Events

Argentina just won the 2022 World Cup by lining up and taking free kicks at a French goalie in a fitting end to one of the most corrupt and deadly sporting events in history. At least the 2026 World Cup will take place in countries with (reasonably) strong institutions and existing infrastructure. All the expense, the hype, the scandal, the drama...and in the end, it came down to penalty kicks. It's like having track meet decided by guys jumping one hurdle at a time, or by putting a guy on 2nd base at...

I mentioned this in passing earlier this week, but I wanted to highlight this story of the American automobile fetish and how much it costs us. On Wednesday, the city officially opened an $800 million rebuild of the Jane Byrne Interchange, which started after the Union Pacific Railroad began rebuilding a single train station that still hasn't reopened: The original Circle Interchange was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and had no major overhaul until the reconstruction project began in 2013....

This was the view out my (downtown) office window Friday afternoon: And this, after 13 straight days of overcast skies, was the view out my (home) office window a few minutes ago: On the other hand, it's -9°C going up to -4°C...but that trade-off works fine for me.

This just in: as of sunset yesterday, Chicago has experienced the longest spell with no sun (12 days) since 9 January 1992. And the forecast doesn't call for any until tomorrow afternoon. In related news, Chicago-area therapists report overwhelming demand...

I can't quite draw a line between all of these stories, but it feels like I should: Elon Musk suspended several top journalist's Twitter accounts last night while ranting about nonsense "assassination coordinates," making the money-losing media service less relevant by the day. The XPOTUS made a "major announcement" about...a hilariously pathetic NFT project that lost value within minutes of its release. Mazars—the only firm sketchy enough to do the XPOTUS's taxes—decided crypto firm Binance was just...

As I look out my office window at the blowing snow accumulating on downtown Chicago streets, I think back to days gone by when we had sunlight. Eight straight days of gray tend to wear on a person. It looks like we'll have sun on Sunday, just before the arctic blast comes through and drives temperatures down to -14°C by Wednesday. This also comes just after Cassie got a perfect bill of health at the vet yesterday—except that she's now 15% overweight. Guess who's getting raw green beans for dinner for...

First: the past. Chicago has not seen the sun since last Thursday at all, and hasn't had 50% of possible sunlight since the 4th. We might have sunlight on Sunday—when it's -3°C. Because nothing says "December in Chicago" like 11 days of overcast skies. Second: the future. Today's forecast predicts temperatures 11°C below normal by next Friday. But winter builds character.

A little less than 50 years ago, the Greater London Council finally abandoned a plan from 1966 that would have obliterated Earls Court, Brixton, Hampstead, and many other central neighborhoods: If events had turned out differently, Southwyck House would be perched on the edge of the Motorway Box, a 50-mile, eight-lane ring road built across much of inner suburban London, including Brixton. This was only part of the planners’ ambitions. The Box, or Ringway One as it was later titled, was to be the first...

Theodore Schleifer examines the intellectual and ethical upbringing of Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old indicted yesterday for perpetrating one of the biggest frauds in history: Of all the potentially unanswerable riddles underpinning the Sam Bankman-Fried saga—why did Sequoia invest in a mop-topped kid who played video games during a diligence call; were Alameda and FTX ever really separate?—perhaps the most vexing is how the mastermind of this whole legal and ethical imbroglio was the offspring of...

Before you freak out, I need to remind you that this made the news because this sort of thing happens so rarely. Still, two armed robberies followed by the getaway car bursting into flames just a few blocks away did get my attention: A driver fleeing police crashed and their car burst into flames Monday morning on a residential block in Lincoln Square, according to police and the local aldermen. About 10:45 a.m., several people in a stolen silver Hyundai robbed someone in the 1900 block of West Berteau...