Random News: August 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 August 29, 2024, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. I’m Zak, here to deliver your morning news like some digital paperboy. Also, I’m starting to yearn for the upcoming three-day weekend, but I have tons to do between now and then, so let’s get this news out of the way and get closer to that point.

• Let’s open with a fun fact couched in a history lesson.
• Fun Fact: if Kamala Harris gets elected in November, she will be the 47th president of the United States. We all know that.
• But if her running mate Tim Walz is elected along with her, he’ll be the 50th Vice President. What is this fuckery?
• It’s really no big thing. We just had a few situations where a President had more than one VP for various reasons.
• The first was Aaron Burr, who was not nominated to a second term as Jefferson's running mate in the 1804 election. Jefferson never trusted him, and soon after he shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel… you might have seen the play. Burr got replaced by George Clinton.
• Like Burr, Hannibal Hamlin got dumped by his president — Abraham Lincoln — after one term. Hamlin was replaced by Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat chosen for his appeal to Southern Unionists.
• Same thing happened again with Schuyler Colfax, who thought Ulysses S. Grant would only serve one term and intended on running for President in 1872. He ended up getting replaced by Henry Wilson.
• Garret Hobart died in office while serving under William McKinley, being replaced by Teddy Roosevelt.
• FDR had three VPs during his four terms as President: John Nance Garner, who fell out of favor with the President; Henry A. Wallace, who was VP during WWII but also ran into issues; and Harry S. Truman, who was VP for only a few months before FDR died and he assumed the Presidency.
• Spiro Agnew was VP under Nixon, but was under investigation for criminal conspiracy, bribery, extortion, and tax fraud, and resigned in disgrace. He was replaced by Gerald Ford.
• So now you know why we’ve had more VP’s than POTUS’s.
• Now let’s do the news.
• We don’t talk about polls at Zak’s Random News. Polls are bullshit. We know this.
• But I will say this: the most recent round of polling has opened up an eighth state that was previously listed first as “Likely R” and then “lean R” to now being listed as “toss up”… North Carolina.
• NC is, as of now, a swing state. It has not been a blue state for presidential elections for 16 years, since the first Obama election. Last time before that? In 1976, for Jimmy Carter.
• Two other states have moved from “Likely R” to “Lean R”… Texas and Florida. And even Alaska, Missouri, Iowa, South Carolina, and Ohio are no longer listed as “Safe R” in all polls.
• I’m certainly not in ANY way predicting that Harris/Walz will beat Dumpy/Couchy in all (or possibly any) of those states. But the momentum and enthusiasm behind the Harris campaign are having tangible effects, both in polls and in donations.
• But just to cheer myself up, I made an electoral map with every state that wasn’t “Safe R” and flipped it to see what a 420-118 landslide blowout would look like, and as I suspected, it looked pretty great.
• There’s a horrible scenario where Harris loses Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina (along with the expected Red states), but still wins the election 271-267.
• However, we could save ourselves a whole lot of headaches after the election by making sure that the win is so lopsided in Harris’s favor that Dump doesn’t have a legal foot to stand on, and even the most ignorant members of his violent MAGA base realizes there’s no path to victory.
• Moving on.
• Kamala Harris and Tim Walz traveled across southern Georgia yesterday, the pair’s second bus tour in two weeks and their first burst of campaigning since the Democratic National Convention ended last Thursday.
• The tour, which is scheduled to end with a Harris rally in Savannah today, is the campaign’s latest effort to compete in Georgia, which has become a critical battleground in the month since Biden dropped out of the race.
• The bus tour features more intimate settings and smaller groups, following the template Harris and Walz set while traveling through western Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago.
• Let’s move on.
• A follow-up on our story about the arrest of Pavel Durov, CEO of messaging service Telegram. He was indicted yesterday on charges of complicity in the distribution of child sex abuse images, aiding organized crime, and refusing lawful orders to give information to law enforcement.
• The 39-year-old billionaire was ordered to put up a 5 million Euro bond, and was barred from leaving France.
