Random News: May 11, 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 May 11, 2024, and it’s a Saturday. I’m a guy in a bathrobe, scrolling through the entire Internet every morning to tell you things that might impact your life, or help you develop a better understanding of the things that impact others. At least I hope that’s what I do.

• Here’s a headline that you probably saw lately: “President Halts Shipment Of Shells to Israel”
• Except that headline was published on July 19, 1982, and the president was Ronald Reagan.
• What was going on? Again, this should sound familiar. Reagan halted a new shipment of artillery shells to Israel while reviewing whether Israel’s use of bombs in the invasion of Lebanon violated U.S. arms export laws and other special agreements with Israel.
• And the main issue with the armaments, back in 1982 as it is today: the shells caused a high toll among civilians if used in areas where military units are mingled with the population.
• Let me tell you something… nothing that happens to you or anyone else in the world is unique. In slightly varying ways, everything has happened before, and humans seem doomed to repeat the same situations and responses, like some universal version of Groundhog Day.
• Let’s do some news.
• In “WTF Kind of Handmaid’s Tale Shit Is This?” news, remember Katie Britt, the Alabama Senator who gave the deeply cringe retort to President Biden’s State of the Union speech from a weird kitchen and was mocked on SNL after?
• She introducing a bill this week to create a federal database storing information on pregnant women. It would entail a website that would include information on adoption agencies but not on abortion clinics, and the bill would give grants to anti-abortion nonprofits as well.
• But wait.
• Elsewhere, the bill notes that the website’s users consent for their contact information to be used by the government, which may “conduct outreach via phone or email” to share “additional resources that would be helpful.”
• Does anyone here see a big fucking problem here? I was always told Republicans were the “small government” party… not the one that checks to see how often you have sex and then forcing you to deliver babies when you do.
• Let’s move on for now.
• As you scroll down your social media this morning, you’re probably seeing 17,000,000 pics of night skies glowing in amazing colors. That is because we had a large-scale incident of the phenomenon colloquially called Northern Lights, or scientifically, aurora borealis.
• They’re pretty neat, huh? I think so. You know what else they are?
• Fucking horrifying.
• See, we live on a smallish rock called Earth that is trapped in the gravitational well of a medium-sized star we call the Sun.
• And that star, like all stars, is a huge ongoing nuclear fusion explosion that’s only held together by its own insane gravitational mass.
• And it’s not perfect. On a pretty regular basis, it burps out billions of tons of plasma… highly charged gas particles that traverse millions and millions of miles through space at high speed. We call that a coronal mass ejection.
• Here on Earth, we are pretty lucky. We have a planetary magnetic field that acts pretty similar to a fictional deflector shield in ‘Star Trek.’ Most of the harmful radiation from the Sun just slides on past us in normal situations.
• But that field sprouts out from the north and south poles (and, in fact, define those poles, but that’s another story). That’s where the planet has the least protection from those plasma particles.
• Side note: almost everyone calls them aurora borealis because almost all people live in the northern hemisphere, but if you’re looking at the south pole, they are named aurora australis.
• So those beautiful, unworldly colors you see are the effect of our planet’s shield — which just kinda came with the planet and we have no say in how it works — stopping the sun’s highly-energized particles from killing you and every other living thing on this rock.
• Without the magnetosphere, you’re toast. You don’t need mass ejection events. The solar wind that flows over us us constantly would take out our entire atmosphere. And the pretty Northern Lights would flash-fry everything else.
• So when you see those pics (or are lucky enough to witness aurora in person), give a little thought of thanks to Earth’s magnetosphere. Without it, life never could have possibly developed here, and Earth would be a barren rock.
• Before you start having some kind of crisis about this… the Earth’s defense system has been working fine for about 4.6 billion years and probably will continue functioning for billions more. You probably won’t die from anything related to Northern Lights.
• Gamma ray bursts or rogue black holes or planet-killing asteroids and comets? Yes. Northern Lights? No. And human-accelerated climate change will kill us long before any of those other things anyway.
• Less scary note: the actual light from an aurora functions the same way as a neon sign. The charged particles collide with gasses in our upper atmosphere. The light levels and colors you see change on which gas is being charged and how intense the charge is.
• The current solar storm producing the auroras will last through Sunday.
• Moving on, and back to our top story, but in the present.
• Yesterday, the Biden administration said that Israel's use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law, but that wartime conditions prevented U.S. officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.
• It’s hard to say what this finding means in the big picture. The US is in a tough position as Israel’s primary ally, but also not ethically able to support war crimes of any kind.
• The caveat is that the administration wasn't able to link specific U.S. weapons to individual attacks by Israeli forces in Gaza. If they did, they’d have leeway in further restricting provisions of offensive weapons to Israel.
