan.
They care whether the same component suddenly becomes more expensive every time it moves.
So yes:
Lake America is funny.
The economic fight underneath Lake America is not.
F’NEDUCATION
The Department of Education Accidentally Made Trump Hitler
Some stories don’t require much editorial assistance.
The U.S. Department of Education posted a social-media video using a scene from the 2017 Winston Churchill biopic Darkest Hour.
Churchill says:
“You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.”
The department then cut to a montage of Donald Trump and captioned the post:
No one does it like us.
Tiger emoji.
There was one problem.
The tiger Churchill is referring to in that scene is:
Adolf Hitler.
People pointed this out.
A Community Note appeared.
The Department deleted the video. Reporting said the clip was used without understanding its historical context. (The New Republic)
Normally this is where we’d make the joke.
But the joke appears to have been produced directly by the United States Department of Education.
We cannot improve upon it.
The more consequential backdrop is that the Trump administration continues trying to dramatically reduce the federal department’s role, transfer responsibilities elsewhere and return more educational authority to states.
That is an actual policy debate.
What should the federal role in education be?
Which functions require national administration?
What happens to civil-rights enforcement, disability protections, research, student aid and accountability when responsibilities are dispersed?
Those are serious questions.
Which somehow makes the federal education agency failing a movie-context quiz even more incredible.
Illinois Is Taking the Phones Away
While the federal Department of Education was accidentally failing its own history quiz, Illinois had an education story considerably closer to the classroom.
The state has adopted a statewide requirement directing public-school districts to establish policies restricting student cellphone and personal-device use during the school day.
The requirement is scheduled to take effect for the 2027–28 school year.
This isn’t literally:
Illinois has confiscated every teenager’s iPhone.
Districts will still develop their own policies, and the law contains exceptions for things including medical needs, individualized education programs and 504 plans, translation, caregiving responsibilities, instructional purposes and emergencies.
But the direction is obvious.
Schools increasingly believe the little rectangle sitting on every student’s desk has become incompatible with getting students to pay attention to the person standing in front of the classroom.
Which puts Illinois into a much larger national experiment.
For years, schools tried incorporating smartphones and technology into education.
Now they’re increasingly asking:
What happens if we just make everybody put the damn thing away?
Teachers are about to find out.
F’NCRYPTO / F’NCONFLICTS
When the President’s Family Business Meets Foreign Policy
Then there’s the story where crypto, banking, foreign policy, artificial intelligence and presidential conflicts of interest all crash into each other.
At the center is Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser and one of the most powerful figures in Emirati finance and intelligence.
Tahnoon-linked interests have been involved in enormous transactions connected to World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency venture associated with President Trump and his family.
A Tahnoon-backed investment vehicle reportedly acquired a major stake in World Liberty, while another Tahnoon-chaired entity, MGX, used World Liberty’s new USD1 stablecoin to settle a roughly $2 billion investment in Binance.
That transaction helped transform USD1 from a relatively small stablecoin into a multibillion-dollar one. (Forbes)
Then came the part that turned a crypto story into a foreign-policy story.
The Trump administration moved to dramatically ease restrictions on the UAE’s access to advanced American AI chips, including technology that had previously raised national-security concerns because of the possibility of sensitive technology reaching China. In July, the administration further loosened export restrictions for UAE entities. (Reuters)
The overlap has prompted congressional scrutiny.
A Senate Banking Committee letter summarized the sequence and explicitly called for investigation into whether the foreign investment influenced subsequent administration decisions. (Senate Banking Committee)
Now World Liberty itself has moved another step toward the traditional financial system.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval this month for World Liberty Trust Company, a proposed national trust bank that would handle USD1 issuance and custody. (Reuters)
And new reporting has placed Tahnoon-linked investors among the largest owners connected to the proposed bank structure.
There is an important distinction here.
The existence of the investments and the subsequent policy decisions does not by itself prove a quid pro quo.
Timing is not proof of bribery.
Correlation is not proof of an exchange.
But that isn’t the only reason presidential conflicts-of-interest rules matter.
The deeper question is whether the public can confidently distinguish a decision made solely for the interests of the United States from a decision that also happens to financially benefit the president’s family.
When a powerful foreign official or entities connected to him put enormous sums into a business tied to a sitting president’s family while that foreign government simultaneously seeks extremely valuable American policy decisions?
That potential conflict is impossible to ignore.
And crypto makes the transparency problem harder.
Tokens.
Stablecoins.
Holding companies.
Intermediaries.
Foreign investment vehicles.
Custodians.
Digital transactions.
Traditional political ethics rules were not designed for a financial system where billions of dollars can move through structures most voters could not explain if given a whiteboard and an afternoon.
So add another item to this week’s increasingly bizarre collision of:
Government.
Money.
Crypto.
Intelligence.
AI.
Foreign policy.
And private business.
No allegation needs to be exaggerated.
The established facts are interesting enough.
F’NWAR
The “Short” Iran War Is Six Months Old
The U.S.-Iran conflict has now crossed roughly the six-month mark.
