Random News: April 24, 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 April 24, 2023, and it’s a Monday. Things always happen. That’s how we know time exists as its own dimension; if it didn’t nothing would happen…

• Republicans have a prime directive in all upcoming elections: keep abortion rights off the ballot by any means necessary.
• Six abortion rights measures were on ballots last year and all of them won. Knowing that will continue to be the case, the new strategy is to keep as many as possible away from the public to vote for, and to make it harder for people to vote when they do get on the ballot.
• Example: GOP state lawmakers in Ohio are pushing for a ballot amendment that would raise the passage requirement for a constitutional amendment from a simple majority to a 60 percent supermajority threshold. This is being done specifically to thwart abortion rights advocates who are working to get a constitutional amendment protecting abortion before fetal viability on the ballot. 
• Arkansas and North Dakota have also both made recent moves to stiffen the process for proposed constitutional amendments. They are trying to take the direction of the country out of the hands of its people. You gonna put up with that?
• This will be a very big deal over the next 18 months, I promise you.
• Last night was a lot more colorful than usual for people in some 30 US states as the aurora borealis (aka northern lights) made an appearance.
• What causes aurora borealis? Oh, not much. Just something entirely horrifying.
• The sun, a star that makes up the main gravitational center of our solar system and takes up 99.8% of the mass of it, is a giant nuclear fusion explosion that goes on for billions of years. We’re about 93,000,000 miles from it, but its energized particles still slam into Earth's upper atmosphere at speeds of up to 45 million mph.
• This is especially true during the massive solar storms that occasionally bombard Earth with extreme amounts of energy. This is when the northern lights are at their brightest and most frequent.
• Fortunately, our planet has this cool magnetic field that protects us from this deadly radiation. Otherwise there would be no life on this planet. There never would have been life. It would be sterile and dead. If you’re alive, thank Earth’s geomagnetic field.
• That magnetic field redirects the particles toward the poles and the result is this beautiful atmospheric phenomenon we call northern lights. Note: there are southern lights too.
• What makes them colorful? Every type of atom or molecule absorbs and radiates its own unique set of colors when bombarded by solar radiation. Some of the dominant colors seen in aurorae are red, a hue produced by the nitrogen molecules, and green, which is produced by oxygen molecules.
• But what they are is essentially a crack in a shield. You see those lights due to particles overwhelming the geomagnetic system at its weak point and getting through, where they light up these molecules in the atmosphere. 
• Anyway, last night’s aurora borealis went quite a lot further south than typical, stretching from Washington to Maine, and were seen in places like Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, and other spots not terribly high in latitude.
• Probably nothing to worry about.
• In other news…
• Susan Rice is stepping down as Joe Biden's domestic policy chief. 
• She was very nearly our vice president. Rice served in foreign policy roles during the Obama and Clinton administrations, and then adopted a structure at the Domestic Policy Council similarly to that of the National Security Council, bringing in policy experts and codifying a process for convening officials across the government.
• She entered the administration intending to stay two years, and ended up staying a bit longer. Thanks for your service, Ms. Rice. P.S. She’ll probably be back in politics in some role at some point. 
• Remember Howard Dean? He was the governor of Vermont in the ‘90s, and for awhile in 2004 was the leading Democratic candidate for president.
• Then he did one thing. He made a speech.
• "Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York. And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan, and then we're going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House! YEAH!"
• That “YEAH” is now infamously known as the “Dean Scream”, and it immediately turned him into a laughing stock, because Americans are weird and petty like that. Why am I telling you this?
• I saw “Bobblehead Ron” trending on Twitter this morning. “What’s this all about,” I asked myself, and then opened a Tweet that showed Florida governor Ron DeSantis in Japan for some reason.
• When asked about his poor poll numbers against Trump, he stated, “I am not a candidate, so we’ll see if and when that changes.”
• Except while he said that, his head was bouncing around indeed as if on a spring, with his eyes looking kind of crazy and… YEAH! Dean Scream moment.
• It’s so bad his supporters are assuming it’s fake. Nope.
• And now, The Weather: “The Moment” by Michael B. Thomas
• This may be interesting. Today, California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis launched her campaign to become the first woman governor of the nation’s most populous state in 2026. She’d be replacing current Gov. Gavin newsroom, who is termed out and will likely be a top candidate in the 2028 presidential election.
• I like Kounalakis a lot… and I think Newsom will be a good President if he makes it there.
• And also, just in case Newsom is going to challenge Biden in 2024 (which I doubt), Kounalakis would be replacing him anyway and then be positioned to be elected to a full term.
• Trump’s E. Jean Carroll rape trial starts tomorrow. That’s nice.
• Today is Armenian Remembrance Day.
• From the POTUS… “On April 24, 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople—the start of a systematic campaign of violence against the Armenian community. In the years that followed, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths—a tragedy that forever affected generations of Armenian families."
• I’ve had many friends of Armenian descent. I salute them!
• From the Sports Desk… NHL and NBA playoffs continue, MLB season is in full swing, and the NFL draft starts this week.
• It’s a lot. Enjoy it, sports fans.
• Today in history… Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris (1558). The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress” (1800). American sharpshooter Annie Oakley is hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West (1885). The first segment of the Imperial Wireless Chain providing wireless telegraphy between Leafield in Oxfordshire, England, and Cairo, Egypt, comes into operation (1922). Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II (1953). Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when its parachute fails to open (1967). The Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery (1990). WikiLeaks starts publishing the Guantanamo Bay files leak (2011).
• April 24 is the birthday of Tahiti queen Marau (1860), painter Willem de Kooning (1906), actress Shirley MacLaine (1934), politician Richard M. Daley (1942), singer/actress Barbra Streisand (1942), music producer Tony Visconti (1944), singer-songwriter Jack Blades (1954), comedian/actor Cedric the Entertainer (1964), MLB player Chipper Jones (1972), MLB player Carlos Beltrán (1977), singer-songwriter/TV host Kelly Clarkson (1982), and NFL player Jerry Jeudy (1999).

Okay. Time to get my ass downstairs to work out. Enjoy your day.