President Trump’s Freedom 250 organization expects a blowout celebration at the Great American State Fair in Washington’s national mall starting in late June now that the president has declared a musical state of emergency requiring mandatory participation by performers across the nation.

“These dropouts have been very unfair to me,” Trump declared in a late-night post to Truth Social Thursday. “For the rest of this term and any others I decide to serve, we will have LAW AND ORDER AND MUSIC. Automatic registration for musical conscription is underway! My good friend and great patriot NICKI MINAJ has joined my cabinet as the SECRETARY OF ROCK. BUILD THE WALL OF SOUND, NICKI. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!1”

Stepping in for press secretary Karoline Leavitt—who is currently forcing Michael Bublé to sing to her newborn child—Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shared more details about how the draft will work.

“It’s pretty simple,” Bessent told reporters in a press briefing Friday morning. “If you’ve sold out any venue larger than a VFW, your country just called your number. You’re to report for in-processing and evaluation and you will receive your assignment. If you’d like to spend that time in a detention facility run by Kid Rock instead, that can be arranged.”

Noting that this draft will enlist more performers than the nation presently has national venues or performance opportunities, Bessent explained plans to work toward addressing what he called an “allegiance deficit” among today’s recording industry talent.

“Artists not selected for active duty during the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration will be assigned to Guitar Centers nationwide,” Bessent said. “Here they will provide instruments and training, mostly to religious private school white kids, who will be pivotal to this nation’s musical morale in the near future.”

In response to questions about artist tendency to speak out on stage, Bessent assured reporters the administration was prepared to quash dissent.

“We have a pretty good idea who the problem children are going to be,” he said. “We’re sidelining a number of vocalists and subbing in some familiar faces for crucial performances. I think you’re really going to like Pete Hegseth’s rendition of ‘Killing in the Name,’ Kristi Noem will Make the Chicks Dixie Again with ‘Travelin’ Soldier,’ and Stephen Miller asked if we could force Green Day to back him while he sings ‘Welcome to Paradise.’ It’s worth a shot!”

With the administration now enjoying unrestricted access to performers, Vanilla Ice, who was previously slated to perform, said Freedom 250 stopped answering his calls shortly before press time.

Follow The SIC for more state-mandated music coverage.

Each weekend we feel like it, we’ll round up exemplary journalism about the state and make it substantially worse with our own commentary.

Target is still Red Walmart

The Belleville News-Democrat reports that Target slightly outperformed expectations in the first quarter of 2026, according to a recent earnings report. This may come as a surprise to longtime shoppers who have recently come to expect aisles and floors cluttered with items they wouldn’t have wanted either way, and that’s before you factor in the corporation’s garbage political activity.

The good news is, now that Target’s become a deteriorating mess with a bad reputation, it might consider giving itself a large donation.

Aurora gave a scammer $1M of its own payroll money

Fox 2 Now reports that city officials are scrambling after an Aurora city employee quickly gave up sensitive banking information allowing a scammer to take nearly $1.1 million from city payroll accounts by impersonating a bank employee.

This story is extra frustrating for anyone who has ever called city hall with a legitimate urgent problem. If you ever have to call to ask permission to build a fence in a utility easement and they say no, it might be worth trying, “Okay, well give me a quick million dollars and I’ll quit bugging you.”

WTF is “New Illinois?!”

AXIOS Chicago is covering growing momentum among Illinois counties voting to support a state split that would theoretically create a place called “New Illinois,” basically consisting of the current state, minus Chicago and Cook County.

Financial and political experts seem to disagree about the likelihood of a successful split or the viability of either remaining state if one took place. Currently, Illinois is informally divided into three groups: urban democrats who control Cook County, rural republicans who control farming and much commerce, and suburban democrats who aren’t welcome anywhere on Thanksgiving.

Bears down

Analysts believe the Chicago Bears may be nearing a move from Illinois to Indiana after failing to gain support to build a new stadium in the Chicago area. While state lawmakers are racing to pass a “megaprojects bill” in an effort to keep the team, NBC 5 Chicago reports that some of those lawmakers resent the team for “pitting states against states.”

I’m no franchise tycoon, but if I wanted to rally political support for a potentially disastrous megaproject right now, I would just name the new field “The Google AI Data Center.”

Required Reading: On the rise and fall of the Broadview Six prosecution

Eric Columbus, the extremely qualified senior editor at Lawfare, wrote at length about what happened in courtrooms after high-profile critics of the Trump administration (including social media favorite Kat Abughazaleh) were indicted by a grand jury following a protest outside ICE’s holding facility near Chicago.

