Winds of change / Hey, CTA! / A 9-Q quiz

Chicago Public Square will take Monday off. Be here Tuesday.


Winds of change. AP White House correspondent Josh Boak says back-to-back hurricanes have reshaped the campaigns of Vice President Harris and ex-President Donald Trump.
Milton’s storm surge: Up to 10 feet along the Gulf Coast …
Chicago’s welcomed 21 dogs rescued from Hurricane Helene.
Wired: As officials encouraged Floridians to evacuate Milton’s path, “several folks stuck around and posted about the storm online—for better or worse.”
Floridians registered to vote run in this weekend’s Chicago Marathon can take a pass until next year.
The marathon stands to run up some big economic boosts for the city this weekend.
Not running? Here’s what it means for non-participants.

Dingus of the week. Columnist Lyz Lenz’s pick: Climate change.
PolitiFact rates wackadoodle U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s assertion that “they” can control the weather “Pants on Fire.”
Cartoonist Ruben Bolling’s latest: “A Trump presidency wasn’t going to harm ME!
If you missed last night’s Northern Lights show over the Chicago area, you may get another chance tonight.

‘Obama was … mocking the ever-loving shit out of Trump.’
Columnist Evan Hurst reviews ex-President Barack Obama’s near-hourlong speech (missing link added) for the Harris campaign last night …
 … which you can see in its entirety here.
He told men to drop “excuses” for not supporting a woman running for the White House. (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)
Jimmy Kimmel paraphrases Trump’s campaign speech yesterday before the Detroit Economic Club: “You guys are living in a real dump. I wouldn’t wanna do business here. PU, vote for me.”
Detroit’s mayor shot back: “Crime is down and our population is growing. Lots of cities should be like Detroit. And we did it all without Trump’s help.”

‘Is it time to panic yet?’ The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser: The presidential campaign’s “all but over and the one question anyone wants answered cannot be answered.”
Public Notice columnist David Lurie: “Harris and Walz are winning the economic policy argument … turning a Democratic weakness into a strength.”
Political poll watcher Nate Silver: Ignore campaigns’ “internal polls.”
Notus: In swing states that didn’t fix their systems, Trump’s 2020 fake electors will be the real deal in 2024.
The American Prospect:Education policies in states red and blue have diverged dramatically,” leaving “schools attended by the vast majority of kids … with far fewer resources.”
ProPublica: The far right’s vision for local governing has come to life in Texas’ third-largest county.
Ready to vote (early)? Check the Chicago Public Square Voter Guide Guide.

‘Threats against free speech.’ The FCC’s chair is rejecting Trump’s complaints about CBS News …
 … but the network faces legit questions over its editing practices.
ABC’s The View was forced under federal law to air an obscure presidential candidate’s ad comparing the show’s hosts to Nazis.

Hey, CTA! The Chicago Transit Authority’s stepping up efforts to hear what riders really want …
DuPage County’s planning to up its pedestrian/biker/transit game.

Guns at work. The Tribune: A string of violent incidents at Chicago workplaces is raising concerns about employees who own weapons.

A 9-Q quiz.
An expanded version of the weekly news quiz, concocted by past Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner Fritz Holznagel, crams in an extra question … for your Chicago Public Square columnist to get wrong, with a measly score of 6/9 correct.
Your four choices for answering Question No. 1: Wriggle, Spin, Fold, Dissolve.

AI’s ‘coming-out party.’ That’s what Politico sees in not one but two of this week’s Nobel Prizes …
 … one of which was shared by a University of Chicago alumnus.
The American Prospect: Artificial intelligence has “helped create barriers for people seeking to access our nation’s social safety net.”
404 Media’s Jason Koebler used AI-powered bots to apply for 2,843 jobs.

Local kids in the news. St. Ignatius College Prep graduate John Mulaney’s signed to host a live weekly talk show on Netflix.
The Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg’s burning to recommend the YouTube series Hot Ones—“where A-list celebrities are grilled while eating progressively hotter wings”—hosted by University of Illinois broadcast journalism grad and Evanston native Sean Evans.

Square
mailbag.
Reader Reg Davis writes about the Internet Archive hack reported on haveibeenpwned.com: “Maybe include a link … that explains pwning and what to do about it. I find all my email addresses have been pwned (and I’d be surprised if most of us weren’t), yet two ‘had no pastes.’ What does ‘paste’ mean?” Thanks for the suggestion, Reg. Answers here and here.
Archive founder Brewster Kahle: “Data has not been corrupted. Services are currently stopped to upgrade internal systems.”
A reader “who had to follow First Amendment caselaw for years” but who asks not to be named takes issue with columnist Eric Zorn’s objection to the State of Illinois’ rejection of license plates referencing Oct. 7: “The First Amendment is not free and not unlimited. ‘Oct. 7’ coupled with references to Palestine such as ‘From the river to the sea’ arguably fits under the ‘fighting words’ exception … and public roads are not a great place for provoking tempers. This was a rational, defensible decision. … Public forums are subject to regulation in terms of time, place and manner.”
Via email, Zorn says he still considers “this objectionable sentiment” political speech and plans to respond next week in his Picayune Sentinel.
Mike Braden made this edition better.

