‘How I got COVID.’ Reflecting on her own case, Politico’s Sarah Owermohle explains, “It’s … an increasingly likely event as our return to normal collides with a patchwork of vaccination rates and booster shots.”
■ The outcome of a ping-pong ball drawing means challenges to President Biden’s vaccine mandate for private companies will be heard in an appeals court dominated by Republican-appointed judges.
Red-light retaliation. Three law firms are taking a Chicago suburb to court over hundreds of $100 tickets they say were issued illegally by a camera focused on a right-turn lane along Mannheim Road.
■ Gov. Pritzker’s signed a law aimed at turning Illinois into the Silicon Valley of electric vehicle manufacturing.
■ Biden’s directed the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether oil and gas companies are illegally pushing up prices.
McDefense. McDonald’s CEO met with Black leaders from across Illinois yesterday to apologize again for his insensitive messages to Mayor Lightfoot in which he cast blame on the parents of two children shot to death (Nov. 4 link).
■ A Democratic state representative wants Illinois to consider restoring the death penalty for those who murder kids.
■ A week after the fatal shooting in Hyde Park of a University of Chicago graduate from China, international students rallied to demand more protection from the school.
‘In a perfect world, he’d be expelled.’ But, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez conceded, “We are not in a perfect world” as the House prepared to vote just on censure for Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, who tweeted an animated video that showed him killing her with a sword.
■ Punchbowl News: “There are still more than 13 months to go in this Congress. We haven’t found the bottom yet.”
‘Really, Gary? You voted against it.’ A U.S. representative who opposed the massive federal infrastructure law is getting trolled for being among the first Republicans to take credit for it.
■ A USC communication professor says the law recognizes that internet access is as essential as water and electricity.
‘Facebook has never really given a chronological news feed a fair shot.’ Consulting, among others, a University of Illinois new-media professor, The Washington Post explains why Facebook won’t let you control what you see and when.
■ Flashback: 25 years ago, photographer Rick Smolan* sat down with your Chicago Public Square columnist to discuss his then-new book, 24 Hours in Cyberspace: Painting on the Walls of the Digital Cave—for which he dispatched hundreds of photographers around the world to document how computers and the internet were changing humanity.
Evanston RoundTable is, like Chicago Public Square,a member of the Chicago Independent Media Alliance.
Congrats, Block Club Chicago. It’s the Local Independent Online News Publishers’ Publisher of the Year …
■ … which makes this as good a time as any to revisit the Square podcast in which Block Club editor-in-chief Shamus Toomey shared Block Club’s origin story.
■ Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune alumnus and New York Times reporter Megan Twohey and her colleague Jodi Kantor are out with a new book, Chasing the Truth: A Young Journalist's Guide to Investigative Reporting.
Bye, Eric. A week after disgraced radio host Eric Ferguson formally left WTMX-FM, he’s sold his suburban home for $1.35 million.
■ Tedium recounts the demise of radio for kids.
‘A good story is key, and this sequel doesn’t have it.’ Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper is unimpressed with Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
■ Oak Park filmmaker Steve James’ celebrated 1994 documentary, Hoop Dreams, is becoming a scripted TV series …
■ … which makes this also as good a time as any to revisit the 2018 Square podcast with James.
Correction. A WTTW News story linked from yesterday’s Chicago Public Square erroneously described 1986 as the year when “it was discovered that [lead pipes] could cause brain-damaging toxins to leach into the water.” In fact, the problem was identified as early as the late 1800s.
■ Thanks to reader and home inspector Steve Nations, who flagged the mistake—adding, “It’s a disgrace that Chicago allowed (even required) lead water service pipes for so long.”
■ Thanks also to Pam Spiegel for making this edition better.
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* Who was portrayed by Adam Driver in a 2014 movie.