Random News: December 18, 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 December 18, 2024, and it’s a Wednesday. Some good news — for me. All the hard work I’ve done recently has paid off from the standpoint of not wanting to jump off a bridge first thing this morning. That’s a solid improvement over recent days. I hope to continue that trend as I get more shit done and thereby have less shit to worry about. Let’s do some news.

• Starting with some numbers.
• 31,000 is the number of K-12 students who experienced a school shooting this year alone.
• 13 is the number of people killed in school shootings since the start of the year — including the teenage student and teacher who were killed at Abundant Life Christian School on Monday. Almost 50 others who were shot this year survived.
• 426 is the number of school shootings since the Columbine High massacre of April 20, 1999.
• 215 is the number of people — including children and educators — who have been killed in school shootings since Columbine. Almost 500 others have been wounded.
• None of this happens in other countries, or at least at a tiny fraction of the rate it happens in the USA.
• Let’s move on.
• With some wonderful breaking news.
• The House Ethics Committee secretly voted earlier this month to release its report into the conduct of former Rep. Matt Gaetz before the end of this Congress.
• The report is now expected to be made public after the House’s final day of votes this year as lawmakers leave Washington for the holidays.
• Hahahahahaha!
• The decision to release the report suggests that some Republicans ultimately decided to side with Democrats on the matter, but it is unclear if the committee will once again change course now that it has voted.
• Guess we’ll see.
• Moving on.
• Democrats elected Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia to serve as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, rejecting a push by some members to tap a younger generation of lawmakers to lead the party on top panels.
• Connolly, 74, defeated 35-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to become the ranking member of the powerful committee. Connolly, who came to Congress in 2009, will replace Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who will lead the Judiciary Committee when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3.
• I think AOC would have been better in the role — especially if Democrats retake the House in 2026. But they didn’t ask me.
• Moving on.
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dumpy’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is expected to face contentious confirmation hearings.
• Assuming no Democrats cross the aisle to vote for Kennedy, he can afford to lose only three Republican votes in the closely divided Senate.
• Some Republicans are calling on the former Democrat to explain his positions on vaccines, abortion, and agriculture policy, warning they have serious questions about his planned agenda.
• I do as well.
• In other news…
• The U.S. government will pay nearly $116 million to resolve lawsuits brought by more than 100 women who were abused or mistreated at a now-shuttered federal prison in California that was known as the "rape club" because of rampant staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct.
• Seems like it should be more.
• Under settlements approved yesterday, the Justice Department will pay an average of about $1.1 million to each of 103 women who sued the Bureau of Prisons over their treatment at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California.
• Lawsuit plaintiff and former Dublin prisoner Aimee Chavira said, "I hope this settlement will help survivors, like me, as they begin to heal – but money will not repair the harm that BOP did to us, or free survivors who continue to suffer in prison, or bring back survivors who were deported and separated from their families.”
• Yesterday’s settlements cover an initial wave of lawsuits seeking monetary compensation from the Bureau of Prisons after former warden Ray Garcia and other employees at FCI Dublin went to prison for sexually abusing inmates. Subsequent lawsuits have yet to be resolved.
• Fuck them up, ladies.
• Moving on.
• Yesterday, a jury convicted the man who killed Cash App co-founder Bob Lee. While they found Nima Momeni not guilty of first-degree murder, he was guilty of second-degree murder.
• Prosecutors argued Momeni lured Lee to an isolated part of the Bay Bridge before the deadly confrontation. They say Momeni stabbed Lee after hearing that Lee's drug dealer friend gave Momeni's younger sister a date rape drug before sexually assaulting her.
• What the fuck?
• I’m really fucking sick of hearing about these wealthy and powerful people and their twisted sexual escapades. I’m over it, truly.
• In other news, I feel a responsibility to continue warning you about how Dump’s tariff plan is going to screw up all of your lives.
• That way, maybe you’ll be somewhat more prepared and less shocked and astounded about something that’s is 100% going to happen assuming he follows through.
• Dump’s proposed tariffs are so high they could entirely wipe out the annual profits of some large companies. Of course, companies won't sit idly by and let that happen — those costs will just be passed along to American consumers.
