Random News: June 7, 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 June 7, 2024, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! I want to start by once again sending my gratitude to all of you who sent nice birthday wishes yesterday, along with a sense of relief that my birthday is over and done with for another year. I think I have a complicated relationship with topics like aging and awareness of self. In any case, now let’s get back to normal with news that isn’t about me.

• Yesterday, I got a nice birthday present when Judge Carl Nichols revoked Steve Bannon's bail and ordered the Dump ally to report to prison by July 1.
• Bannon has bragged on multiple occasions that he’d never end up in jail. Guess we’ll see soon enough.
• Before you celebrate, the decision and schedule gives Bannon's lawyers nearly a month to appeal the revocation of his bail to higher courts. The defense team is also planning on appealing his conviction the entire D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. 
• A jury found Bannon guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 after he refused to comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 failed coup attempt.
• The congressional investigators were interested in Bannon's conduct in over a dozen key areas, including his communications with former President Donald Trump as he resisted the results of the 2020 presidential election. 
• Fuck that festering pustule of goo. Let’s move on.
• In continuing celebration of Pride Month, our Gay of the Day for June 7 is mathematician, computer scientist, logician, and cryptanalyst Alan Turing.
• You owe this man far more than I can say in a few words.
• In addition to being widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science (hence you can thank him for the phone, tablet, or desktop computer you’re reading this on right now), Turing played a crucial role in cracking intercepted messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis powers in WWII.
• Without Turing’s genius mind, you’re probably still living in a world run by Nazis today, assuming you’re alive at all.
• After the war, in 1952 Turing was prosecuted for homosexual acts. As an alternative to prison, they chemically castrated him for no other reason than being gay.
• Turing died 70 years ago today on June 7, 1954, aged 41, from cyanide poisoning, with his death ruled a suicide.
• That’s why we have Pride today… so we don’t lose any more of the most important people in our global culture for the most horrible of reasons.
• In other news…
• The US economy added a blockbuster 272,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate remained right around 4%.
• That data far outpaced economists' expectations for 180,000 jobs. If you want to credit a country’s president for keeping the economy robust, you have to give a salute to Joe Biden on this topic.
• What industries ere powering those 272,000 new jobs? Education and health services supplied 86,000 of them. Government powered 43,000 more, while leisure and hospitality added 42,000.
• The rest are divvied up between areas like business/professional services, construction, retail, transportation, manufacturing, and more.
• Moving on…
• It’s time to pay the piper for conspiracy theorist and giant asshole Alex Jones.
• He’s asked a U.S. judge to convert his bankruptcy into a Chapter 7 liquidation, giving up on an effort to settle massive legal judgments related to his lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
• As you may recall, courts in Texas and Connecticut ordered Jones to pay $1.5 billion to the relatives of 20 students and six staff members killed in the 2012 mass shooting after losing a defamation lawsuit.
• A Chapter 7 liquidation would not allow Jones to escape paying the legal judgments, but it offers a streamlined procedure for selling his assets under the supervision of a court-appointed trustee.
• Bankruptcy can sometimes be used to wipe out debts and legal judgments, but the judge overseeing Jones’ case ruled in October that most of the defamation verdicts cannot be legally discharged because they resulted from “willful and malicious injury” caused by Jones.
• He has to sell off his shitty Infowars web site and other assets.
• Lest you have any sympathy for this horrible human being, keep in mind that he claimed for years that those tiny kids who were murdered were actors and the whole horrible mass shooting incident was staged.
• As a result, in addition to dealing with the grief of their children being slaughtered, those parents endured years of threats and harassment, while Jones profited by driving traffic and sales on his Infowars website.
• Fuck Alex Jones.
• Let’s move on.
• As long as we’re covering the assholes of the world, I probably shouldn’t leave out El Dumpo.
• He held once of his weird cult rallies yesterday in Arizona. Since he had to get to a big donor event in San Francisco that evening, the event was held in the middle of the afternoon in the blazing heat.
• As Dumpy took the stage at a mega-church in Phoenix, the temperature was 111º F. Eleven people had to be trotted by paramedics with heat-related issues, with several of them requiring hospitalization.
• His next scheduled rally is in Las Vegas on Sunday, where the forecast high of 112º F would break a heat record for this date.
