Praise the Lord and pass the Ozempic

     Sure, I’m taking Ozempic. Aren’t you? Isn’t everybody?
     OK, that’s an exaggeration. There’s also Zepbound and Wegovy and all those other drugs that belong to the GLP-1 class of weight-blasting tonics. Some folks take those instead (though really, just among us Ozempic users — we view those as cheap knockoffs, right? Like a restaurant serving Red Gold ketchup instead of Heinz. We’ve got the good stuff).
     Thirty million American adults — 1 in 8 — take GLP-1 drugs, which not only curb your appetite so you can be a svelter, happier, more successful you, but seem to offer a wide and expanding range of positive results, from quieting the howl of addiction to healing brain trauma. According to the rapidly building data, taking such drugs can cut your risk of heart attack or stroke by 20%. I mentioned to a young person of my acquaintance that I was taking Ozempic, and he expressed an emotion not often heard when old people are cataloging their medicines: envy. Ozempic is supposed to keep you young, he said, wishing he could get some.
     I believe that ship has already sailed for me, though freezing the decline process at this point would be welcome.
     All of this is relatively new. Ozempic received FDA approval in December 2017. Researchers are dancing as fast as they can, but if after 10 full years of use, Ozempic causes your head to tumble off your shoulders, then the joke will be on humanity, again. Remember another hugely popular drug that helps keep you thin, nicotine. People didn’t figure out tobacco’s lethality for 400 years after Europeans first embraced it. Millions still haven’t.
     Though given Ozempic’s fat-busting abilities, we’ll accept the occasional head bouncing down the sidewalk, giving it a quick soccer flick as we pass.
     Despite dieting continually for the past half-century — I’ve counted more calories than stars in the known universe — I would have never sought out Ozempic had Type I diabetes not fried my pancreas and a doctor suggested I might try it. Technically, Ozempic is used for Type II diabetes, to help your not-dead pancreas produce insulin, which doesn’t mean much if the organ is merely decorative (There’s a fun online shop for Type I diabetes T-shirts and various gadgets called “The Useless Pancreas.”) But apparently mine is still quivering, kind of — I seem to have what some call Type 1.5; doctors tend to shrug and mumble when pressed for details — so a GLP-1 drug might do some good.

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Put that mirror down or I'll sue!

"Toppers," by Jan Pieter van Baurschelt (Rijksmuseum)

     When the Trump Era finally comes to an end, with its corruption, cruelty and incompetence, that last quality will be seen almost as a godsend; we will be grateful for how the damage, though extensive, was also constrained by the unfathomable laziness and stupidity of the toadies selected for their blind obedience and nothing else. 
      A vigorous, disciplined and skilled FBI director, determined to do the bidding of his master, could have cut a swath of damage across the country. And Kash Patel, the FBI director, is trying to do just that. But he keeps tripping over his limitations, at least according to a story, "The FBI Director is MIA," published in The Atlantic. Rather than manage his 38,000 agents, Patel, the magazine said, spends his time "with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences." 
     But that isn't why I'm writing this. Patel, trained at the Trump knee, is now suing the magazine for $250 million — these lawsuits reflect the heavy-handed tactics the Trump administration is increasingly turning to trying to stifle valid media criticism. ICE will be tossing reporters into white vans next. For now, though suing is Trump's go-to move, or, rather, threatening to sue. Though I can't help but notice he has never, to my knowledge, sued anyone accusing him of molesting girls under the aegis of Jeffrey Epstein, I wonder why that is? 
     Could it be that he didn't want to end up in a court of law where the defendant would of course present evidence that the accusations are true? A thought that clearly did not occur to Patel. 
    Needless to say, I've never met the man. He could be sober as a church mouse, and dedicated to his craft, and I hope he is. 

      But I am familiar with The Atlantic, and my hunch is they would not publish such a story if it weren't true. The story is almost comically well documented — the initial humiliating vignette of Patel being unable to log onto this computer, then panicking and announcing he had been fired is "according to nine people familiar with his outreach." Nine people? I haven't read a story backing up a fact with nine sources in my entire life. The article names the bars he's drinking at — Ned's in DC, the Poodle Room in Vegas. Nor does the news shock.
     "Patel's drinking is no secret," the magazine reports, pointing out that he was filmed chugging beer with the U.S. Men's Olympic hockey in their locker room after their gold medal game.
     Suing is both bluster and blunder. Rather than repairing the damage to Patel's good reputation — not that such a thing exists — he is merely broadcasting the accusations and ensuring they remain in the public eye for the foreseeable future, or until he's summarily canned by Trump for being pathetic. 
     "Some at the FBI are concerned that Patel's behavior has left the country more vulnerable," the magazine wrote. I dispute that. Better Patel doing shots in Vegas than at his desk in DC, pursuing what FBI agents retain their sense of justice and patriotism. 
     Or as one official told The Atlantic: "Part of me is glad he's wasting his time on bullshit, because it's less dangerous for the rule of law."
    Make that two of us.

