Facebook's biggest problem / Jewel + Whole Foods? / Trump condo glut

FACEBOOK’S BIGGEST PROBLEM. The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo takes a detailed look at how the News Feed “sucks up lies from cable news and Twitter, then precisely targets each lie to the partisan bubble most receptive to it.”
Facebook is one of the tools far-right trolls are using to spread hoaxes about moderate French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.
Politico analyzes the data and concludes the media bubble that kept reporters from spotting Donald Trump’s election “is worse than you think.” And it has yet to burst.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is beginning to beat Fox News in the ratings.
The Washington Post guarantees all its online ads will load in less than 2 seconds.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK. Gov. Rauner’s secretary of “Innovation and Technology,” who earns $145,000, is billing the billions-of-dollars-in-debt State of Illinois $208,000 for two professional memberships.
A new report describes how top Democrats got friends and family top jobs at the Illinois Department of Transportation. (Corrected at 10:22 a.m. to put the modifier “top” in the correct place.)


SHAMELESS PLUG Dept. Vote for Chicago Public Square as Best News Site in the Chicago Reader’s Best of Chicago 2017 poll. It’s quick and easy. And your children’s children will thank you.


JEWEL + WHOLE FOODS? Albertsons, which owns the Chicago area’s Jewel-Osco stores, is reportedly in the hunt to buy the Whole Foods grocery chain.
Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood is getting a major grocery store for the first time in 19 years. (Image: Company rendering.)
The CTA’s Green Line station at Cottage Grove is set for an overhaulupdate.
A new report from the Metropolitan Planning Council concludes when whites leave Chicago suburbs, jobs leave, too—and majority black suburbs in southern Cook County are seeing the deepest losses.
Malls are fighting online competition … with parking lots.

TRUMP CONDO GLUT. The Tribune’s Gail MarksJarvis reports “an unusually large number of condominiums for sale and for rent” in Chicago’s Trump Tower.
Strunk and White’s classic book on writing, The Elements of Style, gets an update for the Trump era.
A website invites users to describe the president in just one word.
Ivanka Trump got booed in Berlin.
The State Department has pulled a web page that read “almost as if it’s an advertisement” for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

THE WEIRD WEATHER / GLOBAL WARMING CONNECTION. Math + powerful computers + historical records = Clearer-than-ever evidence that record meteorological events carry “a detectable human fingerprint.”
At the UN, other countries are dissing the Trump administration’s climate stance.

MARIJUANA FOR THE AUTISTIC? The world’s first clinical trial for kids with autism will test evidence pot can help them in ways no other drug has.
Rich Miller in Crain’s: The business case for legalizing pot in Illinois.

‘WHEN ONE PERSON SUFFERS FROM A DELUSION, IT IS CALLED INSANITY. WHEN MANY PEOPLE SUFFER FROM A DELUSION IT IS CALLED A RELIGION.’Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance author Robert M. Pirsig, who died yesterday at 88.
Congressional Republicans are pushing a bill to allow discrimination by “people of faith.”
Illinois women are set to march on Springfield as the Illinois House considers a bill to expand the availability of taxpayer-funded abortions—legislation sponsored by Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (who is—full disclosure—a frequent Words With Friends opponent for your Chicago Public Square proprietor; but she started it).

THANKS. To Chris Koenig and Jennifer Follis for help slapping together this issue.

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