Random News: June 15, 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 June 15, 2023, and it’s Thursday for some reason. Things happen all the time. Some are important, some less so, but it’s always good in the big picture to know more things than less things, so let’s go…

• Today’s Pride point is about gender identity.
• To talk about that, we have to rewind the clock. Your clock. Way back to when you were conceived.
• Biological gender identity is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, also known as the sex chromosomes. Females inherit an X chromosome from the father for a XX genotype, while males inherit a Y chromosome from the father for a XY genotype (mothers only pass on X chromosomes).
• It’s pretty random and yet we (and most species that reproduce sexually) end up with just about half male and half female offspring. It’s nearly exactly 1:1 with male and female births. In 2021, the sex ratio for the entire world population was approximately 101 males to 100 females. Amazing.
• So, I guess that’s it then. Oh wait, maybe not.
• When you’re born, you’re assigned a sex. This has historically been done by the doctor who delivered you; they look at your genitalia and proclaim you to be a boy or a girl. In more recent years, people have been informed of their child’s gender while still in gestation via a visual inspection of an ultrasound exam.
• However, most doctors and scientists today agree that gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. 
• In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females, a gender binary to which most people adhere and which includes expectations of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of sex and gender: biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.
• But some people do not identify with some, or all, of the aspects of gender assigned to their biological sex; some of those people are transgender, non-binary, or genderqueer.
• It is widely agreed that core gender identity is firmly formed by age three. After age three, it is extremely difficult to change gender identity.
• Gender identity is a combination of factors that involve what biologists call “nature vs. nurture”. Biological factors that influence gender identity include pre- and post-natal hormone levels, but while genetic makeup influences gender identity, it does not inflexibly determine it.
• Much in the same way that homosexuality was once considered a mental illness, up until the late 20th century, transgender and gender incongruent individuals suffered a mental health disorder termed "gender identity disorder."
• Acceptance of people who do not identify with their biologically assigned gender has not been an easy road, and as seen in current legislative efforts, it can seem to be going backwards.
• But what I will never understand is why it’s so important for some people to make these determinations for other people. I believe the cause is a combination of fear and ignorance.
• This is a very deep topic and I barely scratched the surface here, but suffice it to say that I support the chosen gender identity of every human.
• Let’s do some news…
• A grand jury has indicted former U.S. Marine Daniel Penny in connection with the chokehold death of Jordan Neely aboard a subway train. Penny was initially arrested on a second-degree manslaughter charge.
• Video showed Penny, 24, putting Neely in a chokehold on May 1. Several witnesses observed Neely making threats, yelling, and harassing passengers on the train.
• But Penny was not specifically being threatened by Neely when he intervened and Neely had not become violent and had not been threatening anyone in particular.
• I won’t comment on this without knowing the facts, but I don’t believe that people have the right to end other people’s lives unless they are in direct fear of their own life via tangible reasons.
• Moving on…
• Yesterday, a Republican-led effort to censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff (R-CA) has failed in a key House vote.
• The House voted to kill the resolution, a motion put forward by House Democrats. Enough Republicans crossed the aisle in support for the effort to succeed in blocking the censure. The vote was 225 to 196 with 20 Republicans voting with Democrats to table the resolution.
• The censure resolution was sponsored by the latest member of the GOP crazy train, a Florida Rep. named Anna Paulina Luna, who is looking to establish herself along the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Her poorly-written resolution focused on Schiff’s role in investigations of the former president, and attempted to kick him out of Congress and fine him $16 million.
• And moving on…
• On Tuesday night, after Trump’s arrest and indictment, President Biden was speaking about an unrelated topic at the White House, and the always-classy Fox News posted a chyron (the words you see on the bottom of a news story on TV).
• It read “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.”
• “The chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed,” the network said in a statement yesterday afternoon. If it was “addressed” with anything less than the firing of the news producer who created it, Fox is, as always, full of shit.
• Can you imagine buying anything from a company who purposefully advertised on that network?
• Here’s a more accurate statement, this one in regard to the former president…
• “He’s scared shitless.” John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff from 2017 to 2019.
• Mooooving on…
• Now that Trump is getting closer to his demise, more and more people are jumping into the GOP presidential race. The latest addition is Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who filed federal paperwork yesterday to join the crowded Republican field.
• Suarez becomes the third candidate from Florida alone who is running for the GOP nomination, along with Ron DeSantis and the aforementioned Trump. Suarez is the first Hispanic candidate to jump into the 2024 race, which is something, I guess.
• Other declared GOP candidates include Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Ryan Binkley, Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Larry Elder, Asa Hutchinson, Perry Johnson, Vivek Ramaswamy, and others.