• Durov’s Telegram is unusual for being run from a nonaligned Middle Eastern country, the United Arab Emirates, and for declaring that it shares no information with authorities anywhere about messages or activities on the site.
• Elmo Muck is very mad about this whole thing… allegedly about free speech issues, but more likely because X (formerly know as Twitter) also has a ton of easily-accessible porn that could include images of children.
• But child safety advocates say Telegram permits more illegal activity, including abuse images, than any other major network. The laws in most countries, including France and the United States, do not protect platforms from prosecution over illegal content.
• Telegram has some 950 million total users and is especially popular in Russia, elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. It is used for private messaging, public posts, and group chats.
• Let’s move on… though still in the realm of Elmo Muck.
• Yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded SpaceX rockets following a failure of one of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket boosters.
• The grounding comes as a crew of four astronauts waits in quarantine for the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission aboard a Falcon 9. The private flight, funded by internet entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, is set to conduct the world’s first commercial spacewalk. It had already been pushed back several days due to technical issues and weather concerns.
• The SpaceX Falcon 9 booster failed as it relit its engines to set down on the deck of a ship, when an uncontrolled fire appeared to bellow out from its underside. Seconds later, the rocket stage tipped into the Atlantic Ocean.
• The FAA said that the Falcon 9 would be grounded until the investigation was complete. This is the second grounding of the Falcon 9 rocket in recent months. The FAA grounded the rocket on July 12, after its second stage failed to relight properly during another Starlink launch. That grounding lasted around two weeks.
• Let’s move on.
• The fallout over Donnie Dump filming campaign videos over the dead bodies of fallen soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery has continued.
• The official who tried to do her job to stop the Dump campaign from illegally filming their ad there did not press charges over fear of retaliation by the violent MAGA community. I understand her outlook, but it’s sad that she has to feel that way.
• At least one Republican who accompanied Dump on his trip to desecrate the sacred grounds has apologized.
• Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox faced criticism yesterday for including a photo of him and Dump at Arlington in a campaign email soliciting donations for his reelection bid.
• Cox’s campaign has apologized for using the photo and politicizing the graveside ceremony. “This was not a campaign event and was never intended to be used by the campaign,” the governor wrote in a post on X. “It did not go through the proper channels and should not have been sent.”
• I mean, it’s literally against the law. 
• “Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign.”
• Would you want some politician — Republican, Democrat, or otherwise — smiling and giving thumbs-up signs over your dead kid’s or parent’s grave? I didn’t think so.
• Moving on.
• This is a note of warning: if you were one of the people who invested in Dump’s social media stocks, the day of reckoning is coming soon.
• Dumpy’s lock-up period prohibiting him from selling or even borrowing against his $2.3 billion stake in Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) is scheduled to expire by September 25.
• Since people aren’t complete idiots — well, some of them, anyway — the share price is already tanking. The stock tumbled another 4% on Wednesday, trading during the session below $20 for the first time since the merger that formed the company this spring.
• Trump Media has lost a staggering 70% of its value since late March, a selloff that has accelerated as Vice President Kamala Harris has gained in the polls against Trump.
• It would be all but impossible for Dump to liquidate his whole stake or even a fraction of it without completely tanking the stock price. But trust me, he’ll tank it and squeeze whatever he can get out of it.
• And anyone left owning shares will find they are absolutely worthless. Consider yourself fairly informed, while you still have time to cut your loss and sell.
• Let’s move on with some good news.
• Yesterday, the California State Assembly passed a bill that would enact the nation’s strictest regulations on artificial intelligence companies.
• The proposed law would require companies working on AI to test their technology before selling it for “catastrophic” risks such as the ability to instruct users in how to conduct cyberattacks or build biological weapons.
• Seems like the least we could do. Hopefully this law from my state will inspire similar legislation nationwide.
• In other news…
• A note from the Health Desk… check your fridge and make absolutely sure to get rid of any Boar’s Head deli meats.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors turned up dozens of violations at the Boar's Head plant in Virginia now linked to a nationwide recall of deli meats, including mold, mildew, and insects repeatedly found throughout the site.
