Random News: December 14, 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 14, 2022, and it’s a Wednesday. No time to dilly-dally; let’s go…

• History was made yesterday with the announcement of a new nuclear fusion technique that produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy they used to power the experiment.
• Don’t get mad, but I’m going to explain what this is because I don’t automatically assume that everyone knows what this means. 
• What you think of as “nuclear energy” is based on fission; that is, the energy released when an atom is split up. It’s how both nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants work.
• Fusion is a whole different thing. It’s what the sun and every star in the universe uses to generate power. Nuclear fusion happens when two or more atoms are fused into one larger one, a process that generates a massive amount of energy as heat.
• The sun does this by fusing hydrogen atoms into helium.
• The heat by-product can then be used like any other power generator, which is to heat water and make steam which turns turbines, which subsequently generates electricity.
• In theory, fusion is clean, limitless energy.
• This experiment was done by a team of scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in California on December 5.
• The experiment put in 2.05 megajoules of energy to the target and resulted in 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output – generating more than 50% more energy than was put in.
• That’s amazing. When can start using fusion energy to toast our bread and power our cars? Not for a good long while. Decades, likely. But it was only 15 years from when nuclear fission was discovered to when they built the first nuclear power plants in the USA.
• Pretty neat. I hope I’m alive when feasible, sustainable fusion energy happens.
• Let’s talk about TikTok. Its days might be coming to an end in the USA.
• A group of lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation yesterday that would ban the app in this country, following warnings from the FBI director and cybersecurity experts who have said China could use the social media platform for spying.
• It’s a bi-partisan bill sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), with a companion measure introduced in the House by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL).
• The lawmakers said the bill aims to protect Americans from foreign adversaries who might use certain social media to surveil Americans, learn sensitive data about them, and spread influence campaigns or propaganda.
• I have mixed feelings. Obviously if these warnings are accurate, we don’t want our people — especially the youth crowd with whom TikTok is popular — to become victims of foreign misinformation and propaganda, or to be spied on.
• And yet, it seems to me that all forms of social media are frightening to US lawmakers who want to control the spread of their own misinformation and propaganda and spying, and remove routes of direct communication between groups of people.
• I mean, look at what’s happening to Twitter.
• Sigh.
• COVID is blowing the fuck up in China once again. Beijing in particular is pretty devastated.
• Everyone wants it both ways. Free to go everywhere and interact with everyone, and then get mad at someone else when they get sick.
• It seems like we’re going to avoid a government shutdown as well as a bunch of messy stopgap budget measures.
• Last night Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), who lead the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), who chairs the House panel, announced the framework for a bipartisan omnibus spending bill.
• It’s not a done deal yet. There are shenanigans with the House Republicans, who want to hold the budget hostage until January when they gain leverage.
• Hopefully it goes through. Honestly, we should have the right to fire our entire-ass government if they can’t accomplish the one thing we hire them to do, which is to allocate our money appropriately. It’s that way in other countries.
• And now, The Weather: “7 of Cups” by Wombo
• With their functional 51st seat, the Senate Democrats now have subpoena power, and apparently they intend to use it.
• Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had this to say… “We’re talking about incredible greed in the pharmaceutical industry, very high prices. We’re paying the highest prices in the world for healthcare, we’re talking about union busting. I think those are issues the American people want us to look at,” he said.
• Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the chair of the Finance Committee, and outgoing House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) are asking for records related to Trump-son-in-law Jared Kushner’s family business.
• Good luck to the greed heads. They’re gonna need it.
• Oregon governor Kate Brown has commuted the sentences of all 17 death row inmates in her state, changing their punishment to life in prison.
• I do not believe the state is morally authorized to take the lives of people. I find it barbaric, and I find the possibility of even one innocent person being put to death by mistake is worth 1000 guilty people of receiving leniency.
• Life in prison is punishment enough.
• I have some sad news about our local celebrity mountain lion, P-22. He was captured after some incidents involving attacks on pets. It seems that he’d suffered an injury, possibly having been hit by a car at some point.