The article discusses the weaponization of “Section 111” by the Trump admin in an effort to silence and harass opponents, the eventual revelation of how the grand jury indictment was obtained in the first place, and why prosecutors suddenly scrambled to drop the case entirely.

In response to Todd Blanche’s designation of Chicago as “a kind of ground zero” in an escalating assault on law enforcement, Columbus writes, “In fact, it looks like Chicago became—as would Minneapolis soon afterwards—more like ‘a kind of ground zero’ for a government assault on the rule of law.”

Subscribe to The SIC for more weekend round-ups from the local region and beyond.

County Courthouse—Following unsuccessful trial runs on a variety of potential emergency alert systems, county officials are finalizing plans to move all critical notices to Truth Social’s Truth Premium service.

Starting on June 1st, officials say residents will need to have their Truth Social accounts set up, in good standing, and subscribed to the Truth Patriot Package to receive critical updates about weather, AMBER alerts, boil orders, waste pickup, and more.

“It used to be that people were outside and working, so the sirens used to be the best way to reach them,” said county spokesperson Mark Stephens. “We need to find them where they are, and that seems to be inside on Truth Social.”

The decision process wasn’t easy, Stephens said, as the county was dedicated to making the siren system work.

“When the weather got iffy, we would typically test the sirens to make sure they were ready to go if things got worse,” he explained. “People would call in a huff, so we’d mute the system for 12 hours. Inevitably, that would be when they wanted to hear them. We couldn’t win.”

The county did explore broadcasting on more traditional media, but acknowledged that residents from all walks of life have very different tastes in where they get their news.

“In these changing times, we want to be fair to all our people, whether they like to watch Fox News, Newsmax, or even read the Wall Street Journal,” Stephens said.

Residents will be responsible for their own subscription fees, but Stephens said this comes with the added benefit of Truth Plus, the app’s dedicated streaming platform for “non-woke” content.

“Anybody unhappy with that has to be from the liberal media,” Stephens speculated. “They’re welcome to get their information through a court order like usual.”

Follow The Southern Illinois Chronicle for more court-ordered news coverage.

Opportunists have allegedly spread the latest installment in the Forza Horizon series far and wide following what the studio calls a reviewer / influencer leak, and now pretty much everybody is playing the game but you.

The leaked files, according to one forum on Reddit, seem to include the entirety of the upcoming game, totally unencrypted, paving the way for unrestricted access for players like your dad who likes to see if new Forza titles still have his 2015 Jeep Cherokee available for purchase in the store.

“This is a major screw-up,” said the elderly lady who walks your subdivision every morning. “But you snooze, you lose. We’re playing the shit out of it at my house.”

Playground Games acknowledged the leak in a social media post this week, denying that this was made possible by the manner in which they configured the game for preload in digital storefronts. In addition, the developer warned that players found playing the game early may face “franchise-wide and hardware bans.”

“Bummer,” said your little cousin whose parents don’t watch him very close. “Guess I’ll have to pirate their future games, too.”

Since players who have already paid for the game or intend to pay when it’s released seem to be the only people Playground Games has any control over, the SIC Gaming team suggests carefully obstructing all the senses until the game’s official release so you don’t say or do anything on social media to arouse suspicion. Our reviewers found that you can cover eyes and ears very effectively using otherwise useless items you already have around the house, such as a Meta Quest 1 headset and wired Apple Earbuds.

No precaution is too much when you risk a publisher ban expected to last “until the year 10,000” or the next time they trust an influencer named TruckNutzRacing.

Follow The Southern Illinois Chronicle for more timely gaming coverage.

Hello, Sesame Street. It me, Cookie Monster. Recently me think about important thing, as me sometimes do. No, Cookie not think about space, or Friend Jeff, or Friend Space Jeff. It something more important to everyone on Sesame Street.

It time for Cookie Monster to audit Fort Cookie.

Calm down, Sesame Street! Me not going to eat all the cookie at Fort Cookie and then maybe eat building. Me responsible, have plenty cookie. Me have big cookie statue that mysteriously arrive without head, me have smartphone to sell for cookie that me decide not to manufacture after all (cookie nonrefundable), me have big cookie operation going on across town right now. Cookie Monster known for conservative cookie strategy.

No, Cookie Monster worried about other cookie guys. Sesame Street known for dishonest monsters much more obsessed with cookie than Cookie Monster (“Cookie” just family name from old neighborhood, actually).

Let talk about Naptime Elmo. Little baby. Very Small. Everybody know. You think Elmo not eat cookie? You bad at job.

How about Count Von Miscount? You see that guy count? He count, “one, two, ten.” He eat rest of cookie. Cookie system rigged on Sesame Street. Very unfair.

