Random News: December 10, 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 December 10, 2022, and it’s a Saturday. I’m actually dressed in human clothing and have a bunch of stuff to do today, so let’s see what’s been happening…

• Some sad and suspicious news to start.
• American sports journalist Grant Wahl died after collapsing at Qatar World Cup yesterday. He was 48 years old and had previously been in good health.
• Wahl had covered soccer for more than two decades, including 11 World Cups — six men’s, five women’s.
• As you may recall from a couple of weeks ago, Wahl was the guy who was detained and briefly refused entry to a World Cup match because he was wearing a rainbow t-shirt in support of LGBTQ rights.
• In the “everyone loses” file, hundreds of thousands of undergraduate students at the University of California face a chaotic finish to their fall term as a strike by academic workers grinds through its fourth week.
• With the strike involving some 48,000 employees, there’s a huge disruption for finals testing and class grading… which shows how important these workers are and how they should get better compensation.
• But if you’re a student, even one who supports the strike, it means a possible major roadblock toward keeping your academic career on schedule.
• Any of us who went to college and/or have kids in college know that fit’s hard enough to register for classes tat fill up quickly and have prerequisites. 
• Moving on.
• Yesterday, I mentioned the lawmakers who unsuccessfully voted against the Respect for Marriage Act. One of them was Vicky Hartzler, R-MO. She was the one who literally cried while speaking in Congress, saying how same-sex marriage and interracial marriage would be a threat to her Christianity.
• Her nephew, 23-year-old Andrew Hartzler, wasn’t very surprised… because he’s gay. He made a video to his aunt, saying how religious institutions aren’t being persecuted, and highlighting how Christian schools receive federal funding despite discriminating against LGBTQ students.
• “It's more like you want the power to force your religious beliefs onto everyone else, and because you don't have that power, you feel like you're being silenced. But you're not. You're just gonna have to learn to coexist with all of us. And I'm sure it's not that hard.”
• Well said.
• And now, The Weather: “Blessing” by Alex G
• Here’s a weird-ass story.
• In November, a girls’ basketball team was in a locker room in Lubbock, TX, and saw a device that they bought was a phone charger.
• It wasn’t. It was a video recording device, and security footage showed Seagraves ISD Superintendent Joshua Neil Goen, 43, putting it in the locker room. He was arrested on Thursday.
• He bonded out of jail, went home, and shot himself. Probably the best plan under the circumstances. I don’t think they respect pedophiles in Texas prisons.
• In January 6 news, Nicholas Ochs, founder of the Hawaii Proud Boys chapter, and Nicholas DeCarlo, 32, a Fort Worth, Texas, man who was with Ochs at the U.S. Capitol, were each sentenced yesterday to four years in prison for their roles in the failed coup attempt.
• No matter how long it takes, every single person who was involved in the insurrection will be found, tried, and punished.
• Here’s something that most of us can relate to.
• Maxwell Frost made history last month at age 25 as the first member of Gen Z to be elected to the U.S. Congress.  
• So, he had to find a place to live in DC.
• “Just applied to an apartment in DC where I told the guy that my credit was really bad. He said I’d be fine. Got denied, lost the apartment, and the application fee. This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money,” Frost tweeted.
• The guy ran up debt running for Congress without already being rich, so his credit at age 25 isn’t optimal. I can tell you, neither was mine at that age. He’d been an Uber driver previously.
• When they tell you that “anyone” can be a leader in this country, there are a lot of caveats they leave out.
• The CDC is recommending mask use in large metropolitan areas including LA County (CA), Maricopa County (AZ), Queens County (NY), and others.
• It’s not just to fight the current COVID surge. Flu and RSV are both raging as well.
• Of course, politically, mask mandates are a nightmare now so I suspect people will be on their own to mask up or not. I’ll point out again… I have never stopped masking in public, and I haven’t gotten any kind of virus since late 2019 before all this shit started.
• Finally, I’d like to point out that Americans aren’t the only people who are stupid and gullible enough to destroy their own lives via conspiracy theories.
• Dozens of people were detained by German police this week over allegations that a QAnon-inspired fringe group planned to overthrow the government and install a new national leader in a violent coup.
• As of Friday, 25 people had been arrested, most of whom are believed to belong to the “Reichsbürger” (Citizens of the Reich) — a far-right group that rejects the postwar democratically elected German government and advocates for the reestablishment of the German Empire.
• Sound familiar?
• We live in a fully interconnected world at this point. Things I write here are not at all limited to my geographical location. Hopefully I can share info that inspires people to not be an asshole. Others are on the opposite side of that philosophy.
• Don’t be an asshole.
• Today in history… Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham are executed for having affairs with Catherine Howard, Queen of England and wife of Henry VIII (1541). Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley (1684). The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published (1768). Mississippi becomes the 20th U.S. state (1817). Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's Union Army troops reach the outer Confederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia (1864). Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize in any field (1906). Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved "300 million yen robbery", is carried out in Tokyo (1968). 
• December 10 is the birthday of mathematician/computer scientist Ada Lovelace (1815), poet Emily Dickinson (1830), economist/academic Elizabeth Baker (1885), dancer/choreographer Hermes Pan (1909), composer Alexander Courage (1919), NBA referee Dick Bavetta (1939), actress Susan Dey (1952), producer Paul Hardcastle (1957), actor/producer Kenneth Branagh (1960), NHL player/executive Rob Blake (1969), drummer Meg White (1974), and NFL player Joe Burrow (1996).

Today’s plan for me includes the annual procurement of the large plant that will sit in the living room and get decorated. I’m also going to be trying to wrap up my annual “best-of” music report. I’ve done this for a good number of years, and looking back, my recommendations do hold up very well. This year’s list will be called “22 for 2022”. If I can get it nailed down (it takes a whole lot of research and formatting), I’ll be posting it later today or tomorrow. Enjoy your day.