Random News: July 31, 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 July 31, 2023, and it’s a Monday. I’m showered and dressed and have a cup of coffee that I scraped together from the remains of several bags of coffee because UPS is late in delivering the coffee I’d rather be having, but these are first-world problems and I’ll survive. Let’s do some news…

• No one is claiming responsibility for Sunday’s bombing in Bajur, Pakistan that killed 54 people (including at least five children) and wounded nearly 200 people.
• It happened at an election rally for a pro-Taliban cleric. The attack appeared to reflect divisions between Islamist groups. It targeted the Jamiat Ulema Islam party, which has ties to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban.
• I will say, as fucked up as our own divided climate is here in in the USA, we do tend not to bomb each other over our political differences. At least not often.
• Moving on…
• We spoke quite extensively this weekend about Carlos De Oliveira, the new co-defendant in the Trump classified documents criminal case.
• Carlos was scheduled for an arraignment this morning, but that’s up in the air because he has not yet gotten a lawyer who practices in Florida to represent him.
• Without a Florida lawyer present, a judge could delay Carlos’s scheduled arraignment in Miami federal court. De Oliveira’s failure so far to get a Florida lawyer mirrors the difficulties former President Donald Trump briefly had hiring a local attorney for the case. The third co-defendant, Trump toady Walt Nauta, had his arraignment twice postponed because of the same issue.
• Sucks to be them. Why not just assign them a public defender like any criminal?
• In other news, GOP leaders are finally getting sick of Tommy Tuberville’s shit. 
• His blockade of military promotions is uncomfortably splintering both the Senate GOP and Alabama Republicans. Tuberville has refused to allow any of the more than 300 stalled military promotions to advance. This is in retribution for the Defense Department allowing paid leave for abortions.
• Democrats could have called individual votes on the nominations over the August recess, but ultimately decided it was the GOP’s responsibility to eat Tuberville’s shit.
• So due to Tuberville and the GOP, we have no functioning military and are more vulnerable to attack than ever. And now the Senate has left for five weeks, and the Republican’s nearly five-month hold appears almost certain to stretch into September.
• Typical MAGA mentality. “Give me what I want or I’ll destroy the whole country!” Whining baby-ass bitches, all of them.
• Moving on…
• Yesterday, I mentioned that accused felon Donald John Trump had spent more that $40 million raised for his reelection on legal fees.
• Now Save America, his primary fundraising PAC, requested a refund of $60 million it had given to another political action committee supporting his 2024 White House bid.
• Snort. Moving on…
• One more note on that guy and his cult members. Footage from a pre-rally interview shows a Trump supporter saying that he will “guarantee” that Trump gets back into the White House. He’s then asked what his opinion is on “globalists and RINOs” and he responds with, “Kill them all,” to which reporter Matthew Alvarez says, “I agree with you on that.”
• Nice people, these Republicans. Speaking of which…
• Some piece of shit in North Carolina intentionally drove his SUV into a crowd of migrant workers in a Walmart parking lot yesterday afternoon. Six of them were transported to hospitals with injuries, none of them appearing being life-threatening.
• Police say they're still looking for the vehicle and driver involved in the incident, which they said took place at 1:17 pm ET. The vehicle is an older model SUV with a luggage rack, and the driver, shockingly. is an older white male.
• And now, The Weather: “Vampire Empire” by Big Thief
• Yesterday, Phoenix, AZ set a new record: 31 days straight of over 110-degree heat. It smashes the previous record of 18 days set in June of 1974.
• One July 23, police in Frisco, TX held a Black couple at gunpoint and handcuffed their son after mistyping their car's license plate into their system, leading them to falsely believe the car the family was driving was stolen.
• Body cam footage shows an officer holding the family at gunpoint. Officers ordered the family to show their hands, and commanded the driver to exit the car, face away from the officers, lift up her shirt while spinning to reveal her waistband, and walk backwards.
• "We made a mistake," said Frisco Police Chief David Shilson. "Our department will not hide from its mistakes. Instead, we will learn from them."
• Will they, though?
• As mentioned previously, I spent the entire weekend poring over genealogy information, and found some fascinating shit. I may fill you in on some of it at some point.
• From the Sports Desk… tomorrow at 6PM ET is the deadline for MLB trades. Who has been dealt? Who’s going where? I’m not sure.
• Today in history… Marc Antony wins the Battle of Alexandria over Octavian, but most of his troops desert (30 BC). The oldest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji (781). All remaining Jews are expelled from Spain when the Alhambra Decree takes effect (1492). Christopher Columbus “discovers” Trinidad (1498). Odawa Chief Pontiac's forces defeat British troops at the Battle of Bloody Run during Pontiac's War (1763). Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city (1856). The Nazi Party wins 38% of the vote in German elections (1932). New York International Airport is dedicated, and is later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport (1948). Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes (1964). Michael Phelps breaks the record for most medals won at the Olympics (2012).
• July 31 is the birthday of Holy Roman emperor Maximillian II (1527), French Prime Minister Henri Brisson (1835), painter Mary Vaux Walcott (1860), animation producer Fred Quimby (1886), music producer Ahmet Ertegun (1923), guitarist/composer Kenny Burrell (1931), tennis player Evonne Goolagong (1951), actor Michael Biehn (1956), drummer/composer Bill Berry (1958), guitarist Stanley Jordan (1959), NFL player Kevin Greene (1962), actor Wesley Snipes (1962), DJ/musician Fatboy Slim (1963), author J. K. Rowling (1965), MLB player/manager Gabe Kapler (1975), singer-songwriter/guitarist Zac Brown (1978), actor/screenwriter B. J. Novak (1979), and NFL player DeMarcus Ware (1982).

Okay, I have to jump. Time and tide wait for no man, and I’ve got shit to do. Enjoy your day.

Random News: July 30, 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 July 30, 2023, and it’s a Sunday. I just woke up and made coffee, and now that I have coffee it is safe to interact with me in most ways, so let’s see what’s going on…

It wasn’t that long ago that Florida was considered a swing state. But MAGA and Ron De Santis have, as you’re well aware, turned it into the current right-wing nightmare that we all seem to think is past the point of no return.

National Democrats had all but written off Florida as a lost cause. However, citizen initiatives dealing with abortion rights and recreational marijuana legalization could fuel turnout and boost the party’s chances.

Some are skeptical that the initiatives will change the fortunes of the party in that godforsaken state But Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried thinks it’s the perfect storm.

She said that Democratic volunteers and paid canvassers will help gather signatures for the weed and abortion amendments when they go out into the field. The party does not plan to help fund either initiative, but Florida Democrats are promoting the abortion rights initiative — as well one dealing with clean water — on the party’s website.

She’s probably right. So that’s a little glimmer of hope. The weed initiative has already gotten over a million signatures, and the abortion rights initiative has over 400,000 and is on track to hit a million.

In other news…

Per a federal ruling yesterday, Arkansas is temporarily blocked from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors.

U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which also would have created a new process to challenge library materials and request that they be relocated to areas not accessible by kids. The measure, signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders earlier this year, was set to take effect this Tuesday, August 1.

Yes. Be it Florida or Alabama, Texas or Arkansas, I know it seems like the places that were already bad are getting worse. But there’s also systems in place to keep America being the land of the free, and none of these evil motherfuckers can easily negate those systems.

Moving on…

I’ll bet you think that Supreme Court justices have a pretty good understanding of US government and the Constitution. I mean, I’d think that.

So I was a little tiny bit surprised on Friday when SCOTUS justice Samuel Alito said in an interview, “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it. No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”

Oh?

Shortly after, my congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) posted, “Dear Justice Alito: You’re on the Supreme Court in part because Congress expanded the Court to 9 Justices. Congress can impeach Justices and can in many cases strip the Court of jurisdiction. Congress has always regulated you and will continue to do so. You are not above the law.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had some feelings as well.

“What a surprise, guy who is supposed to enforce checks and balances thinks checks shouldn’t apply to him. Corruption and abuse of power must be stopped, no matter the source. In fact, the court should be *most* subject to scrutiny, bc it is unelected & life appointed. Alito’s next opinion piece in the WSJ is about to be ‘I am a little king, actually. The Constitution doesn’t explicitly say I’m not.”

Alito is on the defensive after accepting gifts without disclosing them, and then refusing to allow any ethics regulation for the Court. There’s a name for a guy like that, and that name is “asshole”.