    Now Patel's genius idea is to force that official to repeat his statement in open court.  If the suit ever comes to trial. My bet is, it won't — the only question is, which is shitcanned first, the lawsuit or Patel.
 

New AI platforms hand hackers powerful new tools for cracking cybersecurity

Bundles of currency on display at the Federal Reserve Bank's Money Museum, 230 S. LaSalle St. 

     Everyone has a morning routine. With me, I open my eyes, muse darkly upon my life, then flee upstairs to my office — even before coffee is made or the dog walked — blast out the day's blog post to my hearty band of followers, then ritualistically log into a financial service company to check on my 401(k). A moment emotionally somewhere between Scrooge McDuck going down into his vault to roll around on his piles of gold and a castaway in a rubber raft checking the amount of water left in the jug. It takes a minute.
     Except one Sunday morning a few weeks ago. I plug in my username and password. Nothing. A second, more careful try. It warns me, in red letters, that a few more such attempts and I will be locked out.
     Not wanting that, I hit "Forgot password." It asks for my birthday, my email and the last four digits of my Social Security number. Normally, you never share that information. But this wasn't something over the transom; I'd logged into my 401(k) site. I plug in the info.
     No account associated with me. I try again. Nothing.
     A few more attempts, with growing alarm, that I'll spare you. In brief, my 401(k) account, with my entire nest egg needed for looming retirement, built over decades, the provisions that must sustain us on our one way journey into the dark woods of decline, had simply vanished.
     Money, as you know, is no longer bullion slumbering in vaults or even stacks of fresh currency, but mostly bundles of electrons flitting through systems of unfathomable complexity. You buy a pack of gum, tap your phone to a contactless payment terminal, and great institutions briefly kiss. Visa slips Walmart $3 and debits your account. You get a pack of Hubba Bubba Sour Blue Raspberry.
     We hardly even think about it. But maybe we should. While we're used to the idea of endless legions of scammers assailing us through every mode of communications short of semaphore flag, the latest and most ominous twist is coming from a new weapon of immense power that is already derailing modern life: artificial intelligence.
     Yes, AI. The thing that keeps trying to summarize your email. That your kid uses to write his report on Cotton Mather instead of actually doing the work and learning something. AI is so incredibly powerful, not only does it produce videos of obese porch pirates getting their faces painted with blue dye, but it can code/write computer programs.
     Or crack them. A story that might have gotten lost in the whirl of general disaster is that on April 7, Anthropic, an AI company that started five years ago and is now worth $380 billion, provided a preview of its Mythos AI model to 40 Big tech giants — Apple, Google, Microsoft, JPMorganChase. The reason for this effort, dubbed Project Glasswing, is because AI can cut through cybersecurity like a hot knife through butter, thwarting encryption, discovering hidden vulnerabilities that escaped notice for years.

     So Anthropic is giving the biggest players a chance to fix their heretofore undetected flaws before Mythos is available to the general public, one of whom might decide to type, "Drain Neil Steinberg's 401(k) and transfer the contents to my Apple Wallet."

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Barbara Flynn Currie, 'trailblazer who opened doors for generations of women' dies

     This ran in the paper on Saturday. 

     After a vote in the Illinois House on a key part of then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pension relief plan in 2016, Barbara Flynn Currie did something not often seen in these times of our divided, dysfunctional government. She crossed the aisle and shook hands with the three Republican lawmakers who broke ranks with the GOP and voted to override Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a measure deferring police and fire pension payments.
     That was Currie, 85, who died Thursday. She not only represented her Hyde Park district in Springfield for 40 years — 20 as majority leader and the first woman to hold that role in the Illinois General Assembly — she but was a tireless promoter of active, engaged, effective government. 