• The past seven months of airstrikes, ground fighting, and aid restrictions have claimed the lives of nearly 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Reckless harm of civilians is against all international wartime laws.
• So we’ll wait and see here that leads, if anywhere. Or Israel and Hamas could fucking figure it out for now, and we could table the discussion for next time.
• The most current news form the conflict… today, Israel told Palestinians in more areas of Gaza's southern city of Rafah to evacuate and head to what it calls an expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi, in a further indication that the military is pressing ahead with its plans for a ground attack on Rafah.
• Sigh.
• Moving on.
• Yesterday a federal judge in Texas sided with the big business and banking groups — and against the American people — by halting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new rule capping credit card late fees at $8.
• This was part of Joe Biden going after junk fees that end up costing consumers billions each year. Forth Worth Judge Mark Pittman’s preliminary injunction prevents the rule from taking effect next week as it was scheduled.
• The injunction was sought by groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association. Pittman, a Dump appointee, cited a 2022 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
• But the U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing the 2022 ruling, and during oral arguments in October appeared wary of upholding it. Guess we’ll see if the people win or Team Greed is victorious.
• Moving on.
• Yesterday was another bad day in what will be a continually worse string of bad days for the guy once called America’s Mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
• Rudy Patootie was suspended by WABC radio and his daily talk show was abruptly canceled after the station said he violated its policy by trying to discuss discredited claims about the 2020 presidential election on air.
• Rudy’s shit was so awful that the decision to yank him and his show off the air was made by the station owner… billionaire Republican businessman John Catsimatidis, who says Rudy was warned to shut the fuck up multiple times.
• His gig with WABC was one of his only current sources of income. He has been criminally charged in two states, Georgia and Arizona, for this role in the effort to overturn the 2020 results.
• He also owes $148 million to two Georgia election workers after a court found that he had defamed them.
• I’d wish Rudy luck, but frankly he doesn’t deserve it at all. 
• In other news…
• I want to briefly mention a name I’ve rarely, if ever, noted here, and it’s Barron Trump, the youngest child (that we know of) of Donnie Dump.
• Barron is now 18 and an adult, and I mention him now only because for a day or so, he was in the news cycle for having been named to serve as a delegate for Florida at this summer’s Republican National Convention.
• But a day or so later, the family stated that he had declined the role due to prior commitments.
• Here’s why I’m saying this… I don’t know anything about that kid. He may be an ass like his dad or stepbrothers. He may be totally cool. He may grow up to do great things. No one knows. He’s 18.
• But I would never, ever hate someone because of their family. I base my opinion of people based on their own individual acts. I don’t have any reason to be snarky about Barron Trump until I’m shown otherwise.
• So that’s all I’m saying about that. I’m sure many of you have family members to whom you wouldn’t want people to assume you were similar in outlook or actions.
• And now, The Weather: “We Used To Be Alright” by Emmett Kai
• For no reason at all, here’s a list of the 14 coolest people, as judged by me, who were born the same year as me.
• Jennifer Aniston, Dave Bautista, Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Ice Cube, Peter Dinklage, Dave Grohl, Ken Jeong, Matthew McConaughey, Paul Rudd, Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z, Renée Zellweger, and my friend Bunny.
• From the Sports Desk… the best teams in all of Major League Baseball, based on current win-loss records.
• 1. Phillies (27-12). 2. Orioles (26-12). 3. Dodgers (26-24). 4. Yankees (26-14). 5. Braves (23-12). 6. Guardians (24-15). 7. Brewers (23-15). 8. Twins (23-15). 9. Royals (24-16). 10. Cubs (23-16).
• Today in history… In the first coronation ceremony ever held for an English monarch, Edgar the Peaceful — my 33rd great-grandfather — is crowned King of England, having ruled since 959 (973). Matilda of Flanders — my 29th great-grandmother and wife of my 29th great-grandfather William the Conqueror — is crowned Queen of England (1068). Louis IX of France — my 25th great-grandfather — and James I of Aragon — also my 25th great-grandfather — sign the Treaty of Corbeil (1258). Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the British House of Commons (1812). Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format (1997). 
• May 11 is the birthday of organist Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach (1715), US vice president Charles W. Fairbanks (1852), aviator Harriet Quimby (1875), pianist/composer Irving Berlin (1888), artist Salvador Dalí (1904), actor Phil Silvers (1911), physicist Richard Feynman (1918), computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930), religious leader Louis Farrakhan (1933), singer-songwriter Eric Burdon (1941), NFL player Matt Leinart (1983), and NFL player Cam Newton (1989).

Time to shower and dress and do things. Enjoy your day.