• It’s sort of appropriate that these people are going to worship Satan in weather that very closely resembles hell.
• As long as we’re on this topic…
• The amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has hit a new record due primarily to emissions of greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels.
• That’s why we’re currently having temperatures 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than what is normal for June.
• All the extra carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere traps heat, and leads to more intense, frequent and persistent heat waves, and other extreme weather such as powerful hurricanes and heavy rain storms.
• May 2024 saw the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere hit nearly 427 parts per million, which is an increase of about 3 parts per million compared to last year’s peak. That’s one of the largest annual jumps on record.
• We did at least try to tell you what would happen. Pease don’t act surprised now that it’s happening.
• The imminent and now-unavoidable climate-related deaths of your friends and loved ones is a result of people who refused to support alternative energy sources over fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal.
• And now, The Weather: “Love's Permission” by Snoozer
• As I mentioned up top, my birthday is done for another 364 days.
• When I was turning 50, my mom — who was alive at the time, so it wasn’t a paranormal experience — called me to wish me happy birthday. I mentioned to her that I was born 50 years ago that very day.
• “I know,” she said. “I was there.”
• From the Sports Desk… last night was Game 1 of the 2024 NBA Finals. The Boston Celtics had a dominant 107-89 victory over the Dallas Mavericks.
• As a lifetime Los Angeles Lakers fan, I am contractually obligated to wish bad things upon the Celtics, so hopefully Dallas can turn it around in Game 2 on Sunday.
• In other Sports Desk news, the Sports Desk knows absolutely nothing about cricket, despite it being one of the world’s most popular sports.
• But the massive underdog USA team shocked Team Pakistan at the T20 World Cup at Dallas. The game went into a Super Over, whatever that means, and the USA prevailed.
• USA! USA!
• Most of the sporting world was shocked by this unexpected victory. I was shocked that the USA has a cricket team.
• Today in history… Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Tordesillas which divides the New World between the two countries (1494). Louis XIV is crowned King of France (1654). Richard Henry Lee presents the "Lee Resolution" to the Continental Congress, leading to the United States Declaration of Independence (1776). The United States and the United Kingdom agree in the Lyons–Seward Treaty to suppress the African slave trade (1862). Homer Plessy is arrested for refusing to leave his seat in the "whites-only" car of a train; he lost the resulting court case, Plessy v. Ferguson (1892). Allied soldiers detonate a series of mines underneath German trenches at Messines Ridge, killing 10,000 German troops (1917). The Douglas DC-4E makes its first test flight (1938). The United Kingdom's BBC returns to broadcasting its television service, which has been off air for seven years because of World War II (1946). The Supreme Court of the United States hands down its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, prohibiting the states from criminalizing the use of contraception by married couples (1965). The United States Supreme Court overturns the conviction of Paul Cohen for disturbing the peace, setting the precedent that vulgar writing is protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (1971). Priscilla Presley opens Graceland to the public (1982). Mount Pinatubo erupts, generating an ash column 4.3 miles high (1991). The United Nations defines the Blue Line as the border between Israel and Lebanon (2000).
• June 7 is the birthday of fashion designer Beau Brummell (1778), Paul Gauguin (1848), Hungary prime minister Imre Nagy (1896), actress Jessica Tandy (1909), poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917), actor/singer Dean Martin (1917), singer Tom Jones (1940), guitarist Clarence White (1944), MLB player Thurman Munson (1947), actor Liam Neeson (1952), singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/actor Prince (1958), US VP Mike Pence (1959), actor Lance Reddick (1962), guitarist Dave Navarro (1967), NBA player Allen Iverson (1975), actor/screenwriter Bill Hader (1978), tennis player Anna Kournikova (1981), actor Michael Cera (1988), rapper Iggy Azalea (1990), rapper Fetty Wap (1991), and NFL player Christian McCaffrey (1996).

That’s plenty of things to consider. I’m feeling glad it’s Friday. I’m also feeling like I overate all day yesterday and I actually need the workout that I’m about to go do. Gonna spend a good amount of time doing aerobic stuff and burn off some of this fat, or at least feel better that I made an attempt to do so. Enjoy your day.