Facebook 😡 Square / Death and blackouts / ‘A strange day in civic Chicago’

Facebook 😡 Square. In the latest sign that Facebook really, really wants Chicago Public Square to stop sending readers its way—as has been the case for virtually every edition since launch in 2017—the company this week has repeatedly removed posts sharing the Sept. 30 edition, which among other things featured news of The New York Times’ presidential endorsement for Kamala Harris.
 Facebook says, “It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.” And/or: “Spam.”
 If you’re unsure what constitutes “misleading” or “spam” when sharing an award-winning, critically acclaimed email newsletter, good luck finding out. As with previous rounds of censorship, Facebook parent Meta provides no way to offer a personalized defense and no way to reach a human for answers.
 Want to protest this capricious crackdown? Share (or try to share) this link on Facebook, Threads and other Meta-brand social media: https://www.chicagopublicsquare.com/2024/09/trumps-dark-threats-post-helene-hell.html …
 … or this link to the Mailchimp email dispatch of that edition: https://us6.campaign-archive.com/?u=c1ce195a775f7d7ff4846006e&id=56f2c8500e.

Wayback: Way down. Archive.org—whose Wayback Machine has by default become the definitive repository of internet history—has been hacked …
 … exposing 31 million usernames, passwords and other data …
 … and knocking much of its service offline …
 … including a repository of Square podcasts.
 Check haveibeenpwned.com to see if yours is among the accounts compromised.

Death and blackouts. Updating coverage: Floridians—at least those who could sleep through the night—awakened today to widespread destruction and some fatalities in the wake of Hurricane Milton …
 … but the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency says the state avoided “that worst-case scenario that we were planning for.”
 A former Florida climate commissioner writes for Heated: “Milton is a monster. Elected leaders are to blame.”
 Among the devastation: The roof of the Tampa Bay Rays’ stadium …
 The paper’s climate reporter is sharing photos.
 Popular Information: The fine print means many Florida homeowners—even those with insurance—will get little or no help rebuilding …
 … and Hurricane Helene’s damage to Deerfield-based Baxter International’s North Carolina plant foretells a shortage of IV fluids for hospitals across the nation.

‘It’s beyond ridiculous.’ President Biden held back little yesterday in calling out Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for lying about the federal government’s disaster response.
 USA Today’s Rex Huppke: Trump-led misinformation is sucking time from recovery efforts.
 Alumni of Trump’s presidency hit the trail to campaign against him in Pennsylvania last night, but The Bulwark questions whether they can reach their target audience.
 Trump’s niece Mary quotes herself: “If [Donald] can … profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.” (Cartoon: Jack Ohman.)

‘Like sharing news that Hugh Hefner went on a date.’ Columnist Neil Steinberg’s not all that hot to praise the Times for its belated acknowledgment of Trump’s “extensive cognitive decline.”
 Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “Increasingly, Trump’s behavior seems to parrot the dictators he appears to admire.”
 National political journalist Nina Burleigh describes a new documentary about Trump-inspired MAGA violence—available digitally next week—as “required viewing.”

‘Harris doesn’t owe the mainstream press anything.’ Public Notice’s Noah Berlatsky rejects media whining about her refusal to grant them interviews.
 Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show: Harris raised a billion dollars. Yeah, now you’re allowed to text her for donations.”

‘A license plate is pretty clearly a public forum.’ Columnist Eric Zorn agrees with the Illinois secretary of state’s office that vanity plates displaying “some iteration of the date Oct. 7” are “repugnant and ghoulish,” but he contends the platform “ought to be open for a wide variety of expressions, even those that many of us find politically objectionable.”
 Puck’s Dylan Byers recaps an ostensibly “confidential” staff meeting to discuss “a fast-metastasizing, five-alarm shitshow” at CBS News—over an aggressive interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates about the Mideast war.
 Media columnist Justin Baragona at Zeteo: Anchor Tony Dokoupil’s admitted to violating CBS standards.

‘A strange day in civic Chicago.’ Activist Tom Tresser marvels that the teachers union and the embattled school board agree on a highly controversial notion: The end of the city’s tax increment financing (TIF) system.
 WBEZ: Such a move “could draw ire from some City Council members and private developers who rely on the system to fund projects.”
 Hundreds of Chicago families have been blindsided by private operator Acero’s decision to close seven schools beginning next year.

‘Why is this a story?’ Square reader Michael Rosenbaum writes of yesterday’s edition’s inclusion of an item about a person’s arrest after a gun was found in a room at Chicago’s Trump Tower: “Is Trump planning to stay there next week when he is in Chicago? … Other than the name of the building, does this have anything to do with Donald J. Trump?”
 As subsequent reporting has explained: Yes. Also, turns out: Multiple guns.

Got anything going on tonight? Come to FitzGerald’s in Berwyn to support a great cause—the Farther Foundation, funding life-changing educational travel for deserving students …
 … and—bonus—hear your Square columnist share profoundly personal, highly embarrassing tales of his own travel mishaps.

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