Events

While we wait for former FBI Director James Comey to finish testifying before the Senate today, take a look at this really cool thing: They say all roads lead to Rome, but they also lead outward to a number of intriguing places. There’s Antinoopolis in northern Africa, Londinium in what we now know as the U.K., and—should funding from the mighty Emperor Hadrian arrive—the yet-built Panticapaeum station along the Pontus Euxinus, or Black Sea. Or so says this wonderfully thought-out fantasy transit map...

The Chicago Tribune today published the first in a three-part series showing how Illinois property tax assessments contribute to rising inequality while failing to fund schools: The valuations are a crucial factor when it comes to determining property tax bills, a burden that for many determines whether they can afford to stay in their homes. Done well, these estimates should be fair, transparent and stand up to scrutiny. But that’s not how it works in Cook County, where Assessor Joseph Berrios has...

Chicago Tribune "Cityscapes" reporter Blair Kamin discusses the 606 Trail, which opened two years ago today: When The 606, which is named for Chicago's ZIP Code prefix, opened on the carefully selected day of June 6, 2015, it was almost embarrassingly bare. Trees and wooded plants had yet to grow. Sedges and prairie grasses hadn't been planted. Some spots had more pavement than plantings. "The 606: Is that all there is?" asked Crain's Chicago Business. The picture looks very different today. Trees and...

USA Today is reporting that Uber and Lyft are destroying the taxi industry here: About 42% of Chicago’s taxi fleet was not operating in the month of March, and cabbies have seen their revenue slide for their long-beleaguered industry by nearly 40% over the last three years as riders are increasingly ditching cabs for ride-hailing apps Uber, Lyft and Via, according to a study released Monday by the Chicago cab drivers union. More than 2,900 of Chicago’s nearly 7,000 licensed taxis were inactive in March...

I thought y'all would like this, which I originally posted on 4th May 2017. Photo #1, 4th May 2007: Photo #2, 4th May 2017: Parker turns 11 on June 16th.

Chicago opened its first elevated train 125 years ago tomorrow, on 6 June 1892: On June 6, 1892, 125 years ago this week, the first elevated line called the "Alley L" opened for business, running from Congress Parkway and State Street to 39th Street, along the alley, behind and around buildings and through backyards, said Graham Garfield, CTA general manager of customer information and unofficial agency historian. It was a novel way to travel — above the streets and eye-level to people's second- and...

Now in our first full week of the third straight year that Illinois has no budget, it's interesting watching people try to figure out who's to blame. In Crain's alone, we have three opinions. Their editorial board blames Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan, because they blame him for everything. Also, their readership tend to be Republicans. Because it's Crain's. Still, they haven't tried very hard to muzzle their opinion writers. Business columnist Joe Cahill, noticing that before we had Republican...

Vladimir Putin biographer Masha Gessen explains why autocrats like Putin and President Trump tend to be so gloriously incompetent: [A] careful reading of contemporary accounts will show that both Hitler and Stalin struck many of their countrymen as men of limited ability, education and imagination — and, indeed, as being incompetent in government and military leadership. Contrary to popular wisdom, they are not political savants, possessed of one extraordinary talent that brings them to power. It is the...

Washington Post retail reporter Sarah Halzack reviews the history of Sears and how it's done the last few years: Decades of missed opportunities have brought Sears to this. It lost its focus with ventures into Discover credit cards and Coldwell Banker real estate in an attempt to diversify. Then big boxes such as Home Depot and Best Buy chipped away at lucrative product niches. But maybe the biggest whiff: Executives knew as far back as the early 1990s that they had to wean Sears off its dependency on...

Paul Allen has funded development of an airplane designed to launch satellites into space. It's...huge: Called Stratolaunch, the plane has some impressive stats: a wingspan of 117 m, or longer than a football field, and a height of 15.24 m. Unfueled, it weighs 226,800 kg. But it can carry 113,400 kg of fuel, and its total weight can reach 590 tonnes. But, really ... how big is it? It’s so big that it has 28 wheels and six 747 jet engines. It’s so big that it has 96 km of wire coursing through it. It’s...