Random News: February 23, 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 February 23, 2023, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. What follows are various things I’ve seen and now share with you, person who reads…

• The weather is crazy, yo.
• I mean, we have blizzard warnings in Southern California. Last time that happened was 1989. They had to close I-40 in Arizona due to 80mph wind gusts. Snow is blanketing many states at record levels, with school closures and road closures and power outages aplenty, and at the same time Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Mobile all have record highs.
• And my fence blew down.
• In case you’re interested, my landlord says it will be fixed… eventually. Meanwhile I just get to know my neighbors better.
• Human bag of infected goo Steve Bannon is getting sued… by his own lawyers.
• A law firm that represented the former Trump strategist is suing Bannon for nearly $500,000 in unpaid legal bills.
• The lawsuit states that Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP worked for Bannon from November 2020 through November 2022 and represented him on several high-profile cases, including investigations into Bannon’s fake crowdfunding border-wall effort and the subpoena from the House select committee investigating the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021.
• Bannon paid $375,000 of his bill, and blew off the remaining $480,487.87.
• I wasn’t going to mention this next story because I try not to cover the insane ramblings of people with no bearing in reality, but…
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a key ally of speaker Kevin McCarthy and a hopeful running mate of Donald Trump in 2024, has called for a “national divorce” between red states and blue states.
• Interestingly, her state has two Democrat Senators, and Georgia is kinda blue, but I digress.
• So speaking for the Republicans, Taylor Greene is calling to break up the United States. Will she introduce legislation for states to secede from the Union? Time will tell. But she’s no longer some fringe candidate. This is now the mainstream of the GOP.
• Moving on…
• In health news, researchers say they’ve found a possible link between regular laxative use and a person’s risk of dementia. True story.
• Now we’ll never know if you’re crazy or just full of shit (ba-dum-tizzzz).
• And now, The Weather: “Sore” by Rozi Plain
• Today is the 54th day of 2023, if that matters in any way.
• It’s also my 4,444th day of exercise on my Wii Fit. Yes, I have curtailed any major exertion while I’ve had COVID… but I still weigh in and do light stretching, because I’ll be worse off if I don’t.
• 4,444 days is a little over 12 years. I haven’t stuck with many things in life for that long, but I know for sure I’d be in a really bad way had I not picked up that Wii Fit on a whim back in late 2010.
• From the Sports Desk… Aaron Rodgers has emerged from his darkness retreat, according to the owner of the facility in southern Oregon where the Green Bay Packers quarterback spent the past several days and nights, and saw his shadow. That means six more years in Wisconsin.
• Today in history… Empress Wu Zetian abdicates the throne, restoring the Tang dynasty (705). Baron von Steuben arrives at Valley Forge, PA, to help to train the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War (1778). The Siege of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, TX (1836). Post-U.S. Civil War military control of Mississippi ends and it is readmitted to the Union (1870). Charles Martin Hall produced the first samples of aluminum from the electrolysis of aluminum oxide (1886). Cuba leases Guantánamo Bay to the United States "in perpetuity” (1903). U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signs a bill by Congress establishing the Federal Radio Commission — later replaced by the Federal Communications Commission — which was to regulate the use of radio frequencies in the United States (1927). German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg writes a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli, in which he describes his uncertainty principle for the first time (1927). Plutonium is first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg (1941). The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh (1954). 
• February 23 is the birthday of diarist/politician Samuel Pepys (1633), composer George Frideric Handel (1685), banker/businessman Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744), businessman César Ritz (1850), sociologist/activist W. E. B. Du Bois (1868), journalist Agnes Smedley (1892), physicist Allan McLeod Cormack (1924), actress Majel Barrett (1932), actor Peter Fonda (1940), NFL player Fred Biletnikoff (1943), singer-songwriter Johnny Winter (1944), NFL player Ed "Too Tall" Jones (1951), guitarist Brad Whitford (1952), singer-songwriter Howard Jones (1955), businessman Michael Dell (1965), actress Niecy Nash (1970), actress Emily Blunt (1983), and actress Dakota Fanning (1994). 

I’m just getting things back to normal around here. I know it doesn’t seem like it; over the course of about two weeks, my mom died, my back went out, I got COVID, and my patio fence was ripped down by a storm. That doesn’t seem normal. But I’m also getting work done, helping my family in various ways, and writing these stupid bullets, which does. I’m alright. Enjoy your day.