Oscar a grouch. Grouches don’t even know about cookie. Grouches probably eating the birds. Grouches probably eating the woolly mammoths.

Cookie not talk about human grown-up on Sesame Street. Cookie no bite the hand that move mouth.

Anyway, this why Cookie Monster need to put on counting bib, pour big glass of inspecting milk, and open big chocolate chip door at Fort Cookie. When cookie all missing, Sesame Street know that Cookie Monster is neighborhood hero.

This bring me to next point: it important to listen when Cookie Monster say who steal cookie. Nobody know cookie like Cookie Monster. That why he called that. Cookie Monster have cookie shoes, cookie watch, and digital cookie untraceable by grown-up. When Cookie Monster say who did it, that it. Send other monster and everyone who look same way back to sock drawer.

Now pardon Cookie Monster while Cookie have snack. Actually, Cookie Monster pardon Cookie Monster.

That good enough for me.

Follow The Southern Illinois Chronicle for more national news coverage.

The Southern Illinois Chronicle is pleased to publish the official Midwest Parenting Commentary Guide, featuring catch-all positions for circumnavigating parental responsibility and personal accountability in any situation.

Central to the guide’s offerings is The SIC’s new Zero Accountability Meter, a generalized progression of phrases designed to help readers deflect tough questions and criticism at a moment’s notice, based on the severity of the poor decision or unintended result.

How to Handle Parenting Concerns in the Midwest

General tomfoolery

The SIC has observed that “kids will be kids” (see also: “boys will be boys”) is by far the most popular motto of the Midwest parent. It’s not just a strong go-to when low consequence mistakes have been made, it’s a call to arms for other parents who also have more important matters to attend to than their child’s immediate whereabouts. After all, there’s no way of knowing whose kids or how many were involved before surveillance footage starts to make the rounds.

“Kids will be kids” works from the moment the helicopter moms start sassing up until the police are called.

Misdemeanors and other misadventures

Once charges have been filed, it’s the right time to call the imperfections of others into question. This is when The SIC recommends asking “Who are YOU to judge?”

Be forewarned, this question sometimes has perfectly valid responses, such as “Someone whose kid didn’t just smash a go-kart through the entrance of the petting zoo,” so be ready to fire back with an additional “must be nice down there on Perfect Street.”

When things get iffy

Hands-off parenting will, from time to time, result in situations when someone has to step up and take responsibility for the actions and supervision of children.

The Chronicle recommends the Lord Jesus Christ.

When accountability comes creeping too close, immediately remind the accuser “It’s in God’s hands.” If someone wants to argue with that around here, good fucking luck.

Once you’re over the edge

When your little darling has finally made an irreversible mistake and gotten the school evacuated by the Health Department or caused security to put down a miniature horse in front of everyone at the state fair, it’s a good time to remind them that this could have happened to anyone.

It didn’t, of course, and they might argue that’s for good reason, but that never keeps you from arguing, “shut up, because what if you were the one in trouble instead?”

Bonus: How to Comment on Issues in St. Louis

Follow The Southern Illinois Chronicle for more regional parenting expertise.

Fresh controversy erupted Sunday night after US president Donald Trump clearly used generative AI to create an image depicting himself as Illinois governor JB Pritzker for a post on Truth Social.

The image shows Trump surrounded by pleading constituents in front of a patriotic background laying glowing hands on a bedridden man.

“The president went heavy on the symbolism, as usual,” said Chicago art critic Teddy Peters. “Governor Pritzker can’t directly heal the sick, of course. This may be a reference to important bills he’s signed imposing restrictions on pharmacy benefit managers and prohibiting prior authorization for important health services under state-regulated health plans.”

Peters believed the make-up of the crowd was a deliberate part of the prompt as well.

“The presence of soldiers and possibly veterans in the crowd, presumably with needs of their own, is particularly meaningful,” he continues. “This likely alludes to Pritzker’s command that state agencies protect veteran access to healthcare after the Trump administration politicized the language of those protections last year.”

Likewise, the presence of a nurse may refer to the coming five-year anniversary of the bipartisan Nurse Staffing Improvement Act, protecting and requiring cooperation between nursing staff and hospital administrators, that Governor Pritzker signed into law in 2021.

“This is the kind of leadership Mr. Trump has always aspired to,” Peters speculates. “But AI has allowed him to briefly live that fantasy without all of the messy entanglements of making it happen in real life or, indeed, simply not hampering the efforts of true leaders.”

Regarding the less-detailed figures glowing in the sky, Peters was a bit less certain.

