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.

---

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.