Sunday is our day to discuss gun violence in the USA. Why Sunday? Because Americans tend to shoot each other a lot on Friday and Saturday. It just works out that way.

One dead and 17 wounded at a party in Muncie, IN. Five shot with two in critical condition at a community event in Seattle, WA. Four dead, 36 injured in Chicago, IL. Two dead and four injured in Oakland, CA. Five shot with two in critical condition in Lansing, MI. Someone opened fire on a Best Western in San Antonio, TX, striking seven rooms and wounding one woman in her hotel room. One guy in critical condition after being shot in a Phoenix, AZ dog park. One dead in Huntsville, AL. Three shot at a 7-11 in Arvada, CO. One shot at a P.F. Chang’s in Chino Hills, CA. One shot in Brownsville, PA.

There are more, but I guess you get the idea. The United States has surpassed 400 mass shootings in 2023, setting the stage for a record-breaking year in gun violence. Including homicides and suicides, nearly 1 in 5 US adults has had a family member killed by a gun.

And, over the past few years, firearms contributed to the deaths of more children ages 1-17 years in the U.S. than any other type of injury or illness. When you vote for candidates who don’t support common-sense gun control, like universal background checks, waiting periods, and limits on ammunition capacity, you are part of the system that’s killing these children.

Don’t be surprised when your choice affects you personally.

And now, The Weather: “Soft Like a Flower” by Cherry Glazerr

The social network formerly known as Twitter has completed its transition to its new brand, now called X.

As I’ve been participating more on the Threads app, I find myself barely ever visiting X anymore. When I do stop in, it’s a horrible cesspool of Nazis and porn. Sad.

I guess that’s what Elmo wanted.

Want to send money to Donald Trump for his re-election efforts? Well, his political action committee, Save America, has spent more than $40 million on legal fees since the start of this year.

The PAC, which raises most of its funds through small-dollar donations from Trump’s supporters, is expected to report to the Federal Election Commission tomorrow that it spent $40.2 million on legal costs in the first half of the year – more than double the amount the group spent on legal fees in all of 2022.

So that’s what you’re paying for. Hundreds of lawyers for a rich guy. Does that make you a smart person? Should people respect you for that? Are you so wealthy that you can afford to pay legal fees for a wealthy criminal?

In personal news, I spent the whole day yesterday on the Ancestry site, finding a string of direct relatives going back to the early 1500s.

Without going into much detail, a little over a year ago, I got some rather surprising news about my genetic makeup. With both of my parents now dead, I’m using multiple tools to explore both my familial and biological background.

It’s pretty fascinating. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about it.

From the Sports Desk… running back Sony Michel has decided to retire on the opening weekend of training camp with the Los Angeles Rams. He’s only played for five years and is a two-time Super Bowl champion.

Running backs do not typically last long. It’s a grueling position on the body, with constant violent collisions and high changes of concussions and sinew injuries. He was a first round pick of the Patriots in 2018.

In other sports news, the USWNT will determine its fate Tuesday with a final group-stage match against Portugal. USA! USA!

Today in history… Baghdad is founded (762). The Virginia General Assembly convenes for the first time (1619). Founding of Baltimore, MD (1729). Uruguay wins its first FIFA World Cup (1930). Congress decides that “In God We Trust” is the new national motto (1956). Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act, establishing Medicare and Medicaid (1965). Apollo 15 lands on the moon with the first lunar rover (1971). Jimmy Hoffa disappears and is never seen again (1975). 50,000 people demonstrate in Communist Poland (1981). NASA's Mars 2020 mission was launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral (2020).

July 30 is the birthday of Ming emperor Hongzhi (1470), pianist Maria Anna Mozart (1751), novelist Emily Brontë (1818), engineer/businessman Henry Ford (1863), MLB player Casey Stengel (1890), banker Henry W. Bloch (1922), puppeteer Sid Kroft (1929), guitarist Buddy Guy (1936), director Peter Bogdanovich (1939), singer-songwriter Paul Anka (1941), saxophonist/composer David Sanborn (1945), actor/politician Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947), drummer Rat Scabies (1955), actress Delta Burke (1956), lawyer Anita Hill (1956), NBA player Bill Cartwright (1957), singer-songwriter Kate Bush (1958), actor Lawrence Fishburne (1961), actress Lisa Kudrow (1963), NBA player Chris Mullin (1963), actress Vivica A. Fox (1964), director Christopher Nolan (1970), actress Hilary Swank (1974), and soccer player Hope Solo (1981).

I need to take a shower and do various things. Enjoy your day.

Random News: July 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 July 29, 2023, and it’s a Saturday. I was in a bathrobe but then I realized it’s a toasty summer day, so I swapped that for some shorts an a t-shirt, then got my coffee, and now I’m ready to see what’s happening in this weird and wonderful world…