• A reminder: Dump said he'd put 25% tariffs on all goods coming from Canada and Mexico — the two largest U.S. trading partners — as soon as he takes office.
• That’s on top of tariffs of 60% or more on goods from China, and 10-20% tariffs on imports from the rest of the world.
• These measures would increase the amount of money businesses pay in tariffs by more than 400%.
• An analyst’s model finds Dump’s tariff increases are often larger than an importer's annual profits across a range of industries including autos, retailers, communications equipment-makers, and companies that import fruits and vegetables.
• So I’m telling you, get ready to pay more — in some cases a lot more — for nearly everything. You knew you were voting for that, right, MAGAs?
• Let’s get a rare report from the Science Desk.
• The Science Desk would like to complain that it doesn’t get enough space here. We offer no excuses.
• Anyway…
• In southern China, a massive detector is nearly complete that will sniff out the mysterious ghost particles known as neutrinos lurking around us.
• The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory will soon begin the difficult task of spotting the tiny cosmic particles with a mind-bogglingly small mass.
• The detector is one of three being built across the globe to study these elusive ghost particles in the finest detail yet. The other two, based in the United States and Japan, are still under construction.
• Neutrinos date back to the Big Bang, and trillions zoom through our bodies every second. They spew from stars like the sun and stream out when atomic bits collide in a particle accelerator.
• Scientists have known about the existence of neutrinos for almost a century, but they’re still in the early stages of figuring out what the particles really are.
• There’s no way to spot the tiny neutrinos whizzing around on their own. Instead, scientists measure what happens when they collide with other bits of matter, producing flashes of light or charged particles.
• Neutrinos are so small that they bump into other particles only very rarely, making it extremely difficult to catch a collision.
• I the time it took you to read about this, about 100 trillion neutrinos went through you, through the entire Earth, out the other side, and continued on their journey through space and time.
• And now, The Weather: “Death Spells” by Goon
• From the Sports Desk… have a seat on the bench, Kirk Cousins.
• Michael Penix Jr. is the new starting quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons and Cousins is now relegated to a backup role, coach Raheem Morris announced last night.
• The Falcons beat the lowly Raiders 15-9 on Monday night, but Cousins was just 11-of-17 passing for 112 yards with a touchdown and an interception. He has nine interceptions and just one touchdown pass in his past five games.
• Today in history… Kublai Khan renames his empire “Yuan”, officially marking the start of the Yuan dynasty of Mongolia and China (1271). The United States celebrates its first Thanksgiving (1777). New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution (1787). US Secretary of State William Seward proclaims the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery throughout the USA (1865). Premiere performance of The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Saint Petersburg, Russia (1892). The resolution containing the language of the Eighteenth Amendment to enact Prohibition is passed by the United States Congress (1917). The Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Korematsu v. United States supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 which cleared the way for the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, born and raised in the United States (1944). A meteor exploded over the Bering Sea with a force over 10 times greater than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945 (2018). The United States House of Representatives impeaches Donald Trump for the first time (2019).
• December 18 is the birthday of physicist J. J. Thomson (1856), Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863), politician Joseph Stalin (1878), painter Paul Klee (1879), MLB player Ty Cobb (1886), engineer Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890), actress Betty Grable (1916), actor Ossie Davis (1917), music publisher Allen B. Klein (1931), bass player/manager Chas Chandler (1938), saxophone player Bobby Keys (1943), singer-songwriter/guitarist Keith Richards (1943), activist Steve Biko (1946), director/producer Steven Spielberg (1946), guitarist/composer Elliot Easton (1953), actor Ray Liotta (1954), NBA player Charles Oakley (1963), actor Brad Pitt (1963), actress Rachel Griffiths (1968), rapper DMX (1970), singer-songwriter Sia (1975), actress Katie Holmes (1978), singer-songwriter Christina Aguilera (1980), MLB player Ronald Acuña Jr. (1997), and singer-songwriter Billie Eilish (2001).

I’m going to try and continue my direction of Getting Shit Done and thereby leaving less stuff to stress me the fuck out. Hopeful it works out that way. Enjoy your day.