Random News: December 19, 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.

---

Good morning. It’s December 19, 2022, and it’s a Monday. Let’s see what sort of shenanigans have occurred, as well as whatever thoughts pass through my brain while writing this stuff…

• Happy Hanukkah. The Jewish holiday started last night and runs through December 26.
• If you want to be super cool in a Hebrew way, say chag sameach (pronounced khag sah–MAY-ahkh). But just saying Happy Hanukkah is fine too. 
• I’m an atheist, but my genetics say I’m Jewish, which is confusing for people because the same name refers to both the religion and the ethnicity, which are two different things entirely.
• But I celebrate Christmas and have my whole life. Yes. I’m an atheist Jew Christmas guy.
• If you want to pretend you’re celebrating Hanukkah but actually want an excuse to be a glutton, just get yourself a sufganiyah. It’s a round jelly doughnut topped with powdered sugar. Delicious.
• Apart from being a decent person who recognizes that the world has many customs and religions, the main reason I bring up my Jewish ethnicity now is the rise of blatant anti-Semitism in recent times.
• Try discriminating against me or my family for our ethnic background, and I promise I’ll put my Jewish foot up your ass. And I’ll shove a sufganiyah up there while I'm at it.
• Again, Happy Hanukkah!
• In “of course this happened” news, people who bought the FPOTUS’s digital trading cards have noted that he stole the original pre-Photoshop images from various stock photos.
• Stuff like that is expected for a notorious skinflint, but they did such a poor job that people have found stock art watermarks on the NFTs that the artists didn’t bother and/or forgot to remove. A good number of the images were taken off Amazon.
• Slow clap.
• Here’s a reminder that the House January 6 Committee will be voting today at their final meeting. You can watch it starting at 1PM EST on many news channels, YouTube, and so on.
• As I’ve mentioned, they are expected to make criminal referrals to the DOJ.
• A sympathy note to our neighbors to the north. At least six people were killed in a rare mass shooting in Canada. Someone apparently shot up their condo board meeting in Vaughan, a suburb of Toronto, ON.
• It happens so rarely in Canada compared to the USA that it’s shocking. If that happened in any US city, I wouldn’t have even mentioned it.
• Why? Because it happens daily here and I don’t want this news list just to be a constant reminder of how sick we are.
• There were literally dozens of shootings in the US yesterday alone.
• Moving on.
• The other prick who runs that social net with the bird made another genius decision over the weekend.
• You can read it for yourself in this TOS update…
• “We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms. However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter.”
• They then went on to say they will remove accounts with “content that contains links or usernames” specifically to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.
• They also noted that Twitter users can’t even use link aggregators that might mention the competing social nets, such as Linktree.
• What. A. Pussy.
• And a hypocrite. Here’s what Elmo wrote on June 5: “The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one!”
• Congrats Twitter. You are now the bad one.
• But wait. I have an update to this update.
• Last night, after realizing the many legal implications of what can happen with the new “no competing mentions” policy, Elmo reversed course yet again, repealing the policy and pulling it from Twitter’s TOS within 12 hours.
• Another stable genius!
• And then finally, Elmo put up a poll asking if he should step down as CEO of Twitter, saying he’d abide by the results, and the results were firmly on the “yes” side.
• No prediction as to what he’ll actually do, but now I definitely understand why my friends who’ve worked for Tesla and SpaceX say it was the worst job they ever had in their lives.
• And now, The Weather: “Greatest Hits” by Jockstrap
• Here’s my continual warning about pre-holiday travel in severe winter conditions. I’m not saying “don’t go”. I’m saying plan ahead for whatever may happen that disrupts your safe travel plans.
• Be prepared. The Boy Scout motto. Do it.
• From the Sports Desk… the New England Patriots took on the Las Vegas Raiders last night in an NFL game that had what many are calling the craziest end to a football game ever. The Raiders, as usual, had squandered a big lead and were down 24-17 with 37 seconds left. Then they scored rather improbably to tie it up. All New England had to do was… nothing. Take a knee and see what happens in overtime.
• Instead, with no time left on the clock, they tried one final crazy play for no reason at all, and it ended with Jakobi Meyers heaving a lateral across the field into the arms of Raiders DE Chandler Jones, who mushed the Pats QB to the ground and then trotted in for a TD. Game over.
• Today in history… Henry II of England is crowned at Westminster Abbey (1154). The ships Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery depart England carrying settlers who founded, at Jamestown, VI, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States (1606). John Amery, British Fascist, is executed at the age of 33 by the British Government for treason (1945). The last crewed lunar flight, Apollo 17, carrying Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth (1972). The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1983). President Bill Clinton is impeached by the United States House of Representatives, becoming the second President of the United States to be impeached (1998). Park Geun-hye is elected the first female president of South Korea (2012). 
• December 19 is the birthday of astronomer John Winthrop (1714), activist Mary Livermore (1820), physicist Albert Abraham Michelson (1852), historian Carter G. Woodson (1875), sportswriter/MLB commissioner Ford Frick (1894), actor Ralph Richardson (1902), politician Leonid Brezhnev (1906), singer Édith Piaf (1915), producer/talk show host David Susskind (1920), actress Cicely Tyson (1924), MLB player Al Kaline (1934), singer-songwriter Phil Ochs (1940), singer-songwriter Maurice White (1941), actor Tim Reid (1944), actor Robert Urich (1946), NBA player/coach Kevin McHale (1957), actress Jennifer Beals (1963), and NFL player Warren Sapp (1971).

It’s that week before Christmas and it’s the start of Hanukkah, and that means it’s impossible to know who’s around, who’s on vacation, who’s still gung-ho trying to wrap up work projects before the end of the year, and so on. Basically a time of total uncertainty. I’m going to assume that I’m expected to get stuff done as I usually do, and just take care of business stuff. It’s a basic assumption, though, that as the week goes on, more and more people will be pretty checked out. That’s fine. I don’t mind being flexible. I’m sure everything will be fine regardless. It usually is. Enjoy your day.