• We should talk about poor Carlos De Oliveira. Who is he?
• On Thursday, poor Carlos became the third person charged with federal felonies in relation to alleged efforts by former President Donald Trump to keep classified information after leaving office and impede an investigation.
• The other two are Trump himself and his toady, Waltine Nauta.
• De Oliveira is identified in the indictment as a property manager at Mar-a-Lago. He’s a maintenance guy, doing odd jobs around the facility. He’s not in any way part of Trump’s inner circle. He’s definitely not been privy to internal deliberations or high-level conversations.
• He’s a 56-year-old man who lives in an apartment in a middle class townhome community in Palm Beach Gardens, FL who’s been a fix-it guy at Mar-a-Lago for 20 years. You’d call him if a toilet was clogged or if a sprinkler wasn’t working. That guy.
• The superseding indictment claims De Oliveira helped move boxes containing classified information for Trump, and requested an employee to delete Mar-a-Lago security camera footage to prevent it from being turned over to a federal grand jury.
• The DOJ claim is that the day after Trump got his subpoena on June 24, 2022, Nauta and De Oliveira went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors and pointed out surveillance cameras.
• A couple of days later, De Oliveira took another Trump employee to a small room known as an "audio closet," and asked the employee how many days the server retained security footage. It’s said that employee is Mar-a-Lago I.T. guy Yuscil Taveras.
• The indictment says that De Oliveira told Taveras that "'the boss' wanted the server deleted.” Taveras responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the right to do that. Good for him.
• When federal investigators spoke with De Oliveira in January, De Oliveira told the FBI he was not part of a group that helped unload and move boxes at the end of Trump's presidency. He also was asked whether he was aware that boxes were being moved, and said that he "never saw anything.”
• So, poor Carlos seems like a patsy here. His boss (or more like his boss’s boss’s boss) told him to tell someone else to do something highly illegal. And now, prosecutors know that De Oliveira's statements were false, because they have evidence that De Oliveira had personally observed and helped move Trump's boxes when they arrived at Mar-a-Lago in January 2021.
• A source is saying that De Oliveria’s family was pretty certain that he did not realize the consequences of what Trump was telling him to do when he asked him to delete the security footage, and that given his lack of money, De Oliveria was probably just doing anything that Trump told him to do.
• Will a poor idiot like De Oliveira go to jail for the rest of his life to help save this piece of shit who would otherwise have never had anything to do with him?
• Well, according to the indictment, Trump called De Oliveira “and told De Oliveira that Trump would get De Oliveira an attorney.” Jesus H. Christ.
• Anyway, that’s Carlos.
• I know that with all the various things going on with Trump’s criminal accusations, it’s easy to get confused. I can unconfuse you in four bullets.
• He is currently under federal indictment in the case ‘United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, Waltine Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira’, the one I was speaking about above. That indictment brings 40 felony counts against Trump related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents after his presidency. That’s being tried in the state of Florida, where Trump’s alleged crime took place.
• A completely different federal investigation — but also run by special counsel Jack Smith — is in regard to Trump’s attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election, including his role in the failed coup attempt at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump said on July 18 that he’d received a target letter, meaning that an indictment is likely imminent. It’s unknown what the specific charges are until the indictment is made public, but are likely also felony-level crimes. That case will be tried in Washington D.C.
• There are also two state-based criminal investigations of Trump The first is in New York, where falsifying business records is a misdemeanor, but it becomes a felony if the defendant falsified the records with the intent of furthering a separate underlying crime. Prosecutors will argue that the payoffs to sex worker Stormy Daniels constituted an illegal contribution to Trump’s campaign — a violation of state and/or federal election law that Trump furthered by falsifying his company’s records. He’s currently charged with 34 felony counts in that case.
• And finally, for now, in December/January 2020/21, Trump sought to overturn the result of the presidential election in the state of Georgia. On January 2, 2021, Trump called Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger and urged him to “find” 11,780 votes. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is leading the investigation. Possible felony charges include conspiracy to commit election fraud, racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations (RICO), and more.
• Why all the news of the Creamsicle Criminal today? Because I am pretty sure that the next set of indictments — those for the Jan 6 crimes — are coming early next week.
• So that’s it. Now you know everything. I thought you might enjoy a full update. Let’s talk about something else.
• Yesterday, the United States announced $345 million in military aid for Taiwan. The White House said the package would include defense, education and training for the Taiwanese. 
• The goals are to help Taiwan counter China and to deter China from considering attacking, by providing Taipei enough weaponry that it would make the price of invasion too high.
• For those who don’t follow geopolitics or history: Taiwan’s official name is the Republic of China. The country you call China, the People’s Republic of China, claims it owns Taiwan.
• It’s a long story (literally… it goes back thousands of years).
• In very much related news, the US announced today it will expand its military industrial base by helping Australia manufacture guided missiles and rockets for both countries within two years. Agani, this defense cooperation is meant to counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific.
• This is part of a trilateral partnership that will see Britain provide Australia with a fleet of eight submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology.
• Imagine if we took all that war machine money and used it to improve people’s lives instead of dividing and destroying each other. Ah well.
• Moving on…
• A Colorado police officer who put a handcuffed suspect in a patrol SUV that was then hit by a train near Denver last year was found guilty of two misdemeanors Friday. Misdemeanors? What the fuck?
• Officer Jordan Steinke was convicted of reckless endangerment and third-degree assault, but acquitted of a felony charge of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter. That’s bullshit.
• Steinke arrested Yareni Rios-Gonzalez in a road rage case. She cuffed her, put her in a cruiser, and parked in the middle of a railroad crossing, then got out and left her there to be hit by a train.
• Dashcams and body cams showed Rios screaming for help as the train approaches and strikes the vehicle. Rios suffered nine broken ribs, a broken arm, broken teeth, and a punctured lung in addition to other injuries.
• Officer Steinke will be sentenced in September. She’ll probably serve no time for this “misdemeanor”.
• In other, possibly even sadder news…
• The largest school district in Texas announced its libraries will be eliminated and replaced with discipline centers in the new school year. Librarian and media-specialist positions in 28 schools will be eliminated as part of superintendent Mike Miles’s “new education system” initiative.
• Teachers at these schools will soon have the option to send misbehaving students to these discipline centers.
• I’m not kidding. This isn’t some joke or some kind of dystopian horror movie. This is real.
• Let’s do some better news…
• Starting Tuesday, Minnesotans will be able to legally possess and grow their own marijuana for recreational purposes. Most legal retail sales likely won't begin until early 2025, while the state creates and implements a licensing and regulatory system for the new industry.
• Minnesota is the 23rd state to legalize recreational marijuana. As someone who’s lived in a non-prohibition state for years, I can tell you… it’s not that big of a deal. When I was a teenager, I envisioned a world of legal weed to resemble a giant parking lot of a Grateful Dead show.
• No. It’s more like you can buy weed at a place that looks like an Apple Store instead of from some guy in a poncho named Tim who you meet behind the McDonalds.
• Don’t do anything with weed that you wouldn’t do with alcohol, like consume it in public, use it while operating vehicles or machinery, or have it around children.
• And now, The Weather: “Pool” by Far Caspian
• Speaking of weather, July 2023 is going to end up being the hottest month globally on record and likely the warmest human civilization has seen.
• Earth’s temperature has passed over a key warming threshold: the internationally accepted goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
• Oh well. It was good for awhile, being on this nice planet and being people.
• Moving on…
• Yesterday, President Joe Biden publicly acknowledged a daughter of his son Hunter for the first time.
• “Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” Biden said in a statement.
• I don’t give a shit about people’s family situations that don’t affect me. A whole lot of people have family members who have kids out of wedlock, who use drugs, and do stupid things.
• Frankly, Hunter Biden seems like a trashy piece of shit. He’s about the same age as me, and I’ve known plenty of dudes like him. Overprivileged, lacking morals, exhibiting few redeeming qualities that I can see.
• But what he does has nothing to do with me. He’s not a public servant nor a candidate for office. He’s just some fucking guy.
• In “Crime Doesn’t Pay” news, I saw a piece of body cam footage that cracked me up.
• On Wednesday, Tristan Heidi, 27, broke into an Ohio bank at 2am, intending on robbing it. Cops got a silent alarm and went to investigate. They saw an access door in the drive-thru area’s roof swing open.
• Just as Heidi gingerly lowers himself down, cops scream and rush him, Heidi panics, and falls directly into a giant trash bin, saying “AW FUCK!” as he docilely surrenders. He’s charged with breaking and entering and possession of criminal tools and safecracking.
• From the Sports Desk… NFL training camps officially opened this week. Teams have cut their rosters to 90 men, eventually having to pare down to the final goal of a 53-man roster.
• With the season’s prep officially underway for a couple of days, has anything happened yet? Of course. Aaron Rogers voluntarily reduced his salary by about $35 million over the next two seasons, Joe Burrow suffered a non-contact calf injury almost immediately, Justin Herbert became the highest-paid player in NFL history, and a Vikings rookie was cited for driving 85 mph over the speed limit.
• Welcome back, NFL.
• Today in history… The Neo-Babylonian Empire sacks Jerusalem and destroys the First Temple (587 BC). The Siege of Damascus ends in a decisive crusader defeat and leads to the disintegration of the Second Crusade (1148). Mary, Queen of Scots marries Henry Stuart (1565). The US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps is founded when General George Washington appoints William Tudor as Judge Advocate of the Continental Army  (1775). The Arc de Triomphe is inaugurated in Paris (1836). United States and Japan sign the Harris Treaty (1858). Confederate spy Belle Boyd is arrested (1864). Land lottery begins in Oklahoma (1901). Robert Baden-Powell hosts the first Scout camp (1907). Adolf Hitler is named head of the Nazi Party (1921). After a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, the Summer Olympics open in London (1948). The International Atomic Energy Agency is established (1957). The Tonight Show with Jack Paar begins, starting the modern dat talk show (1957). Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space act, founding NASA (1958). David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz kills his first victim (1976). 700 million people watch the wedding of Charles and Diana (1981). British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President of France François Mitterrand sign the agreement to build a tunnel under the English Channel (1987). Astronomer discover the dwarf planet Eris (2005). The International Space Station temporarily spins out of control (2021).
• July 29 is the birthday of organist/composer Johann Theile (1646), historian/philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville (1805), fascist politician Benito Mussolini (1883), gynecologist Bernhard Zondek (1891), businessman J.R.D. Tata (1904), actress Clara Bow (1905), businessman Jim Marshall (1923), wrestler Lou Albano (1933), politician Elizabeth Dole (1936), journalist Peter Jennings (1938), actor David Warner (1941), actor Tony Sirico (1942), keyboardist/songwriter Neal Doughty (1946), filmmaker Ken Burns (1953), singer-songwriter/musician Geddy Lee (1953), singer-songwriter Martina McBride (1966), actor Will Wheaton (1972), and NFL player Dan Prescott (1993).

Time for more coffee. Enjoy your day.

