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Miles Kampf-Lassin—High-Tech Fascists
Bridgeport residents are refreshingly unafraid to say what they think about the proposal to replace Sox Park with a railroad maintenance facility. Ben riffs. Miles takes the deep dive on the high-tech fascists who want to end democracy and replace us with robots. Also, the difference between Trump and Vance. Finally, it wouldn’t be a Ben/Miles conversation without some Bulls talk. Miles is an editor/writer for In These Times. Do yourself a favor and read his latest essay—Tech Authoritarian Dooms
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Sept. 24, 2026
While I Was Eating Shrimp Dumplings...
Read an article the other day in The New York Times by a reporter named Teddy Rosenbluth, who I presume is a real person. Though in these days of A.I., you never know. It's about Zou and Pak, a couple of scientists at Stanford, who oversaw a team o…
Sept. 20, 2026
How Could They Forget About The Daleys?
In the category of if you live long enough, you'll see it all... How is it possible that a developer, even a billionaire, would try to build something in Chicago without really running it by the Daleys? Especially if that developer wants to buy th…
Sept. 16, 2026
A Friend Of Kafka
From time to time, I find myself compelled to read the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Or re-read, to be exact. As I'd read most of them by the time I was 30. Which was, as you might imagine, a long time ago. Reading all those stories is no smal…
Sept. 15, 2026
The Aging Road
As soon as word broke that Stevie Wonder was playing the United Center in November, my wife and I did what we've been doing with big-time concerts since 1972. Hopped into our car and drove on down to the United Center to buy our tickets directly fr…
Sept. 13, 2026
Wanda Hickey's Night Of Golden Memories
Let's start by carving this into stone... Should the Bears make good on their threat to move to Hammond, Indiana--as I still don't believe they will. As I still believe they want to stay in Illinois, but having painted themselves into a corner by e…
Sept. 12, 2026
Things Are Looking Up
As the sweet summer days turn into autumn nights, my family and I made our annual pilgrimage to Michigan. The northern regions, that is. AKA, MAGA land. It's hard to understand, much less explain, how a country so great could produce a political…