• Gross!
• Last month, Boar's Head recalled all of the deli meats made at its plant in Jarratt, VA, after a listeria outbreak was blamed on products distributed from the site. 
• The outbreak has grown to 57 hospitalizations in 18 states linked to recalled products from the plant. At least nine deaths have now been reported, including two in South Carolina and one each in Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, New Mexico, and New York.
• And now, The Weather: “Bon Voyage” by Luna Li
• Let’s do a chart, and let’s dedicate it to Kamala Harris's father, Donald J. Harris. He’s a Stanford University professor of economics (emeritus) who arrived in the United States from Jamaica in 1961, for graduate study at UC Berkeley, and received a PhD in economics in 1966.
• Jamaica is the home of reggae music, a genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s (after Donald Harris had already emigrated to the USA). 
• But like most music genres, Jamaican reggae music didn’t pop out of nowhere. It evolved out of the earlier local genres like mento, ska, and rocksteady.
• Anyway, rather than a real chart, let’s scour the wide-ranging opinions on the Internet for a quasi-legit amalgamation list of the greatest reggae artists and bands of all time. 
• 1. Bob Marley. 2. Toots & the Maytals. 3. Peter Tosh. 4. Burning Spear. 5. Steel Pulse. 6. Yellowman. 7. Toots & The Maytals. 8. Jimmy Cliff. 9. Marcia Griffiths. 10. Sly and Robbie. 11. Gregory Isaacs. 12. Desmond Dekker. 13. Black Uhuru. 14. Lee “Scratch” Perry. 15. Dennis Brown. 16. Ziggy Marley. 17. Third World. 18. Barrington Levy. 19. The Skatalites. 20. Bunny Wailer.
• From the Sports Desk… pitcher Rich Hill is back in MLB, nearly two decades and more than a dozen teams since he made his big league debut.
• The Boston Red Sox selected the 44-year-old lefty from Triple-A Worcester. He very well may face a batter this season — say, 20-year-old Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio — who had just been born when Hill was a rookie.
• Putting it in perspective, when Hill debuted with the Cubs in 2005, George W. Bush had just started his second term.
• Side note: there have plenty of active MLB players older than Hill. Minnie Miñoso, for example, played his first game on April 19, 1949, and his last one on October 5, 1980 at age 56 years, 311 days. That’s over a year older than me right now.
• I still have a chance! Calling the Dodgers right now.
• Today in history… Copper coins are minted in Japan (708). The city of Nuuk, Greenland is founded (1728). American forces defeat the British and Iroquois forces at the Battle of Newtown (1779). Massachusetts farmers have an armed uprising against high taxes and debts, called Shays’ Rebellion (1786). Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction (1831). Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first internal combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen (1885). The Goodyear tire company is founded (1898). The Beatles perform their last ticketed concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco (1966). Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party (1991). Netflix is launched as an internet DVD rental service (1997). Hurricane Katrina devastates the Gulf Coast, killing up to 1,836 people and causing $125 billion in damage (2005).
• August 29 is the birthday of physician/philosopher John Locke (1632), physician/writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809), engineer Charles F. Kettering (1876), actress Ingrid Bergman (1915), saxophonist/composer Charlie Parker (1920), businesswoman/philanthropist Iris Apfel (1921), singer-songwriter Dinah Washington (1924), soldier/politician John McCain (1936), actor Elliot Gould (1938), director Joel Schumacher (1939), press secretary/activist James Brady (1940), singer-songwriter Michael Jackson (1958), actress Rebecca De Mornay (1959), astronaut Chris Hadfield (1959), SCOTUS justice Neil Gorsuch (1967), bass player/singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello (1968), and MLB player Noah Syndergaard (1992).

There are just 68 more days until the election. There’s far less time than that to make sure that you and your family and friends are properly registered to vote. In coming days, we’ll talk about what your plan is to vote int he 2024 election. Now just to make it through to this coming Labor Day weekend. I think I can do it. Enjoy your day.