Random News: July 28, 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 July 28, 2023, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I am greatly looking forward to it being a weekend, even if I’m spending a chunk of it improving my home in various ways. I’m just happy to not be doing work activities on Saturday or Sunday. Let’s do some news…

• Holy shit!
• Court papers filed in federal court last night indicate that prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith's office have added new charges against former President and current alleged felon Donald Trump in the case involving classified documents at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago.
• This superseding indictment lists multiple serious new counts against Trump, including altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object; and corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing a document, record or other object; and an additional charge of willful retention of national defense information.
• There’s also a new, third defendant named in the case: Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago property manager and former valet. He faces one count of altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object; one count of corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing a document, record or other object; and one count of making false statements and representations during a voluntary interview with federal investigators.
• Wow.
• On a completely different Trump criminal matter…
• The grand jury conducting special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump’s bid to interfere with the 2020 presidential election met again yesterday amid signs of a looming indictment.
• That indictment, whatever it may entail, could happen as early as today.
• Also yesterday, Trump posted about a meeting his attorneys held that morning with the special counsel’s team. Last time they met as such, the indictments came down the next day, which would be today if it follows the same pattern.
• And in addition to all that…
• In Fulton County, GA, images of newly-installed security barricades around the courthouse there — where Trump may face similar charges related to his role in seeking to subvert Biden’s win in Georgia — also contributed to the sense that Trump’s already serious legal troubles are about to become even graver.
• Okay. Enough on that guy… for the moment.
• Yesterday we mentioned Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s brain having frozen during a press conference. Mitch is only 81; let’s talk about his older colleague Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
• I love and admire and respect my Senator. She has been a lion in liberal politics for well over 50 years. She’s also 90 years old and has been through some health issues in recent years.
• Yesterday, she appeared to get confused during a committee vote. After Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, asked members to vote on the Defense Appropriations Act, the clerk called on Feinstein to cast her vote. The senator then began reading aloud a statement, instead of saying how she wanted to vote, with either an “aye” or “nay” response.
• As Feinstein continued to read her statement, an aide nudged her to vote, while Murray, who was sitting immediately left of Feinstein, told the senior senator to “just say, ‘Aye,’”. Murray had to prod her three times to cast her vote before she seemed to click in.
• She’s still planning on finishing out the remainder of her term, which ends in early 2025.
• Sigh. The same strength that’s fueled her successful acts in the Senate is also what’s likely driving her obstinance at not retiring despite being long past the point of being effective in her role.
• Moving on…
• An actual headline from CBS yesterday afternoon: “Trader Joe's recalls broccoli cheddar soup because it contains bugs.”
• That’s nice.
• The FDA said in a recall notice that the soup "has insects in the frozen broccoli florets,” and is being voluntarily recalled by its manufacturer, Winter Gardens Quality Foods of New Oxford, PA. It’s called Trader Joe's Unexpected Broccoli Cheddar Soup
• Say, that really is unexpected. Snort.
• Also noted in the same article: earlier this week, the company recalled two varieties of cookies, Almond Windmill Cookies and Dark Chocolate Chunk and Almond Cookies, because some batches contain rocks.
• Rocks and bugs. I think I’ll continue not shopping at Trader Joe’s.
• And now, The Weather: “Bug Like an Angel” by Mitski
• Rest in peace to Randy Meisner, who died yesterday at 77. In 1971, Meisner, along with Glen Frey, Don Henley, and Bernie Leadon, formed a band called Eagles. He played bass and sang the high harmony parts in the iconic band until 1977, and sang lead on their first million-selling single, “Take It to the Limit”.
• Meet Anthony Gibson. He’s a Black man who lives in Georgia and he likes to fish. In 2021, he moved into in a 200-home development called Springwater Plantation that has a lake.
• On July 11 video, Gibson sat with two Black female friends when a white resident named Tanya Petty told him that the lake was for “residents only,” and that she would take down his license plate to report him to local authorities. 
• By the end of the day, Gibson said he and his friends were approached a total of four times that day by residents asking him if he lived in the community. All of those residents were white.
• The harassment began right form the start. Once, two white men whom he didn’t know approached Gibson and asked him to provide his address. When Gibson declined, the man called the police.
• White people who weren’t residents of the community but fished there told Gibson they’d never been questioned by residents.
• We’ve got to get better. Moving on…
• Anyone ever tell you that you were worth your weight in gold? It’s a high compliment.
• I checked my weight in gold at the current market rate for said precious metal at $1,951/ounce. Turns out that I’d be worth $5,618,880 in gold. That is considerably more than my tangible net worth, but still seems kinda chintzy. I’m only worth five and half mil?
• I want to be worth my weight in plutonium. That shit goes for $4,000/gram. I weigh about 80kg. That’s $320,000,000. That’d be impressive.
• It’s getting to be that time of year around these here local parts where the ants suddenly become an issue. I’m having to be vigilant about any ant sightings, especially monitoring the cat find dishes downstairs.
• But I do have a nightmarish real life ant story to share with you. I may have shared it before.
• Summer 1987, I was working for the City of Rancho Palos Verdes being a laborer. My little team would go clear out overgrown fields, cut trees that were blocking stop signs, and all that fun-ass city shit.
• One day I’m taking out a field of fennel. I spent most of the day hacking at it with a machete. Then I get an idea. A brilliant idea. I’m going to take a chainsaw and remove the fennel much more expediently via raw power.
• So I start up my Stihl, rev it a few times, and bend down to take out a big batch of vegetation at the root. I realized that I’d fucked up immediately when I slightly missed the bottom of the plant and instead sprayed my own face and torso with dirt.
• Except it wasn’t dirt. I’d chainsawed an anthill and hundreds of them were angrily crawling all over me.
• I won’t describe the rest of it, which involved a lot of screaming and tearing off of clothes on a public street, but I will tell you that hours later when I finally got into a shower, I was still finding live ants in various crevices of my body. That’s the kind of thing that leaves one traumatized, and ants have never been my friends to those day.
• From the Sports Desk… just a note of admiration about the man who might end up as the best Major League Baseball player of all time: Shohei Ohtani.
• Yesterday, the Los Angeles Angels’ pitcher/slugger became just the fifth player since 1900 to throw a shutout and hit 2 home runs on the same day, and the first ever to do so over a doubleheader. 
• He leads the league in home runs (38 currently). The only player that’s come close to him so far is Babe Ruth.
• Today in history… Henry VIII marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard (1540). Maximilien Robespierre is executed by guillotine in Paris (1794). Confederate troops make a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, GA at the Battle of Ezra Church (1864). The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is certified, establishing African American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law (1868). The city of Miami, FL is incorporated (1896). The US occupies Haiti and stays for 19 years (1915). Lyndon B. Johnson increases US troops in Vietnam from 75,000 to. 125,000 (1965). 600,000 people go see bands rock at Watkins Glen Summer Jam (1973).  The Summer Olympics open in Los Angeles, CA (1984). 
• July 28 is the birthday of pianist/businessman Ignaz Bösendorfer (1796), writer/illustrator Beatrix Potter (1866), activist Lucy Burns (1879), painter/sculptor Marcel Duchamp (1887), actor/singer Rudy Vallée (1901), inventor/businessman Earl Tupper (1907), composer/conductor Carmen Dragon (1914), US first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929), guitarist Mike Bloomfield (1943), keyboardist Richard Wright (1943), cartoonist Jim Davis (1945), actress Sally Struthers (1947), guitarist/composer Gerald Casale (1948), Venezuela president Hugo Chávez (1954), guitarist/composer Steve Morse (1954), NHL player Garth Snow (1969), NBA player Manu Ginóbili (1977), and rapper Soulja Boy (1990).

So, many things might happen today. Some may be good, some may be bad. I’ll be here to observe and document it all. Enjoy your day.

Random News: July 27, 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 July 27, 2023, and it’s Thursday for some reason. I’ve got a big cup of Peet’s and I like my news like I like my coffee: fresh, hot, and in a large mug. Let’s go…

