Random News: March 29, 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 March 29, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I’m glad this work week is drawing to a close and I can go into weekend mode. One of the benefits of being a person who works hard is that you get to appreciate the times you’re… not. Let’s see what’s going on in the world.

• Yesterday was the hearing in Fulton County, GA, where Don the Con and his lawyers were trying to get his state election subversion case dismissed on First Amendment grounds.
• The judge did not rule from the bench, nor did he say when he would rule. The Georgia case is one of four criminal cases Trump is facing while his 2024 presidential campaign is underway.
• Dump’s attorney argued that the former president's statements about the 2020 presidential election in Georgia are "core political speech” and he therefore cannot be prosecuted. 
• The Fulton County prosecutors countered that it was premature to consider First Amendment arguments and that such arguments should be put before a jury during trial.
• But more importantly, he pointed out that Dump’s lies furthered a criminal conspiracy. The prosecutor also referenced a federal judge’s ruling against Trump's First Amendment argument in the parallel election subversion case in DC.
• There’s no trial date yet in this case. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis still hopes to go to trial before the November election.
• We’ll see. Moving on.
• Former cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced yesterday to 25 years inprison for his role in perpetrating one of the largest financial crimes in U.S. history.
• He fucked around, and he found out.
• Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted in November of seven counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, along with other charges of conspiracy to commit commodities and securities fraud. 
• The 25 years was a very generous sentence for SBF. He had faced up to 110 years under federal sentencing guidelines.
• His company FTX was once the second-largest crypto exchange in the world, and his wealth was once estimated at more than $30 billion.
• And now? Not.
• Moving on.
• President Joe Biden hosted a record-breaking election fundraiser in New York City last night, alongside his predecessors Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
• The star-studded evening at Radio City Music Hall raised over $26 million, setting a record for the most successful single political fundraising event in history.
• Comedian Mindy Kaling hosted the event, which also featured appearances by entertainers like Lizzo, Queen Latifah, Cynthia Erivo, and others. The audience chanted "four more years” when Biden took the stage.
• Probably the best line of the night, unsurprisingly, went to Stephen Colbert, who said in regard to Biden, Obama, and Clinton, “Three presidents... and none of them are here [in New York] to go to court.”
• Biden’s fundraising has dwarfed that of Dump, who is selling $60 Bibles to fund his campaign. He may also have a lemonade stand… not sure.
• In other news…
• A quick science note for all the conspiracy theorists out there in regard to the Key Bridge disaster.
• Perhaps you’ve heard of a thing called Newton’s Second Law of Motion. It says that the acceleration of an object as produced by a net force is directly proportional to the magnitude of the net force, in the same direction as the net force, and inversely proportional to the mass of the object.
• Short version… force equals mass times acceleration.
• Something small going very fast (like a bullet shot from a gun) can produce a lot of force. But something with a lot of mass (like a freight train, or perhaps a huge container ship) doesn’t need to be going very fast to also produce a lot of force.
• How big was the Dali cargo ship that hit the bridge? If you stood it on its end, at 985 feet long, it would be about the same height as the Eiffel Tower.
• That boat weighed 95,000 tons when empty… and it was far from empty when it hit the bridge at about 9mph, carry 4,700 containers.
• That’s why the force enacted on that bridge support was incredibly strong, and it also at an angle that’s a structural weak point.
• As these container ships keep getting more and more gargantuan, this is something that you’ll see more often than you did before.
• Moving on.
• In what may be some of the most horrifying footage yet from the extremist forced-birth movement, Hood County, TX Republican officials attended a presentation by Abolish Abortion Texas (AATX), a group that advocates for the death penalty for abortion and IVF, including for pregnant minors.
• Hood County Constable Scott London, Hood County GOP Chair Steve Biggers and Hood County GOP Chair candidate Greg Harrell were present at a meeting featuring AATX hosted by the group True Texas Project, which has been labeled as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and has ties to white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
• AATX also advocates for the outlawing of contraception and abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Scott London and Steve Harrell, along with multiple other Texas Republicans, have signed an AATX pledge to outlaw abortion in all cases. 
• I am telling you now… every single Republican you vote for in November brings us one step closer to this nightmare, where they murder your wives, daughters, and other female friends and loved ones.
• Do not allow this to happen. Vote, and encourage everyone you know to do the same.
• Moving on.
• A court ordered the eviction of MyPillow from a suburban Minneapolis warehouse. Company founder and prominent election denier (and insane asshole) Mike Lindell confirmed Wednesday that MyPillow owes around $217,000 to Delaware-based First Industrial LP for rent for the facility in Shakopee.
• Lindell faced a setback last month when a federal judge affirmed a $5 million arbitration award in favor of a software engineer who proved that Lindell was full of shit in his claims that China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
• Lindell also acknowledged in January that Fox News stopped running MyPillow commercials after he stopped paying his bills.
• Fuck that guy.
• In Complete Asshole News, meet Michigan State House Rep. Matt Maddock.
• On Wednesday night, Maddock made a social post with photos of three buses near a plane at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Maddock wrote that the buses “just loaded up with illegal invaders.”
• Who were these dangerous illegal invaders? It was Gonzaga and three other college men’s basketball teams arriving for March Madness.
• When this was pointed out to Maddock, you’d think he’d apologize, right?
• No, he doubled down. Maddock, a Republican representing parts of metro Detroit, was endorsed by Trump while running for reelection in 2022. His wife, Meshawn Maddock, is one of 15 Republicans facing eight criminal charges on accusations of acting as fake electors for then-President Trump in 2020.
• Jesus fucking Christ. DO NOT VOTE FOR THESE PEOPLE.
• Let’s move on.
• Planning on sending your kid to Harvard?
• Wow, really? Okay, then… they might have a better chance to make it in than they did before the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action last June, a ruling that prohibited the College from considering race during the admissions process.
• The School In Boston received a total of 54,008 applications for the next cycle. And in total, Harvard offered admission to 1,937 of them to join the Class of 2028.
• That’s an increase all the way up to 3.59 percent of applicants! It’s like anyone can get in there these days. My apologies to the 52,071 kids who got rejected this year.
• Relevant side note: average cost to attend Harvard including tuition, books, and living expenses is $83,538 per year, assuming you don’t qualify for financial aid and aren’t on a full-ride scholarship somehow.
• Side note two: I didn’t apply to Harvard. I had high SAT scores but an incredibly unimpressive 2.8 GPA in high school. I did apply to (and get rejected from) other somewhat prestigious schools including UCLA and Cal Berkeley, though, so I’ve got that going for me.
• And now, The Weather: “Tongue-Tied” by Oscilla
• Rest in peace to actor Louis Gossett Jr., the first Black man to win a supporting actor Oscar and an Emmy winner for his role in the seminal TV miniseries “Roots.” He was 87.
• Like many of you, I was a huge admirer of his work in films like “An Officer and a Gentleman,” “Enemy Mine,” and many others.
• Something I never knew until today: in August 1969, Gossett had been partying with members of the Mamas and the Papas when they were invited to Sharon Tate’s house. He headed home first to shower and change clothes. As he was getting ready to leave, he caught a news flash on TV about Tate’s murder. She and others were killed by Charles Manson’s associates that night.
• Holy fuck.
• Let’s do a chart. This time, it’s late March 1983, I’m a freshman in high school, and this is the official listing of heavy-rotation (3-4 plays/day) videos on MTV.
• Cuts Like A Knife (Bryan Adams), Der Kommisar (After The Fire), Anxiety (Pat Benatar), A Little Too Late (Pat Benatar), Photograph (Def Leppard), Come On Eileen (Dexy’s Midnight Runners), Rio (Duran Duran), Der Kommisar (Falco), Twilight Zone (Golden Earring), Separate Ways (Journey), Jeopardy (Greg Kihn Band), Be Good Johnny (Men At Work), Back On The Chain Gang (Pretenders), A World Of Fantasy (Triumph).
• I stopped doing quotes in my Random News bullets because most of them are inane, but I do like this one from a god pf physics, Niels Bohr.
• “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”
• Bohr was saying this in regard to quantum mechanics, the study of the subatomic level of existence. To give you the quick and easy version, at the tiniest of scales, everything in the universe is made of incredibly small particles/waves with, relatively speaking, tremendous distances between them.
• So everything you think of as real — yourself, the shirt you wear, your cat, the chair you’re in, the wall next to you, the sun in the sky — is actually comprised of space interspersed with the occasional particle/wave that generates the space.

