He used to live here / Grief denied / ‘I’ve never mentioned any of this on the air’

He used to live here. The suspect in the New York subway shooting spree was evicted from a single-room-occupancy hotel in Uptown in 2017.
CWBChicago: He gave the hotel a one-star review on Yelp. (Photo montage: New York City Police.)
 … but police say, before that, the gunman himself tipped them off to his location.
A flood of details about the suspect includes, according to The Associated Press: “An erratic work history. Arrests for a string of mostly low-level crimes. A storage locker with more ammo. And hours of rambling, bigoted, profanity-laced videos on his YouTube channel that point to a deep, simmering anger.”
A journalism professor hails the news media’s limit on the naming of mass shooting suspects.

Who needs $500/month? At 9 a.m. April 25, the City of Chicago will open applications for its new Resilient Communities Pilot—a lottery that will send cash to 5,000 eligible households for a year.
Mayor Lightfoot says a deadly porch collapse on the West Side spotlights the city’s affordable housing crisis.
A Tribune editorial calls for the City Council to let citizens decide on Chicago’s next ward map.

Grief denied. In what he calls “the hardest thing I’ve had to write in these last few years,” The Atlantic’s Ed Yong examines the challenges confronting millions of people mourning loved ones lost to the pandemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has extended the mask requirement for airplanes and public transit through at least May 3.
Gov. Pritzker’s still in the hunt for a new Illinois public health director.

‘This gallery contains graphic content.’ AP photos capture Ukrainians in mourning, surrounded by rubble.
Google Adsense pledges to “pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.”

The courts, diversified. President Biden’s new nominees to the federal bench in Illinois exemplify his commitment to put more people of color in the judiciary.
Colleagues fear Judiciary Committee member and Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who’s 88, is losing it.

‘Twitter needs to be transformed.’ Elon Musk is offering to buy the company whole.
Read his Securities and Exchange Commission filing, in which he says, “I don’t … believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market.”
Axios notes a parallel between this and Musk’s unsuccessful 2018 bid to take Tesla private: “His offer to buy Twitter also includes the number 420, which can be used as a reference to smoking marijuana.”

‘Let the IRS provide everyone with free tax prep software.’ Columnist Eric Zorn (about halfway through today’s edition) says he “will never not be mad” that Congress hasn’t made that happen.
 Here’s why this year’s deadline falls on April 18 instead of April 15.

Wetter, not better. New research concludes that human-caused climate change is increasing the occurrence of extreme rainfall accompanying tropical storms.

‘I’ve never mentioned any of this on the air.’ WXRT morning host Richard Milne shares on Facebook that he’s taking a leave from the show as his wife, Charlene, enters at-home hospice six years after her diagnosis for a rare form of dementia.
Richard and Charlene were co-workers with your Chicago Public Square columnist the year they met, 1988.

Help keep Square coming. Contribute at any of these levels—and get $5 off a Square T-shirt …
 … which Eric Zorn kind-of declares (at the bottom of today’s column) “all the rage in the fashion salons in Europe.” (Photo: Ben Zorn.)

Subscribe to Square.