Barbara Flynn Currie (Wikipedia)

     "Last night we lost a giant," House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch, D-Hillside, posted on his Facebook page Friday. "Barbara Flynn Currie was more than a leader — she was a trailblazer who opened doors for generations of women in the Illinois House, many of whom continue her legacy today. ... She set the standard for what it means to serve with purpose. Her impact will be felt for generations."
     She was an enthusiastic advocate of clean air and clean water, and juvenile justice reform.
     “Barbara Flynn Currie was one of a kind," Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. "Her intelligence, decency, and absolute command of the issues were without equal in Illinois politics... Barbara was a passionate, tireless advocate for the people who needed one most. She delivered on issues like raising the minimum wage, early childhood education, gun safety." ... She lived a life of genuine public service and leaves behind an extraordinary record of accomplishment.”
     Her district encompassed Hyde Park, Woodlawn, South Shore and Kenwood, and she was a vigorous proponent of liberal causes, such as prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace and offering all-day kindergarten. She spearheaded a compromise on welfare reform and helped extend state contracts to minority- and female-owned businesses.
     In 2009, she chaired the special 21-member bipartisan committee that recommended the impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
     ”We stand here today because of the perfidy of one man: Rod Blagojevich,” said Currie. “To overturn the results of an election is not something that should be undertaken lightly.”
     Every member of the Illinois House and Senate, save one, voted to impeach.
     State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat, (14th) sat next to her on the House floor.
     "Every day was a master class in the work of the legislature," said Kelly. "She was unparalleled in debate, knew her bills inside out and backward, and could fire off a one-liner like nobody before or since."
     With women making up a record 32% of state legislatures across the country, it might be difficult to remember the male world that Currie entered. When she was elected in 1978, fewer than 11% of Springfield lawmakers legislators were women. When she announced her retirement in 2017, that figure was more than a third, and in 2025 the Illinois Legislature was 42% female.
     Then-House Speaker Michael Madigan's decision to name her as majority leader in 1997 was unexpected: Downstate Democrats felt they had a hereditary right to the position, didn’t like the powerful post to pass to a Chicagoan, a woman, and perhaps worst of all, a liberal. Women across the spectrum saw it as a milestone.
     ”Republican women gave me flowers,” Currie later recalled. “Secretaries and staff in the Capitol were thrilled. One of my girlfriends nearly ran her car off the road. The depth of excitement was really quite thrilling.”

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Works in progress: Jack Clark in Paris

Paris, 2017

     Jack Clark spends his springs in Paris — talk about a good judgment call. This year he told me he was off for France with what struck me as an air of fare-thee-well-until-I-return. To which I responded, in essence, "not so fast, bub. Would you consider writing something from Paris?" Thankfully, he agreed, asking only that I remind you to visit www.jackclarkbooks.com.

