Random News: December 15, 2023

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s December 15, 2023, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! It’s been a crazy couple of weeks here during my busiest time of year, with 12-hour work days and high levels of stress between coworkers and all that fun stuff. Perhaps my most peaceful hour of the day will be the one I’m in right now as I share some news with all of you.

• Let’s start with something good.
• Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court left in place an Illinois ban on semiautomatic weapons.
• Two lower courts have upheld the law, and yesterday's Supreme Court action marked the second time in six months that the justices have declined to intervene.
• Illinois passed the ban on assault weapons after the 2022 Independence Day parade shooting that left seven people dead and 48 wounded. The gunmen in the July 4th shooting fired 83 rounds in under a minute using an AR-15. The ban prevents people from owning semiautomatic weapons, such as the one used in that shooting, as well as magazines that enable handguns and rifles to fire off many rounds without reloading.
• This is the kind of thing I’m talking about when I offer my support for common sense gun laws. I’m glad the Court agrees with me.
• While we’re on this topic…
• Hundreds of young children in the U.S. have been killed playing with guns over the last two decades, per a study published yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The vast majority of cases involved guns that were stored unlocked and loaded.
• For the study, federal researchers examined 1,262 accidental firearm deaths reported from 2003 to 2021 to the CDC's National Violent Death Reporting System, which links death certificate tallies to other data from law enforcement investigations.
• Of them, the CDC's report narrowed in on 367 accidental gun deaths of children ages 0 to 5 years old and 176 deaths of children 6 to 10 years old. 
• "Securing firearms (e.g., locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition) is protective against unintentional firearm injury deaths among children and adolescents, underscoring the importance of promoting secure firearm storage.”
• Of course, that’s in conflict from the standard MAGA ideology, in which an unloaded gun that you can’t grab to shoot someone within seconds is absolutely useless. That’s why these little kids are constantly being killed.
• How could a person live with themselves knowing that a tiny kid blew his or her brains out because you couldn’t be bothered to keep a gun out of their hands, or (worse) that you purposefully kept loaded guns handy?
• Let’s move on to some other news.
• Jurors continue to deliberate this morning on the amount of damages Rudy Giuliani will have to pay for defaming election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. Deliberations started yesterday afternoon.
• Jurors need to decide on three numbers — the amount of damages Giuliani has to pay for defaming the women, the amount of damages he has to pay for causing them emotional distress, and the amount of punitive damages.
• Lawyers for Freeman and Moss asked jurors to award each woman $24 million in defamation damages but left the other amounts up to the jury. 
• Here’s hoping that number is impressively huge.
• Moving on…
• Both the House and Senate have passed the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which is expected to be signed by President Joe Biden. Among other things, the bill authorizes a pay raise for both service members and civilian defense employees.
• The Act supports $841.4 billion in funding for the Defense Department. Included in the bill are provisions related to service members and their families. For instance, the bill increases family separation allowance to $400 per month.
• I’m sure our military is grateful for the tireless efforts of the Democratic representatives who pushed this through.
• Let’s talk abortion.
• Republicans — both current politicians and prospective candidates — keep trying to come up with a coherent message on abortion. And failing.
• Interestingly, only one of the GOP presidential candidates — Chris Christie — has categorically stated that he is opposed to a national ban on women’s reproductive health care, and has come out firmly against what’s been happen to women in forced-birth states like Texas.
• None of the others, from Donnie Dump to Nikki Haley to Rob DeSantis and the rest, will commit in any way to protecting women’s reproductive rights.
• I’ll remind you that overturning Roe v. Wade was a major promise of Dump’s campaign and victory in 2016. He was successful in appointing radical far-right Supreme Court justices who would enact the biggest blow to women’s rights in the past 100 years.
• If he were to be re-elected, the situation would grow much, much worse for women in America and the people who love and support them.
• Sensitive subject ahead, so skip the next few bullets if you’re so inclined.
• Let’s mention a related topic: the idea of “exceptions” for abortion laws for situations like pregnancy via rape.
• Banning abortions unless a woman is raped is saying that women don’t earn autonomy over their own bodies until a man violates it.
• It’s extremely hard to prove rape. The grand majority of rapes go unreported, and of those that are, only a small percentage result in a conviction. Victims are accused of lying and that will become more common if the only way to get an abortion is if you’re raped. 
• Also it takes time to prove rape. Time isn’t something someone who wants an abortion has a lot of.
• Does the victim have to wait for the rapist to be convicted of rape to have the abortion? Charged with rape? What if the rapist is a stranger? What if he’s never found? So the rape exception isn’t really an exception at all.
• Let’s move on… to the topic of religious freedom.
