Random News: September 25, 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 September 25, 2022 and it’s a Sunday. Not sure what to talk about today, though I’m sure I’ll figure it out…

• Um… or not.
• You may have noticed, while I’ll talk about updates on ongoing world events and other news items, I don’t sit here and rehash the same stories over and over.
• If I’ve talked about it before and there haven’t been significant updates, I tend to not mention it again, even if (like most issues in life) it remains unresolved.
• I genuinely can’t stand most media sources in that regard. I often feel I’m getting the same stories over and over while there are plenty of other things being underreported or ignored entirely.
• Anyway.
• Everyone on Twitter is mad at Roger Waters today. “Oh, I thought he hated Trump but now he loves Putin, cancel him, wahhhhhhh…”
• Let me tell you something about Roger Waters: he is a great musician, he is a unique and amazing songwriter, and he is a legendary prick. He is a very outspoken person in regard to politics and world events, and if you expect to agree with Roger all the time on all issues, you’ve chosen the wrong hero.
• Floridians are being told to prepare for tropical storm Ian, which will likely be a hurricane shortly. The thing about people in Florida who’ve been there more than five minutes is that having hurricanes in late summer/early fall is as odd to them as the rest of us having Thanksgiving in November.
• They know what to do. They have extra supplies and an evacuation plan if necessary.
• Speaking of things that keep happening, there were shootings at a theme park, a high school homecoming football game, a pool hall, and a Chuck E. Cheese in the past 24 hours. I’m sure there were more. Those were just the ones I saw in a few random scrolls down the ol’ bad news pages.
• In other news that won’t be surprising, a huge has ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay his third ex-wife the $225,000 he owes her or face jail time.
• Here’s some actual helpful info though. The kirpan is a religious symbol carried by devout Sikhs. It is a curved, single-edged dagger and is worn at all times.
• On Thursday, a Sikh student at UNC Charlotte was detained and put into cuffs because someone reported him for “having a knife”. 
• Well of course he had a fucking knife. He’s a Sikh, and gaining just a tiny amount of cultural awareness would have prevented that entire episode.
• File this away in your memory banks: Sikhs have "Five K’s” with them at all times: Kesh (uncut hair), Kara (a steel bracelet), Kanga (a wooden comb), Kaccha (cotton underwear), and Kirpan (steel sword).
• The school apologized. The More You Know…™
• Italy is having their election today. 
• It’s likely that an ultra-conservative woman named Giorgia Meloni is likely to become Italy's first female prime minister. Her party is openly fascist and would be similar to someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene being elected president.
• Her campaign was themed on "God, country and family,” and focuses on anti-immigration policies and weakening LGBTQ and abortion rights.
• Sound familiar?
• France and Sweden also have far-right political movements — some with Neo-Nazi roots — affecting their political landscapes.
• I wish people weren’t so stupid. I do.
• From the Sports Desk… the Sports Desk is watching Sunday football games and being super disappointed thus far at his Las Vegas Raiders. Nothing more to add for now.
• A bit of local news. Scientists at Harvard have reassessed the Palos Verdes fault zone, which runs about 70 miles under the western parts of LA County, practically directly under me here in lovely Redondo Beach.
• Their new prediction is that it’s capable of producing a quake of 7.8 magnitude, which is about 45 times as strong as the devastating 1994 Northridge quake.
• It would take out LA and Long Beach harbors as well as LAX. All homes in my area would be flattened rubble that would be swallowed by the earth due to the liquefaction phenomenon. Most of the greater Los Angeles area would be destroyed in varying degrees.
• The good news is that they feel this fault will only create that size of quake every 5,000 year or so. So, it could be tomorrow or a thousand years from now.
• That’s fine. Everything is fine.
• And now, The Weather: “Places/Plans” by Skullcrusher.
• Today in history… the last Roman emperor elected by the Senate is Marcus Claudius Tacitus (275). England and Scotland sign the Treaty of York, establishing the location of their common border (1237). Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaches what would become known as the Pacific Ocean (1513). The United States Congress passes twelve constitutional amendments: the ten known as the Bill of Rights, the unratified Congressional Apportionment Amendment, and the Congressional Compensation Amendment (1789). Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is founded in New York City (1912). TAT-1, the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system, is inaugurated (1956). Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is integrated by the use of United States Army troops (1957). Dr. Frank Jobe performs first Tommy John surgery on baseball player Tommy John (1974). Bill Cosby is sentenced to three to ten years in prison for aggravated sexual assault (2018).
• September 25 is the birthday of novelist William Faulkner (1897), artist Mark Rothko (1903), pianist/composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906), baseball player/sportscaster Phil Rizzuto (1917), journalist Barbara Walters (1929), author/illustrator Shel Silverstein (1930), pianist Glenn Gould (1932), actor Michael Douglas (1944), model/actress Cheryl Tiegs (1947), actor Mark Hamill (1951), basketball player Bob McAdoo (1951), actor Christopher Reeve (1952), actor Michael Madsen (1957), actress Heather Locklear (1961), actress Aida Turturro (1962), basketball player Scottie Pippin (1965), rapper/actor Will Smith (1968), journalist Bill Simmons (1969), actor Hal Sparks (1969), actress Catherine Zeta-Jones (1969), and actor/rapper Donald Glover (1983).

Okay, well, I’m going to do Sunday things on this fine Sunday. It really is fine here; sunny and 72ºF. I mean, what more could one want? I kinda want a bagel, so I’m gonna go handle that and you enjoy your day.