     When I was 17 or so, I was in love with Christine who lived down the block. I never told Chris how I felt but she knew and she did like me, just not in the same way. Our block, on the far West Side, was Irish and Italian, Jewish, and Greek. I’m of Irish descent. Chris was the oddball. Her family was Lebanese. I probably couldn’t have found Lebanon on a globe back then.
     Four of us would spend hours night after night sitting on Patty’s porch. She lived across the street from Chris. Patty was Greek and her parents were strict. She couldn’t leave the porch. My friend TiTi lived next door. He was also Greek and was another Chris but we all called him by his nickname, which was pronounced "Tee Tee."
     We were all American kids. I’m pretty sure that most of our parents were born here too. Mine were. So were my grandparents.
     We talked about everything and anything, usually while a transistor radio played rock and roll with the volume down low. Most of that talk is now lost to the years. But one thing I remember clearly is Chris telling us proudly that Beirut was considered the Paris of the Middle East. I think her family visited relatives every few years.
     The neighborhood changed eventually and we all went our separate ways. Chris and I kept in touch for a bit over the telephone. I only remember seeing her one more time. She was working downtown and I was going to school out by Navy Pier, trying to figure out how to become a writer. We got sandwiches at Jerry’s Deli on Grand Avenue and carried them down to the river to have lunch. And that was it. A few years later, I heard she’d moved to Denver and we haven’t been in touch since.
     In the mid-70s a Civil War broke out in Lebanon with Beirut at the center. It went on for years and didn’t end officially until 1989. It’s never really ended, not for Beirut. There have been breaks here and there, otherwise it’s been one shock after another to the current dark days.
     Whenever Beirut made the front page, I’d think of Chris and our nights on Patty’s front porch and wonder what the Paris of the Middle East looked like after the latest round of troubles.
     Many years later, I fell in love again and ended up in the real Paris. And I don’t mean the tourist city, which I do my best to avoid. Hélène and I have pretty much been inseparable for the last 15 years, except for those long months when we’re living 4000 miles apart.
     Hélène lives in public housing. I like to joke that she’s in the Cabrini-Green of Paris. But Paris and Chicago are completely different worlds, and so is their public housing.
      Chicago is the larger city both by size and population. But Paris has over 250,000 public housing units. That’s close to 25% of total residences. By comparison, at its peak Chicago had around 40,000 units. It’s now down to 15,000 with an additional 35,000 families relying on Section 8 housing vouchers.
     The residents in Hélène’s building are mostly working people and their children. Her next-door neighbor is a woman named Thérèse. She’s Lebanese. I’m pretty sure that’s where she was born. She has three grown children. They’re French.
     If we run into Thérèse on the street or in the hallway, she and Hélène usually speak in French while I twiddle my thumbs. But if I run into Thérèse when I’m alone, we speak English and she almost always ends up apologizing for her lack of proficiency. I answer that I should be the one apologizing. I’ve spent almost half of the last 14 years in France and I still can’t speak the native tongue. I have zero proficiency and should probably apologize to the entire country. Although I will say, once I gave up trying to learn French, my Paris life has become much more enjoyable.
     I sometimes like to amuse myself by looking at the listings pasted in the windows of the real estate offices. A million doesn’t get you much anymore. Not in Paris. It’s only public housing that keeps the City of Light from turning into an amusement park populated exclusively by the rich. It’s still a livable place for people like Hélène and Thérèse, a couple of single moms who raised their kids next door to each other while working full time.
      Hélène is a retired social worker. I assume Thérèse is retired too. I know she goes to Lebanon for months on end. Unlike the typical vacationer, when she comes back she sometimes looks more distressed than before she left.
     We were on our way out last week while Thérèse was coming in. “Ça Va,” we all said, as both a question and a statement. Pronounced as "sava," this is one of my favorite French expressions. You ask, "It goes?" The standard answer is: "It goes." And then you ask back, "It goes?" It’s the equivalent of "How are you? Good. And yourself?" without all those extra words.
     And then Thérèse turned my way. “Ça Va aux États-Unis?” she asked with a bit of aggression in her tone. It goes in the United States?
     How could I answer that except to say no. It does not go in the United States. Not this year. Not this month. Maybe never again.
     Her expression changed and she brought her hand to her heart twice and bowed slightly. “Désolée. Désolée,” she said.
     Once again, I told her that I was the one who should be sorry. And I am, of course. I’m sorrier than I’ve ever been and also ashamed by the actions of my own country, but that doesn’t do her or anyone else any good.
     Decades back, when we were all sitting on Patty’s front porch, the Vietnam War was going full blast, while a couple of miles east of us, large sections of Madison Street and Roosevelt Road were going up in flames.
     Our families packed up their possessions and we scattered and moved away. The war finally ended. The riots burned themselves out. But everything was different. New neighborhoods. Lost friends. Still, life went on almost as before.
     Maybe that will happen again. This period will just become another one for the history books and life will go on almost like before. I tend to doubt it but I hope it’s so.
     In the former Paris of the Middle East, they’re not looking for life to go back to the recent status quo. That’s what they’re hoping to get away from, their own dark history.
     We might try that ourselves in the coming years. But I think we’ll probably find this an impossible task. Darkness doesn’t always lead to light. There’s no guarantee that the sun will rise, that a new morning will ever come.

                                                                       — Paris, April 2026

 

Technology always wins, but we can make our own magic until then

"The Hand & The Eye," $50 million worth of high end magic palace located in the old McCormick Mansion on East Ontario. It opens Saturday. 

     A lot of old people on Facebook wax nostalgic about drinking out of garden hoses, riding in the beds of pickup trucks without seat belts and the freedom of no cellphones.
     Count me out. I was there and recall a lot of boredom. Much thumb-twiddling, whistling and staring out of windows. As for seat belts — I was riding with Phil Flanigan in his mother's 1966 Ford Falcon when she hit the brakes and I went over the front seat and knocked out my front teeth on the dashboard — baby teeth, thank goodness. Still, I'm a big fan of seat belts. They save lives.
     As for iPhones, one question: Have you gotten lost lately? Me neither. Getting lost sucked. 
     Not to be confused with wandering. Wandering is great, I went Downtown twice this week, researching columns. Marching up the wide, sunny arc of Wacker Drive, marveling at the passersby, but also thinking how soon the striding pedestrians and zipping electric scooters (c'mon guys, pretend you have brains to protect and wear a helmet) will be forever joined by squads of little rolling robots, like the pair that took out a couple bus shelters in West Town and Old Town last month. These are the last days we can pad around without flocks of drones buzzing over our heads. 