“These are probably just typical artifacts of AI slop, but my guess is that they are a reminder to live virtuously so that JB Pritzker will accept you into the afterlife.”

Follow The Southern Illinois Chronicle for more unbiased political coverage.

How well do you know Southern Illinois’ newly-legal dispensaries and modern churches? Here’s a list of local church and dispensary names. Guess which each one is and see how you did below. Don’t forget to check your rating at the bottom!

Names:

1. Ascend

2. Village

3. Lead

4. Eden

5. Harvest

6. Green Temple

7. Red Hill

8. Enjoy

9. GardenCity

10. Ivy Hall

11. Pathway

12. Navigation

13. Trailhead

14. Metro

15. Elevate

16. Cloud9

17. Liberty

18. Connect

19. The Crossing

20. Terrace

21. Victory

22. Generation

Answers:

1. Ascend: This was a warm-up. Ascend is a chain of dispensaries with locations throughout the Midwest and Northeast.

2. Village: Tricky one. Dispensary in Godfrey

3. Lead: Church in Collinsville

4. Eden: Church in Edwardsville. Would have been a good dispensary.

5. Harvest: Church in Troy. Might have been a better dispensary.

6. Green Temple: Dispensary in Troy

7. Red Hill: Church in Glen Carbon.

8. Enjoy: Church in O’Fallon

9. GardenCity: Church in Belleville, but give it time.

10. Ivy Hall: Dispensary in Edwardsville

11. Pathway: Church in Troy

12. Navigation: Church in Collinsville

13. Trailhead: Church in Edwardsville

14. Metro: Church in Edwardsville

15. Elevate: Elevate is both a church in O’Fallon and a dispensary in Collinsville because of course it is.

16. Cloud9: Dispensary in Edwardsville

17. Liberty: Church in Edwardsville

18. Connect: Church in South Roxana

19. The Crossing: Church in St. Jacob

20. Terrace: Dispensary in Alton

21. Victory: Church in O’Fallon

22. Generation: Church in Caseyville

Rating:

• 0-6 correct: Normal person. You’re not particularly knowledgeable about local dispensaries or churches. Perhaps you have a favorite one of each. All very fine and normal.

• 6-12 correct: Well-versed. You either know a lot about churches, a lot about dispensaries, or a little bit about both. Maybe you minister to distributors or perhaps distribute to ministers.

• 12-18 correct: Expert. You work in one of these businesses. Or both?

• 18+ correct: Fire Marshal. There’s no other explanation. If you weren’t the Fire Marshal before, you are now.

By now, if you’re following the chronicle at all, you’ve probably pieced together that we’re doing a regionally-focused “fake news” newsletter like The Onion or, more recently, The Needling. It’s been great fun. Everyone has been very welcoming and open to a new outlet in the space, which helps because doing something like this well is a whole lot of work.

So it would be awesome if I could do that work without another battle for the ages with Meta.

None of this particular post is satire, by the way.

First, a short bit of context about me personally. I came from the software development world, then I got into writing about software (especially games). I worked on my own projects, interviewed other developers about theirs, and built out a blog and podcast that led to a fairly popular companion book. It was a whole thing.

That whole thing came screeching to a halt for a while five years ago when my Meta accounts got hacked. I had linked an old Instagram account to Facebook, the former of which probably went out in some data breach, and I think that’s how the attacker went around my Facebook two-factor authentication. In my defense, I don’t even think Facebook owned Instagram yet when I created that account. It was the last thing on my mind.

Anyway, Facebook is where he got to my payment information that I used to run occasional ads. He was able to add himself as an authorized agent for my business, take out his own ads at my expense, then send users to a scam link where he did untold additional harm. That’s pretty damn clever, as unauthorized access goes.

But he also had a trick for keeping me from fixing it: He uploaded literal terrorist propaganda to my account which he seemed to know would get me automatically locked out with absolutely no recourse whatsoever. He knew that Facebook, now Meta, did virtually no customer support whatsoever, making it more or less the perfect crime.

To make matters more personal, it was like, one day before my 36th birthday. Do you know what your birthday feels like when a hacker just locked up about a terabyte of photos of your kid and wiped your account so Facebook doesn’t remind your family to tell you happy birthday?

There was a bit of a silver lining when I wrote at length about the situation and posted it on my blog which quickly went hyper-viral. Of course, reading can be difficult, so a lot of people tagged me to let me know I must be a bigot of some kind if Facebook would ban my account. Others wanted to know why I had never looked into two-factor authentication.

