Downtown Chicago Losing an Icon

From Leen Yassin at Block Club Chicago

Blommer Chocolate Closing Chicago Factory

WEST LOOP — Blommer Chocolate Company is closing its Chicago factory, officials announced Friday.

The facility at 600 W. Kinzie St. has been running since 1939, and it’s Blommer’s original manufacturing plant, officials said. The decision to close is due to the increasing costs and repairs required to maintain the building, which have also led to production reliability issues.

The facility is set to close in May, the Sun-Times reported.

That smell though!

I knew the smell of this place very well at one point in my life. The coolest part of it, IMO, was that they ran some train tracks right up along factory, just east of it. Once upon a dark evening, I was passing through there, and I watched them unload the raw cocoa beans off the rail cars. The beans were dumped into a weird conveyor belt they had running between the tracks. The belt ran under the alley, sort of, too. Dudes with brooms would sweep the stray cocoa beans that didn't make it at first, off the alley asphalt, and onto the conveyor belt. That detail stuck with me. I assume the uhh, "impurities" got cooked off later.

So I Guess the White Sox are Trying this Again Now. #KnowYourBillionaires ep. 2

I'm a White Sox guy. I like baseball, I want the team to do well, and I live off 35th. I'm not interested in a shiny new, $1.7billion+ stadium, paid for by my taxes. Maybe put a quality team on the damn field, and someone with two brain cells to rub together in the offices? Can my tax dollars go towards that instead? This sh** is so messy and mark my words, leaving the Old Comiskey site would create big, huge, messy issues for the team. They're messing with 120+ years of tradition in Bridgeport. I have dozens of happy memories there. F*** "The 78." The Sox are massively profitable (even when they lose). We don't need to give Jerry Reinsdorf $1.7 billion.

The other thing is, if this proposition gains traction, you can write off the team for the next 4-5 years, because organizationally, the entire thing will be about "new stadium." Trust me, "decent team on the field" will get put far, far into the backburner.

This billionaire is a huge, shameless A-hole. He does not give one poop in a rat's patoot about giving White Sox fans a better actual team to root for.

They're not going to move to Nashville, they're just threatening it, so they can bilk the people of Chicago for money for a stadium. Reinsdorf practically invented this strategy: ("creating leverage") the LAST time he got a stadium built on the public dime. Remember how thre Sox were gonna move to Tampa Bay? He later basically admitted that the St. Petersburg play was a ruse. And it's still working this time! At first glance it seems like our "progressive" Mayor Brandon is totally on board! Field of Schemes.

#KnowYourBillionaires ep. 1: LEN BLAVATNIK

I'm off work with a lot of spare time, so I'm gonna politics a little. You've been warned.

Harvard's president Dr. Claudine Gay was recently forced out of her position; supposedly over "plagiarism," (a couple/few very minor, purely technical errors on published work from decades ago); and her weak response to Hamas' attacks on Israel, which she later walked back mighty publicly. She was only in the job for 6 months.

#KnowYourBillionaires #LenBlavatnik

LEN BLAVATNIK is of Ukrainian heritage, but he's a UK and US citizen. Blavatnik is worth $30,000,000,000.00 ($30b) and He's one of the Harvard donor billionaires who helped force Dr. Gay out, by threatening to withhold money. Blavatnik was also backing Chris Rufo, a provocateur who used his right wing media platform to ruin Gay, and successfully drum her out of her position.

This is an important read IMO. Blavatnik is one of the many faces of institutional racism in America. He denies connections to Putin but there is no question he made his money cashing in on aluminum when the Soviet Union collapsed - he is awash in Russian money, yet here he is helping to call the shots at Harvard.

There should be Billioniare Collectors Cards or something, so people know who's who.

#CertainToLose

Real profile in courage, this one:

She was about to have a rematch against the same candidate who came within 600 votes of beating her in 2022, and back then he had no name recognition. Nothing says "I'm certain I'm going to lose" more than bravely bailing on the constituents in your home district, who first elected you, and then seeking the limelight and a lot of cameras somewhere else. Will she be able to get rehired in a more conservative district? Well, there was that whole "getting-caught-with-her-hands-in-the-boyfriends-pants-and-then-getting-ejected from (I sh** you not) a performance of Beetlejuice: The Musical," . . . uhh . . . kerfluffle. So getting a job in a new and very family values-y district kinda #SeemsDoubtful. Can't wait to see her crash and burn in the churchier district. The sooner trash like this is removed from the Capitol, the better. Get bent, Boebert.

WWW III in Authoritarianism vs. democracy: It's everywhere

UPDATE: This bastard won and will now be the head of government in Argentina.

Per The Guardian: It's everywhere.

‘BAD AND DANGEROUS’: ARGENTINA’S TRUMP ON TRACK TO BECOME PRESIDENT

If elected Sunday, populist Javier Milei vows to abolish central bank, loosen gun laws, legalize sale of human organs

A foul-mouthed, far-right populist who has been described as a cross between Boris Johnson and the killer doll Chucky is in pole position to become president of South America’s second-largest economy as Argentina chooses its next leader on Sunday against a backdrop of anti-establishment fury and economic disarray.

Election-eve polls suggest Javier Milei, a charismatic and wild-haired political outsider who found fame pontificating on television chatshows about monetary policy and sex, could sneak a first-round win, although a November runoff is likely.

At his final campaign event in Buenos Aires on Wednesday, the 53-year-old “anarcho-capitalist” addressed a packed 15,000-capacity stadium from a stage adorned with a banner proclaiming him “The Only Solution” to Argentina’s economic malaise.

More whack-a-fascist to play, and a very whack-able face to boot. Now it’s Argentina's turn. 

I'm an armchair international affairs expert and all, but is it possible that this IS WW III? If so, maybe it's just a different sort of war: a few hotspot shooting wars, like Ukraine, the Middle East and West Africa; but generalized democracy vs. authoritarianism political struggle and information warfare, nearly everywhere. Of course, to no one’s surprise the Bolsonaro family appears in this saga, in support of this jackal. In some ways I'm a little surprised we weren't learning of a Trumpian figure arising in Argentina sooner as the nation has a long history of populist, personality-driven politics.

It’s all the same struggle — democracy versus authoritarianism. It’s everywhere.

Get A Load of this Beady-eyed Jackboot

I hope Puddin'-Tips Ronnie DeSantis enjoys having El Drumpfo mop the floor with his beady-eyed face in the GOP primary. The Cult of Personality has made its choice and DeSantis ain't it. In order to pry the GOP from the Cult of Personality, DeSantis would have to have a personality himself. Instead he comes off like a damp towel. I hope 2024 is the worst year of his life. He deserves it.

There's been this overplayed, barely-a-kernel-of-truth media narrative that this beady-eyed jackboot is "the smart one," but if DeSantis had some ace card up his sleeve, the time has already come and gone to play it. Last summer, Gov. Puddin-tips was routinely beating Trump in GOP polls and now he's down 20 points. "The smart one" doesn't have anything up his sleeve. Whatever. Biden will have an easier time with Donnie than Ronnie. I look forward to an eventful 2024.

Zombie Zeitgeist

Finished The Last of Us awhile ago. Not sure if it *quite* lived up to the hype I was hearing, but yes I liked it quite a lot. I've often wondered if the dystopian zombie genre is so popular these days because, "things that should have died long ago but still somehow continue on" are such a huge part of our current zeitgeist. We've got zombie ideas, zombie policy solutions, zombie political parties, zombie religions, zombie socioeconomic systems. No wonder fighting that which just seems unkillable, that which seems to Keep Coming Back, resonates. As horror, that sh** is day-to-day, even AFTER the screen time is over.