And some of the most consequential effects are increasingly appearing far away from Iran itself.
Associated Press reporting this week described a conflict that failed to produce the clean geopolitical outcome its architects envisioned. Iran suffered enormous military and economic damage, but its government remains in place, while the war has altered regional alliances, energy markets and American military commitments. (AP News)
Then came an especially important readiness story.
U.S. Patriot interceptor stocks in Europe have reportedly fallen to levels officials described as “beyond critical,” driven significantly by missiles expended during the Iran conflict and other global demands. (AP News)
That matters because military resources aren’t theoretical.
A missile fired at one threat no longer exists to defend another installation.
A carrier deployed to one region isn’t simultaneously available somewhere else.
A maintenance crew working overtime for eight months eventually gets tired.
Wars consume things.
Not just money.
Inventory.
Hours.
Readiness.
People.
And that leads directly to one of the week’s uglier stories.
F’NMILITARY
Punishment Doesn’t Fit the Crime?
One story involving the USS Abraham Lincoln deserves to be treated without the F’nAround punchline.
A 19-year-old sailor reportedly jumped overboard during an apparent suicide attempt.
He survived.
He received medical care.
He then reportedly faced disciplinary proceedings related to his conduct.
His family has said he sought mental-health assistance before the incident.
There may be facts in the Navy’s disciplinary record the public does not know.
That matters.
But the broader institutional question remains:
If conduct occurs during an apparent suicide attempt, what exactly is punishment supposed to accomplish afterward?
Accountability and mental-health treatment are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
But neither should a system designed around discipline become a substitute for understanding why a service member reached the edge of a ship in the first place.
That deserves scrutiny.
And the conditions aboard the Lincoln are becoming part of a broader controversy.
Stars and Stripes Is Suing the Pentagon
Three senior Stars and Stripes staff members sued the Pentagon this week after being fired, alleging retaliation and First Amendment violations tied partly to criticism of government interference and reporting on conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
The Pentagon has not accepted their characterization of events. (AP News)
But the institutional issue is fascinating.
Stars and Stripes receives Defense Department support while historically maintaining editorial independence to report critically on the military establishment its readers serve in.
A military newspaper that cannot report uncomfortable things happening to military personnel eventually stops being journalism.
It becomes an employee newsletter with camouflage.
We’ll be watching that one.
The $70 Million Cigarette
Then there’s the USS George Washington.
This did not happen this week.
It happened in 2008.
But one of the stories resurfacing this week reminded us of one of the most catastrophically expensive smoke breaks in military history.
An unauthorized cigarette was blamed for starting a fire aboard the nuclear-powered carrier.
That cigarette encountered improperly stored flammable materials.
Investigators later found roughly 90 gallons of oils and other flammable liquids improperly stored nearby.
The fire burned for hours.
Dozens of sailors were injured.
The estimated damage:
$70 million.
A cigarette.
Seventy million dollars.
Somewhere in the Navy there is probably still a PowerPoint slide about this.
JD Goes Back to Basic Training
Vice President JD Vance, who served in the Marine Corps, posted video of himself and his son taking on a Marine obstacle course alongside active-duty Marines.
Internet reaction went exactly how internet reaction always goes.
Some people thought it was cool.
Some mocked him.
Some analyzed his obstacle-course performance like he was trying out for Recon.
We have a simpler view.
A sitting vice president voluntarily climbing over Marine Corps obstacles with his kid is at least more visually interesting than another speech behind a lectern.
So the headline survives:
JD Goes Back to Basic Training.
“Operation Epstein Fury”
Then there is the photograph.
A viral image circulated purporting to show messages scrawled in dust on a U.S. military aircraft in the Persian Gulf.
Among the messages reportedly visible:
Operation Epstein Fury.
Other writing allegedly referenced Trump, Israel, Epstein and American foreign policy.
But this is exactly where viral does not equal verified.
We have not seen reliable independent authentication establishing who wrote the messages.
So we are not writing:
American service members did this.
What we can accurately say is:
An image claiming to show it went viral.
Funny story.
Asterisk attached.
Accuracy first.
Profanity second.
F’NIMMIGRATION
He Helped American Intelligence. Now ICE Wants Him Gone.
This one barely sounds real.
Blerim Skoro is a Kosovo-born man whose history with the United States reportedly includes working as an American intelligence informant and infiltrating extremist networks after 9/11.
He later received protection from deportation to Kosovo under the Convention Against Torture because of the danger he could face there.
That protection did not make him a permanent U.S. resident.
And now immigration authorities are seeking to remove him.
His lawyers are fighting it.
There are obvious immigration-law questions.
But there is an even more interesting institutional one.
The same human being can apparently exist inside government as:
Useful intelligence asset.
Informant.
Protected individual.
Removable noncitizen.
It is possible for every one of those bureaucratic descriptions to exist simultaneously.
That does not necessarily mean the outcome makes sense.
It means agencies have missions.
And agencies can become extremely good at seeing their own mission while being remarkably bad at seeing the entire person another part of government created.