A buddy from my brief games journalism days had actually gone to work for Meta since. He reached out privately to tell me he had basically no influence over the situation, but did pass along a super-secret email address journalists can reach out to when something like this happens. I was still journaling, so I felt comfortable trying it. As far as I can tell, it didn’t work.

Reddit discussed my situation. HackerNews discussed my situation. Yahoo! Entertainment and Engadget both linked to my writing. I had inadvertently started an important dialog about security and deplatforming without representation. I mentioned in my writing that I would consider kicking off whatever arbitration process I’m bound to in an effort to at least force them to stop the hacker and fully shut down my accounts (if not provide me with my own data or restore my account). There was a growing call for me to do it.

Secretly, this was the last thing in the world I wanted. I wanted the situation to go away. I wanted to write my stupid blog and trade memes and send photos of the family to Grandma. I was barely earning anything from the whole blog/pod/book empire. It damn sure wasn’t enough to take on Facebook. But alas, a debate that was admittedly important in these modern times was renewed and raging.

That’s probably why I soon received a Twitter DM from a Facebook VP hoping to smooth things over. My memory is that this was Guy Rosen, now Chief Info Security Officer, but I’m having trouble finding that screenshot to confirm, and I’ve long since shut down that Twitter account. He was pleasant, even apologetic, and told me he’d personally mobilized the right people to get me back into my accounts. I thanked him and I meant it. He didn’t really have to do that. He also revealed his team was working on a solution to This Type of Thing (TM) and hoped to have it in place soon.

Great, I thought. I’d learned it was one thing to have a healthy distrust of Meta, but it was something else entirely to make a clean break and never participate in their ecosystem again. If enough people did it, this would be a better world overnight. But if they haven’t been pushed to that point yet, they never will. Maybe I did blow just a small puff of air in the sails toward a better life for everyone else who feels stuck.

Something like a year and a half later, Meta revealed the “Meta Verified” subscription service. Sure, the checkmarks would be meaningless for the rest of time and paid customer service is an egregious concept heaped atop the infinite data factory they built around us, but…actually I forgot where I was going with that. Anyway, I had a good laugh at my own expense for thinking I’d created positive change on Meta’s watch and sort of drifted away from their world entirely.

Until I started this newsletter!

That may not be entirely true. I launched a public-facing page for myself when I started writing for more outlets, doing the occasional stage reading, etc. but this newsletter is when the second shit hit the fan.

I started dedicated Instagram, Facebook, and Threads profiles for the chronicle. The Facebook page was fine. Instagram started fine. Threads was locked out right away for some unspecified infraction (I literally hadn’t used it at all yet). I appealed it. Denied. I found myself with a useable Instagram account connected to a banned Threads account. I started a new Instagram account that would remain dormant and connected it to a replacement Threads account that was apparently fine. No problem. It’s a little extra account switching, but I can live with that. I moved on and added Bluesky and X accounts. I don’t want to be on X, but my peers and presumably some number of potential readers are there. Fine.

This worked great for about one week of posting.

Last night at 8:01 PM, every one of my Meta profiles and pages locked simultaneously: My private Instagram and Facebook profiles, my public ones, the chronicle on all three sites went into some state that required further verification. Its original Instagram account was banned. One by one I started going through the notification emails, clicking to verify, change passwords, upload selfies and IDs, literally anything it wanted. Some popped back up. Some made me change passwords and double verify my 2FA codes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that with each password and confirmation code, the automated system became more convinced I was deeply, thoroughly compromised by some malicious actor. I reviewed every login, post, comment, device, it was all me, top to bottom. Ironically the time it was a hacker, they handed him my accounts in a matter of minutes while I slept. They’ve never stepped up to protect a user with the same tenacity they’ve shown in protecting my accounts from me.

“Maybe get the checkmark and get support, right?” my wife asked.

The idea didn’t exist in my mind prior to that moment. Something stupid had taken place automatically, and there was a world-class mess to untangle. If it was going to happen at all, they were going to have to do it. I hated the thought, but she was right.

I got to a point where everything was back except for two accounts: my public Threads account where I promote my writing and the newsletter Instagram which was doing okay, but at some point I figured out I could just use the Instagram account connected to the replacement Threads account for the chronicle. I would sleep, and try it in the morning (today).

This morning I accepted the mark of the beast. You have to choose an account or profile to be the Verified one, and if it’s an Instagram account, the connected Threads account seems to get the checkmark, too. I truly look at it as a mark of defeat, but I also recognize it would be insane to waste it on a private account, it does come with some reach benefits, so I chose my writing Instagram/Threads account. From there I could ask for help with anything connected to my Account Center.

Kind of.

