Random News: March 1, 2025

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 March 1, 2025, and it’s a Saturday. In as much as I’d love to spend the day relaxing and recuperating form a busy work week, I have some family responsibilities to deal with this morning, as do many people on a typical Saturday. So, despite being in my robe and sipping my coffee at the moment — Peet’s Colombian, quite nice — it’s early and I only have a short while before having to get rolling on my day.

• So…
• Rabbit rabbit rabbit.
• Did you know that every single month I’ve started by saying those words, I haven’t died even once?
• Proof that it works, obviously.
• Side note: maybe look into the concept that correlation doesn’t imply causation. It might be good for you to understand this.
• Let’s do some news.
• Yesterday was one of the most embarrassing moments in US history as Dumpy the Fucking Dick went off on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during an extraordinary Oval Office meeting.
• Zelenskyy really triggered the Dumpster, who raised his voice and called the foreign leader “disrespectful.”
• Both Dump and that couch-fucker guy who he named VP were incredibly rude to the head of state of our ally. That’s putting it mildly.
• Dumpy screaming, “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel because you’re in no position… to dictate what we’re going to feel.”
• After Dumpy had his little fit, he and Zelenskyy went into separate rooms and the Ukrainians wanted the talks to continue. But Dumpy told them to leave. Just like that.
• Yesterday’s meeting was supposed to be about an agreement for the U.S. to access critical minerals in Ukraine. Dumpy has argued the deal would boost the Ukrainian economy and help the U.S. recoup money it has provided to Ukraine in fighting Russian forces.
• And like a typical baby who takes his ball and goes home crying, Dumpy suggested he was cutting off talks with the Ukrainian leader.
• Dump can’t handle being in the presence of an actual man.
• How did the people of Ukraine feel about it?
• They admire their leader even more. So would I.
• They expressed a sense that the Ukrainian leader had stood up for their country’s dignity and interests by firmly maintaining his stance in the face of chiding from some of the world’s most powerful men.
• Example… Nataliia Serhiienko, 67, a retiree in Kyiv, said she thinks Ukrainians approve of their president’s performance in Washington, “because Zelenskyy fought like a lion.”
• I’d have been proud of him as well.
• And as judged from the reaction of social media around the world, it would seem that a giant majority of people in the USA and internationally felt the same.
• Also, leaders from across Europe came quickly to the defense Zelenskyy after the clash with Dump and Couch Boy.
• Many of them publicly pushed back against Dumpy's alignment with Vladimir Putin and the pointless browbeating of Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.
• Within a couple of hours of the embarrassing meeting, leaders spoke out against Dump and in support of Zelenskyy that included French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Spanish premier Pedro Sánchez, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa, Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Czech President Petr Pavel, and Australia premier Anthony Albanese.
• Bad move for the Dumpster. He looked weak and petulant.
• And looked like a tool for Putin… which he is.
• Let’s move on.
• Remember when the MAGA folks were all about transparency in government? That was a big thing to them.
• But yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended a longstanding transparency rule, supercharging his authority to change policies in areas ranging from Medicaid to the National Institutes of Health without advance notice to the public.
• Dubbed the "Richardson Waiver" after the former health secretary who issued the rule in 1971, the policy Kennedy repealed had required regulations related to property, loans, grants, benefits or contracts to go through the federal "rulemaking" process.
• But now they can do all of that — or not do any of it — behind closed doors with no Americans having the info they need to make healthcare decisions, or awareness of how money is being spent, and by whom.
• Good job MAGAs (slow clap).
• Now health agencies no longer need to go through the notice and comment process for many policy changes about grants and benefits. This includes new rules that could otherwise be stymied by backlash during a public comment period, like potentially adding in work requirements to Medicaid or redrawing how the National Institutes of Health funds research.
• Let’s move on.
• Remember all those boxes of documents — many of them classified as top secret — that Dumpy stole from the White House and got accused of a very serious felony for until the same was dropped?
• He’s got them back again.
• Yesterday, the Felonious Punk transported back to Florida with him those same boxes of documents that the FBI had seized from Mar-a-Lago after executing a court-ordered search warrant in August 2022.
• The classified documents case against Dump, in which he pleaded not guilty, was dropped in November after he won the 2024 election.
• His staff still refuses to comment about the boxes’ contents. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said the boxes contain “personal items that belong to the president.”
• His counselor Alina Habba wouldn’t answer any questions about them at all.
• Moving on with a follow-up story about the slashing of government resources and how it will affect you in coming months.
• At dozens of National Weather Services offices across the country, staffing levels were low well before Dumpy and his boss Elon Musk took office. As the new administration announced mass terminations this week, current and former staffers said an exodus of new hires and veterans will hinder the agency’s ability to monitor and predict weather hazards.
• On Thursday, Dumpy and Musk let go of meteorologists, hydrologists, and technicians that help inform daily weather forecasts. It fired scientists who build, improve, and maintain weather models that form the backbone of weather forecasting around the globe.
• And staff at offices responsible for warning the public about tsunamis, tornadoes, and hurricanes lost their jobs, as did an entire team dedicated to communicating NOAA’s work and science to the public.
• And at the same time, buyouts from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service that went into effect yesterday shrank the Weather Service ranks by another 170 positions.