We have encountered that concept before.
F’NPOLITICS
Trump Won Another Golf Championship
At a Trump golf course.
President Trump reportedly won another club competition at Trump National Westchester after previous senior and super-senior victories.
Trump says he has accumulated around 40 club championships.
At some point the Caddyshack references stop working.
Donald Trump has apparently created the Caddyshack Cinematic Universe.
F’NTECH
Meta Found an $18 Billion Solution to a Child-Safety Fight
Meta agreed to a settlement worth as much as $18 billion resolving claims from U.S. states alleging Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed in ways that encouraged addictive use by children while failing to adequately protect young users.
Meta denies wrongdoing.
The agreement includes major youth-safety changes, including usage restrictions and tighter nighttime controls. (Business Insider)
Whatever side of the broader argument you’re on, an $18 billion settlement indicates governments no longer view children’s social-media use as merely:
Parents need to watch their kids.
It has become a regulatory question.
How much responsibility belongs to parents?
How much belongs to platforms?
How much belongs to government?
And what happens when the business model rewards keeping everybody including children on the screen longer?
That fight is not going away.
F’NMONEY
The Fed Went to Jackson Hole
The Federal Reserve gathered in Jackson Hole this week with one problem still refusing to disappear:
Inflation.
New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh entered Friday’s speech with Wall Street trying to figure out not only where monetary policy is heading but how much guidance the new chairman intends to provide about getting there. (Reuters)
Markets love certainty.
Central bankers sometimes benefit from not providing it.
That tension is going to define a lot of the Warsh era.
Meanwhile, initial unemployment claims remained around historically low levels.
Which is worth mentioning because political conversations about the economy generally demand that it be either:
AMAZING
or
A DISASTER.
Real economies are considerably more annoying.
Consumers can hate prices while unemployment remains low.
Companies can invest while households feel squeezed.
Inflation can remain elevated while layoffs remain subdued.
Multiple things are allowed to happen simultaneously.
Economics would be much easier if it respected social-media character limits.
It doesn’t.
F’NPIZZA Darwin Comes for Pizza
Apparently natural selection has reached the pizza menu. A list making the rounds claims several once-popular pizza styles are slowly disappearing, including Sicilian, Buffalo-style, St. Louis-style, California pizza, tomato pie, white pizza and even French-bread pizza. We’re having a hard time agreeing with some of those choices, especially declaring entire regional styles endangered because they aren’t dominating national menus. And after Mike just reviewed Prince Street and complained about those little pepperoni cups, finding Buffalo-style pizza and its cup-and-char pepperoni on the endangered list feels suspiciously well timed. Maybe pizza evolves. Maybe tastes change. Or maybe somebody just needed a fucking slideshow.
F’NMOVIES Maybe the Critics Were Wrong
Another list claims to identify movies critics hated that were actually awesome—and annoyingly, we’re having a hard time arguing with a lot of it. Hook, Constantine, Man on Fire, National Treasure, The Cell, Alien³ and several other movies that developed serious fan followings despite mediocre or outright terrible contemporary reviews all make appearances. Mike only made it halfway through the list before declaring most of them bangers, and we’ve watched enough of these together to understand the argument. Maybe some movies are bad. Maybe some critics were wrong. And maybe the real test is whether people are still voluntarily watching the damn thing 20 years later.
F’NDEBATE The $180 Wi-Fi Favor
Here’s a neighborhood argument for the group chat. A man reportedly let his neighbor use his Wi-Fi as a favor, only for the arrangement to eventually produce a dispute involving a $180 bill. The internet naturally divided itself over who should be responsible. It’s a beautifully simple debate because helping somebody with your Wi-Fi sounds harmless right up until money becomes involved. If someone lets you use something for free and your use creates an additional charge, is paying that charge obviously your responsibility or did the person sharing the service accept that risk? This feels like one Mike and Joe could somehow turn into a 45-minute argument.
F’NTECH Sometimes Little Fucks Big
Tesla once reportedly paid hacker and security researcher GreenTheOnly through its bug-bounty ecosystem to find vulnerabilities in its technology. Then his ability to dig through Tesla systems became considerably more expensive for the company. While examining data from an Autopilot computer connected to a fatal crash, Green recovered information that became important evidence in litigation that ultimately produced a $243 million jury verdict against Tesla. There’s something beautifully F’nAround about that sequence: a giant technology company, one guy willing to dig into the machine, and one little piece of information capable of becoming extremely fucking expensive. Sometimes little fucks big.
F’NWATCHING Apparently Mike Has Homework
There continues to be noise around the possibility of Firefly returning, although getting an actual revival onto television remains considerably more complicated than fans yelling “bring it back” on the internet. The cult sci-fi series famously lasted only one season before cancellation and somehow spent the next two decades refusing to die culturally. The latest revival talk apparently created another obstacle but hasn’t completely killed hopes for some form of 2026 return. For Mike, however, this creates a more immediate problem: he needs to bone up on the original. Twenty-plus years after Fox canceled Firefly, apparently we’re assigning homework.