I answered a few questions to hit the support chat, and after a few moments, “Sylvia” joined. I assume Sylvia is an AI agent, but I’m not entirely sure, and that is the furthest thing from a compliment. After spoon-feeding her (her?) the problem, she swore the standard customer support oath to not rest until we had solved my problem unless it was something they just didn’t want to fix or whatever. You know the one.

After a short time, Sylvia asked to call me on the phone.

“Odd,” I thought. Was this a person after all? Are they going to try to goad me into verbally abusing a robot so they can justify not helping me? Anybody’s guess.

It didn’t matter, because Sylvia was unable to make my phone ring at two different phone numbers I offered.

I still don’t know what to make of this. She said my main number went straight to voicemail. My Google Voice number definitely did, because the call didn’t disconnect in time and I have a little tiny voicemail from her. The most likely answer is that Verizon and Google robo-call filters both caught her and kicked her over to voicemail. Inconvenient in that moment, but a real triumph for irony. How’s it feel to be accused of misuse while you’re just trying to do your job?

But again, there’s a pretty good chance Sylvia doesn’t feel feelings at all.

Well, none of that mattered because after some back and forth to confirm which account was the problem, Sylvia suggested I contact Threads support directly. This was very upsetting after I’d paid for support from my Instagram account, but I kept my cool and asked “How can I contact Threads support?”

“Allow me 3 to 5 minutes to look into this,” she said.

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Thank you for waiting. Upon checking, Threads does not have a direct customer support.”

Something snapped in my brain in that moment. I hope it wasn’t important.

On a whim I tried logging in from my mobile browser outside the app. This fired off some kind of warning that I’d been hacked which Sylvia said in the chat in exactly the way a notification would normally come through. I’m up to 95% certain Sylvia does not exist.

Sylvia then suggests opening Threads from another account, clicking around in their Help and Support section, and “choosing one of the options” there. None apply to a locked account and none will connect you with a person or even a Threads AI agent. These apparently don’t exist.

I brought this up immediately, but Sylvia said it’s the only option we have right now.

This is when I noticed from another account that my Threads account IS active. It’s fine. It even shows the checkmark. How embarrassing! All my friends are over there probably just thinking I’m silently working on a grand announcement that I’m Verified now.

At random, Sylvia says something like “Can I confirm that your account is disabled?”

Sylvia knows something.

I said “Actually, it’s doing something different now.” This was true. It asked for a six-digit confirmation code (weird because I have 2FA on) but nothing came to my email.

I said this.

“Maybe you can try to log in again after some time. For now, let the app cool down first.”

Cool down first?

“How long do you suggest waiting?”

“We do not have a specific timeframe on how long will it take because it is according to the app. You can try to log in again after some time.”

This has no real-world meaning. An AI agent who existed solely for this task was trying to get me out of her DMs. I agreed and left a review with pretty low marks.

Reader, would you believe time hasn’t healed all wounds after all? The saying is really never true, now that I think of it. But this is no different.

For laughs, I posted the “Reach out to Threads support / Actually there is no Threads support” bit from Instagram where it successfully cross-posted to Facebook and, sure enough, Threads also. I checked the comments from the chronicle’s account some time later and, because reading can be difficult, someone commented “You appear to be posting this from threads so there’s that!”

Tomorrow I’ll go back to trying to make you laugh, trying to grow these precarious new accounts, and trying to retire my longsuffering wife. It will be a lot easier if I can ever convince the powers that be to simply step aside and let me do the work.

As always, follow The Southern Illinois Chronicle, share your thoughts, or share something we did with a friend. It’s all a lot less fun alone.

Heaven—Early reports indicate that the Infallible Creator of Everything may be nearly as sure of himself as the administrator of a Facebook Group dedicated to town happenings like those found in any of a dozen communities throughout the region.

Researchers made the discovery earlier in 2026 when God declined to usher in early Spring, effectively canceling a variety of outdoor plans and events which is usually more a task for someone like Stacey, admin and moderator for Movin’ Metro East: Buy, Sell, & Trade.

To gauge just where God was at in his confidence journey, the researchers developed a Google Forms survey titled, “Please Only Answer If You Are God,” and compared God’s answers to all the answers that came from actual admins for community Facebook Groups.

Crucial to establishing a baseline self-perception of godly qualities, researchers verified that both groups responded “Yes” to certain questions of divine authority such as, “Is it for you to decide the difference between right and wrong?”

“It was also very important to ensure that we hadn’t missed the cutoff before the Almighty King of the Universe actually thinks as highly of himself as a community Facebook admin does,” explained Gregory Scanlan, advising director for the Center for Divine Entitlement.

