Random News: September 22, 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 September 22, 2024, and it’s a Sunday. It’s overcast and cool, and I’ve got a big cup of Peet’s Sumatra as I start the day in a blue bathrobe. We’re waking up today to a whole new change of season, so…

• First and foremost, a Happy Fall to all.
• The Autumnal Equinox was about three hours ago, at 5:43am PT/8:43am ET this morning.
• What does that mean, other than the official real start of Fall? Simple.
• At that moment, the Sun — as viewed from the equator — rises due east and sets due west. It’s the start of fall here in the Northern Hemisphere where 88% of all humans live.
• For you Brazilians and Aussies and other rare friends down south, it’s the first day of spring. But the rest of us are pulling out our jeans and flannel shirts and so on. Overall, fall is probably my favorite time of year.
• For pagans, the autumnal equinox is a holiday known variously as Harvest Home, Mabon, the Feast of the Ingathering, Meán Fómhair, An Clabhsúr, or Alban Elfed. It is a festival of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and a recognition of the need to share them to secure the blessings of the Goddess and the Gods during the coming winter months.
• I may celebrate it by dancing around naked. I mean, I was gonna do that anyway but now I have an actual reason.
• Let’s do some news.
• Yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris accepted CNN's invitation for a second debate, and challenged The Dumpster to join her. It’s scheduled for Wednesday October 23.
• But Don the Chicken — or El Pollo, as I will now refer to him — doesn’t want to have his ass publicly handed to him like he did at the previous debate. At a rally yesterday, Dumpy contended it's "too late" for another debate, noting, "Voting has already started.”
• Let’s see here. In the previous election, the final presidential debate took place on October 22, 2020, literally within a single calendar day of this proposed event. Dumpy didn’t have a problem doing it then. What’s changed?
• Harris campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon noted, "Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate. It is the same format and setup as the CNN debate he attended and said he won in June, when he praised CNN's moderators, rules, and ratings."
• Bok bok bok bok bok (chicken noises to enrage El Pollo).
• Here’s something that is actually odd: due to his fear of debating Harris again, Dump is allowing his running mate, JD Vance, to have the final debating word this fall.
• Vance and the Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz will participate in a vice presidential debate on CBS News a week from Tuesday, on October 1. The VP debate has never been the last in an election cycle, but that apparently will be the case this time.
• Moving on.
• Where is Kamala Harris today? She is scheduled to attend a fundraiser in New York this afternoon, aiming to pad her cash advantage against El Pollo by courting donors in the city that made him famous.
• How is fundraising going for the Harris/Walz campaign? Glad you asked. Kamala Harris’s campaign raised more than four times as much as Dump’s effort in August, capitalizing on the surge of Democratic enthusiasm during the first full month of her presidential campaign.
• Harris’s campaign raised $190 million in August, per reports filed Friday night with the Federal Election Commission. Dump raised $43 million in August.
• Ruh roh.
• Let’s move to some international news, which is pretty concerning.
• Hezbollah launched more than 100 rockets early today across northern Israel, with some landing near the city of Haifa, as Israel launched hundreds of strikes on Lebanon. Both sides appeared to be spiraling closer toward all-out war.
• I shouldn’t have to remind you that as an ally of Israel, if open war begins, the USA will have some level of commitment to defend the country. Hezbollah is backed by Iran.
• None of this is good.
• In Europe, France unveiled a long-awaited new government yesterday dominated by conservatives and centrists. And yes, a left-wing coalition secured the most seats in the June-July parliamentary elections, but failed to win a majority.
• Unsurprisingly, student groups and activists from the hard-left France Unbowed party held protests around the country yesterday against a government they say rejects the voters' will.
• President Emmanuel Macron named conservative Michel Barnier as prime minister earlier this month even though Barnier's Republicans party had a poor showing in the elections, and Barnier put together the government after difficult negotiations.
• None of this is encouraging if you appreciate democracy. Marine Le Pen's far-right anti-immigration party National Rally has no seats in Barnier's government (yay!), but has enough votes in parliament to bring it down (boo!).
• Moving on.
• We no longer do the Sunday Gunday column here at Zak’s Random News. I stopped in July because I realized it was too time consuming to do with the amount of shootings in the USA every weekend.
• It was also too depressing and didn’t seem to solve a damn thing. Few people seem to care that gun violence is the number-one killer of children in the USA… probably because they assume it will always be someone else’s kid who is shot to death (until it isn’t).
• But I still feel compelled to mention that four people were killed and 17 others were injured when multiple shooters opened fire in the center of one of the most popular entertainment areas in Birmingham, AL last night.
• Just after 11pm, multiple shooters fired multiple shots on a group of people in the Five Points South area. Two men and a woman were pronounced dead on the scene, and another man died later at the University of Alabama Hospital.
• Maybe support common-sense gun regulation? Maybe elect candidates who give a shit about our kids? It’s up to you.
