Random News: July 16, 2022

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s July 16, 2022, and it’s a Saturday. Weekend thought cavalcade ahead…

• A moment of silence for Shooters Grill, the gun fetish restaurant owned by congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO). Her landlord refused to renew the lease, and now Coloradans have nowhere else to go where all the waitresses in daisy dukes are open-carrying and locked and loaded.
• Just kidding, fuck her.
• Here’s a thought question for you.
• How many of your actions in life are based on the idea of a merit-based afterlife scenario?
• For example, a person like me, who doesn’t believe there’s anything at all beyond this life, with no heaven, and no hell… my sense of ethical behavior is entirely focused on my worldview that being a decent person makes life better for myself and everyone around me.
• I don’t do it because I think I will be rewarded. In fact, heh heh, it’s often the opposite. No good deed goes unpunished, as the cynical phrase says.
• There are people who claim that as an atheist, I can sin as much as I want. Rape and murder as often as I choose. And that is true. I do rape and murder as often as I choose, which is not at all.
• There are great aspects of religion. There really are. In its purest sense, it gives people a sense of community, and puts together a set of guidelines for behavior which are generally for the common good.
• It also organizes altruistic action that doesn’t come naturally for some folks. There’s a benefit there.
• But — purely from a logical, emotionless, philosophical standpoint — if I don’t think I get any eternal reward for being a good person but do it anyway, aren’t I in some aspect a more ethical person that one who does it purely because they’re afraid to go to hell if they don’t?
• I don’t know the answer. All of us who are alive can’t know.
• It’s probably a good thing, religion. As bad as so many people are, how much worse would it be if they didn’t have any external factor controlling their behavior?
• Pretty bad.
• Side note: I’m perfectly fine with you and your religion, and this isn’t an invitation to debate or be defend your views as such. I’m 100% cool with your identity as a Christian or Jew or Muslim or Buddhist or Zoroastrian or Hindu or Sikh or Pagan or any other religion or mythology. I am part of the world’s third largest religion, which is total lack thereof, and my view is no more valid than anyone’s. Do what you enjoy and feel is right.
• President Biden, after fist-bumping MBS, apparently did confront him over Kashoggi’s murder, and MBS responded about US atrocities at Abu Ghraib. Touché, MBS.
• Climate change legislation is fucked again. Everyone is mad at Joe Manchin, and everyone should always be mad at Joe Manchin. But also, maybe also be mad at literally every Republican in Congress who have always blocked any legislation that stops humanity from dying out in the next few generations.
• Last night, the January 6 Select Committee subpoenaed that Secret Service for the texts they erased on January 5/6.
• This shit is so intricate, I can’t possibly explain it in a bullet point or two. The Secret Service is under the Department of Homeland Security, which is under Biden.
• But — without going into paranoid crazy town — there exists the distinct possibility that within organizations like the Secret Service, FBI, and others, that some Trump loyalists are still working behind the scenes to try and complete the coup they started in January 2021.
• The call is coming from inside the house. Eek.
• So we’ll see how that goes. Either way, unless they win and start erasing history, our grandkids’ grandkids will still be hearing about this fun little era in American history.
• In the good news folder, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline now has a three-digit number: 988. It’s up and running, and they accept calls or texts.
• In women’s health rights news, the horrific assholes at the National Right to Life Committee are lobbying for legislation to make it a crime to advertise information about abortion pills or other methods of ending a pregnancy on social media.
• Wait until they get a load of me!
• I will happily give every person as many resources as I can for information on safe abortions. if you need some help, just call my name. You got a friend.
• Europe has a massive heatwave going. Most of Europe, especially in the northern parts, are not at all acclimated to temps above 38C/100F. Their infrastructure is also not designed to handle it. Down south, they’re having raging fires in Spain, Portugal, and France.
• As climate change progresses, this will get worse every year. We now just have to find ways to stay alive while we can.
• QotD: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” - Philip K. Dick
• Today in history… the beginning of the Islamic calendar (622). King Richard II is crowned (1377). Jacques Cartier returns home after claiming a bunch of now-Canada for France (1536). Father Junipero Serra founds California’s first mission, which becomes San Diego, CA (1769). The District of Columbia is named the capital of the USA (1790). The world’s first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, OK (1935). Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in 56 consecutive games, a record that still stands today (1941). The USA gets the Atomic Age rolling by detonating a plutonium-based nuclear bomb in New Mexico (1945). J.D. Salinger publishes ‘Catcher in the Rye’ (1951). Saddam Hussein becomes the president of Iraq (1979). Comet Shoemaker-Levy crashes into Jupiter (1994). John F. Kennedy Jr. and several others die in a plane crash (1999). 
• July 16 is the birthday of religious leader Margaret Baker Eddy (1821), activist and NAACP co-founder Ida B. Wells (1862), baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson (1887), actress Barbara Stanwyck (1907), actress/dancer Ginger Rogers (1911), football coach Jimmy Johnson (1943), musician Rubén Blades (1948), musician Pinchas Zukerman (1948), actress Phoebe Cates (1963), actor and incredibly funny person Will Ferrell (1967), and NFL great Barry Sanders (1968).

I don’t really have any plans today. I’m still in a bathrobe at 11am. Doing nothing is highly underrated. That being said, I’m terrible at it, so I’ll be likely working on some music after I eventually shower and put on clothes like an adult human. I’ve been given a mission by my bandmates to record a demo of a new song idea, so maybe that’s my day today. Enjoy yours.