Random News: October 18, 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 October 18, 2022, and it’s a Tuesday. Here’s whatever points of interest I can scrape together while doing about a thousand other things…

• As I mentioned over the weekend, we voted for the upcoming 2022 National Election on Saturday by dropping off our ballots at an authorized dropbox.
• Yesterday in the early afternoon, less than 48 hours after dropping off our votes, I got the following email…
• “This is a message from the California Secretary of State on behalf of Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters. Your ballot for the November 8, 2022, General Election was received and counted. Thank you for voting!”
• It should be that easy for every single person in the USA. If we can do it in California, the nation’s most populous state, your state can do it too if they want.
• I hear terrible stories of people not being allowed to get ballots, of being dropped from voter rolls, of people needing multiple confirmation signatures to validate their vote, of little or no early voting, and of course of long lines in hard-to-access places on election day.
• WHY?
• You already know why. It’s in certain factions’ best interests to make it as hard as possible for you to take advantage of the one power you have as a US citizen.
• Fuck them. Vote however you can.
• The election is three weeks from today.
• On this coming Friday, human ball of dirty congealed pork grease Steve Bannon will be sentenced for defying a a subpoena to testify before the January 6 House Select Committee.
• The contempt of Congress charges are for one count for failing to appear for a deposition and another for refusing to hand over documents. He was found guilty on July 22.
• The DoJ is recommending him to be sentenced to six months in jail and pay a $200,000 fine.
• He will still face other charges for fraud in a separate case. His trial date for defrauding MAGA people with his fake “Build The Wall” scheme isn’t until November 2023.
• And now, The Weather: “Gretel” by Alex G.
• Yesterday, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a letter to the Secret Service to get a full accounting of the spending at Trump-owned properties during FPOTUS’s presidency. 
• Apparently, Trump was charging our Secret Service up to $1,185 per room, per night. This is miles above the government per diem rates.
• We pay for that, you know. The taxpayers pay for that.
• It happened at least 40 times between January 20, 2017 and September 15, 2021. Trump charged the USA more than $1.4 million in Secret Service rooms at his shitty hotels.
• From the Sports Desk… we still don’t know who’s playing in the ALCS. Rain delayed the Yankees/Guardians game last night, so we’ll know today who’s facing the Astros.
• In other Sports Desk news, the Denver Broncos were up 10-0 after the first quarter of last night’s Monday Night Football game, and still managed to lose to the Los Angeles Chargers 19-16 via a flurry of field goals. With a third of the season done, there is still one very unexpectedly undefeated team in the NFL: the Philadelphia Eagles are at 6-0.
• Sheep may go to heaven and goats may go to hell, but according to a news report out of Glacier National Park in Montana, it’s the goats who are winning the battle to access natural salt licks.
• “We were surprised that mountain goats won,” said Joel Berger, a professor at Colorado State University.
• The study concluded that the goats get greater access to the salt compared to the sheep because they are meaner. Anyone who’s ever been around a goat could have told you that.
• Today in history… King Chlothar II promulgates the Edict of Paris that defends the rights of the Frankish nobles while it excludes Jews from all civil employment in the Frankish Kingdom (614). African-American poet Phillis Wheatley is freed from slavery (1775). Herman Melville's ‘Moby-Dick’ is first published as ‘The Whale’ (1851). United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million (1867). The United States takes possession of Puerto Rico from Spain (1898). The British Broadcasting Company is founded by a consortium to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters (1922). Argentine military officer and politician Juan Perón marries actress Eva Duarte (1945). Texas Instruments announces the first transistor radio (1954). NASA Astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch take part in the first all-female spacewalk when they venture out of the International Space Station to replace a power controller (2019).
• October 18 is the birthday of poet Lady Mary Wroth (1587), painter Luca Giordano (1634), composer Baldassare Galuppi (1706), painter James Brooks (1906), Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau (1919), singer-songwriter Jessie Mae Hemphill (1923), musician Chuck Berry (1926), actor George C. Scott (1927), actor Peter Boyle (1935), actress Dawn Wells (1938), NFL player/coach Mike Ditka (1939), assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (1939), songwriter Cynthia Weil (1940), TV host Huell Howser (1945), composer Howard Shore (1946), singer-songwriter Laura Nyro (1947), tennis great Martina Navratilova (1956), actress Erin Moran (1960), musician Wynton Marsalis (1961), sportscaster Rachel Nichols (1973), skier Lindsey Vonn (1984), MLB player Yoenis Céspedes (1985), and WNBA player Britney Griner (1990).

Well, my Tuesdays are pretty busy, wedging a grocery store run in between meetings and work deliverables. I’m not going to worry about things; I’m just going to do things until I have less things to worry about. One thing I say that tends to always be true: bad shit will happen and good shit will happen, and they happen to everyone, and the only difference between a sad person and a happy person (other than certain aspects of brain chemistry) is the ability to recognize and appreciate the good times. Enjoy your day.