’Tis the season. Chicago Public Square will wind down for a few days. But watch your email inbox for a surprise quiz or two before the year’s out—beyond the one below, of course. And follow the Square Facebook page for news of note through the rest of the month. Next regular edition: Jan. 3.
■ And now the news:
Silent night. Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists who cover the company for, among others, CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Voice of America.
■ And then Twitter at least suspended its Spaces group audio feature after some of those banned journalists used it to dress down Twitter overlord Elon Musk. (Image: Modified DALL-E illustration.)
■ Mediaite calls it a “Thursday night massacre.”
■ FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver: “If you can now be suspended from Twitter for doing fairly straightforward reporting, you have to wonder if that’s the tipping point.”
■ Email newsletter innovator Ernie Smith notes—on Twitter—that FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, seems to still be paying Twitter for ads even as the service limits journalists’ rights and expression.
■ As of Square’s email deadline, this was still up.
■ The Discourse Blog shares ways to track Musk’s private jet.
Declassified. Thousands of previously secret government documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have at last been made public by the National Archives.
■ As ABC 7 notes, those papers are rife with Chicago connections.
■ Here they are. Dive in.
■ From the archives: A 2013 interview with Oak Park native Howard Willens, one of three lawyers appointed to supervise the Warren Commission investigation of the assassination.
Shots shot down. A national defense bill that would roll back the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for U.S. soldiers is headed to President Biden.
■ Chicago Council on Global Affairs senior fellow Elizabeth Shackelford: The Pentagon’s getting more money even though it can’t balance its books.
‘We shelter the ignorant, the racists.’ Scorching his political party—and the Democrats, too—Republican Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger delivered a farewell speech for the ages.
■ See it here.
■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke on Donald Trump’s new scam: “It’s funny unless you think about the thousands of Trump loyalists … giving more of their hard-earned money to … a man who thinks he’s worthy of being on overpriced digital trading cards.”
■ Jimmy Kimmel: “He’s selling you nothing. It’s literally Cards Against Humanity.”
A cup of jeer. Some Starbucks workers pushing for unionization today launched a national three-day strike …
■ … targeting at least four stores in Chicago and two in the suburbs.
■ Gov. Pritzker has signed a proclamation certifying the enactment of the Workers’ Rights Amendment to the Illinois Constitution, guaranteeing protections not subject to the whims of changing administrations and legislatures.
■ Goldman Sachs plans to lay off as many as 4,000.
■ Citing challenges for lower-income residents, Evanston is weighing a ban on businesses that refuse to take cash.
Ads, coming and going. Airbnb says it no longer will let people rent out homes where enslaved people used to live.
■ Paramount+ is now running ads when users pause playback.
The new news quiz is here! The new news quiz is here! The new news quiz is here! And you surely can beat your Square columnist’s deplorable score of 50%.
■ As noted above, watch your inbox over the rest of the month for holiday and year-in-review quizzes.
‘Tips on How to Be More Quiet.’ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg offers holiday counsel for extroverts.
■ His colleague Natalie Moore recommends songs for a modern soul Christmas playlist.
■ The year’s last Politico Illinois Playbook bestows hypothetical gifts on a raft of public officials.
■ In the hunt for holiday viewing? Cord Cutter Weekly’s Jared Newman rounds up free streaming TV deals …
■ … including Paramount+ and Showtime.
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