Random News: January 11, 2023

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 January 11, 2023, and it’s a Wednesday. Let’s see what’s going on in various places to various people and things…

• This is kinda crazy. All flights across the United States were brought to a standstill this morning after the FAA suffered a computer outage, forcing it to halt all departures nationwide while it worked to resolve the issue.
• The total halt to air travel, which affected some 4,500 flights, was due to a “computer glitch”. Normal operations resumed at 8:50am EST.
• The failure was to the FAA’s Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, system. This alerts pilots about things like closed runways, equipment outages, and other potential hazards along a flight route or at a location that could affect the flight.
• Some IT person is having a rough morning. Send them good thoughts.
• In other news…
• Yesterday, Illinois became the latest U.S. state to ban the sale or possession of assault weapons. Congrats!
• Nine states as well as D.C. prohibit the sale or possession of assault weapons.
• Illinois’s new law bans assault weapons, including some semiautomatic firearms, along with high-capacity magazines and rapid-firing devices.
• Some news in my state not having anything to do with rain…
• Congresswoman Katie Porter (D-CA) has declared her candidacy for Senator here in California, replacing Dianne Feinstein, who is 89 years old and has served as CA Senator since 1992.
• Feinstein has not yet announced her plans for retirement or whether or not she intends to keep the office for another term in 2024. I admire Feinstein and give her all the respect for her service, but if it comes down to it, I will absolutely support Katie Porter in this face-off.
• You may not be aware that Porter studied under then-future Senator Elizabeth Warren at Harvard Law School.
• Moving on.
• RIP, I suppose, to Lynette “Diamond” Hardaway of the pro-Trump entertainment team called Diamond & Silk. She was 51.
• Her death — which was announced by Trump himself via social media on Monday night — was not given a confirmed cause. However, she allegedly suffered a severe bout of COVID starting in late November.
• The duo had a show for awhile on Fox News’s streaming service, Fox Nation, but the network cut ties with them in 2020 after they spread misinformation about official COVID-19 death figures.
• Like many people who’d been sadly misled but the GOP cult, Diamond & Silk were publicly against COVID vaccination and promoted unproven and dangerous “alternative cures”.
• Also dead: Cardinal George Pell, the infamous high-ranking Catholic official convicted of child sex abuse. He was 81.
• Mooooving on…
• A pair of House Democrats filed a complaint against George Santos (R-NY) urging the Ethics Committee to open an investigation into allegations the freshman congressman failed to file timely, accurate and complete financial disclosure reports.
• Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Daniel Goldman (D-NY) also hand-delivered a copy of the six-page ethics complaint to Santos’s office.
• Get his ass.
• Allen Weisselberg, long-time chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, was sentenced by a New York judge to five months in jail for his role in a decade-long tax fraud scheme after testifying as the state’s witness against the Trump Organization.
• Weisselberg, 75, will report to Rikers Island to begin serving his sentence immediately. As part of his guilty plea, he was required to testify truthfully at the trial of the Trump Organization, pay $2 million in back taxes, interest and penalties, and waive any right to appeal.
• And now, The Weather: “Pacific Coast Highway” by Das Kope
• It finally stopped raining here yesterday afternoon. More rain coming soon though.
• About an hour’s drive north of here, the area got seriously slammed in this last storm with amounts upwards of 18 inches over higher terrain of Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. That’s crazy. They had serious flooding and roads washed out.
• Next round is expected this Saturday and continuing.
• The trial began yesterday for Richard “Bigo” Barnett, the January 6 insurrectionist who propped his feet on a desk in Nancy Pelosi’s office.
• Before leaving Capitol grounds, Barnett used a bullhorn to give a speech to the crowd, shouting, “We took back our house, and I took Nancy Pelosi’s office!” according to prosecutors.
• A grand jury indicted Barnett on eight charges, including felony counts of civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding. He also faces a charge of entering and remaining in restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon — a stun gun with spikes concealed within a collapsible walking stick.
• His defense lawyers said that he wandered into Pelosi’s office suite looking for a bathroom.
• LOCK HIM UP.
• In very related news, a federal judge yesterday sentenced pro-Trump livestreamer Anthime “Baked Alaska” Gionet to 60 days in prison for his actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
• This was the genius who live-streamed while he marauded through the Capitol. 
• The 60-day jail term is relatively steep for the hundreds of misdemeanor defendants who have faced sentencing for their conduct at the Capitol, but fuck that guy.
• LOCK HIM UP TOO.
• From the Sports Desk… here are the current betting lines for the NFL Wild Card Round.
• Niners -10 over Seahawks
• Chargers -1.5 over Jaguars
• Bills -10.5 over Dolphins
• Vikings -3 over Giants
• Bengals -6.5 over Ravens
• Cowboys -2.5 over Buccaneers
• I’m not going to talk about the crazy-ass story about the sex scandal at the La Vergne, TN police department. I’ll just say that if some person at your job is having sex with all the other people at your job, maybe don’t have sex with them too.
• So far, five officers have been fired and three more have been suspended without pay.
• In personal news, I am excited because I ordered three bags of coffee from Peet’s. I got a pound each of Las Hermanas, Garuda Blend, and Sulawesi-Kalosi. This is what excites me these days. 
• Today in history… In Constantinople, a quarrel between supporters of different chariot teams—the Blues and the Greens—in the Hippodrome escalates into violence (532). First recorded lottery in England (1569). William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus (1787). Alabama secedes from the United States (1861). Grand Canyon National Monument is created (1908). Leonard Thompson becomes the first person to be injected with insulin (1922). Louis B. Mayer, head of film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, announces the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at a banquet in Los Angeles, CA (1927). Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California (1935). The first "networked" television broadcasts took place as KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, PA goes on the air connecting the east coast and mid-west programming (1949). Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Luther Terry, M.D., publishes the landmark report ‘Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States’ saying that smoking may be hazardous to health, sparking national and worldwide anti-smoking efforts (1964). East Pakistan renames itself Bangladesh (1972). Major League Baseball owners vote in approval of the American League adopting the designated hitter position (1973). Municipal health officials in Wuhan announce the first recorded death from COVID-19 (2020).
• January 11 is the birthday of religious leader/poet Wang Chongyang (1113), economist/politician Alexander Hamilton (1755), businessman/philanthropist Ezra Cornell (1807), Canada prime minister John A. Macdonald (1815), chemist Albert Hofmann (1906), engineer/race car driver Carroll Shelby (1923), singer-songwriter Slim Harpo (1924), Canada prime minister Jean Chrétien (1934), saxophonist Clarence Clemons (1942), singer-songwriter Naomi Judd (1946), keyboardist Tony Kaye (1946), guitarist Lee Ritenour (1952), NBA player Darryl Dawkins (1957), guitarist Vicki Peterson (1958), singer-songwriter Mary J. Blige (1971), and actress Amanda Peet (1972).

Welp, now that I’ve written this shit, I’m going to go work out, and then do work and things. I’m not anticipating anything weird as far as Wednesdays go. Just work and things. Enjoy your day.