F’NCANNABIS
Kentucky: The More Records We Get, the More Interesting the Architecture Becomes
Our Kentucky medical-cannabis research continued this week.
And at this point the interesting question isn’t simply:
Did somebody do something wrong?
It’s becoming:
How did information move or fail to move between government agencies?
F’nAround has been examining ownership, management arrangements, acquisitions and Kentucky’s restrictions on vertical integration in the medical-cannabis market.
The Kentucky Office of Medical Cannabis has acknowledged responsive material exists in the form of internal correspondence and preliminary notes, analyses or recommendations associated with applications.
At the same time, when we sought communications between OMC and Kentucky’s Office of Inspector General concerning ownership, acquisition, transfer and control issues we were researching, OMC reported finding no responsive communications and no investigation or referral records on those topics.
That becomes particularly interesting because OIG produced an evaluation of Kentucky’s cannabis licensing structure.
We then asked another part of state government for communications concerning whether that evaluation should be corrected after the ownership information we identified.
Again:
No responsive records.
None of this by itself proves wrongdoing.
That is important.
What it does is begin mapping the architecture.
One compartment had certain information.
Another compartment produced an evaluation.
Our records requests are testing whether those compartments actually communicated with one another.
That is a much larger institutional question than one company or one cannabis license.
Because this is exactly how bureaucratic failures can occur without anybody ever writing an email saying:
“Let’s screw this up.”
Everyone can technically perform the task assigned to them.
The overall system can still produce a bad output if necessary information never crosses the boundary between departments.
That’s the part we’re studying.
And while we examine the machinery, Kentucky cannabis is becoming a real operating market.
Patients are shopping.
Dispensaries are opening.
Companies are operating.
Money is moving.
Which makes getting the regulatory architecture right considerably more important than when everything existed only on paper.
We are waiting for their official response.
Michigan: Define “Shut Down”
Then we received something interesting from Michigan.
During the Illinois trial involving nuEra Cannabis related entities, testimony by Robert Fitzsimmons described Union City Productions / nuEra’s Michigan operation as no longer operational and shut down.
Then on Aug. 25, correspondence from Michigan’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency showed a renewal application for PR-000243 Union City Productions LLC being processed.
CRA issued a deficiency notice because the applicant’s legal name had been written incorrectly on an attestation and provided five days to correct it.
Let’s be precise.
A license renewal does not prove a facility is operating.
Those are different questions.
But a facility described under oath as “shut down,” followed by an active state-license renewal process by the GM of the “shut down” facility , creates a perfectly fair follow-up:
What exactly did “shut down” mean?
Why are there still employees if it is shut down?
Business operations stopped?
Facility inactive?
Entity still alive?
License retained?
Temporary shutdown?
Those distinctions matter.
And once again:
That’s why we ask for the paperwork.
Trap Stars: Township Says Closed. Store Says Appeal.
New Buffalo Township voted Aug. 17 to revoke Trap Stars Outlet’s special-land-use approval, citing alleged regulatory and zoning violations.
The township ordered sales stopped immediately, inventory removed and signage eventually taken down.
About a week later?
Trap Stars was reportedly still selling cannabis.
That sounds straightforward until you hear the business’s side.
Attorney Adam Behrendt argues the township’s zoning ordinance provides appeal and review procedures that preserve the status quo while the decision is challenged.
So the dispute is essentially:
Township: Your approval is revoked. Stop.
Trap Stars: Your own appeals process says that isn’t final yet.
This is why government stories become dramatically more interesting when you read the boring procedural section.
Sometimes both sides are describing different stages of the same process.
Illinois Finally Invented the Weed Drive-Thru
Meanwhile, Illinois cannabis continues becoming more like ordinary retail.
Village Dispensary in Godfrey launched an approved cannabis drive-through lane after Illinois changed its rules to permit drive-through and curbside service.
Customers still have to order appropriately, meet identification requirements and follow purchasing limits.
So no, it isn’t quite:
“Welcome to McWeed, can I take your order?”
But the architecture is now there.
Give capitalism time.
Someone will invent the value meal.
F’NSYSTEMS
What Happens When You Actually Try to Use the Protection System?
Another thing we’re increasingly doing after the trial is taking experiences that happen around us and using them to understand process.
This week that meant walking through systems available when someone alleges blackmail or coercion and threatened false testimony.
We’re intentionally leaving the underlying interpersonal details out.
The individual isn’t the interesting part.
The path through government is.
Report something to police.
What happens next?
What belongs in the criminal system?
What gets pushed into civil court?
When is emergency protection available?
What standard does a judge apply?
What happens when alleged conduct has existed for a long period rather than beginning yesterday?
Who serves whom?
Where do investigative and protective functions diverge?
Most people do not learn any of this until something bad happens.
So rather than pretending we understood the system from the outside, we walked through it.
That’s increasingly what F’nAround research has become.
Not simply:
What does the rulebook say?
But:
What happens to a real person when they actually try to use the rulebook?