• It is nothing you would remotely call real on its own, and yet everything in the universe is made of it. If this is confusing to you, I have another Bohr quote ready for ya…
• “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it.”
• Yep.
• From the Sports Desk… with under 10 games remaining in the regular season, the NHL is approaching playoff time. If those playoffs were starting now, here’s who’d be in…
• Eastern Conference: (1), New York Rangers, (2) Boston Bruins, (3) Florida Panthers, (4) Carolina Hurricanes, (5) Toronto Maple Leafs, (6) Philadelphia Flyers, (7) Tampa Bay Lightning, (8) Washington Capitals.
• Western Conference: (1) Dallas Stars, (2) Vancouver Canucks, (3) Colorado Avalanche, (4) Winnipeg Jets, (5) Edmonton Oilers, (6) Los Angeles Kings, (7) Nashville Predators, (8) Vegas Golden Knights.
• Some of those standings are very close, so this list will be quite different before the playoffs start in a few weeks.
• Today in history… Construction is authorized of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, becoming the first United States federal highway (1806). United States forces in the Mexican-American War led by General Winfield Scott take Veracruz after a siege (1847). The United Kingdom annexes the Punjab (1849). Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act which establishes Canada on July 1 (1867). Royal Albert Hall is opened by Queen Victoria (1871). Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage (1951). The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, D.C., to vote in presidential elections (1961). Lieutenant William Calley is convicted of premeditated murder in the My Lai Massacre and sentenced to life in prison (1971). NASA's Mariner 10 becomes the first space probe to fly by Mercury (1974). The Baltimore Colts load its possessions onto fifteen Mayflower moving trucks in the early morning hours and transfer its operations to Indianapolis (1984). The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the 10,000 mark for the first time, during the height of the dot-com bubble (1999). Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia join NATO as full members (2004). The first same-sex marriages in England and Wales are performed (2014). Prime Minister Theresa May invokes Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, formally beginning the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union (2017).
• March 29 is the birthday of biologist/physician Santorio Santorio (1561), US president John Tyler (1790), engineer/inventor Elihu Thomson (1853), MLB player/manager Cy Young (1867), US first lady Lou Henry Hoover (1874), actress/singer Pearl Bailey (1918), businessman Sam Walton (1918), saxophonist Michael Brecker (1949), NFL player Earl Campbell (1955), actress Marina Sirtis (1955), MLB player/manager Billy Beane (1962), politician Catherine Cortez Masto (1964), actress Lucy Lawless (1968), politician Ted Lieu (1969), and tennis player Jennifer Capriati (1976).

Welp, that’s plenty of news. I’m looking forward to wrapping up the work week on a high note and then doing some as-yet-undetermined fun things this weekend. Enjoy your day.