• Something weird happened to Mitch McConnell yesterday.
• He had just started speaking at a press conference and then just… stopped. He was in mid-sentence, froze, and stared vacantly into space for about 20 seconds.
• His colleagues finally asked if he was okay, then led him away. McConnell later returned to the press conference and answered questions from the press.
• Asked about what happened, McConnell said he was “fine.” He did not elaborate.
• That didn’t seem fine to me. That seemed like a stroke.
• Mitch has done some terrible things to this country, perhaps most egregiously when he held up the nomination of Obama’s would-be final Supreme Court justice, which ended up causing the country to be where it is now, with a radical right-wing court that took away reproductive health rights for hundreds of millions of Americans.
• Being a decent person, I still don’t want to watch the guy stroke out on live TV.
• Moving on…
• Here’s some international news you never want to see: soldiers in Niger have announced a coup, imposing a curfew and closing borders in a country that is a key U.S. ally in West Africa.
• It’s never good when a democratically-elected leader is overthrown by military force.
• Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum had been effectively held hostage all day by members of the presidential guard. Soldiers went on state television after midnight there and announced the coup, saying the country's constitution has been dissolved and all institutions suspended.
• The U.S. has drone bases in Niger, a country that has had four coups since gaining independence from France in 1960 and numerous attempted takeovers, including against Bazoum.
• In other news…
• Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, made a court appearance about his failure to pay taxes and his ownership of a gun. If he’s guilty, hopefully he’ll be sentenced appropriately.
• No one is above the law.
• But to be clear, I don’t care about the non-elected family of politicians. I don’t care what Hunter Biden does or doesn’t do any more than I care about the actions of Amy Carter or Sasha Obama or Tricia Nixon Cox.
• I guess that’s all the news. Oh wait… there is that small matter of the USA being in contact with aliens for decades.
• Retired Air Force intelligence officer Major David Grusch testified yesterday to Congress, saying that the U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects.
• The Pentagon has denied his claims. I’ll bet they did!
• Grusch spoke before a House Oversight subcommittee. Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.
• Do I believe that in our vast universe that there is not only life off our one little planet but also advanced intelligent life? Yes, 100% yes. Space is too big for us to be the only ones here.
• Do I believe that intelligent extraterrestrial aliens have visited Earth, or that our government has been using their technology to do things like fly to the Moon less than 100 years after inventing the light bulb?
• I mean, it’s not out of the range of possibilities. But without any actual evidence of such, I’ll just assume that weird things happen for various reasons that not everyone gets to understand.
• Moving on…
• A cop in Ohio has no job today after having his canine partner maul a Black man after he’d surrendered to authorities with his hands raised.
• "Officer Speakman did not meet the standards and expectations we hold for our police officers. Officer Speakman has been terminated from the department, effective immediately.”
• Police dogs and their handlers do amazing work. But the standards of any use of force by law enforcement have to be stringent, and having your dog attack a guy who has surrendered and has his hands up?
• No. That’s fucked up. It also makes the good cops out there look bad and lessens public trust in policing. Fuck Officer Speakman.
• In other news…
• Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan continues to impress me. I think she’s someone to keep an eye on as a future presidential candidate.
• Yesterday she signed two bills banning so-called conversion therapy, a scientifically discredited practice intended to change a person’s sexual orientation, for minors in the state.
• “As a mom of a member of the community and a proud, lifelong ally, I’m grateful that today we’re banning the horrific practice of conversion therapy in Michigan. In doing so, we are taking action to make Michigan a more welcoming, inclusive place.”
• The governor’s approval of the measures makes Michigan the 22nd state to ban “conversion therapy,” according to the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization focused on suicide prevention efforts among LGBTQ youth.
• Moving on…
• An 11-year-old Florida girl has been arrested and charged with a felony after falsely reporting that her friend had been kidnapped.
• Why would she do that? Because of a stupid fucking YouTube challenge. She told police she thought it would be funny.
• Please, I beg you: monitor your younger kids’ use of social media. This could have been disastrous. The alert prompted multiple deputies from Volusia -- along with Edgewater, New Smyrna Beach and Port Orange police, as well as Volusia's aviation unit, Air One -- to search for the falsely-reported suspect vehicle.
• And now, The Weather: “dazies” by yeule
• Rest in peace to Sinéad O’Connor, one of the greatest and most misunderstood voices of her generation. She has died at age 56. No cause of death was given.
• Sinéad first gained international fame at age 20 with her album ‘The Lion and the Cobra’ and then exploded into fame in 1990, thanks to her stunning cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U”.
• 56 is so young. It’s just a couple of years older than me. Wanna talk about age?
• Here’s a list of people who are 80 years old.
• Andy Summers (guitarist - The Police), Barbra Streisand (singer/actress), Brian Wilson (singer-songwriter/musician - the Beach Boys), Christopher Walken (actor), Eric Idle (actor/comedian), Harrison Ford (actor), Joe Biden (president. USA), Joe Namath (NFL legend), Joe Pesci (actor), Martin Scorsese (film director), Mick Jagger (singer - The Rolling Stones), Paul McCartney (singer-songwriter/musician, The Beatles). And Robert De Niro (actor) turns 80 in August.
• 80 doesn’t seem quite as old as it once did, eh? But then there’s Mitch McConnell (81). I guess there’s a variety of people and how well they are at various ages.
• Let’s talk about things that happen in small towns, like that Aldean guy mentions in his little song.
• A teenager was brutally attacked and left unconscious with a broken nose by a group of several men at a country music festival in Cullman, Alabama on Saturday night.
• Reid Watts, 18, attended the “Rock the South” music festival with a group of his friends when a fellow concertgoer accused him of spilling a drink on them, which eventually led to the teen getting beaten up by a large group of 30- to 40-year-old men.
• That’s how they do it in a small town. Beat up the defenseless for no reason.
• From the Sports Desk… in the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the USWNT had to fight for a draw against a tough Netherlands team. The final score was 1-1.
• Midfielder Lindsey Horan scored the tying goal.
• Today in history… Siward invades Scotland and defeats Macbeth north of the Firth of Forth (1054). England requires all goods bound for American colonies must be sent on English ships from English ports (1663). The Second Continental Congress passes legislation establishing "an hospital for an army consisting of 20,000 men,” establishing the U.S. Army Medical Department (1775). The USA establishes its first federal government agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs, later renamed the Department of State (1789). Maximilien Robespierre is arrested after encouraging the execution of more than 17,000 "enemies of the Revolution” (1794). The first transatlantic telegraph cable is completed, running from Ireland to Newfoundland (1866). Vincent van Gogh shoots himself and dies two days later (1890). The Chicago Race Riot erupts after a racial incident occurred on a South Side beach, leading to 38 fatalities and 537 injuries over a five-day period (1919). Researchers at the University of Toronto prove that the hormone insulin regulates blood sugar (1921). A cartoon called ‘A Wild Hare’ is released starring a new character named Bugs Bunny (1940). The US, China, and North Korea sign an armistice agreement ending the Korean War (1953). 5,000 more US military advisors are sent to Vietnam bringing the total to 21,000 (1964). The House Judiciary Committee votes 27-11 to impeach Richard Nixon for obstruction of justice (1974). Belarus declares independence from the Soviet Union (1990). A pipe bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta (1996).
• July 27 is the birthday of Shingon Buddhism founder Kūkai (774), Earl of Sandwich Edward Montagu (1625), pilot/engineer Geoffrey de Havilland (1882), actor Keenan Wynn (1916), writer/producer Norman Lear (1922), game designer Gary Gygax (1938), singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry (1944), figure skater Peggy Fleming (1948), singer Maureen McGovern (1949), drummer Bobby Rondinelli (1955), singer-songwriter Julianna Hatfield (1967), wrestler Triple H (1969), actress Maya Rudolph (1972), singer-songwriter/guitarist Pete Yorn (1974), MLB player Alex Rodriguez (1975), MLB player Max Scherzer (1984), NFL player Ryan Tannehill (1988), and golfer Jordan Spieth (1993).

Time for me to do things that aren’t this thing. Enjoy your day.

Random News: July 26, 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 July 26, 2023, and it’s a Wednesday. All alone and awake, I’m like a garter snake. Let’s see what’s up…

