Random News: January 29, 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 29, 2023, and it’s a Sunday. Got my coffee, wearing a robe, let’s see what’s shaking around this globe…

• This morning, Governor Spencer Cox (R-UT) signed bills that ban youth from receiving gender-affirming health care.
• Utah's measure prohibits transgender surgery for youth and disallows hormone treatments for minors who have not yet been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
• Lawmakers in at least 18 states consider similar bills targeting health care for young transgender people. Much like states that don’t allow for people to choose their own reproductive plans, I find it likely that there will be an exodus from those places for people who would face discrimination there.
• In better news, the Minnesota Senate passed legislation early yesterday morning that guarantees the right to abortion.
• The Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act passed the state Senate 34-33, after Republicans had unsuccessfully tried to amend the bill 35 times. The bill states that "every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health."
• Good.
• You know the guy in Half Moon Bay who killed seven of his farming coworkers in a mass shooting last week?
• Turns our he did it after his supervisor demanded he pay $100 to repair a forklift damaged at work. Chunli Zhao was enraged by the equipment bill, saying that a co-worker was to blame for the collision between his forklift and the co-worker's bulldozer.
• Zhao also said he was bullied and worked long hours on the farms and his complaints were ignored.
• Sad.
• Demonstrators marched through New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, among other cities across the nation yesterday to decry police brutality after the release of video depicting the violent Memphis police beating that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.
• I’m not sure there’s any way to end police brutality. A certain percentage of people who go into law enforcement do so specifically because it gives them a legal blanket to be the violent people they want to be.
• How do you change that?
• General Mike Minihan, a four-star Air Force general who leads the Air Mobility Command (AMC), said in a memo on Friday that he believes the USA will be at war with China by 2025.
• “I hope I am wrong,” he added.
• Me too.
• And now, The Weather: “Cheers!” by koleżanka
• Let’s talk a little more about the Republican plan for a 30% national sales tax.
• Data shows the tax would raise the cost of a household by $125,000, the cost of a car by $10,000 and the average grocery bill by $3,500 a year. Everything from groceries to gas to medicine would jump up, and in most states, you’d still be paying state income tax.
• A national sales tax would hit lower-income folks as well as retirees particularly hard, while the rich would benefit disproportionately.
• Why does the GOP-led Congress think this “FairTax Act” is a good idea? I don’t know. You’ll need to ask your congressional rep, and you should.
• 2023 has been brutal in terms of the loss of musical heroes. Among others, in the past couple of weeks we’ve lost David Crosby and Jeff Beck. Yesterday’s loss of Tom Verlaine was right up there with those two more well-known guys.
• So much of today’s indie rock (and frankly any kind of avant-garde music that uses guitar) is based on music that Verlaine and his band Television launched in the mid/late 1970s. Along with a short list of other bands from that era like the Talking Heads and the B-52s, Television was so far ahead of their contemporaries that they ended up changing the direction of music in ways that reverberates all the way to the present.
• RIP, Tom.
• From the Sports Desk… today’s the day. NFL Conference Championships. I’d like to say that I’ll be able to chill and watch these two penultimate games of this football season, but that remains to be seen. I’m not really pulling for or against any of these teams, regardless.
• Speaking from much personal experience, it’s actually a better experience to watch games where you don’t have any emotional investment.
• I was born in Cincinnati, so I suppose I’d enjoy seeing the Bengals return to the Super Bowl for the second straight year. Today’s AFC Championship is a repeat of last year’s, when the Bengals beat the Chiefs 27-24.
• The 49ers are also making their second straight trip to the NFC championship. Last year they lost to the Rams 20-17, and the Rams ended up winning the Super Bowl.
• So we’ll see. Enjoy the games, if you can.
• Today in history… "The Raven" is published in The Evening Mirror in New York, the first publication with the name of the author, Edgar Allan Poe (1845). Kansas is admitted as the 34th U.S. state (1861). Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile (1886). Charles Curtis of Kansas becomes the first Native American U.S. Senator (1907). The Bolshevik Red Army, on its way to besiege Kyiv, is met by a small group of military students at the Battle of Kruty (1918). The first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame are announced (1936). In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush describes "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea (2002). 
• January 29 is the birthday of scientist/philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688), activist/philosopher Thomas Paine (1737), US president William McKinley (1843), playwright Anton Chekhov (1860), businessman/philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874), actor W. C. Fields (1880), actor John Forsythe (1918), composer Leslie Bricusse (1931), bass player James Jamerson (1936), actor Tom Selleck (1945), drummer Tommy Ramone (1949), actress/TV host Oprah Winfrey (1954), diver Greg Louganis (1960), actor Nicholas Turturro (1962), NHL player Dominik Hašek (1965), actress Heather Graham (1970), actress Sara Gilbert (1975), singer Adam Lambert (1982), and MLB player José Abreu (1987).

I have no idea what today is all about. I’ll eventually get dressed and stuff. Beyond that is anyone’s guess. Enjoy your day.