‘Does Donald Trump want to go to jail?’ If he doesn’t, The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes asks, “why has he spent the last few days baiting, insulting and threatening the judge, the jury pool and potential witnesses?”
■ Columnist and ex-U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance speculates that Trump is indeed trying to push Judge Tanya Chutkan into putting him in custody.
■ Media critic Margaret Sullivan: “Televise the trial!”
‘If Reynolds really believes that Anheuser-Busch … is a malign force seeking to undermine American values, it’s unclear why an organization she controls would accept Anheuser-Busch’s money.’ Popular Information calls out Iowa’s governor and other Republicans who’ve been publicly bashing Bud Light for its alliance with a trans influencer —while quietly pocketing donations from its corporate parent.
■ USA Today columnist Rex Huppke on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ assertion that “the left” has it out for him: “Sometimes politicians are ridiculed simply because they stink.”
■ The Onion: “DeSantis Bans AP Psychology Out Of Fear People Will Figure Out What’s Wrong With Him.”
‘What I can’t say anymore.’ Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg chafes at restrictions on political commentary imposed by the paper’s new ownership, the 501(c)3 charity Chicago Public Media.
■ A Sun-Times editorial from February: “Why we are not endorsing.”
Gov. Geek. The Sun-Times: “It is not an overstatement to say that Gov. JB Pritzker is enamored with quantum computing, which he sees as a key to making Illinois the next Silicon Valley.
■ A Sun-Times editorial: As Congress dawdles, Illinois lawmakers should step up to guard against the abuses of artificial intelligence—like the impersonation of people, the creation of political propaganda and the amplification of government surveillance.
■ Hasbro, owner of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise, is forbidding its illustrators from using AI for commissioned art.
■ A cinema scholar explains actors’ and writers’ concerns about AI’s role in entertainment.
■ At The Nib, cartoonist Gemma Correll sees AI as inspiration for one of a series of Barbie-like movies—including these:
■ A Penn State neuroethics professor: Tech that interacts directly with the brain is blurring the lines around mental privacy.
COVID comeback. The coronavirus has been sneaking up on a growing number of Chicago-area residents.
■ Count Chicago’s among big-city downtowns struggling to recover post-pandemic activity.
■ Block Club introduces you to a family that’s visited 364 (and counting) of Chicago’s more than 600 parks.
If they didn’t die, it’s not electrocution. Despite the headlines on a number of Chicago news websites over the weekend, two people who were hurt in a stunt on the CTA tracks at the Ridgeland station on the Green Line were not electrocuted.
■ The -cution part comes from execution.
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