• Moving on. Yesterday, Dumpster did a rally in North Carolina and went the entire time pretending that Republican governor candidate Mark Robinson does not exist. He didn’t make a single mention of him.
• Probably a good idea. What’s he going to do… talk about how he “cherishes” this man who calls himself a Black Nazi, enjoys transgender porn, and wishes slavery to be reinstated?
• This morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) joined MSNBC’s “Meet the Press” and said the allegations against Robinson would make him “unfit to serve” if they are true.
• “The charges are beyond unnerving,” Graham said. “If they’re true, he’s unfit to serve for office. If they’re not true, he has the best lawsuit in the history of the country for libel.”
• Still waiting for that lawsuit, Robinson. If you’ve been slandered, you should definitely sue.
• Crickets. Please vote for Democrat Josh Stein, North Carolinian friends. Or, if you can’t being yourself to do that, just sit out the election altogether.
• Let’s move on.
• As the old saying goes, “As goes California, so goes the Nation.” This might be good news for the whole USA, if that’s the case.
• On Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that aims to reduce social media use among children, the latest state effort to regulate the medium over increasing concerns that heavy use is damaging to young people.
• The Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act makes it unlawful for online services and applications to provide an “addictive feed” to a minor, unless they are unaware the user is underage or have obtained parental consent. It passed the Democratic-led state Legislature by comfortable margins last month.
• The bill defines an “addictive feed” as “an internet website, online service, online application or mobile application in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based on information provided by the user, or otherwise associated with the user or the user’s device, as specified, unless any of certain conditions are met.”
• That’s in reference to the “endless scroll” offered by platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook/Instagram stories, and the like.
• The law also bans notifications from platforms from midnight to 6 a.m. and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, times when children are in school, unless the user has parental consent.
• Platforms must allow parents the option to choose specific hours for their child to not receive notifications, limit access to the platform’s feed, view the number of “likes” and set their child’s account to private.
• I agree with all of that.
• In other news… Earth is getting a new moon. A little tiny mini-moon. It’s only hanging around for a couple of months.
• The space rock, which has been named “2024 PT5,” has been traveling along its normal path around the sun, but will be temporarily pulled into Earth's gravitational orbit later this month.
• It’s a rock about 33 feet long. No, you won’t be able to see it. 2024 PT5 will travel around the Earth in a horseshoe path for about two months, from September 29 to November 25.
• This actually happens pretty often. In 2020, astronomers identified another mini-moon, 2020 CD3, which orbited the Earth for over a year.
• Earth is a big-ass hunk of rock with a big iron core. Hence, we have gravitational supremacy over smaller rocks.
• And now, The Weather: “Getting Old” by Circus Trees
• From the Sports Desk… today is the third Sunday of the 2024-25 NFL season. Here’s who’s playing, along with the spreads.
• Giants at Browns (-6.5). Packers at Titans (-3). Bears at Colts (-2). Texans (-2) at Vikings. Eagles at Saints (-2.5). Chargers at Steelers (-3). Broncos at Buccaneers (-6). Panthers at Raiders (-5.5). Dolphins at Seahawks (-4). Ravens (-1) at Cowboys. 49ers (-6.5) at Rams. Lions (-3) at Cardinals. Chiefs (-3) at Falcons.
• Monday night has two games this week: Jaguars at Bills (-5.5) and Commanders at Bengals (-7.5).
• Today in history… The last hanging of those convicted of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials, including Samuel Wardwell, my 10th great-grandfather (1692). George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz are crowned King and Queen of Great Britain (1761). Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during the American Revolution (1776). Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history at the time (1896). The steel strike of 1919 begins in Pennsylvania before spreading across the United States (1919). On Rosh Hashanah, the German SS murders 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, who are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed (1941). François Duvalier is elected president of Haiti (1957). Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford (1975). Iraq invades Iran, sparking the nearly eight year Iran–Iraq War (1980). The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time (1991).
• September 22 is the birthday of Chinese emperor Li Zicheng (1606), physicist Michael Faraday (1791), activist Christabel Pankhurst (1880), actor Paul Muni (1895), actor John Houseman (1902), Nazi war criminal Ilse Koch (1906), activist Eric Baker (1920), MLB player/manager Bob Lemon (1920), MLB player/manager Tommy Lasorda (1927), NBA commissioner David Stern (1942), singer/choreographer Toni Basil (1943), singer-songwriter King Sunny Adé (1946), singer-songwriter David Coverdale (1951), singer Debby Boone (1956), bass player Doug Wimbish (1956), singer-songwriter Nick Cave (1957), singer-songwriter/bass player Johnette Napolitano (1957), singer Andrea Bocelli (1958), singer-songwriter/guitarist Joan Jett (1958), MLB player/manager Mike Matheny (1970), and actor Tom Felton (1987).

Time to get out of this robe and into something more… productive. Happy Fall. y’all. Enjoy your day.