• Last night, formerly respected guy Rudy Giuliani conceded that he made false and defamatory statements about Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
• He still claims that his statements about voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 election were protected speech. Notably, he also refuses to concede that his statements caused damages to Moss or Freeman.
• Hmm. Moving on…
• Just a heads-up: as mentioned previously, there’s a distinct possibility that in the next few days — perhaps even today — former president Donald Trump will be indicted for his actions that directly led to the failed coup attempt on January 6, 2021.
• Politico has a terrific article that encapsulates the range of conduct that led to the possibly imminent indictments, from the disinformation campaign leading into the 2020 election to the attempts to illegally override state legislatures, make sue of fake electors, looking into seizing voting machines (!), weaponizing the DOJ, through to the “rally” and the resulting insurrection.
• I’ll save those details for when they become relevant in a court case. Moving on…
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential hopes are diminishing daily. His campaign is letting go of more than a third of his staff from the payroll in a move designed to keep him financially solvent into the fall. 
• Are you wondering why DeSantis is funneling money into an obviously losing cause as a distant second-place candidate? That’s easy.
• He knows that the presumed candidate might be in jail or otherwise occupied by the time November 2024 rolls around.
• He’s also getting more national exposure for a 2028 run if this doesn’t work out.
• Back to the present. The layoffs include 10 event staffers, two senior advisers, and other staffers from "across all departments".
• Whatever. None of this will matter.
• Moving on…
• Let’s do some outstanding news regarding women’s body autonomy…
• Ohio voters will have the opportunity this fall to decide whether to guarantee access to abortion in the state.
• State officials said yesterday that a ballot measure to change the state constitution had enough signatures. It would establish “a fundamental right to reproductive freedom” with “reasonable limits.”
• Will it pass in November? That depends on the outcome of an upcoming August 8 special election called by Statehouse Republicans to determine whether to raise the threshold for passing future constitutional changes from a simple majority in place since 1912 to a 60% supermajority.
• They’re trying anything to subvert the will of the people. It will be close; AP VoteCast polling last year found 59% of Ohio voters say abortion should generally be legal.
• And now some disgusting news on the same topic…
• Over this past weekend, a panel of all-male anti-abortion movement leaders gathered in Georgia to harass a nearby abortion clinic and to brainstorm strategies to subject people who have abortions to the death penalty.
• Every speaker at the extremist group Operation Save America’s abortion panel—which included voices from a diversity of groups including End Abortion Now and Georgia Right to Life—was a man. To be clear, these “pro-life” men are publicly stating that women who choose not to be pregnant should be put to death.
• Before Roe v Wade was destroyed, most people said that only ”extremist groups” were behind efforts to remove women’s reproductive autonomy. You saw what happened there.
• Voting for any Republican at any level is a vote for these men who will hunt down women and kill them for the crime of not wanting to be forced to give birth. Ask them; they’ll gladly tell you. They’re already planning the details.
• Moving on…
• U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar has blocked the Biden administration's new rules for asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. He found the rules unlawful because they impose conditions on asylum-seekers that Congress did not intend.
• Tigar stayed his own ruling for 14 days, giving the Biden administration a chance to appeal before it takes effect.
• The asylum rules, which took effect in May, make it harder for migrants to get asylum if they cross the border illegally after passing through Mexico or another country without seeking protection there first.
• Tigar blocked a similar policy during the Trump administration, and immigrant advocates had urged him to do the same in this case.
• Let’s do some January 6 news. I will continue doing these until every single person involved in the failed coup attempt is brought to justice.
• Today’s dumbass is Brian Gundersen of Armonk, NY. He was sentenced yesterday to a year and a half in federal prison. Prosecutors had recommended 46 months.
• How did Gundersen get identified? Well, it might be because he wore his high school football letterman jacket during the insurrection. He was found guilty of two felony counts of obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting or impeding officers.
• Gundersen’s public defender, Eugene Ohm, indicated in court that his client had underlying mental health issues. I’d say being a stupid asshole is indeed a mental health issue of sorts.
• More than 1,000 people have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, and more than 300 thus far have been sentenced to incarceration.
• In other news…
• UPS reached a contract agreement with its 340,000-person strong union yesterday, averting a strike that had the potential to disrupt logistics nationwide for businesses and households alike.
• The Teamsters called the tentative agreement "historic" and "overwhelmingly lucrative." It includes, among other benefits, higher wages and air conditioning in delivery trucks.
• Under the preliminary agreement, full-time drivers will make $49 per hour and part-time drivers will make $21 per hour. UPS will also add air conditioning to U.S. small delivery vehicles purchased after January 1, 2024.
• Good.
• Yesterday, first-term Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) introduced a resolution to censure Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over her controversial comments and actions, with the most recent being her public display of sexual images of the president’s son Hunter Biden in a hearing last week.
• The resolution introduced Tuesday is a laundry list of around 40 points of grievance against Greene, many of which list her specific comments and the dates on which she said them.
• Here’s a follow-up that I’d been waiting on…
• Robert Hadden, the gynecologist who sexually abused dozens of vulnerable and trusting patients for over two decades at prestigious New York hospitals, was sentenced yesterday to 20 years in prison by a federal judge who called his crimes shocking and unprecedented.
• The sentence for Hadden, 64, came nearly a month after he heard nine victims describe how the doctor abused them during gynecology treatments at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The institutions have agreed to pay more than $236 million to settle civil claims by more than 200 former patients.
• No sympathy for this scum.
• And in related news, yesterday, a federal jury found a former nurse at Oregon’s women’s prison guilty of sexually abusing nine women while they were in custody.
• 38-year-old Tony Klein was convicted of 21 of the 23 federal charges he faced including 17 counts pertaining to sexual assault and four of making false statements under oath in a deposition.
• Looking forward to his sentencing. I wonder how the inmates in his prison will feel about a rapist guard?
• And now, The Weather: “Push Back Baby” by Lutalo
• This is absolutely horrifying…
• Excessively hot waters off the coast of South Florida rose to an unfathomable level this week.
• A buoy in Manatee Bay, about 40 miles south of Miami, posted a temperature of 101.1 degrees at 6PM after a morning low of 91 degrees. Water temperatures remained at or above 100 from 5PM through late evening.
• For comparison, the suggested ideal temperature of a hot tub is 100 to 102 degrees.
• The fish are gonna die. The things that eat the fish are gonna die. We’re all gonna die. Does no one give a shit?
• Calming down. Hey, let’s do some charts!
• It was July 1978, and I was nine, but I was absorbing all music like some kind of sound sponge. I think this is the first Billboard Top 20 I’ve posted here where I could sing every song without a reminder of what they were. Lots of good shit here.
• 1. Shadow Dancing (Andy Gibb). 2. Baker Street (Gerry Rafferty). 3. Take A Chance On Me (ABBA). 4. Use Ta Be My Girl (The O’Jays). 5. Still The Same (Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band).  6. Miss You (The Rolling Stones). 7. The Groove Line (Heatwave_. 8. Dance With Me (Peter Brown With Betty Wright). 9. It's A Heartache (Bonnie Tyler). 10. Last Dance (Donna Summer). 11. Grease (Frankie Valli). 12. Bluer Than Blue (Michael Johnson). 13. Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad (Meat Loaf). 14. Love Will Find A Way (Pablo Cruise). 15. Runaway (Jefferson Starship). 16. Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton). 17. Copacabana (at The Copa) (Barry Manilow). 18. I Can't Stand The Rain (Eruption). 19. Life's Been Good (Joe Walsh). 20. Hot Blooded (Foreigner)
• X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, is now in such desperate straits that it is resorting to extorting brands for advertising money.
• They sent a warning to brands that they will lose their verification checkmark if they haven’t spent at least $1,000 on ads in the past 30 days, or $6,000 in the previous 180 days.
• Brand verification is important in that without it, it opens the platform to impersonators who could deceive the public by making false statements under the brand’s name.
• Fuck off, Elmo.
• From the Sports Desk… U.S. swimming champion Katie Ledecky has tied a record with legend Michael Phelps for the most individual world swimming titles.
• Ledecky, 26, achieved the feat while competing in Fukuoka, Japan, at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, where she won the 1,500-meter freestyle race —her 15th world title, and her fifth in the specific race.
• In Women’s World Cup news, the USWNT plays the Netherlands tonight. They will provide a tougher test than Vietnam, which the U.S. defeated, 3-0 last week.
• A win would give the U.S. six points, which could be enough to reach the knockout stages. If not, it would come down to Tuesday’s game against Portugal.
• Today in history… Rout of an alliance of Christian troops from Navarre and Léon against the Muslims at the Battle of Valdejunquera (920). Francis Drake, the English explorer, discovers a major bay on the coast of California, now known as San Francisco (1579). The office that would later become the United States Post Office Department is established by the Second Continental Congress, and Benjamin Franklin takes office as Postmaster General (1775). New York ratifies the United States Constitution and becomes the 11th state of the United States (1788). Liberia declares its independence from the United States (1847). George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run (1861). Premiere of Richard Wagner's opera ‘Parsifal’ (1882). France annexes Tahiti (1891). United States Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte issues an order to immediately staff the Office of the Chief Examiner, later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1908). In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, the United States, Britain and the Netherlands freeze all Japanese assets and cut off oil shipments (1941). The USS Indianapolis arrives at Tinian with components and enriched uranium for the Little Boy nuclear bomb (1945). Aloha Airlines begins service from Honolulu (1946). U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Department of Defense, United States Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council… holy shit (1947). Truman signs Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military of the United States (1948). Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution (1953). A federal grand jury indicts Cornell University student Robert T. Morris, Jr. for releasing the Morris worm, thus becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1989). The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is signed into law by President George H. W. Bush (1990). Launch of Discovery, NASA's first scheduled flight mission after the Columbia Disaster (2005). Hillary Clinton becomes the first female nominee for President of the United States by a major political party at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia (2016). 
• July 26 is the birthday of US vice president George Clinton (1739), playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856), psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875), novelist Aldous Huxley (1894), actress/comedian Gracie Allen (1895), actress Vivian Vance (1909), director Blake Edwards (1922), actor Jason Robards (1922), writer/illustrator Jan Berenstain (1923), director Stanley Kubrick (1928), singer-songwriter Dobie Gray (1940), singer Darlene Love (1941), singer-songwriter Mick Jagger (1943), actress Helen Mirren (1945), singer-songwriter/drummer Roger Taylor (1949), figure skater Dorothy Hamill (1956), actress Nana Visitor (1957), actor Kevin Spacey (1959), actress Sandra Bullock (1964), actress Kate Beckinsale (1973), singer-songwriter Iron & Wine (1974), UK prime minister Liz Truss (1975), and NBA player Delonte West (1983).