• He’s receiving top care but will not be returned to the wild. He is underweight and in poor shape overall. I’m very sad to hear this. He is elderly and if he is suffering, will likely be euthanized.
• In better news, US inflation has slowed drastically. Even though consumer prices on things like groceries remain unacceptably high due to corporate greed, November was down from 7.7 percent in October and a recent peak of 9.1 percent in June. It was the fifth straight slowdown.
• In shitty news, Stephen “tWitch” Boss, the well-liked DJ for “Ellen DeGeneres Show”, has died at age 40. No cause of death was provided but rumor has that it was suicide.
• Remember: you don’t always know what’s going on with people who are close to you. Talk to your friends and loved ones, and let them know you care.
• In other memorial news, a salute to Angelo Badalamenti, the composer behind several beloved soundtracks, including many of David Lynch’s films and TV shows like ‘Twin Peaks’, ‘Fire Walk With Me’, ‘Blue Velvet’, ‘Mulholland Drive’ and more. He died at age 85.
• Great composer. His sound was integral to the spooky vibe of Lynch’s work. Rest in peace.
• Got some good news on a personal front. Remember that package that they said had been delivered late Friday evening but wasn’t on my doorstep and I assumed got ripped off by porch pirates?
• I was just starting that annoying process of trying to get credited and redelivered in time for Christmas when the missing items just randomly showed up last night. USPS… when you have to make sure something just might get there at some point when they feel like it.
• Anyway, I’m good now. Just need a ton of wrapping paper.
• Today in history… Emperor Wenzong of the Tang dynasty conspires to kill the powerful eunuchs of the Tang court, but the plot is foiled (835). Founding Father Alexander Hamilton marries Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton at the Schuyler Mansion in Albany, New York (1780). The French invasion of Russia comes to an end as the remnants of the Grande Armée are expelled from Russia (1812). Alabama becomes the 22nd U.S. state (1819). Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law, quantum theory, at the Physic Society in Berlin (1900). The Commercial Pacific Cable Company lays the first Pacific telegraph cable, from San Francisco to Honolulu (1902). Roald Amundsen's team, comprising himself, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first to reach the South Pole (1911). The 1918 United Kingdom general election occurs, the first where women were permitted to vote (1918). Plutonium (specifically Pu-238) is first isolated at Berkeley, California (1940). Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann are granted a patent for their cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game (1948). NASA's Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus (1962). In Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the Supreme Court rules that Congress can use the Constitution's Commerce Clause to fight discrimination (1964). Eugene Cernan is the last person to walk on the moon, after he and Harrison Schmitt complete the third and final extravehicular activity of the Apollo 17 mission (1972). Twenty-eight people, including the gunman, are killed in Sandy Hook, Connecticut (2012). The Walt Disney Company announces that it would acquire 21st Century Fox, including the 20th Century Fox movie studio, for $52.4 billion (2017). 
• December 14 is the birthday of astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546), composer/pianist Maria Szymanowska (1789), businessman/politician Erastus Corning (1794), lawyer/activist Louis Marshall (1856), UK king George VI (1895), pilot/general Jimmy Doolittle (1896), singer/bandleader Spike Jones (1911), novelist Shirley Jackson (1916), trumpet player Clark Terry (1920), singer-songwriter Charlie Rich (1932), actress Lee Remick (1935), actress Patty Duke (1946), talent agent Michael Ovitz (1946), guitarist Christopher Parkening (1947), journalist Lester Bangs (1947), MLB player Bill Buckner (1949), NHL player Bill Ranford (1966), singer-songwriter Beth Orton (1970), and NFL player DK Metcalf (1997).

Okay, well… that was more stuff than I’d planned on writing, but it happens that way sometimes. Things are busy over here, trying to wrap up a bunch of work stuff and also planning ahead for 2023. Again, that’s fine. I’d prefer to complain about being busy than about not having enough to do. Enjoy your day.