Panelists includes Rodney Williams, founder of the Cincinnati-based Bluetooth-disrupting sound technology company Lisnr; Dawn Dickenson, whose Miami company Flat Out of Heels makes rollable ballet flats that can be purchased online or from a vending machine; and Jason Caston, founder of digital strategy company Caston Digital, based in Frisco, Texas. Stovall said the panelists have also been asked to address “pattern matching,” an unconscious bias that can cause investors to identify and support entrepreneurs who share similar traits to established entrepreneurs—traits such as gender, race, or educational background—to the detriment of anyone who doesn’t share those traits....

uic.edu Runner-Up DePaul University

Bane This might be your last chance of the summer to take it easy, because while the first half of this week is a slow one for live music, things are blowing up for the rest of the season. And, sure, it’s not totally happening over the next couple of days, but that doesn’t mean this town is a total desert. After the jump there are a couple of awesome Soundboard pics to keep keep things exciting during the relaxing holiday week....

From the Brown Line platform at Irving Park you can see what looks like a field house or maybe even a hangar, a tall, window-filled building with an unusual shape. I’d always wondered what it was, and during the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s annual architecture tour, Open House Chicago, I got to find out. At 4025 N. Ravenswood, it’s a former billboard factory that’s now been repurposed into the Ravenswood Event Center....

Feverishly inventive and wildly curious, percussionist Ben Hall is pretty catholic in his creative pursuits—he also co-owns a restaurant in his native Detroit and is an accomplished visual artist. A former student of singular percussionist Milford Graves and one of the final collaborators with trumpeter Bill Dixon, Hall also led the gloriously chaotic free-noise combo Graveyards with Wolf Eyes founder John Olson. His playing makes room for barrages of furious, surging-and-receding energy along with drone-oriented bowing and rubbing, whether deafening or pin-drop quiet....

Al Podgorski/Chicago Sun-Times Yep, it’s that bad. Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. • That Guinea has banned the consumption of bats, rats, and monkeys in an effort to halt the spread of the ebola virus? —Ben Sachs • That at least three books in Harvard’s libraries are bound in human skin? —Aimee Levitt

Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt Wildbirds & Peacedrums Swedish couple Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin have to rate as one of music’s most dynamic forces, both together and on their own. Wallentin, a singer, released a fantastic solo album last year under the name Mariam the Believer, and her voice has turned up on projects and recordings by artists as disparate as art-pop singer Lykke Li, experimentalist Ben Frost, and jazz bassist Anders Jormin....

October 9-23, cinemachicago.org This year marks the festival’s 50th edition, and in honor of the milestone, presenting organization Cinema/Chicago is giving away the best possible party favors: repeat screenings of notable films that have played at the fest over the years. Back in January, WTTW kicked off a monthly series of revivals with Tod Lending’s Chicago-centric documentary Legacy (2000), followed by such rarely broadcast titles as Mike Leigh’s Bleak Moments (1971), Rebecca Camisa and Rob Frutchman’s Sister Helen (2002), and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s A Screaming Man (2010); the series continues through October, when the festival takes place....

If you haven’t yet seen James Gray’s The Immigrant, make a beeline for the Gene Siskel Film Center next week, when it returns to Chicago for its second run. One of the major achievements of recent American movies, Gray’s immersive period piece channels the raw emotionalism of silent melodramas and Italian opera without coming off as nostalgic or studied. Despite the film’s impeccable artistry—not to mention the rave reviews it received at the Cannes Film Festival and during its commercial run in France last fall—its U....

Sura likes to make pawpaw butter, which can be preserved for use throughout the winter. And because it’s impossible to remove all the fruit from the seeds, instead of discarding the seeds he soaks them in grain alcohol for several weeks to let it soak up the fruit flavor. Then he strains out the liquid and adds simple syrup to make a pawpaw cordial. 10 pounds pawpaw, pitted and peeled 1 lemon, juice and zest 15 percent sugar by weight 1 quart water...

Alderman Willie Cochran said he was joking when he referred to the “gangsters” amont the Chicago Aldermanic Black Caucus earlier this month. But looking back, maybe he was serious after all. At least in reference to himself. The statement comes less than a month after Cochran, a retired police officer, mocked a group of activists gathered at the Chicago Aldermanic Black Caucus’s annual fund-raiser at a Loop cocktail lounge.

soundcloud.com/zebo Runners-Up Alinka DJ Rashad The-Drum

Tine Defiore Black Oak Tattoo

When you come down to it, there’s only a limited number of circus skills. You can throw, spin, balance, bounce, hang, fly, catch, contort, somersault, or clown. Your average show is pretty much guaranteed to feature somebody juggling pins, walking a wire, flying off a teeterboard, swinging from a height, touching toes to head, or doing a handstand atop either another person or a swaying stack of chairs or both....

Oakland’s Sex Snobs could easily just be filed under straight-up noisy punk rock—they’ve got the gurgling, crunchy bass tone and evil-sounding guitar riffage down, that’s for sure—but what makes them stand out is a decidedly rock ‘n’ roll bravado. On their debut album, Lonely, front man Alex Barnard tweaks his vocals with a sweaty sass, chugging along in a way that’s more appropriate for a glitter-littered stage than a dingy basement floor....

J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photos Should writers feel sheepish for describing former Secret Service director Julia Pierson as sheepish in the wake of security lapses that could have been disastrous? If I take the time to find a pen and circle things in the morning paper, I can take a few minutes more and explain why I bothered. Maybe Ahmed is a cynical mercenary. Maybe what he actually feels is shame....

Rappers like to remind you where they’re from, often by peppering their lyrics with mentions of the spots they know best. Here are five of my favorite references to Chicago locations in local rap songs this year. Lil B and Chance the Rapper, “First Mixtape Based Freestyle,” Free (Based Freestyles Mixtape) Rich Jones casually half-sings, half-raps about stumbling through the bars and darkened corners of Milwaukee Avenue. The song’s dreamy, twinkling instrumental and Jones’s simple, affectionate performance remind me of the many warm evenings I’ve spent walking through the bustling patchwork of diverse neighborhoods along that street....