Okay, I guess that’s plenty for now. There’s always more. I get PMs fairly often from folks who tell me I left out something important, and I tell them the same thing every time: they’re right. But this is all the news I can do between 7:15 and 7:45 each morning, and it is what it is. Enjoy your day.

Random News: July 25, 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 July 25, 2023, and it’s a Tuesday. I’ve got a jam-packed schedule this morning, so no poetic dilly-dallying; let’s get our news on…

• A fucking ton of documents from formerly respected guy Rudy Giuliani has been turned over to special counsel Jack Smith. These documents are focused on the debunked conspiracies and unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
• Those documents had been withheld by former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who claimed they were privileged. But something must have swayed his opinion, because they were handed over to Smith on Sunday.
• None of this is good news for Donald John Trump and his upcoming third round of indictments. Speaking of which, that indictment could happen as early as today.
• Moving on…
• Yesterday, Twitter was renamed as X.
• Yes. Just X.
• Instead of making a Tweet, you make a Xeet. I’m not kidding about this. I’m 100% serious.
• One small problem.
• There’s already a trademark for an “X” logo, and that trademark belongs to… Elmo’s arch nemesis Zuck!
• Cue dramatic music fanfare.
• Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has already registered an "X" logo in connection to "online social networking services" and "social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming, and application development."
• Welp. Way to business, Musky Man.
• But bizarrely, Microsoft also has a trademark on a tech product called “X”. And to make matters even funnier, yesterday workers were seen removing the first letters of the word Twitter before SFPD stopped them from continuing the “unauthorized work.”
• According to police, the social media firm had failed to communicate with security and the building’s owner its plans to remove the sign at the Market Street headquarters. After the initial work by a worker on a cherrypicker, only the blue bird and the letters “er” were left on one side of the sign.
• Er.
• Final note: from the viewpoint of a veteran marketing person (i.e., me), changing the name and logo of an established brand is almost always the sign of a death knell.
• In our continuing coverage of the January 6, 2021 failed coup attempt, meet Peter Francis Stager, a 44-year-old man from Conway, Arkansas.
• Stager beat a Metropolitan Police Department officer with his flagpole at least three times as other rioters pulled the officer, head first, into the crowd. He was captured on video saying, “Every single one of those Capitol law enforcement officers, death is the remedy. That is the only remedy they get.”
• Yesterday, U.S. Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced Stager to four years and four months in prison. He’d pleaded guilty in February to a felony charge of assaulting police with a dangerous weapon.
• There will be no peace until every one of the Jan 6 insurrectionists receive justice.
• Current Florida Governor and distant loser of a presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was in a car crash this morning in Tennessee on the way to an event. He and his team were uninjured. Further details of the wreck were not immediately available.
• Shrug.
• In other “People Who Will Never Be President” news, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum has qualified for the first Republican presidential primary debate next month in Milwaukee
• To do so, Burgum offered donors $20 gift cards for $1 donations. 
• See, the first debate requires candidates to collect 40,000 individual donors, with at least 200 unique donors per state, as well as poll at 1% in three RNC-sanctioned polls, or 1% in two other national polls and two polls from key states.
• The funniest part: supporters of Joe Biden say they have been funneling the gift card money to the president’s re-election campaign. Nice!
• Although the RNC has not announced who has qualified for the debate, Burgum is the seventh Republican to claim they’ll be there. 
• Moving on…
• Yesterday, as promised, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Texas and its Republican governor for placing buoys in the Rio Grande as part of the state's effort to deter migrants from crossing into the United States.
• The civil suit said Gov. Greg Abbott (R) violated federal law by installing the barrier and asked a judge to order the defendants to "promptly remove the unauthorized obstruction" at their own expense.
• The lawsuit cites the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899, which bars the “creation of any obstruction not affirmatively authorized by Congress, to the navigable capacity of any of the waters of the United States.” It also alleges that Abbott had failed to obtain a permit through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before installing the barrier in the Rio Grande as required by federal law.
• Get his ass.
• In the “This Asshole Again?” file, anti-government agitator Ammon Bundy must pay an Idaho hospital more than $50 million for defaming it and targeting it with protests while it cared for an associate’s grandson—who was taken into protective custody after child welfare officials determined he was malnourished.
• He put up web content accusing the hospital of being kidnappers and child traffickers, and had mobs of men threatening patients and families in the ER. Life Flight pilots were refusing to land at the facility, fearing shots from the armed crowd on the ground.
• A jury delivered its verdict yesterday: Bundy, an associate, and their companies would owe $26.5 million in compensatory damages and nearly $26 million in punitive damages.
• Some global news…
• China’s foreign minister Qin Gang was booted today after a prolonged absence from public view and replaced by his predecessor. This is a surprising and highly unusual shake-up of the country’s foreign policy leadership.
• No one knows what happened to Qin, who has not been seen in public for a month. Weird.
• And now, The Weather: “Good Era Doom” by Draag
• What should be — but might not be, horrifyingly — the hottest week of the year is here. More than 260 million Americans will experience a deadly heat wave that continues to encompass more of the U.S.
• By tomorrow, the heat will spread up the coast toward the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
• Stay safe, peoples.
• Of note: the extreme heat waves across three continents this month were made significantly more likely by the human-caused climate crisis, per a new analysis released today.
• There was a time we could have prevented this, and we simply chose not to. A lot of you laughed at the people who tried to warn you about a pending climate disaster that could wipe out humanity.
• Still laughing?
• Speaking of ways to die that were totally avoidable…
• Registered Republicans experienced a "significantly higher" rate of excess deaths than Democrats in Florida and Ohio in the months after COVID-19 vaccines were made widely available, a new study has found.
• The Yale researchers note in their study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine Monday, the findings "suggest that well-documented differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republican and Democratic voters may have been a factor in the severity and trajectory of the pandemic."
• After May 1, 2021, when vaccines were available to all adults, researchers found the excess death rate gap between Republican and Democratic voters widened from a percentage point of −0.9 to 7.7 percentage points. That meant the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than that among Democratic voters.
• Holy shit. Well, I hope wearing that red hat was worth losing your parents and grandparents.
• Let’s do some charts. July 1995: I was 26 and was very much immersed in my career. In fact, I was working in marketing for an audio equipment manufacturer, and our gear was used on the #1 song at the time, and that became a very big fucking deal. Here’s the Modern Rock Charts, which represented a good chunk of the stuff I’d have been listening to. I wasn’t a pop guy then either.
• 1. You Oughta Know (Alanis Morissette). 2. Hold Me, Thrill me, Kiss Me, Kill Me (U2). 3. Molly (Sponge). 4. This Is A Call (Foo Fighters). 5. December (Collective Soul). 6. All Over You (Live). 7. Misery (Soul Asylum). 8. I Got A Girl (Tripping Daisy). 9. Say It Ain’t So (Weezer). 10. Little Things (Bush). 11. Stars (Hum). 12. Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver (Primus). 13. More Human Than Human (White Zombie). 14. Tomorrow (Silverchair). 15. Hey Man, Nice Shot (Filter). 16. Smash It Up (Offspring). 17. Carnival (Natalie Merchant). 18. Better Than Nothing (Jennifer Trynin). 19. In The Blood (Better Than Ezra). 20. Stutter (Elastica).
• From the Sports Desk… Running back Saquon Barkley and the New York Giants have agreed to terms on a one-year deal worth up to $11 million. The deal also includes a $2 million signing bonus.
• Well, good for him I guess. Get that money.
• Today in history… Constantine I is proclaimed Roman emperor (306). Henry IV converts from Protestant to Catholic (1593). James VI and I and Anne of Denmark are crowned in Westminster Abbey (1603). The last action of the American Revolutionary War, the Siege of Cuddalore, is ended by a preliminary peace agreement (1783). Mozart completes his Symphony No. 40 in G minor (1788). An American attack on Canada in the War of 1812 is repulsed (1814). The first commercial use of an electrical telegraph is successfully demonstrated in London by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone (1837). The United States Congress passes legislation authorizing the rank of General of the Army, and Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant becomes the first to be promoted to this rank (1866). The Wyoming Territory is established (1868). The American invasion of Spanish-held Puerto Rico begins, as United States Army troops under General Nelson A. Miles land and secure the port at Guánica (1898). Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University discovers that a key ingredient in kombu soup stock is monosodium glutamate (MSG), and patents a process for manufacturing it (1908). Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) is established (1925). In a speech John F. Kennedy emphasizes that any attack on Berlin is an attack on NATO (1961). Bob Dylan goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival, signaling a major change in folk and rock music (1965). Birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilization, or IVF (1979). WikiLeaks publishes classified documents about the War in Afghanistan, one of the largest leaks in U.S. military history (2010).
• July 25 is the birthday of humanist Jakob Wimpfeling (1450), dramatist George Peele (1556), Japanese warlord Katō Kiyomasa (1562), abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman (1806), English prime minister Arthur Balfour (1848), actress Estelle Getty (1923), actor/director Jerry Paris (1925), trumpet player/composer Don Ellis (1934), actress Barbara Harris (1935), lynching victim Emmett Till (1941), drummer Jim McCarty (1943), singer Rita Marley (1946), bass player Verdine White (1951), NFL player Walter Payton (1954), model Iman (1955), singer-songwriter/guitarist Thurston Moore (1958), NHL player/coach Tony Granato (1964), and actor Matt LeBlanc (1967).

