Random News: October 13, 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 October 13, 2024, and it’s a Sunday. It seems very calm so far this morning. Maybe it’s just me… it’s quiet and overcast here in my neighborhood. While I detest being bored, given the choice, I would take “boring yet peaceful” over “exciting yet stressful” every single time. Now let’s look at the news.

• This morning, President Biden got a firsthand look at the devastation inflicted on Florida’s Gulf Coast by Hurricane Milton. Biden is pressing Congress to approve additional emergency disaster funding.
• At the same time, Vice President Kamala Harris was spending a second day in North Carolina, hard-hit by Hurricane Helene, to worship with Black churchgoers and hold a campaign rally.
• She was spending Sunday in Greenville, with plans to speak during a church service as part of her campaign’s “Souls to the Polls” effort to help turn out Black churchgoers before Election Day.
• She was also scheduled to hold a rally to talk about her economic plans and highlight Thursday’s start of early voting in the state.
• Back in Florida, Biden’s motorcade drove along the highway, where piles of debris, tattered billboards, toppled fences, fallen trees, and closed gas stations were prevalent.
• He passed through a neighborhood where almost every home had water damage and heaps of belongings were on the curb.
• Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) seems unfazed by the devastation. Today, Johnson said that lawmakers will deal with the issue after the election because of the amount of time it takes to come up with an estimate.
• So yes, due to the Republican leadership in the House, at least another month will go by before the government even starts to look at providing additional help to the people of Florida, North Carolina, and elsewhere.
• Let’s move on.
• Kamala Harris said Friday she would create a bipartisan council of advisers if elected president.
• The veep announced this while campaigning in Arizona, courting Republican and independent voters there. Smart.
• Harris says her bipartisan advisors can give feedback on policy as we go forward. She added that she doesn’t want “yes people” around her.
• “We need a healthy two-party system, we have to have a healthy two-party system, we have to,” she said. “It’s in the best interest of all of us.”
• I agree.
• In other news…
• As I noted last week, I have already voted in the 2024 general election. 
• My ballot arrived on Saturday October 5 — all registered voters in California are sent one automatically — and by Sunday, I’d done my research, filled out my ballot, and dropped it off at a convenient drop box a block away.
• As tends to happen around this time in an election year, I’ve seen some people proudly showing off pics of their filled-in ballot. I do get that you’re excited to support your candidate.
• But guess what? Depending on where you live, that might be a crime. Here’s a list, for your reference, of states where taking or sharing pics of your ballot is illegal.
• Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.
• Is that all? No. A bunch of other states have more nebulous laws that apply more to things like taking pics inside polling places versus your mail-in ballot.
• In addition to basic privacy rights (and people accidentally disclosing personal information on the ballot), one of the reasons it’s illegal in some places is that you could be using the pic to prove that you voted in some situation where you were being paid to vote…and that’s definitely illegal.
• So my advice — take it or leave it — is that we don’t need to see a picture of your ballot. You don’t owe anyone proof of your support. Your word is enough.
• On a related side note, do NOT wear campaign t-shirts, buttons, hats, or any other item that shows your political preference while you vote…. whether it’s in person or even submitting a ballot at a drop box.
• That violates laws in most states. All it take is one person to claim that they felt intimidated to vote because of your presence, and a whole world of shit may come crashing down on you.
• Let’s move on to some international news.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on United Nations peacekeepers to heed the Israeli military's warnings to evacuate Lebanon immediately as the fighting intensifies amid Israel's ground operation.
• That’s never good. If you’re conducting military operations under the rules of international law, you welcome UN peacekeepers and other observers.
• Israeli forces have repeatedly fired upon locations where first responders and U.N. peacekeepers were present since the start of the ground operation against Hezbollah.
• Today, the Lebanese Red Cross said paramedics were searching for casualties in the wreckage of a house destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon when a second strike left four paramedics with concussions and damaged two ambulances.
• That rescue operation had been coordinated with U.N. peacekeepers, who informed the Israeli side. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
• Fuck Netanyahu. Much like his pal Donnie, the sooner he’s gone, the better off the world will be.
• Moving on.
• You know we no longer do our Sunday Gunday column here, but I did want to mention that at least one person was killed and 14 others injured in a mass shooting in Oklahoma City, OK early Saturday morning.
• The mass shooting took place at a Halloween party at an event center. Apprently it started as an argument between two groups, and they believe multiple shooters were involved.
• And then yesterday evening, another person was killed and nine others wounded — including three children — after two groups fired at each other after a Tennessee State University homecoming parade.
• I’ll once again remind you that the most likely way your child in the USA will be killed is via gun violence. Not car accidents, not cancer, not allergies, not drowning, not fires, not animal attacks.
• If you live in the USA, statistically, your child is far more likely to be shot and killed than any other cause of death. Common sense gun regulation would put a big dent in that number.
• Let’s move on.
• I haven’t been covering the endless barrage of lies that spew from the mouth of one of the most evil men to have ever walked our planet, the guy I call Dumples the Clown.
• Why would I?
• But I will mention this because I think it helps illustrate the horrible nature of this person.
• Dump was getting heckled at one of his little rallies yesterday and said tot he crowd of cheering people that a heckler would later get “the hell knocked out of her.”
• He stopped himself while demonizing immigrants to say, “Back home to mommy, she goes back home to mommy. Was that you darling? And she gets the hell knocked out of her. Her mother’s a big fan of ours, you know that right? Her father, her mother. You always have that.”
• The only other thing Dump said of note was that if he became president, he would withhold funds for California wildfires.
