‘I’ll still wear a mask.’ Author and Deadspin founder* Will Leitch lists the places he’ll keep his face covered “even if/when the pandemic is over.”
■ A bipartisan legislative panel has slapped down Gov. Pritzker’s plan to restore the state’s emergency mask mandate for schools.
■ A Reuters survey finds school boards nationwide enduring death threats over masks and other policies.
■ The Conversation: “For bullied teens, online school offered a safe haven.”
■ Don’t count on a quick end to Chicago’s vax and mask mandates—regardless of what happens at the state level.
■ First Aid Kit: How to avoid overpaying for medical tests.
‘Lets get ready to steal b----.’ A Chicago man has pleaded guilty to inciting a cycle of looting and rioting in August 2020.
■ Rejecting Donald Trump’s request to keep Congress from seeing White House visitor logs—including those from Jan. 6, 2021—President Biden’s ordering their release.
Whoops. BuzzFeed News reporter Jason Leopold tweets: “ICE turned over docs to me in response to my #FOIA about protests in Portland, forgot to redact them & then wrote back to me & demanded I destroy the docs & ‘refrain from using or disclosing the contents.’ Here they are.”
■ The last immigrants in Illinois detention awaiting deportation from the U.S. have been transferred out of state.
Only in Chicago. Axios Chicago notes that no other (correction:) major U.S. city gives the mayor power to fill vacancies on the municipal legislature …
■ … as Mayor Lightfoot’s preparing to do in the case of convicted Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson …
■ … amid growing pressure for her to pick an Asian American.
Blood money. Gunmaker Remington’s agreed to pay $73 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the families of nine of the victims among the 20 first-graders and six educators killed with one of its rifles at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
■ Time: Despite research that such programs don’t reduce smoking by kids and may in fact encourage it, tobacco giant Altria keeps quietly funding substance-use-prevention training for teenage students.
Facebook’s bind. In what looks to be another blow to Facebook and other social media companies that have been monetizing your digital activity, Google says it’s following Apple’s lead and phasing out cross-app tracking on Android phones.
■ The Washington Post says an all-hands Facebook meeting didn’t go well yesterday: “A new set of corporate values … was ridiculed by employees” …
■ … who now apparently will be called “Metamates” instead of Facebookers.
Unrelated developments.
■ The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers magazine Spectrum reports that hundreds of patients around the world dependent on bionic eye implants to address blindness have been plunged into darkness because the company responsible has stopped supporting the technology.
■ CNN: “A pastor baptized people for decades using one wrong word. Now those are all considered invalid.”
‘Good for journalism.’ The Poynter Report’s Tom Jones celebrates the “one-two punch” Sarah Palin suffered in her fight against The New York Times.
■ The Onion sees its shot and takes it: “Judge Dismisses New York Times Libel Suit Brought By Cannibal Terrorist Sarah Palin.”
ViacomCBS, we hardly knew ye. The new corporate name: Paramount.
■ The change took Stephen Colbert by surprise.
■ Caught up in a multifaceted scandal, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer is quitting.
■ The Daily Beast snarks: “Jeff Zucker’s Girlfriend Goes Scorched Earth as She Quits.”
Wordle, bastardized. Days after The New York Times acquired the beloved online word game with a pledge that “no changes will be made to its gameplay” (Jan. 31 link), the Times has, well, changed its gameplay …
■ … to take “obscure” and “insensitive” words out of the mix.
■ Columnist Eric Zorn: “It goes too far to disallow such words as guesses, which are often strategic attempts to locate the placement of letters in the actual solution.”
■ Depending on your age, you may have known him best as National Lampoon editor-in-chief, 60 Minutes contributor or Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! panelist: P.J. O’Rourke is dead at 74.
So … a typical February Wednesday in Chicago. Temps in the 50s today …
If Chicago Public Square makes your day better … Please consider pitching in to help this service continue.
■ Reader Bill Smith made this edition better.
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* And newly named inductee to the Illini Media Hall of Fame.