Random News: October 7, 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 7, 2022, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! Here’s a smattering of things I’ve noticed…

• Here’s some long-overdue very good news!
• President Biden is pardoning all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession, which could affect thousands of Americans.
• He’s also calling on governors to pardon simple state marijuana possession offenses. No one should be in jail at any level in any place in the USA for using weed. 
• President Biden is also beginning the process of reclassifying weed away from being a dangerous drug on the level of heroin or meth or fentanyl.
• Hell yes. Smart move, Mr. President.
• Imprisonment for minor drug offenses is highly tilted toward non-white people.
• The “war on drugs” has produced profoundly unequal outcomes across racial groups, manifested through racial discrimination by law enforcement and disproportionate drug war misery suffered by communities of color.
• Nearly half (46%) of all people in state prisons are there for nonviolent drug, property or public order crimes, including 50% of federal prison inmates. Almost two million Americans are in prison right now.
• The USA has just over 4% of the world’s population, but over 24% of the world’s incarcerated people.
• “Dank Brandon is putting the pot in POTUS.” - Tristan Snell
• Moving on.
• Remember how Elon Musk was going to buy Twitter, and then spent months trying to back out from buying Twitter, only to suddenly announce this week that is going to, after all, buy Twitter in advance of a looming court deadline?
• Word on the street is that his investors he’d supposedly formed an agreement to purchase the platform now have cold feet. 
• All they have to do to avoid the trial (which got pushed back to October 28)  and seal the deal is write a check for $44 billion or so. They say they’ll do this before October 10. Stand by.
• I don’t think I’ve ever really mentioned what election days are like here in my household.
• It’s sort of like the Super Bowl, minus the guacamole and with the addition of stress in that what happens actually affects our lives, unlike a football game.
• Anyway, Kat and I start monitoring poll returns as soon as they start coming in, usually in the late afternoon/evening here on the West Coast. We’ll both have our respective preferred websites and news channels open, intently looking at maps of the USA subdivided down to the congressional district level.
• I generally know a lot of the races, though at that tiniest level (“Hey look, Zabby McDoo is ahead by 132 votes in AZ-14!”) I’m not always 100% aware of each and every candidate.
• I don’t stay up super late watching election returns (though Kat does). I figure whatever happens, I can be happy or sad about it when I wake up the next day. But I do follow a ton of races, usually with multiple browser tabs open and some pundit droning in the background via YouTube.
• And now, The Weather: “Sunshowers” by Andrew Goldring.
• Some recent polls. I’m here to tell you… it’s even MORE important that you Dems in red states kick ass.
• Georgia Governor: Kemp (R-inc) 47% (+2), Abrams (D) 45% (Survey USA)
• Georgia Senate: Warnock (D-inc) 47% (+3), Walker (R) 44% (Insider)
• Arizona Senate: Mark Kelly (D-inc) 51% (+6), Blake Masters (R) 45% (CNN)
• Arizona Governor: Katie Hobbs (D) 49% (+3), Kari Lake (R) 46% (CNN)
• Nevada Senate: Adam Laxalt (R) 48% (+2), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-inc) 46% (CNN)
• Nevada Governor: Joe Lombardo (R) 48% (+2), Steve Sisolak (D-inc) 46% (CNN)
• New Mexico Governor: Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-Inc) 46% (+2), Mark Ronchetti (R) 44% (Cygnal)
• If you vote, we win. That’s all there is to it.
• From the Sports Desk… the Sports Desk didn’t watch the whole Thursday night NFL game between the Denver Broncos and Indianapolis Colts, but in monitoring the scoring, it seems to have been one of, if not the worst professional football game of all time.
• In regulation time, neither team managed to score a touchdown (the score was 9-9, with three field goals each), and I believe both Matt Ryan and Russell Wilson threw two interceptions each. The Colts managed to get yet another field goal in OT for the win.
• Oh shit, the Sports Desk is right… “According to Elias Sports Bureau research, the seven combined field goals in a game in which both teams scored only by way of field goal is an NFL record.”
• All bananas are clones. It’s true.
• Also, all bananas are slightly radioactive. Bananas have naturally high-levels of potassium, and a small fraction of all potassium is radioactive (like potassium-40). Each banana can emit .01 millirem of radiation.
• It’s a very small amount, but it allows scientists to frame radiation exposure as an educational exercise in a way that people can understand. It’s called the Banana Equivalent Dose, or BED (I’m serious). It’s so small that it’s only 1% of the amount of radiation you get exposed to daily.
• Comparison: a chest CT scan delivers 70,000 BED. If you lived 10 miles from Three Mile Island, you were getting about 800 BED per day on average. A lethal dose of radiation is approximately 35,000,000 BED.
• The effect is not cumulative, so don’t worry about your daily banana. I don’t.
• Today in history… The epoch reference date origin of the modern Hebrew calendar (3761 BC). The charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay is issued (1691). King George III issues the Royal Proclamation of 1763, closing Indigenous lands in North America north and west of the Alleghenies to white settlements (1763). American militia defeat royalist irregulars led by British major Patrick Ferguson in South Carolina (1780). Cornell University holds opening day ceremonies; initial student enrollment is 412, the highest at any American university to that date (1868). Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving vehicle assembly line (1913). Georgia Tech defeats Cumberland University 222–0 in the most lopsided college football game in American history (1916). The McCollum memo proposes bringing the United States into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States (1940). The U.S. manned space-flight project is renamed Project Mercury (1958). Four men from the Palestine Liberation Front hijack the MS Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt (1985). Fox News Channel begins broadcasting (1996). Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, is found tied to a fence after being savagely beaten by two young adults in Laramie, Wyoming (1998). The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan begins with an air assault and covert operations on the ground (2001). 
• October 7 is the birthday of writer John Marston (1576), composer William Billings (1746), musician/comedian Uncle Dave Macon (1870), activist Joe Hill (1879), physicist and amazing genius Neils Bohr (1885), religious leader Elijah Muhammad (1897), evil Nazi piece of shit Heinrich Himmler (1900), actress June Allyson (1917), archbishop/activist Desmond Tutu (1931), TV host Joy Behar (1942), USMC colonel and war criminal Oliver North (1943), musician Kevin Godley (1945), musician John Mellencamp (1951), politician Vladimir Putin (1952), musician Yo-Yo Ma (1955), audio engineer/producer Mike Shipley (1956), TV host Simon Cowell (1959), singer Toni Braxton (1967), musician Thom Yorke (1968), NFL great Charles Woodson (1976), musician Lockett Pundt (1982), and baseball player Mookie Betts (1992). 

Things I have to look forward to with it being Friday: at least three of my retainer clients remembering some urgent thing that needs to be done before the weekend, sushi for lunch, and fighting the feeling of falling asleep at about 3PM. Enjoy your day!