F’NHOW THE HELL DID HARVARD GET HERE?
Harvard Medical School and the $53 Million Body-Parts Settlement
Harvard Medical School agreed to pay $53 million to settle class-action litigation involving human remains stolen from its morgue and sold by a former morgue manager.
The underlying federal investigation found that portions of cadavers donated for education and research had been stolen and entered a network buying and selling human remains. (Harvard Magazine)
That sentence starts at:
Harvard Medical School
and ends at:
black-market human body parts.
There really isn’t a graceful transition available.
Families believed their loved ones’ remains had been donated to medicine.
Instead, prosecutors said portions were stolen and sold.
This is one of those stories that should permanently end every meeting where somebody asks:
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
Never ask.
The universe listens.
F’NCLIMATE
Illinois Isn’t the Only Place Nature Is Doing Weird Shit
Illinois’ tornado year isn’t occurring in isolation from a much larger conversation about extreme weather and climate risk.
This week, catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-China border killed hundreds of people after what scientists believe was a glacier-related collapse that sent an enormous surge of water and debris down the valley.
More than 1,400 people were reported missing as rescue operations continued. (AP News)
No individual disaster should automatically be stamped:
CLIMATE CHANGE.
Weather and climate are not interchangeable.
But warming is changing glaciers.
It is changing rainfall.
It is changing heat.
It is changing the assumptions engineers, insurers, farmers and governments use when they decide what “normal” means.
The important story is rarely one storm.
It’s when the baseline itself begins moving.
F’NSPORTS
Chicago Baseball Is Weirdly Fun Again
We need to acknowledge this because Chicago baseball fans have suffered enough.
The White Sox entered the end of August in a legitimate postseason fight.
The Cubs did too.
There are years when White Sox fans spend late August discussing draft position.
There are years when Cubs fans start saying:
Maybe next season.
This is not one of them.
Both sides of Chicago entered September with reasons to watch.
Do not ask too many questions.
Enjoy it before baseball finds a way to hurt everybody.
The Sky Banned Enes Kanter Freedom From Wintrust Arena
Here’s one we did not expect.
Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom was removed from a Chicago Sky game and subsequently banned from Wintrust Arena following an altercation involving Sky guard Natasha Cloud.
The incident occurred amid Kanter Freedom’s ongoing public campaign around transgender participation in women’s sports. The Sky said it viewed his behavior as potentially threatening; Kanter Freedom characterized the incident differently. (Reuters)
Whatever somebody thinks about the larger political debate:
“Former NBA player banned from WNBA team’s arena”
does not happen often enough to casually walk past.
There is probably a separate story there.
Bears Football Is Almost Real Again
Preseason football happened.
Some of it looked ugly.
It was preseason.
These facts are capable of peacefully coexisting.
The portion of the year where everybody screams:
IT DOESN’T MATTER!
while simultaneously analyzing the third-string right guard’s footwork is almost finished.
Actual football is coming.
Then the panic can become official.
College Football Is Back
And college football starts this weekend.
Which means millions of Americans are about to sacrifice Saturdays until January.
Welcome back.
F’NRIP
Death Comes in Threes. Let’s Leave It at That.
This week came directly for several generations of childhood.
Dolly Parton.
Tim Curry.
Peter Cullen.
Three careers that barely overlap on paper.
And yet together they occupy an absurd amount of cultural memory.
Dolly
Dolly Parton died this week at 80.
Calling Dolly a country singer feels almost comically incomplete.
Obviously she was one of the defining country artists ever.
But she was also a songwriter whose work escaped genre entirely.
“Jolene.”
“9 to 5.”
“I Will Always Love You.”
Movies.
Television.
Dollywood.
Business.
Philanthropy.
And the Imagination Library, which put books into children’s homes around the world. (Reuters)
Dolly somehow became one of those rare celebrities Americans could disagree about almost everything around and still generally agree:
Yeah.
Dolly’s pretty great.
That’s a hell of a legacy.
Tim
Then there’s Tim Curry.
Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
Wadsworth.
Pennywise.
Legend.
Home Alone 2.
Broadway.
Music.
Voice acting.
The man’s career was basically:
What if charisma could become a profession?
Curry spent decades playing characters who were flamboyant, terrifying, hilarious, charming or somehow all four simultaneously.
Peter
Then Peter Cullen died at 85. (Deadline)
If you grew up with Transformers, Cullen didn’t simply play Optimus Prime.
He was Optimus Prime.
That voice became so inseparable from the character that Cullen returned across multiple generations of television, movies and games.
And Cullen also voiced Eeyore.
The same man gave a voice to:
Leader of the Autobots.
and
Depressed stuffed donkey.
That is range.
People die.
Their work doesn’t necessarily go with them.
Death comes in threes.
Let’s leave it at that.
F’NWATCHED
The Amateur Is Secretly a Prequel to The Mechanic
We watched The Amateur.
And at some point Joe stopped watching the movie that was actually playing and began watching an entirely fictional franchise connection that apparently only existed in his head.