• Alrighty then.
• A U.S. Marine was arrested yesterday alongside another suspect in connection to the firebombing of a California Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa last year. 
• The two suspects —Tibet Ergul, 21, and Chance Brannon, 23— have been accused of using a Molotov cocktail to commit an act of arson. Brannon is an active duty Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton.
• The two men each face up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted. And I’m pretty sure that Marine is extra fucked. We expect Marines to live up to a higher standard than just about anyone.
• Hey are you a woman? Well, you’ve been confirmed as a second-class citizen by the nation's largest Protestant Christian denomination.
• The Southern Baptist Convention announced yesterday it has voted overwhelmingly to finalize the expulsion of two churches for having female pastors, and the vote wasn’t even close.
• They voted by a 9-to-1 margin to seal the exit of California's Saddleback Church and a smaller congregation in Kentucky.
• Sarah Clatworthy, a member of Lifepoint Baptist Church in San Angelo, TX, who has called on the SBC “to shut the door to feminism and liberalism," said she supported the ban on woman pastors. “We should leave no room for our daughters and granddaughters in the generations ahead to have confusion on where the SBC stands,” she said.
• I rarely tell people of an entire religion of millions of people that they’re stupid and wrong, but I will make an exception in this case. Fuck all the way off, Southern Baptists.
• And now, The Weather: “Princess” by Ruby
• Here’s something… gross.
• A former manager at the Harvard Medical School morgue, his wife and three other people have been indicted in the theft and sale of human body parts.
• Cedric Lodge, 55, of Goffstown, New Hampshire, stole dissected portions of cadavers that were donated to the school in the scheme that stretched from 2018 to early 2023. Lodge sometimes took the body parts — which included heads, brains, skin and bones — back to his home where he lived with his wife, Denise, 63, and some remains were sent to buyers through the mail. Lodge also allegedly allowed buyers to come to the morgue to pick what remains they wanted to buy.
• Lodge was fired May 6.
• Let’s just move the fuck on…
• Saturn’s moon Enceladus has enticed scientists for years. Now there’s evidence that the cold, dark ocean that’s found under its crust appears to contain a form of phosphorus, an essential ingredient for life as we know it.
• That means Enceladus has the only ocean beyond Earth known to contain all six elements needed for life. Nice!
• We’ve spoken before about the clash between religious beliefs and LGBTQIA+ acceptance. Now, a Detroit-area community has banned LGBTQ+ flags from publicly owned flagpoles because it conflicts with their Muslim ideology.
• The all-Muslim Hamtramck city council said the pride flag clashes with the beliefs of some members of their faith. Businesses and residents aren’t prohibited from displaying a pride flag on their own property.
• Hey guys, maybe look into the whole separation of church and state that’s a defining rule in the United States of America, okay?
• From the Sports Desk… well, here we are. Basketball and hockey are done, football doesn’t start for months, and baseball is boring as hell. And if you want to learn more about the fourth rape and beating allegations against MLB pitcher Trevor Bauer, go read that elsewhere.
• Today in history… Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history (763 BC). King John of England puts his seal to Magna Carta (1215). Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1648). The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys (1667). Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (1752). New Hampshire approves the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratifying the document (1804). Charles Goodyear receives a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber (1844). Arlington National Cemetery is established when 200 acres of the Arlington estate formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee are officially set aside as a military cemetery (1864). Eadweard Muybridge takes a series of photographs to prove that all four feet of a horse leave the ground when it runs, and the study becomes the basis of motion pictures (1878). Bessie Coleman earns her pilot's license, becoming the first female pilot of African-American descent (1921). Charles Manson goes on trial for the Sharon Tate murders (1970). Microsoft retires Internet Explorer after 26 years in favor of its new browser, Microsoft Edge (2022).
• June 15 is the birthday of Mona Lisa model Lisa del Giocondo (1479), chocolatier Charles-Amédée Kohler (1790), composer Edvard Grieg (1843), psychologist Erik Erikson (1902), Russian politician Yuri Andropov (1914), pianist/composer Erroll Garner (1921), politician Mario Cuomo (1932), singer-songwriter/guitarist Waylon Jennings (1937), singer/actor Johnny Hallyday (1943), singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson (1941), NFL coach Mike Holmgren (1948), MLB player/manager Dusty Baker (1949), singer-songwriter Steve Walsh (1951), actor Jim Belushi (1954), actress Courteney Cox (1964), rapper/actor Ice Cube (1969), actress Leah Remini (1970), actor Neil Patrick Harris (1973), MLB player Tim Lincecum (1984), and NFL player Cooper Kupp (1993).

Okay, I guess that’s all. I have to go do things. Enjoy your day.