• “We’ll say, Gavin, if you don’t do it, we’re not giving you any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the forest fires that you have.”
• It’s darkly ironic that Dumpy is saying those hateful things literally at the same moment that Biden and Harris are busy directing help to supposedly red states. True leadership always puts country over party.
• Finally, Dump is also threatening to use the US military to go after American citizens who don’t support him. That’s people like me, and maybe you.
• It will be much worse than Hitler’s reign in Germany if you allow him to regain power. I’m not exaggerating. I genuinely hope I never have the reason to say, “I told you so.”
• Moving on.
• We gotta talk about TikTok. I hate singling it out, but there’s stuff happening on that platform that you need to be aware of.
• Per their own internal investigation, kids as young as 15 are stripping on TikTok’s live feature fueled by adults who were paying for it.
• Officials at TikTok discovered that there was “a high” number of underage streamers receiving a “gift” or “coin” in exchange for stripping — real money converted into a digital currency often in the form of a plush toy or a flower.
• The information came after a more than two-year investigation into TikTok by 14 attorneys general that led to state officials suing the company on Tuesday.
• Some other findings against the app — which is used by around 170 million people in the U.S. — include the fact that when TikTok’s main video feed saw “a high volume of … not attractive subjects” filling everyone’s screens, the app rejiggered its algorithm to amplify users the company viewed as beautiful.
• A presentation shown to top company officials revealed that an estimated 95% of smartphone users under 17 used TikTok at least once a month.
• On Friday, a bipartisan pair of senators — Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) wrote a letter to TikTok asking the company to turn over “all documents and information” related to disclosures about child safety on the app.
• I’ll tell you, I love the current era with its access to information and communication via these amazing little computers we carry around in our pockets.
• But the downside is extraordinarily awful.
• Let’s move on.
• Here’s something exciting from the Space Desk, and it’s a mission that’s piqued my interest for many years.
• A NASA spacecraft is ready to set sail for Jupiter and its moon Europa, one of the best bets for finding life beyond Earth.
• Europa Clipper will peer beneath the moon’s icy crust where an ocean is thought to be sloshing fairly close to the surface. It won’t search for life, but rather determine whether conditions there could support it.
• Its massive solar panels make Clipper the biggest craft built by NASA to investigate another planet. It will take 5-1/2 years to reach Jupiter, and will sneak within 16 miles of Europa’s surface — considerably closer than any other spacecraft.
• It’s likely the first — and maybe only — opportunity for us to see whether life exists beyond Earth that will occur in my lifetime.
• Setting a reminder to check back and follow up in early 2030.
• And now, The Weather: “Old City Pt. II” by Color Temperature
• From the Sports Desk… yesterday, the Guardians ended the fairy tale run of the Tigers in Game 5, winning 7-3 and taking that series.
• The AL Championship Series starts Monday between the 1-seed New York Yankees and 2-seed Cleveland Guardians.
• The NLCS between the Dodgers and Mets starts this evening here in Los Angeles. LET’S GO DODGERS!
• Also from the Sports Desk, it’s Sunday, so the NFL is in full swing. An early game played in London had the surprisingly spunky Bears (4-2) beating the crap out of the really bad Jaguars (1-5).
• Some of the more lopsided spreads in games today: Eagles (-8.5) over Browns, Texans (-7) over Patriots, Ravens (-6.5) over Commanders, and Falcons (-6) over Panthers.
• I promise that some of these games will be upsets regardless.
• Today in history… Roman emperor Claudius dies from poisoning under mysterious circumstances and is succeeded by his adoptive son Nero (54). Rinchinbal Khan becomes the Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan dynasty, reigning for only 53 days (1332). Coronation of Henry IV of England (1399). The Continental Congress establishes the Continental Navy, the predecessor of the United States Navy (1775). The Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire is publicly proclaimed (1821). Edward Emerson Barnard discovers first comet discovered by photographic means (1892). The Boston Red Sox win the first modern World Series, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates in the eighth game (1903). Margaret Travers Symons bursts into the UK parliament and becomes the first woman to speak there (1908). The Pacific Northwest experiences a cyclone the equal of a Category 3 hurricane, with winds above 150 mph (1962). The first electron micrograph of an Ebola virus is taken at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by Dr. F. A. Murphy (1976). Ameritech Mobile Communications launches the first US cellular network in Chicago (1983). Kenyan Brigid Kosgei sets a new world record for a woman runner with a time of 2:14:04 at the 2019 Chicago Marathon (2019).
• October 13 is the birthday of hunter/businessman Leon Leonwood Bean (1872), pianist Art Tatum (1909), artist Terry Frost (1915), comedian Lenny Bruce (1925), politician Margaret Thatcher (1925), bassist Ray Brown (1926), saxophonist/bandleader Pharaoh Sanders (1940), music producer/manager Neil Aspinall (1941), singer-songwriter/guitarist Paul Simon (1941), businessman Jerry Jones (1942), singer-songwriter/pianist Robert Lamm (1944), singer-songwriter/guitarist Sammy Hagar (1947), singer Marie Osmond (1959), singer Joey Belladonna (1960), NBA player Derek Harper (1961), NBA player/coach Doc Rivers (1961), NFL player Jerry Rice (1962), Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff (1964), skater Nancy Kerrigan (1969), comedian/actor/writer Sacha Baron Cohen (1971), NBA player Paul Pierce (1977), NFL player Brian Hoyer (1985), politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989), ummm… Tiffany Trump (1993), and singer Jimin (1995).

Alrighty then. I’ve got some housekeeping to do, some football to watch, and some preparation for a little trip later this week that I’ll tell you about soon. Enjoy your day.