But it works.
The Amateur follows an intelligent CIA cryptographer pushed by personal tragedy into a world where intellect, planning, technical ability and patience become weapons.
And somewhere along the journey Joe thought:
This is Arthur Bishop before he becomes The Mechanic.
Not literally.
Nobody involved with The Amateur has said that.
There is no franchise connection.
No shared character.
No cinematic universe.
But conceptually?
It’s strangely perfect.
Charles Bronson’s original Arthur Bishop and later Jason Statham’s version isn’t a mindless killer.
He’s meticulous.
Patient.
Technical.
He weaponizes preparation.
The Amateur feels like the emotional and practical origin story of how somebody could eventually become that man.
Different movies.
Different canon.
Same evolutionary path.
And frankly that’s more fun than:
“We give it 3.7 stars.”
F’nWatched probably works best when the question isn’t only:
Was this movie good?
It’s:
What did this movie make us think about?
F’NATE
We Went to a Collab at Graziano’s with El Che
F’nAround doesn’t exist entirely behind a laptop.
We go places.
We see people.
We eat.
We film.
We talk.
Sometimes we’re covering something.
Sometimes we’re invited somewhere.
Sometimes we’re just there.
Graziano’s was part of the week and for the second week in a row we were happy they were.
Cheese Curds Became ASMR
We posted about our stop at Curbside Cravings.
The cheese curds were fresh, shareable and exactly the kind of food that disappears faster once multiple people realize somebody else is eating them.
Mike shared them with Hunter and Barb.
Hunter then discovered that sufficiently stretchy cheese can apparently become content.
Suddenly: Stretch cheese ASMR.
We’re not sure journalism school covers this.
Adapt or die.
Mike Came Back Twice
Then there was Yadeems On The Go.
Mike already liked the food.
Apparently he liked it enough to come back.
This time with Chlo.
The mission: Oreo pudding.
There are complicated systems for restaurant criticism.
Stars.
Scores.
Anonymous inspectors.
We also offer:
Did Mike voluntarily go back when nobody was making him?
He did.
That seems like useful data.
F’NODDLY DELICIOUS
Texas Twinkies
One of this week’s stories introduced us to something called a:
Texas Twinkie.
This sounds like somebody deep-fried a Hostess snack and covered it in barbecue sauce.
Texas actually showed more restraint.
A Texas Twinkie is essentially a large jalapeño stuffed with brisket and cream cheese, wrapped in bacon and smoked.
So Texas looked at a jalapeño popper and concluded:
Needs brisket.
Then looked at the brisket-stuffed jalapeño and concluded:
Needs bacon.
No notes.
Wishbone Is Saying Goodbye
And while Taste of Greektown and the rest of Chicago’s festival calendar remind us how much food defines this city, another longtime Chicago restaurant is reaching the end.
Wishbone is scheduled to close after service Sunday.
For decades, Wishbone built its identity around Southern-inspired comfort food and became one of those Chicago restaurants that existed long enough to become part of the background of the city.
And those are sometimes the closures that feel strangest.
Restaurants don’t have to be Michelin-starred institutions to become institutions.
Sometimes they’re simply places that were there.
Then they were there for another decade.
And another.
Until eventually everybody assumes they’ll always be there.
Chicago’s restaurant scene constantly reinvents itself.
That’s part of what makes eating here fun.
But every reinvention also means something disappears.
This weekend people will be walking Halsted celebrating a Greektown that has already lost some of the restaurants that once defined it.
Elsewhere, Wishbone will serve its final customers.
That’s the strange thing about covering food.
Sometimes you’re documenting what’s new.
Sometimes you’re accidentally documenting what remains.
And sometimes you’re there just in time to say goodbye.
F’NWENT OUT
VibeApple Sent Us on an Inflatable Safari
The VibeApple Inflatable Safari was exactly the kind of F’nAround event that becomes difficult to explain if you try too hard.
There were giant inflatables.
People bouncing around.
Filming.
A montage.
And somehow:
Joe got glittered.
We’ll leave the sequence of events there.
But the unexpected part was Joe catching up with Chicago broadcaster Lou Canellis.
Joe and Lou go back to a completely different chapter, when Joe was involved around the restaurant industry through the investment, venture-capital and lending side.
That’s one of the stranger recurring things about life.
You build one life.
Then another.
Then another.
Eventually the circles overlap.
Someone you knew through restaurants and finance years ago reappears while you’re wandering around an inflatable safari covered in glitter.
There is probably a lesson about life in there.
We’re not qualified to identify it.
F’NFRANCE
Paris Has a Butter Store
After war, suicide, federal bureaucracy, human remains and 207 tornadoes, we desperately need this.
Paris has opened its first boutique devoted entirely to:
Butter.
Le Butter Shop near the Eiffel Tower offers around 30 varieties sourced from producers around France, including flavored versions ranging from shallot and seaweed to vanilla and chocolate. (AP News)
France reportedly consumes around eight kilograms of butter per person annually.
And somehow Paris needed until 2026 to establish a dedicated butter boutique.
