Random News: February 2, 2024

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 February 2, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! And finally, after my most hellacious time of year work-wise, I’m going to get a couple days of rest and relaxation after today. Assuming I will live through today, I am greatly looking forward to two entire days of nothing at all. In the meantime, let’s do some news.

• It’s Groundhog Day, the most inane American tradition of them all.
• If I told you that you’d receive a magical chalice because a squirrel did a somersault, you’d have me committed to an asylum. But some other rodent does (or doesn’t) see his shadow, and we’re supposed to ascertain weather patterns for a number of weeks?
• Anyway, Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow while thousands of idiots looked on this morning at Gobbler's Knob in Pennsylvania. That means, according to the legend, we're in for an early spring.
• This marks the first time since 2020 that Phil predicted an early spring. Can I tell you something?
• We live on a planet. That planet orbits a star. The planet has a slight tilt on an axis in relation to the plane of its orbit so that sometimes one part of the planet gets more sunlight and warmer temperatures than the other.
• And it’s the same fucking day and time every year, barely changing over the course of millions of years. So spring — scientifically the start of the vernal equinox — begins on March 19, 2024, no matter what any rodent in the world thinks about it.
• Anyway, happy Groundhog Day. Let’s move on.
• Allen Weisselberg, the former Chief Financial Officer of the Dump Organization, is in plea talks with the Manhattan district attorney's office to resolve a potential perjury charge.
• It seems that Weisselberg would plead guilty to lying on the witness stand when he testified in October at the civil fraud trial that names him, his former boss — former President and current accused felon Donnie Dump — and others as defendants.
• If this goes the way I think it might, Weisselberg’s revised testimony could possibly mean that Dump’s civil fraud case for which he’s imminently going to be punished financially, might escalate into a criminal charge.
• Wasn’t Dumpy supposed to receive his penalty in the civil trial this week? That date was never set in stone and was based on a general statement of trying to get it done by the end of January. Now it looks like it’s sometime next week.
• In other news…
• The Oregon Supreme Court ruled yesterday that 10 GOP state senators cannot run for reelection after they refused to attend Senate sessions for about six weeks out of protest last year in an attempt to stall Democratic-backed bills.
• I couldn’t be happier. Fuck those useless pieces of shit.
• The court ruling cites a 2022 referendum that bars lawmakers from seeking reelection if they have more than 10 unexcused absences.
• The six-week boycott of the session stopped work and prevented voting, the longest such freeze in the state’s history. The absent lawmakers demanded legislative concessions in exchange for their return.
• That’s not how we do things in this country.
• Moving on.
• There are more and more signs that Joe Biden’s economy is kicking ass. The nation’s employers delivered a stunning burst of hiring to begin 2024, adding 353,000 jobs in January. they’d been hoping for 180,000 jobs and flew past that milestone.
• Today’s report from the Labor Department showed that January’s job gain topped the 333,000 that were added in December, a figure that was itself revised sharply higher. The unemployment rate stayed at 3.7%, just above a half-century low.
• Donnie Dump had said that if Biden was elected in 2020, the stock market would crash. Instead, the stock market has reached all-time highs, with over 38,000 for the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 nearing 5,000.
• Inflation is down, jobs are up, Wall Street is happy. And the way to continue this trend is to re-elect Joe Biden this fall.
• Moving on.
• Joshua Schulte, 35, is a former CIA software engineer. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison yesterday after his convictions for what the government described as the biggest theft of classified information in CIA history, and for possession of child sexual abuse images and videos.
• The bulk of the sentence came for an embarrassing public release of a trove of CIA secrets by WikiLeaks in 2017. Schulte has been jailed since 2018. The so-called Vault 7 leak revealed how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices.
• Don’t do stuff like that, people.
• In other news…
• Last night, the Massachusetts Senate approved a sweeping overhaul of state firearms laws, setting up talks with the House that could lead to a major new law later this spring or summer.
• The Senate bill seeks to rein in untraceable ghost guns, bans carrying firearms in government administrative buildings, gives firearm licensing authorities access to some of an applicant’s mental health hospitalization history, and expands the list of people who can petition the court to take away someone’s guns if they are deemed dangerous. It passed the state Senate on a 37-3 vote.
• These are the things I mean when I talk about common-sense gun regulation. Hats off to Massachusetts, and here’s hoping some asshole judge doesn’t remind their efforts based on a warped interpretation of the Second Amendment.
• Let’s move on.
• Alan Filion, a 17-year-old from California, is accused of making hundreds of swatting calls around the country over the past two years.
• “Swatting” is the act of falsely reporting emergencies like mass shootings, bomb threats and gas leaks to law enforcement. Filion was charging people $35 to $75 each to make the calls,, which targeted mosques, historically Black colleges and universities, FBI agents’ homes, and more.
• Filion was arrested at his home in Lancaster, CA and extradited to Seminole County, FL where he is being charged with four felonies. Swatting incidents have occurred at more than 500 U.S. schools over the past year.
• Let’s do some better news, this time out of Iowa.
• Iowa lawmakers declined to advance a bill yesterday that would remove gender identity from the state’s civil rights law. The bill would have removed gender identity as a protected class under the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
• The Human Rights Campaign, a pro-LGBTQ advocacy group, celebrated the bill’s failure to advance. “This ensures that LGBTQ+ Iowans will remain protected citizens! The pro-equality movement is strong.”
• Right on.
• In anthropology news, fragments of protein and DNA recovered from bones discovered in a cave revealed Neanderthals and humans likely lived alongside one another in northern Europe as far back as 45,000 years ago.
• Modern humans (aka homo sapiens, aka you and me) weren’t previously known to have lived as far north as the region where the tools were made.
• This proves that for thousands of years, humans and Neanderthals lived together in the same place at the same time. Neat, huh?
• And now, The Weather: “Running” by Lutalo & Claud
• From the Sports Desk… I haven’ had time to check out any of the skills competitions associated with the NFL’s Pro Bowl, but they’re usually pretty fun. I’m probably going to hit up YouTube this weekend and check out some of them.
• Today in history… King Louis III of France is defeated by the Norse Great Heathen Army at Lüneburg Heath in Saxony (880). New Amsterdam is incorporated, and is later renamed The City of New York (1653). The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs of Major League Baseball is formed (1876). In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the first Groundhog Day is observed (1887). Boston, Detroit, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Chicago, and St. Louis agree to form baseball's American League (1900). ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce is published (1922). The Battle of Stalingrad comes to an end when Soviet troops accept the surrender of the last organized German troops in the city (1943). Swiss tennis player Roger Federer becomes the No. 1 ranked men's singles player, a position he will hold for a record 237 weeks (2004).
• February 2 is the birthday of France prime minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754), inventor/philanthropist William Stanley (1829), businessman Frederick William Vanderbilt (1856), businessman/philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim (1861), novelist/poet James Joyce (1882), NFL coach George Halas (1895), businessman Howard Deering Johnson (1897), novelist Ayn Rand (1905), novelist/poet James Dickey (1923), journalist Liz Smith (1923), saxophonist Stan Getz (1927), comedian/activist Tom Smothers (1937), singer-songwriter Graham Nash (1942), actress Farrah Fawcett (1947), chef/author Ina Garten (1948), actor Brent Spiner (1949), politician John Cornyn (1952), model/actress Christie Brinkley (1954), and bass player Robert DeLeo (1966).

Gotta go. Enjoy your day.