Random News: October 28, 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 28, 2022, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! Here are some various Friday thoughts of the Friday variety…

• Shell has reported profits of $9.5B for Q3 2022 compared to $4.1B for Q3 2021. They more than DOUBLED their profits. Not their revenue. Their PROFITS.
• Every single Republican voted against a bill to crack down on gas price gouging.
• The high prices you’re paying across the board aren’t from inflation. They aren’t from labor shortages. They are 100% from corporate greed.
• Meet Albuquerque Head. Yes, that’s his name.
• He pulled former Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone into the crowd of violent rioters on January 6, 2021, yelling “I got one!”.
• Fanone was choked, beaten, and tased by the crowd of MAGA terrorists, and suffered a heart attack in the process.
• Head was sentenced Thursday to 90 months (aka seven years, six months) behind bars. 
• I hope his time in there is as bad as it gets.
• The election is in 11 days. I can’t possibly emphasize enough how important it is.
• If Republicans win both the House and Senate, nothing beyond Biden’s veto is stopping them from making abortion illegal nationwide. From making women be forced to have the government involved in their reproductive decision. From canceling Social Security and Medicare. From nullifying same-sex marriages. From enacting draconian laws aimed to harm gay and trans people. From making contraception illegal even for married couples. From ending support to US allies like Ukraine.
• All votes matter in all states at all levels.
• That being said, if you live in a state where things could easily go either way, I implore you to vote, for yourself and for future generations.
• For House, Senate, and Governor races, the most crucial and unpredictable of these states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Others include Kansas, New Hampshire, Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.
• I’m actually going to note some states that could surprise people in both good and bad ways where voting is equally essential: Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Utah.
• I am actually hopeful… much more than I thought I would be last spring when the pundits were saying it was a foregone confusion that the GOP would easily take all of the above.
• No longer.
• Vote however you can, wherever you are.
• Thank you.
• As of yesterday afternoon, more than 15,568,000 early votes have now been cast. That’s very, very good. Let’s keep it rolling.
• Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of House speaker Nancy Pelosi, was violently attacked in a home invasion crime last night. He was assaulted with a hammer.
• Amazing, that tough old guy is expected to make a full recovery. The assailant is in custody. I’m very interested to find out who he is and what his motives were.
• Huge rise in respiratory virus illnesses in school kids recently. Big surge in highly-contagious RSV, earlier-than-usual seasonal flu, and a lot of common colds hitting schools across the country.
• And yeah, COVID-19 is still mutating and there’s an expected surge of that as well as we get into the colder months.
• I’m getting the newer bivalent vaccine very soon. I’m not fucking with that shit. I never got it, and hopefully I never will.
• And now, The Weather: “Grand Canyon” by The Ophelias
• Elongated Muskrat now officially owns Twitter. He immediately fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust, and safety, the woman who made the call to suspend Donald Trump permanently.
• He very well may reinstate Trump, possibly by the time you’ve read this bullet.
• I really, truly don’t care one bit.
• According to Bloomberg, my state of California is poised to overtake Germany as the world’s 4th largest economy.
• To be clear, that means that competing against the GDP of all other countries in the world, the rank will now be in the following order: United States (including CA), China, Japan, California (on its own), Germany, India, UK, France, Brazil, Italy, and Canada.
• Assisting this is California’s current fastest-growing business, renewable energy.
• The House Ways and Means Committee will receive Trump’s IRS tax returns in one week after a federal appeals court declined Trump’s request to hold up the release yesterday.
• Ha ha.
• He’s almost certainly going to appeal to his pals on the Supreme Court.
• Today in history… Beijing is officially designated the capital of the Ming dynasty when the Forbidden City is completed (1420). Christopher Columbus lands in Cuba on his first voyage to the New World, surmising that it is Japan (1492). Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Pacific Ocean (1520). The Massachusetts Bay Colony votes to establish a theological college, which would later become Harvard University (1636). Jonathan Swift’s novel 'Gulliver's Travels’ is published (1726). US president Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty (1886). The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January (1919). Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government (1922). The Cuban Missile Crisis ends and Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba (1962). US President Barack Obama signs the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009). 
• October 28 is the birthday of philosopher Erasmus (1466), businessman Eliphalet Remington (1793), costume designer Edith Head (1897), author Evelyn Waugh (1903), biologist Jonas Salk (1914), actor Jack Soo (1917), businessman Bowie Kuhn (1926), musician Graham Bond (1937), NBA player/coach Lenny Wilkins (1937), guitarist Hank Marvin (1941), actor Dennie Franz (1944), athlete Caitlyn Jenner (1949), actress Annie Potts (1952), businessman/philanthropist Bill Gates (1955), drummer Stephen Morris (1957), actress Jami Gertz (1965), NFL player Steve Atwater (1966), TV host Andy Richter (1966), musician Ben Harper (1969), musician Brad Paisley (1972), and singer/rapper Frank Ocean (1987). 

Okay, so, I’m going to try and stay positive today. Fridays are rough, work-wise, and I’ve found I’ve started to develop a bit of Friday Fear, a mild kind of anxiety that comes from anticipating some metaphorical bomb of work projects that get dropped on me. But whatever happens today happens, and I’ll deal with it accordingly. All in all, I am so extraordinarily lucky and have a great life. I know that. Enjoy your day.