This feels less like a new business and more like France finally discovering an oversight.
America has cannabis drive-thrus.
Paris has a butter store.
Every civilization chooses its own path.
F’NHAPPENING
Taste of Greektown Starts Today
Taste of Greektown returns this weekend for its 36th year.
Friday runs 4–10 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday run 11 a.m.–10 p.m.
The festival takes over Halsted between Van Buren and Adams.
There will be restaurants, Greek food, music, entertainment, family activities and Saturday’s Gyros Eating Contest.
And this has long been one of our favorite Chicago festivals.
Obviously:
Food.
Gyros.
Souvlaki.
Seafood.
Desserts.
Drinks.
Greek food in the middle of the neighborhood that helped make those dishes part of Chicago.
But there is a bittersweet side to returning every year.
We’ve watched Greektown shrink.
Restaurants that once defined the neighborhood have closed or moved.
The festival footprint isn’t what some longtime Chicagoans remember from its biggest years.
The neighborhood’s Greek identity now shares space with a rapidly transformed West Loop surrounding it.
That’s sad.
But maybe that’s also what makes Taste of Greektown more meaningful.
It perseveres.
Halsted still shuts down.
The tents go up.
The music begins.
Saganaki catches fire.
Gyros spin.
People come back.
The festival doesn’t simply celebrate the Greektown that exists in 2026.
It preserves a visible connection to what the neighborhood has represented to generations of Chicagoans.
That matters.
And These People Are Ridiculously Efficient
There is another thing about Taste of Greektown that Joe has become weirdly fascinated by:
Logistics.
At roughly 5 a.m. Friday morning the actual day the festival opens the street closure and build were only getting underway.
Think about what has to appear within hours.
Stages.
Tents.
Power.
Barricades.
Food operations.
Vendors.
Tables.
Entertainment.
Thousands of people.
Most major street festivals begin taking over their footprint well before opening.
Some continue occupying streets while teardown stretches into the following day.
Greektown feels like a Formula One pit crew.
Friday morning:
Street.
Friday afternoon:
Festival.
Weekend:
Thousands of people.
Sunday night:
Tear it apart.
Next business day:
Street.
They have this thing down like clockwork.
After attending enough festivals, efficiency becomes impressive in its own right.
Joe Has an Order
Joe is also a creature of habit.
Greektown has a default setting:
Greek Islands.
Saganaki.
Swordfish kebab.
Side of rice pilaf.
You could probably remove the menu.
It wouldn’t matter.
But being a creature of habit doesn’t mean refusing to explore.
That’s what the festival is for.
You walk.
You smell something.
You see somebody carrying something.
You ask where it came from.
Suddenly the thing you definitely weren’t eating becomes the thing you’re eating.
Knowing what you’re returning for doesn’t mean you can’t discover what you’re trying next.
That’s pretty much F’nAround in food form.
Apparently the Entire City Has Plans This Weekend
Taste of Greektown isn’t the only reason Chicagoans have absolutely no excuse to sit inside this weekend.
The city has apparently decided to schedule everything simultaneously.
There’s the Chicago House Music Festival.
PAWS Chicago’s 5K.
Edison Park Fest.
Edgewater Music Fest.
And then there is:
Panda Fest.
Yes.
Panda Fest.
The traveling Asian food and culture festival is taking over Butler Field near Grant Park this weekend with hundreds of vendors, a ridiculous amount of food, entertainment, merchandise and enormous inflatable pandas.
Which means Chicago’s weekend options currently include:
Greek food.
House music.
A 5K with dogs.
Neighborhood festivals.
Hundreds of Asian food options.
And giant inflatable pandas.
There are cities where people complain there is nothing to do.
Chicago’s problem during the summer is deciding which four things you’re willing to miss because six other things are happening at exactly the same time.
Our recommendation remains unchanged:
Go somewhere.
Eat something.
Talk to somebody.
F’nAround.
F’NAROUND THIS WEEK
Samsung US Popped Into the Inbox
A cool thing happened behind the scenes this week.
The verified Samsung US account reached out through Collab messaging regarding F’nAround content/video.
We’re going to describe that precisely.
Samsung contacted F’nAround about content collaboration.
That’s it.
We’re not calling it a sponsorship.
We’re not calling it a formal partnership.
We’re not announcing anything that hasn’t happened.
Still:
Samsung reaching out to something that began as Mike and Joe F’nAround is pretty fucking cool.
Apparently One Dissertation Wasn’t Enough
The research side of F’nAround also continued expanding this week.
Joe has started putting additional academic working research into public view including work around competitive decoupling, institutional behavior, regulatory systems and the gap between what organizations publicly represent and what they actually do.
These are working papers.
Not peer-reviewed declarations that we solved society.
Research.
Sources.
Ideas.
Arguments that can be challenged, updated and improved.
Which is basically how research is supposed to work anyway.
Then there’s The Way of the Pen, another piece growing out of the strange place where memoir, public records, litigation and research began colliding.