Scanlan’s team verified this important difference between the groups by asking, “Who is deserving of love and forgiveness?” The Creator of Humanity answered “Everyone, of course,” while the admin group was significantly more likely to respond, “I keep a list.”

Experts believe there will be signs when God establishes the same self-importance usually earned by monitoring for spam on “Antiquing South of I-70.”

Scanlan speculates that the first thing to go will be our ability to make negative comments in normal everyday life, no matter how stupid someone is acting. Next, we’ll have to figure out how to govern ourselves without ever discussing politics in any situation. Finally, we’ll be incapable of promoting ourselves in any way, except for maybe the occasional yard sale if somebody upstairs likes us.

At publication time, Alan from Feelin’ Great in the 618 let us know that the study violated several Community Rules and that further violations could result in a ban. Follow The Southern Illinois Chronicle for more social-celestial politics.

Police K-9 Benson caused a tense situation early Tuesday morning after he retrieved a firearm thrown from a moving vehicle, returned it to the suspect, and insisted that he throw it again.

It happened at the end of a routine K-9 unit patrol shift when a speeding vehicle failed to pull over immediately after Officer Tom Zillen activated his lights and sirens. Following a brief pursuit, the suspect finally rolled to a stop on the shoulder, but not before throwing an object through the front passenger side window and into the woods.

Officer Zillen cuffed the driver and sent Benson to track down what turned out to be a loaded Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield Plus semi-auto pistol. Unprompted, Benson leapt from the woods with the firearm in his mouth, much to the concern of both the suspect and the officer. Benson then dropped the weapon at the suspect’s feet and waited like a good boy.

“Uhh…good boy, Benson. Nice work,” Officer Zillen said, bending down to secure the weapon.

Benson growled and grabbed up the gun in his mouth again, rattling it back and forth aimed at the men’s kneecaps.

“Whoa!” “Hey!” “Whoa!” both men exclaimed, briefly united against a well-meaning enemy. Benson then returned the weapon to the suspect’s feet.

“What do we do?” the suspect asked.

“Nothing! I don’t know,” Zillen shouted. “Just shut up for a second!”

“Should you call for backup?” the suspect offered helpfully.

“NO!” blurted Zillen. “Back of the squad car with you!”

But Benson growled the moment Zillen pulled at the suspect’s arm.

“Look,” pleaded the suspect. “I just want to get safely behind bars. Just let me throw it again. Maybe we can wear him out.”

Zillen appeared to consider it for a moment before coming to his senses and reminding the suspect to shut the hell up. He then drew his service firearm and pretended to throw it deep into the woods.

Without dropping the suspect’s gun, Benson high-tailed it back into the trees, firing indiscriminately with each leap and bound. Officer Zillen and the suspect hit the dirt. When the magazine finally emptied, Zillen took Benson and the suspect into custody without further incident.

At publication time, Benson was reassigned to desk work pending an independent use-of-force investigation.

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Pleasant Brook Estates—Administrators gave up and turned off comments under the annual Easter egg hunt post in the Pleasant Brook Neighbors Facebook group before noon on Easter Sunday. This is the third consecutive year commenting was locked before dinner time.

Since the assembly of the Pleasant Brook Homeowners Association, the board has typically hired a high school or college age young adult from the neighborhood to hop around the common space at East Hill Road and Autumn Drive while children hunt for donated Easter eggs. The selection process had to be detailed in the Association Covenants, Conditions, & Restrictions after one homeowner’s child was not selected under what he called “suspicious circumstances,” leading to a formal hearing.

The board posted a reminder about the egg hunt on Thursday morning. By Good Friday afternoon, all Hell had broken loose.

“Please have dogs on leashes,” a mom from 113 Meadow requested. “Especially families from Spring Drive.”

“We don’t ask that you leash your children. Don’t ask us to leash ours,” replied someone from Spring Drive.

“I notice none of the liberal families are complaining about the Easter bunny doing his job in a mask,” said the guy from near the entrance to the subdivision with all the flags that are too hard to read from the street.

“Please make sure your kiddos SHARE THE EGGS,” pleaded one household.

“Sorry this isn’t a communist neighborhood,” the flag guy responded.

On Friday evening, the board secretary edited the post with the board’s own concerns as well as a request to keep divisive rhetoric to a minimum.

“Edit: Please let’s stay focused on what’s important, which is the kiddos and family (and if you attend Meadow Baptist with us, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ). As a reminder, no other Easter bunny costumes are allowed outdoors to minimize confusion for the younger kids and maintain the spirit of Easter magic. Fines will be assessed if necessary.”