Well, it’s time to go work out and then start a marathon of meetings, and then get some work done, and then shop for groceries, and then whatever the fuck happens after that. Enjoy your day.

Random News: July 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 July 24, 2023, and it’s a Monday. I’m up and about, showered and dressed, alive and alert, and ready to tell you and things that have likely happened…

• As you recall, a few weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ended affirmative action in college admissions. The ruling held that the race-conscious admission programs of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
• So, along with things like a woman’s right for reproductive freedom and our expectation for truthful news reporting, affirmative action for minority kids seems to be dead. But a new study finds that affirmative action for rich kids is alive and well, and I’m not talking about the unfair aspect of legacy admissions here.
• The most prestigious private colleges in America are handing a massive admissions advantage to rich kids over less affluent kids — even when they have the same SAT scores and academic qualifications.
• Kids from the richest 1% of American families are more than twice as likely to attend the nation's most elite private colleges as kids from middle-class families with similar SAT scores.
• If you supported the ending of race-based Affirmative Action for reasons of fairness, you must be absolutely outraged by this, right?
• Right?
• Moving on…
• On Friday, an Arizona law limiting how close people can get to police while recording them was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge.
• The law would have made it illegal to film police officers within 8 feet of law enforcement activity if the officer had requested that the citizen or journalist stop filming. Officers could have also ordered anyone filming on public property to stop if they determined the area was unsafe or if the person filming was interfering.
• U.S. District Judge John J. Tuchi cited infringement against a clear right for citizens to film police while doing their jobs in his ruling. “The law prohibits or chills a substantial amount of First Amendment protected activity and is unnecessary to prevent interference with police officers given other Arizona laws in effect,” Tuchi wrote.
• Good. Moving on…
• A whole lot of you folks experienced remote work for the first times in your lives when the pandemic hit in 2020. I have done nothing but remote work going back to 2003, so I know a thing or two about it.
• Several new studies suggest remote and hybrid employees actually work slightly longer hours than their office-bound colleagues. 
• One study tracked more than 60,000 Microsoft employees over the first half of 2020, and found that remote work triggered a 10 percent boost in weekly hours.
• One thing I know to be true: remote employees work more, in part, because they are commuting less. Another landmark study, based on data from 27 countries, found that remote workers saved 72 minutes in daily commuting time. On average, employees spent about half an hour of that extra time engaged in daily work: more than two hours a week. 
• Not only do remote workers log longer hours, but they also seem to get work done at a faster clip. I’ve also found this to be true in the 20+ years I’ve been self-employed and worked from an office in my home.
• In other news…
• A word about the pending third indictment for the former president. It’s likely to happen this week.
• It’s almost certain that Trump will get the Republican nomination no matter what. His cult will remain unwavering no matter what he does, even at their expense (as it often is). He currently leads his closest challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), by about 30 points in national polling averages.
• But Trump lost the popular vote in 2020 by more than seven million votes. He was unpopular for much of his presidency and remains so. In polling by FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s unfavorable numbers have ticked up recently. As of yesterday evening, he was viewed unfavorably by roughly 58 percent of Americans and favorably by just 39 percent.
• So this third indictment, relating to his direct role in one of the darkest days in American history, is not going to help him pick up more voters in 2024 than he had in 2020.
• I guess we’ll all wait and see. And in the meantime, we’ll be ready to vote and encourage others to do so.
• In today’s “Don’t Do This” News, 36-year-old Cory Ehrnschwender of Cincinnati thought it would be a good idea to jump off a 50-foot cliff while vacationing at at Lake Powell in Utah. He was mistaken and is now no longer among the living.
• 50 feet might not seem that high, but it’s equivalent of a five-story building and if you hit the water wrong, well…
• Moving on…
• And now, The Weather: “Tele” by Deeper
• The actual weather remains dangerously hot in many places. Not here in Redondo Beach, CA; my high temp today is 76º F. But my rent here is probably three times the national average, and that weather is a good chunk of why we pay so much.
• Customs and Border Protection officers in Texas intercepted nearly 18 pounds of cocaine hidden inside large wheels of cheese. CBP officers cut open the cheese and discovered seven bundles filled with cocaine, totaling 17.8 pounds.
• The drugs were seized and the truck driver, a 22-year-old U.S. citizen, was taken into custody.
• How dare you defile that cheese!
• From the Sports Desk… congrats to Jonas Vingegaard, who grabbed his second consecutive Tour de France victory on the cobblestones of the Champs-Élysées in Paris yesterday.
• True story: I won a bicycle competition when I was in 5th grade. It wasn’t a race; more like an obstacle course, as I recall. It was in 1979 so my memories are a bit fuzzy, along with everything else that happened in my life before the Internet.
• Today in history… Louis VII of France lays siege to Damascus (1148). Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate and be replaced by her one-year-old son James VI (1567). Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit (1701). Tennessee becomes the first U.S. state to be readmitted to Congress following the American Civil War (1866). Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas” (1911). The Kellogg–Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect (1929). Operation Gomorrah has British and Canadian airplanes bomb Hamburg by night, and American planes bomb the city by day, killing more than 30,000 people and destroying 280,000 buildings (1943). Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean (1969). The United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor (1974). George Brett playing for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the "Pine Tar Incident” (1983). Boris Johnson becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after defeating Jeremy Hunt in a leadership contest, succeeding Theresa May (2019).
• July 24 is the birthday of politician Simón Bolivar (1783), novelist Alexandre Dumas (1802), composer Ernest Bloch (1880), pilot Amelia Earhart (1897), activist/politician Bella Abzug (1920), cartoonist Pat Oliphant (1935), comedian Ruth Buzzi (1936), comedian Gallagher (1946), actor/comedian Michael Richards (1949), actress Lynda Carter (1951), director Gus Van Sant (1952), politician Claire McCaskill (1953), politician Charlie Crist (1956), NBA player Karl Malone (1963), MLB player Barry Bonds (1964), actress Kristin Chenowith (1968), singer Jennifer Lopez (1969), actress Rose Byrne (1979), actress Elizabeth Moss (1982), actress Anna Paquin (1982), and conservationist Bindi Irwin (1998). 

Alrighty, well… I have things to do. Not sure what they are yet, but I know they exist. Maybe that’s what religion is like for some folks; a to-do list that you haven’t yet consulted. Except I know for a fact mine is there. Enjoy your day.