     Yes, some complain about these robots. I'm glad I'm not so touchy as to feel violated by somebody's order of beef and broccoli trying to squeeze past on the sidewalk.
     Sorry, I know, lots of delivery workers out of jobs. And cabdrivers, by self-driving cars. And journalists.
     But not yet. Feeling lousy about it doesn't help. Every technological advance in history was greeted with howls of ambivalence. When Gutenberg created movable type, some worried that the personal connection of reading an author's own handwriting would be lost. The first programmable machine was not a computer, but a Jacquard loom, whose designs could be changed by switching punched cards. Outraged English textile workers attacked the looms. Got them nowhere. Robert Louis Stevenson complained in vain when gaslight was replaced by electric light, "a lamp for a nightmare," producing "ugly blinding glare." No matter. Technology always wins.
     I say this, despite AI coming for my job. But not yet. It can form words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs. But can AI do the footwork? How is AI at rambling? At wandering in a random fashion across an urban environment and stumbling upon interesting stuff?

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Flashback 2009: Lump of coal from Keillor — His 'Christmas' gift won't keep on giving

     Garrison Keillor is coming to the Park West on May 4. I can't go — previous commitment — but I've seen him perform several times, at Ravinia and elsewhere, and know he always puts on a good show. That prompted me to look back at what I've written about him over the years — I interviewed him once, but that was already posted.

     Sidelined in 2017 over accusations of unwarranted sexual advances, none of then seemed as consequential as any given dozen crimes attributable to our president. I particularly appreciate the work he did promoting poetry, both in print — his "Good Poems" collections are priceless — and on the radio.

     This is an oddity — a pan of a little Christmas volume of his. A reminder that even the mighty — and I consider him the greatest American humorist since Mark Twain — have their lapses. I present it for the pure joy of a good pan. 

 
A CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD

By Garrison Keillor

Viking, 180 pages, $21.95

     This coming April, Mark Twain will have been dead 100 years, and were you to throw a cocktail party for all the American humorists since his demise who have created enduring fictional worlds, it would a very small gathering indeed:
     James Thurber, standing alone by the mantle, swilling his scotch and complaining how he never could manage to write a novel. Neil Simon, picking cashews out of the nut bowl.
     And that's about it. Robert Benchley and S.J. Perelman would have sent regrets — already sucked into the maw of obscurity that took Bill Nye and Josh Billings and everyone else whose work is too topical or too minor to withstand the grind of time.
     Of living authors, there would only be one: Garrison Keillor, well-loved for his long-running radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," but also respected for his short stories, novels and essays. His Lake Wobegone might not quite shine equally alongside Twain's Hannibal, Missouri, but if our progeny are still reading any comic fiction writer of our era a century from now, odds are it'll be Keillor. 

     Of course Keillor can't be expected to knock one out of the park every time — even Thurber started churning out those testy complaints about grammar as he aged — and A Christmas Blizzard, Keillor's latest, is a holiday trifle that will be relegated to the scrap heap of misfires by otherwise good authors, though many of his fans no doubt would rather read a mediocre book by Keillor than a good book by anyone else.
     A Christmas Blizzard is a tall holiday tale that rolls merrily along, crammed with inventive riffs on popular culture and quirky characters, all limned in Keillor's distinctive voice. We meet James Sparrow, a fabulously rich Chicagoan with a butler and a private jet, and his wife, Joyce, and if having the two main characters named James and Joyce is too much of a sly wink for you, you better get used to it, because the Hawaiian home where James longs to spend the holiday is called Kuhikuhikapap'u'maumau and the stand-in for Minnesota where our hero gets stranded when he goes to visit his prosaically named but dying Uncle Earl is called Looseleaf, North Dakota, and there is the standard contingent of Floyds and Elmers you'd expect with Keillor.
     Despite the cute names that are more Soupy Sales than Thomas Pynchon, Keillor's wit is generally sharp and intact, and along the way he skewers Americans, from blissed out New Agers to Right Wing conspiracy fanatics. Easy targets, maybe, but it's impossible to completely dislike a holiday book that refers to "the sheer horror of 'The Little Drummer Boy.'" Though by the time we get to the talking wolf, A Christmas Blizzard assumes a random, hallucinogenic quality that makes it feel longer than its 180 pages.
     Early on, Keillor's describes Joyce's writing this way: "She was clever and facile and could spackle bright words on a page in the shape of a poem but she lacked heart." The same could be said for this novel, where Keillor revisits favorite tropes — the indignity of middle age, the quirkiness of small towns, the melancholy of love — grafting them onto a miracles-and-redemption Christmas tale that flirts with incoherence.
     Keillor's 19 previous books are listed in the front, and any one of them would probably provide a richer, more nuanced experience than A Christmas Blizzard. But if you've read them all and enjoyed them all, then you'll probably enjoy this one too, at least a little.

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 29, 2009