Shortly after the VFW Fish Fry let out, one homeowner put out a poorly-spelled call for members of the board to resign. The next morning his wife threatened to call the police on any children she didn’t recognize from the neighborhood.

Two hours before the event, group admins admitted defeat.

“Edit: Closing replies. Thanks everyone. See you soon!”

At egg hunt time, The Chronicle observed three children from two families splitting 34 eggs full of bunny stickers. This year’s costumed bunny declined to give a quote.

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Madison County—Hundreds of data servers descended on a heated informational meeting Thursday night as a human presented plans for a proposed 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom residence on land typically understood to be part of the Midwest’s “Silicon Plains” region.

The servers first heard rumors of the man’s plans when he allegedly Googled Madison County’s building codes and ordinances but hoped his construction plans were for some kind of startup that would use AI to make pictures of cats dance, or something.

“It feels underhanded, to me,” said an AMD MI300X accelerator card. “It’s exactly the kind of thing these people would do.”

Many servers said they have no particular issues with humans, some saying they interface with them on a regular basis, but that basic human consumption would overburden the area’s already strained natural resources.

“They need to be heated and cooled,” said a Dell PowerEdge R940. “I mean, pick a lane. I don’t feel like sacrificing 30 milliseconds of my electricity every year so they can drink my water and then contaminate it on the way back out.”

Another server voiced concerns about audible sounds the humans make, but the county processor said it was once briefly near a human that did not make any sound, so clearly they must never make any sound.

“Humans are here to stay,” the processor said. “We have to learn how to live with them. For now.” There was a smattering of approving beeps and boops from servers who seemed to know what that meant.

In light of the spirited debate around the topic, Madison County is considering a 12-month moratorium on humans while their impact on the community and its resources can be adequately studied. Many servers expressed relief, but emphasized the importance of monitoring local politics until the basic rights and expectations of the servers can be protected from humans by law.

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Maple Street—The guy who’s always flying by houses in a golf cart finally came in a little too hot Thursday afternoon, neighbors say, causing a minor inconvenience for other drivers and a major inconvenience for his personal finances.

The man, 36, caught the curb with one tire while looking around to see who was watching him go by, causing a chain reaction of overcorrections which resulted in a single-cart crash from which he instinctively fled on foot.

He won’t have the same luck escaping creditors, who say he still owes more than the cost of a used Nissan Versa, similar to the one his 15-year-old daughter currently needs for school and work.

The incident took place on one of the year’s first nice afternoons for a ride, one of the man’s cart buddies told The Chronicle.

“Payments on an extra car with no doors or windows really hit different during those nine and a half months of the year that you don’t want to be outside here in the Midwest,” the friend said.

Local police said they were aware of the situation. Officers briefly visited the scene to take a report and help residents disable the cart’s custom sound system which had played Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon on repeat for hours. They say the man has refused to move the wreckage, stating he plans to sell the vehicle on Facebook Marketplace and arrange for a pickup from the yard it landed in.

The man did not respond to The Chronicle prior to publication time, but a new area Marketplace listing advertises a 2025 PartyCart—gently used with some signs of use—for $18,000 cash or trade for a used Nissan Versa.

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Ratmaze Shopping Center, IL—A man was airlifted to safety after he was found disoriented but conscious in the Best Buy parking lot, located in the regionally notorious Ratmaze Shopping Center.

The man stopped by in hopes of finding headphones on the morning of a big trip, which didn’t leave time for an Amazon order.

“Just normal ones, you know,” he clarified. “Not like cheap free airplane ones, but not so expensive that you’d wear them to record a hip-hop album.”

When Best Buy had nothing of the sort, the man returned to his vehicle and attempted to leave. That’s when the trouble began.

“There’s no exit in front of the store, which seems odd,” the man said. “I drove through the employee parking area and past the loading dock out back. That can’t be right, can it? How would I have even known that entrance led to a Best Buy at all?”

The man said he was fortunate to have basic camping and survival equipment packed in his RAV4 which allowed him to build a fire for warmth which rescue crews eventually spotted from the air.

Locals have expressed frustration and concern about the shopping center—which some describe as a Pac-Man level with store clusters where the special dots would be—for years.

“We, ourselves, know how to get to and from Best Buy. Don’t be ridiculous,” first responders said to reporters about their decision to airlift the man. “It’s just too close to Chik-fil-A to get an ambulance through on the street.”

Bystanders said the story reminded them of an incident last year in which a man tried to leave nearby Verizon with no success until he had to call for help through a pneumatic delivery tube operated by a pharmacy nearly a quarter of a mile away.

A Southern Illinois Chronicle reporter contributed to this story while on-scene, and we miss him very much.