Random News: November 23, 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 November 23, 2024, and it’s a Saturday. I’m running out the door to do a little rock star work, and I don’t have time for a full Random News report, so here are a couple of items to tide you over until tomorrow.

• What am I doing today? I’m heading into Los Angeles for a video shoot for Takamine Guitars, where, along with a couple of other guys, I’m performing on a batch of different acoustic guitars and talking about what kind of music might be better on one versus another.
• I know that sounds fun to some folks, and I obviously enjoy being a pro musician from time to time, but it is indeed work, and it’s on a Saturday.
• And I’m still getting over this shitty cold. Thankfully there’s no singing involved… my voice is still shot from the sickness. I’d rather be relaxing here at home today, frankly.
• But you gotta do what you gotta do. And any time I complain about getting paid to play guitar and talk about playing guitar, you should remind me that some other person is getting up early today to dig ditches, tar a roof, feed pigs, drive an ambulance, change a transmission, and so on.
• Complaining over. Let’s do a short look at a little news before I head out.
• You shouldn’t be surprised that New York Judge Juan Merchan has indefinitely adjourned Dumpy's sentencing in his hush money criminal case.
• The filing to indefinitely adjourn next week's sentencing date comes several days after both lawyers agreed that a stay would help sort out unprecedented legal questions.
• Dump's lawyers have long prepared to dismiss the case, arguing that evidence used in the case should not have been introduced and the incoming president cannot be prosecuted. 
• Prosecutors have also prepared to fight the dismissal.
• Moving on.
• In the “Far Too Many Men Are Pieces of Fucking Shit” folder, mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor had to pay a woman $257,000 after he brutally raped and battered her in a Dublin hotel penthouse.
• The woman said the December 9, 2018, assault after a night of partying left her heavily bruised and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
• McGregor testified that he never forced the woman to do anything against her will and said she fabricated the allegations after the two had consensual sex.
• I have to tell you… the very idea of forcing myself on a person after they expressed reluctance makes me feel ill. I can’t even imagine a situation where that would be appealing to literally anyone.
• In other news…
• Dumpy is adding yet another billionaire election denier to his cabinet.
• He’s offering Kelly Loeffler the job of secretary of the Department of Agriculture. Loeffler briefly represented Georgia in the Senate before losing to Democrat Raphael Warnock in a special election on January 5, 2021.
• Yes, the day before That Day.
• Moving on.
• I adored the response of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) regarding the appointment of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as the subcommittee chair of their “DOGE” thing.
• It’s not a government agency. It’s an unofficial, um, advisory thing of some kind.
• Anyway, AOC’s comment was perfect: “This is good, actually. She barely shows up and doesn't do the reading. To borrow a phrase I saw elsewhere, it's like giving someone an unplugged controller.”
• Yas queen.
• Let’s move on with some tech news that makes me smile.
• British phone company Virgin Media O2 has created an AI grandma with the sole purpose of talking to scammers all day so real people don't have to.
• “Daisy” has already had more than 1,000 conversations with scammers in the past week, the longest lasting around 40 minutes, frustrating them with her tech-illiteracy and wasting their time by telling irrelevant stories about her grandchildren.
• The AI was trained by actual scam artists, and Virgin Media O2 used a tactic called number seeding to get Daisy's phone number added to a list of online lists used by scammers targeting U.K. consumers.
• The more time they spend with her, the less they have to prey on real grandmas.
• And now, The Weather: “Occasional Stoner” by Eyedress
• From the Sports Desk… I got nothing.
• Today in history… Thespis of Icaria becomes the first recorded actor to portray a character on stage (534 BC). John Milton publishes Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship (1644). King William III of the Netherlands dies without a male heir and a special law is passed to allow his daughter Princess Wilhelmina to succeed him (1890). Edwin Hubble's discovery, that the Andromeda "nebula" is actually another island galaxy far outside our own Milky Way, is first published in The New York Times (1924). The BBC broadcasts ‘An Unearthly Child’, the first episode of the first story from the first series of ‘Doctor Who’, which is now the world's longest running science fiction drama (1963). Ronald Reagan signs the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17, giving the CIA the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua (1981). Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury announces in a statement that he is HIV-positive and dies the following day (1991). The first smartphone, the IBM Simon, is introduced at COMDEX in Las Vegas, Nevada (1992). Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is elected president of Liberia and becomes the first woman to lead an African country (2005). After 11 months of protests in Yemen, Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh signs a deal to transfer power to the vice president, in exchange for legal immunity (2011). 
• November 23 is the birthday of Holy Roman emperor Otto I (912), US president Franklin Pierce (1804), actor Boris Karloff (1887), comedian/musician Harpo Marx (1888), baseball player Josephine D’Angelo (1924), composer Johnny Mandel (1925), singer-songwriter/guitarist R. L. Burnside (1926), activist/politician Bobby Rush (1946), politician Chuck Schumer (1950), singer-songwriter/pianist Bruce Hornsby (1954), reality TV personality Snooki (1987), and singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus (1992).

Alright, gotta roll. Enjoy your day.