Apparently finishing one enormous dissertation was not enough.
Terrible hobby.
We’re Changing How the Podcast Works
This Friday roundup is part of a bigger decision.
Mike and Joe realized the podcast doesn’t need to exist simply because:
It’s podcast day.
Going forward, full episodes are guest-driven.
Someone interesting comes through?
Sit down.
Talk.
See what happens.
The weekly written column handles the broader conversation.
And when one story is too good to leave on the page?
Mike and Joe can grab a camera and make a Short.
Each format gets a reason to exist.
No filler.
No obligation.
The podcast becomes:
Who are we talking to?
The article becomes:
What deserves digging?
The Short becomes:
You need to hear Mike and Joe talk about this one.
And Friday becomes:
What the fuck happened this week?
Much cleaner.
Our DM’s Had an Interesting Career Suggestion for Joe
They had a suggestion this week.
They believes Joe should apparently consider sperm selling.
Her market analysis involved some combination of height, intelligence, appearance and theoretical demand in Asia.
Then she clarified that she wasn’t entirely joking.
We’ve covered cannabis.
Finance.
Government.
Law.
Media.
Restaurants.
We had not previously conducted a market analysis of Joe’s sperm.
New vertical.
Immediately abandoned.
And Congratulations to Mo
Congratulations to Mo Diab, one of The FuckArounds, on his nuptials.
Marriage paperwork became part of the week too.
Which seemed like the appropriate item to place after the sperm-donation discussion so nobody accidentally interprets them as one continuous narrative.
Keep moving.
Nothing to see here.
F’NLOOKING AHEAD
There is plenty worth carrying into next week.
The Iran conflict has crossed six months, and the military-readiness consequences are becoming increasingly visible.
American Patriot inventories are now part of the story.
U.S.-Canada trade tensions are no longer merely tariff tables; they have spilled into political rhetoric and apparently the naming of geographical features.
The UAE/World Liberty/AI-chip story deserves continued scrutiny because the underlying issue is larger than cryptocurrency: it is what happens when a president’s family business and American foreign policy occupy the same financial ecosystem.
The Federal Reserve is establishing what monetary policy under Kevin Warsh will look and sound like.
Chicago’s Bally’s dispute is no longer theoretical now that construction decisions have been affected.
Kentucky’s cannabis program is reaching real scale while records surrounding its regulatory architecture continue producing questions.
Michigan licensing records give us another thread to follow.
Trap Stars’ fight with New Buffalo could become a useful case study in administrative appeals and local cannabis regulation.
Illinois has already recorded more than four times its historical annual tornado average.
Both Chicago baseball teams have games worth watching.
Taste of Greektown is happening right now.
And next week hasn’t even started.
SO… WHAT F’NHAPPENED THIS WEEK?
That’s the question this column is supposed to answer.
And maybe the answer is always going to be:
More than we thought.
The world is too big to cover everything.
We’re not pretending otherwise.
Reuters has a newsroom.
AP has a newsroom.
The Sun-Times has a newsroom.
ESPN has people whose entire job is knowing what happened in the White Sox bullpen.
We don’t need to recreate that.
What we can do is read broadly, pay attention locally, follow the subjects we understand deeply, go places ourselves and then put the pieces together through the very strange filter that is F’nAround.
A federal department accidentally compares the president to Hitler?
We’re talking about it.
The president renames a Great Lake?
We’re following the story until MapQuest somehow becomes a character.
A foreign national-security adviser has enormous financial connections to the president’s family crypto venture while his country simultaneously receives valuable American technology policy decisions?
We’re separating what’s proven from what lawmakers allege and asking why the conflict matters.
A cannabis regulator sends us records that don’t seem to line up neatly with another government department?
We’re reading them.
Bally’s warns Chicago that expanded video gambling could hurt its casino economics and then slows construction after Chicago allows it?
We’re remembering who said what before the fight.
A Navy sailor’s apparent suicide attempt turns into a disciplinary controversy?
The jokes stop.
Harvard Medical School somehow appears in a story about black-market human remains?
We’re definitely asking how the fuck we got there.
Peter Cullen dies?
We’re remembering the voice.
Paris opens a butter store?
Apparently you needed to know.
Taste of Greektown starts?
We’re probably eating.
And that’s the format.
Not simply:
What was in the news?
But:
What did we notice?
What did we learn?
What did we experience?
What made us laugh?
What made us say:
“Wait… what?”
And what deserves another look next week?
The standalone articles aren’t going away.
The podcast isn’t going away.
The videos aren’t going away.
They’re just getting clearer jobs.
The articles are where we dig.
The podcast is where we meet people.
The Shorts are where Mike and Joe jump on camera because something is too good not to react to.
And on Friday?
We dump the whole week onto the table.
News.
Chicago.
Government.
War.
Money.
Crypto.
Cannabis.
Sports.
Entertainment.
Food.
Fests.
Movies.
Our own shit.
Apparently even butter.
Then we figure out:
What F’nHappened This Week?
Quite a fucking lot.
See you next Friday.