Random News: December 27, 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 27, 2022, and it’s a Tuesday. Back to work for this weird week before the new year where no one knows anything…

• I can’t even imagine what kind of hell people were going through trying to get back from wherever they spent the holidays. Southwest Airlines alone left thousands of people stranded across the country due to weather. They canceled 54,000 flights in 48 hours.
• What can you do? If planes start crashing in foreseeable bad weather, you want the airlines to be accountable (and they should be). But the flip side of being stuck in airports and away from home is shitty, though still the preferable option to plane crashes.
• A related note: this doesn’t just affect people in blizzard destinations. Southwest has canceled all flights out of Los Angeles through New Year’s.
• Representative-elect George Santos (R-NY) admitted lying about his entire employment and educational history, as well as his religious background and other statements about his entire life.
• He claims he is not a criminal, but isn’t this the textbook definition of fraud? He was elected under 100% false pretenses. I don’t care what party he represents; this guy can’t be allowed to compulsively lie his way through a Congressional career… or can he?
• Another big question about Santos: his actual job before running for Congress was as a call center employee, and he’d been falling behind on his rent. Then, out of the blue, he lent his campaign $705,000. Where did all that money come from? The congressional Ethics Committee needs to find out pronto.
• An Arizona court has been asked to sanction defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and her lawyers over her failed effort to overturn the state's election results with no tangible evidence for widespread voting irregularities.
• Maricopa county's deputy attorney Thomas P. Liddy wrote that Lake filed a "groundless" lawsuit for a "frivolous pursuit".
• The sanction will hopefully dissuade the next unscrupulous lawyer for bringing legal cases that waste the court’s time and energy.
• In a separate court filing, Governor-elect Katie Hobbs also asked the Superior Court to have Lake compensate her attorneys for fees and expenses accrued in defending against the ridiculous lawsuit to the tune of about $550,000.
• And now, The Weather: “Big Time” by Angel Olsen
• I love this story. On Friday, a group of 10 tourists from South Korea were going from Washington D.C. to Niagara Falls, and ran into the blizzard from hell. Their van got stuck in a ditch in the snowbank. Desperate and freezing, they knocked on a door to ask to borrow a shovel.
• They happen to find the house of Alex Campagna, a dentist, who knew letting the group back out in that storm would be a death sentence, so he and his wife welcomed all of them in, and ended up hosting all ten of them through Sunday when they could be picked up.
• They put the tourists up on couches and in spare bedrooms, then made Korean food and watched football for two days. That’s how America is supposed to be. Choi Yoseob, a member of the tour group that Campagna hosted, said it was "kind of like fate" that they'd ended up at the home of a hospitable family with a full pantry.
• ”We have enjoyed this so much," Choi said, describing the experience as unforgettable and a "unique blessing."
• Awesome.
• I saw that certain people this past week, both residents and visitors, were bragging about California’s warm weather and blue skies, which is kind of an asshole move.
• Well because you tempted fate, this week we’re getting a category 4 atmospheric river bringing floods and up to 60mph winds to the Bay Area, which then makes its way down to SoCal with three back-to-back storms that will absolutely result in flooding, dangerously high surf, and mudslides.
• Buckle up, fellow CA friends. The first of the storms should be arriving here this afternoon and continuing through New Year’s.
• “But you need rain in drought areas!” Yes, of course we do, but we don’t have any infrastructure that prevents flooding or saves the rain from merely draining into the ocean. The good news is that it does add to the snow pack in the Sierras, which is more important to fight drought long term.
• In music news… as I’d hoped, I was able to spend a chunk of yesterday putting together a private playlist of my band’s collection of demos that will eventually be a collection of songs on a new album.
• I’m really stoked! It’s going to be great once we finesse some of the original raw tracks and tweak various things. But overall, it’s a really impressive bunch of music.
• Today in history… Charles Darwin embarks on his journey aboard HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate his theory of evolution (1831). Journalist John L. O'Sullivan argues in his newspaper New York Morning News that the United States had the right to claim the entire Oregon Country under “manifest destiny” (1845). Kern and Hammerstein's musical play Show Boat, considered to be the first true American musical play, opens at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway (1927). Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City (1932). The International Monetary Fund is created with the signing of an agreement by 29 nations (1945). Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital crewed mission to the Moon (1968).  Spain becomes a democracy after 40 years of fascist dictatorship (1978). Radiation from an explosion on the magnetar SGR 1806-20 reaches Earth. It is the brightest extrasolar event known to have been witnessed on the planet (2004). 
• December 27 is the birthday of astronomer/mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571), microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822), actress/singer Marlene Dietrich (1901), gynecologist William Masters (1915), guitarist Scotty Moore (1931), actor John Amos (1939), journalist Cokie Roberts (1943), guitarist Mick Jones (1944), guitarist Lenny Kaye (1946), actor Gérard Depardieu (1948), drummer Terry Bozzio (1950), journalist Savannah Guthrie (1971), NFL player Deuce McAllister (1978), and NFL player Carson Palmer (1979).

Alrighty. I’ve got a sorta-normal Tuesday ahead. Plenty of work to do, grocery shopping in the afternoon for normal non-holiday food, and various meetings. That’s fine; getting back on track after the holidays is kind of a relief. However, since the world doesn’t all operate at the same pace, like most people I’ll be dealing with not knowing who’s in, who’s out, who’s on vacation all week, and so on. That’s fine; I’m flexible. Gotta bend like the stem and not snap like the twig, or however the fuck that goes. Enjoy your day.