‘Banging sounds.’ Updating coverage: A Canadian aircraft with underwater detection capability gave small hope for five occupants of a missing submersible whose destination was the wreck of the Titanic …
■ … but even if those sounds help locate the vehicle, getting down there would be another thing.
■ In a report that aired in November, CBS reporter David Pogue—who rode the vessel down to the Titanic—read the expedition company’s waiver: “‘An experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death.’ Where do I sign?”
■ Pogue interviewed yesterday: “They lost the signal two-thirds of the way down to the floor. That … means something probably catastrophic happened.”
■ The vessel theoretically had enough air to last only through Thursday morning.
■ The Onion: “‘We Don’t Look So Bad Now, Do We?’ Says Carnival Cruise Ad.”
Another justice, another billionaire. ProPublica’s latest dump on questionable conduct at the Supreme Court: Justice Samuel Alito’s luxury fishin’ trip with a Republican billionaire who later had cases before the court.
■ Alito took the extraordinary step of defending the trip in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published before ProPublica published its report.
■ New York’s Jonathan Chait is unconvinced: “Justices like Alito can rationalize even their most blatant violations with absurd pseudo-legalistic evasions, which he is highly practiced at writing.”
■ Cook County Circuit Court Judge William Hooks has been accused of making racist comments to a defendant, “saying that Middle Eastern men are … controlling and abusive.”
‘Lori’s Revenge.’ Visiting the NASCAR Chicago Street Race website, Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg is incredulous at how much tickets to an event hatched by Mayor Lightfoot will cost: “It’s as if they found a way to make Taste of Chicago even MORE expensive and inconvenient by adding a road race.”
■ Photos offer a sneak peek into Chicago’s historic Medinah Temple, under transformation—at Lightfoot’s direction—into a temporary home for the city’s first casino …
■ … which still doesn’t have its gaming license.
■ Reader columnist Ben Joravsky says his favorite recent news articles have been those “that capture the happy squeals of surprise coming from establishment types who’ve just met Mayor Johnson” …
■ … who’s directed his new financial team to take a microscope to Lightfoot’s optimistic budget predictions before she left office.
■ Journalist and human rights activist Jamie Kalven (2021 interview link) is calling on Johnson to formally commit to principles of transparency with—among other things—“a public repository of police misconduct investigations.”
■ Democrats have picked Johnson’s replacement on the Cook County Board.
‘It’s more real now.’ Responding to citations of gun crimes around the Chicago area and the nation in yesterday’s Chicago Public Square, a reader shares a personal connection to the violence:
■ “My daughter and I were staying the weekend to cat-sit for my girlfriend. … A large number of shots were fired in two separate incidents. At least one round entered the living room of a unit … about two dozen feet from where my daughter was sleeping. It has been very jarring for this late-40s white man to have been thrust into the violence of the South Side. … I am struggling with how to respond to it. My daughter will obviously not be coming back down there … and now I don’t feel safe being down there, and my girlfriend is struggling as well. She moved there when she moved to Chicago 10 years ago because she is Black, and it is very important to her … to be among other African Americans. But now the violence has … lodged itself in the building she herself lives in. I don’t know where we as a couple go with this, and I don’t know where she will go from this, but it’s more real now to us than it was 72 hours ago.”
■ Chicago’s interim police superintendent on a West Side district’s wave of shootings and killings: “The challenges just keep coming.”
■ A Sun-Times editorial calls on the nation to follow Illinois’ lead on gun legislation: “Federal laws are critical, since crime guns can easily move across state borders.”
‘Unbearable.’ Texas is frying under a heat wave with no end in sight …
■ … which Esquire’s Charlie Pierce says makes this a lousy time for Texas to have killed local water-break laws designed to prevent “construction workers … dropping from thirst like something out of Gunga Din.”
■ The Lever: Delaware lawmakers are poised to give corporations a vote in municipal elections.
Free cash from Google. Advisorator columnist Jared Newman: “If you performed at least one Google search between October 2006 and September 2013, you can probably get a handful of dollars as part of a class action lawsuit settlement.
■ Here’s where to file before July 31.
■ The Federal Trade Commission complains that Amazon “tricked and trapped” people into its Prime program—making escape tough.
‘Pay your bills and send money online.’ The first report from a new investigative unit at The Conversation finds criminals using sham bank accounts and secret online marketplaces to steal from almost anyone—with little being done about it …
■ … and it offers tips for protecting yourself.
AI for dummies. PolitiFact offers a plain-English explanation of what generative artificial intelligence is.
■ Axios Chicago surveys experiments by local restaurants—including one in Oak Park—to use robots and other tech to compensate for labor shortages.
… and those 47 include Chicago Public Square.