• Since certain states have insisted on the anti-American act of combining church and state, they were required to allow non-Christian religions to participate when they wanted to put up symbols of Christianity in their public spaces.
• Which brings me to my giggle of the morning: a Mississippi man has been charged with criminal mischief for vandalizing the Satanic Temple of Iowa's Baphomet display in the Capitol building yesterday.
• Earlier this month, the Satanic Temple of Iowa set up the display, which features a ram's head covered with mirrors on a mannequin cloaked in red clothing, as a symbol of their right to religious freedom.
• The Satanists released a statement, saying, “We ask that for safety, visitors travel together and use the 7 Tenets as a reminder for empathy, in the knowledge that justice is being pursued the correct way, through legal means. Solve et Coagula! Happy Holidays! Hail Satan!”
• Snort. I guess the Christians aren’t as into religious freedom as they claimed to be. 35-year-old Michael Cassidy of Lauderdale, MS was charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief and released.
• Moving on.
• Remember that little kid who was shot by cops when he called 911 for help for his family?
• A grand jury in Mississippi determined that there was no criminal conduct on behalf of the officer who shot and wounded Aderrien Murry, the 11-year-old boy, in his home.
• Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch says her office will take no further action against Sgt. Greg Capers, the officer who shot Aderrien. Fitch says her office completed its review into the May 20 incident involving Capers in Indianola, MS, and presented it to the grand jury in Sunflower County on Wednesday — which then handed up the decision.
• It’s just sickening. I somehow doubt that had Aderrien been a little white kid, the outcome would have been the same.
• And now, The Weather: “Nightmares” by NewDad
• Let’s talk about X, the social media platform owned by Elmo Muck.
• 51 of the top 100 U.S. advertisers on X from October last year, when Elmo bought the platform, have ceased ad spending on it as of November 2023.
• Is it just a slowdown on advertising in general? Nope! Disney and Comcast have increased ad spending on Instagram after dropping X. Paramount meanwhile tripled its spending on Snapchat.
• Maybe the problem is Elmo. Just a thought.
• If you don’t believe me, perhaps you should ask Elmo’s new AI known as Grok. the Los Angeles Times interviewed Grok and asked the AI about the rising trend of horrible antisemitism on the platform formerly called Twitter.
• Here’s how Grok responded.
• “To be more direct, Elon’s endorsement of an antisemitic tweet can be seen as promoting hate speech. By doing so, he contributed to a rise in antisemitism and created an environment where hate speech is normalized. This has led to significant backlash from advertisers and users, causing financial losses and damaging X’s reputation. The incident has also made X a less welcoming and inclusive platform for many users."
• Welp.
• From the Sports Desk… history was made last night on a Thursday Night Football game when the Las Vegas Raiders beat the Los Angeles Chargers 63-21. The Raiders were up 42-0 at the half.
• Just four days earlier on Sunday, the Raiders bottomed out with a 3-0 loss to the Minnesota Vikings in the lowest-scoring indoor game in NFL history. Then last night, they set a franchise record for points scored in a game.
• The 63 points were the third most by a team in the Super Bowl era. The Raiders' 35 points off takeaways are tied for the most this century. So that was fun, at least for us Raiders fans.
• Today in history… British and French fleets clash in the Battle of St. Lucia (1778). The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly (1791). The U.S. Patent Office building in Washington, D.C., nearly burns to the ground, destroying all 9,957 patents issued by the federal government to that date, as well as 7,000 related patent models (1836). The Battle of Nashville begins at Nashville, Tennessee, and ends the following day with the destruction of the Confederate Army of Tennessee as a fighting force by the Union Army of the Cumberland (1864). Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull is killed on Standing Rock Indian Reservation, leading to the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890). The "New World Symphony" by Antonín Dvořák premieres in a public afternoon rehearsal at Carnegie Hall in New York City (1893). Gone with the Wind — the highest inflation adjusted grossing film — receives its premiere at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia (1939). German troops murder over 15,000 Jews at Drobytsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine (1941). Gemini 6A, crewed by Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida and achieves the first space rendezvous, with Gemini 7 (1965). Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 successfully lands on Venus, the first successful soft landing on another planet (1970). The American Psychiatric Association votes 13–0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1973). 
• December 15 is the birthday of Roman emperor Nero (37), architect/engineer Gustave Eiffel (1832), businessman/art collector J. Paul Getty (1892), author Betty Smith (1896), sprinter Harold Abrahams (1899), architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907), librarian Eliza Atkins Gleason (1909), pianist Stan Kenton (1911), farmer Max Yasgur (1919), radio DJ Alan Freed (1921), comedian Tim Conway (1933), MLB player/manager Jim Leyland (1944), drummer Carmine Appice (1946), actor Don Johnson (1949), bass player Paul Simonon (1955), MLB player Mo Vaughn (1967), and actor Garrett Wang (1968).

That’s plenty for now. I think today will remain very busy for me, but that’s okay. I’m kicking a whole lot of ass, and if that’s all the ass I can kick, so be it. This is my ass kicking limit and I’m proud of the many tons of ass I have kicked thus far. Enjoy your day.