• I don’t mean to be alarmist in any way. I only want to help you think along lines that will be beneficial to yourself and your family and friends.
• So what I want to say is… basically, you’re on your own.
• Learn to do things that you formerly relied on a stable government to help do. That will leave you in a position to be least likely to be unprepared by things that range from natural disasters to disease outbreaks to attacks by domestic and foreign enemies.
• Because the US federal government is now weak and inefficient, just like Dump, Musk, and Putin planned.
• I should add that some of us are lucky enough to live in states with strong leadership and administration. As I’ve said many times going back to 2016, I am more appreciative and grateful than ever before to be a Californian.
• Moving on.
• Yesterday was the organized economic blackout in the USA, the first of what will likely be a series of actions to allow the citizens of our country to retain some power.
• I was very encouraged to see that even some of the most skeptical people chose to participate.
• Here’s the funny thing: with so much of the media now kowtowing to the fascists and oligarchs and giant corporations, there’s no way in hell they’d report on the effectiveness of the action.
• But you know and I know that it strikes fear into the hearts of the people who really run the world… the uber wealthy.
• If you don’t spend, they don’t get their extra yachts and jewelry and so on.
• I’ll keep you updated on future actions of this nature.
• Let’s move on.
• And let’s talk about eggs.
• I’m pretty sure that eggs have been a staple of your diet for much of your life. They definitely have for mine.
• When I went grocery shopping this week, the least expensive package of a dozen eggs cost $9.99, and were limited to two cartons per customer.
• We know that the drastic increase in the cost of eggs as a result of so many chickens dying from widespread bird flu or being culled because of the outbreak.
• This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture — what’s left of it after the Musk/Dump destruction of our government — announced a $1 billion plan to tackle the crisis.
• Three things to know…
• Egg prices jumped more than 15% last month, and panicked buyers emptied store shelves as fears of a wider shortage loomed.
• The USDA said it would spend up to half a billion dollars boosting bio-safety precautions at egg farms. Another $400 million will go to speed the replacement of lost birds, although it can take six months to a year to raise a productive laying hen.
• The plan also calls for spending $100 million to explore ways to temporarily boost the supply of imported eggs, and possibly to vaccinate domestic chickens.
• But at the same time, Dump has increased the cost of imported foods and goods via his tariffs, and the MAGA world doesn’t want to hear about vaccinations.
• So there’s really no end in sight for the egg problem.
• From the Technology Desk…
• I was on a business call the other day with an older gent, and while we were talking I heard the unmistakable sound of a Skype call coming in. And in my head, I wondered, “Jesus, who is still using Skype?”
• Apparently not enough people to keep it going.
• Microsoft, which acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, announced yesterday that the iconic voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) service would soon go dark. It encouraged Skype users to instead migrate to a free version of Microsoft Teams.
• I’m not a big fan of Teams, though for work I use it often (as well as Google Meet and occasionally Zoom).
• And for social communications, Skype has been largely overtaken over the more than two decades since it was founded by a bevy of competitors such as FaceTime, WhatsApp, Zoom and Slack.
• And as with any change, not everyone is happy. For example, elderly people who have trouble adapting to unfamiliar tech and apps have been using Skype to keep in touch with their families and loved ones.
• Skype has an interesting history. It was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, and was one of the first video conferencing apps, also allowing users to make voice calls and send messages.
• In 2005, it was bought by eBay for $2.6 billion, but just two years later, the online auction company took a $1.4 billion write-down of Skype, acknowledging that the acquisition "had not performed as expected."
• That’s what happens when you don’t invest in and grow your product while competitors come along and improve on your idea.
• And now, The Weather: “I Don't Want To Talk To You” by Snoozer
• From the Sports Desk… baseball is in spring training.
• What did the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani do last night in his first at-bat this spring? He crushed an opposite-field home run off countryman Yusei Kikuchi.
• Ohtani spent the winter rehabilitating after arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder, and it seems to have worked.
• Today in history… Emperor Diocletian and Maximian appoint Constantius Chlorus and Galerius as Caesars, marking the beginning of the Tetrarchy, known as the Quattuor Principes Mundi, or "Four Rulers of the World” (293). Sixty-three Huguenots are massacred in Wassy, France, marking the start of the French Wars of Religion (1562). The Articles of Confederation goes into effect in the United States (1781). United States President John Tyler signs a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas (1845). Nebraska is admitted as the 37th U.S. state (1867). Yellowstone National Park is established as the world's first national park (1872). Electrical engineer Nikola Tesla gives the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis, MO (1893). Henri Becquerel discovers radioactive decay (1896). Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke and collapses; he dies four days later (1953). Seven are indicted for their role in the Watergate break-in and charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice (1974). Bosnia and Herzegovina declares its independence from Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992). Titanic became the first film to gross over $1 billion worldwide (1998). Management of the United States Customs Service and the United States Secret Service move to the United States Department of Homeland Security (2003). 
• March 1 is the birthday of mathematician/diplomat John Pell (1611), SCOTUS justice William Cushing (1732), pianist/composer Frédéric Chopin (1810), poet Basil Bunting (1900), bandleader Glenn Miller (1904), actor/soldier David Niven (1910), novelist Ralph Ellison (1914), singer/TV host Dinah Shore (1917), Israel prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (1922), NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle (1926), singer/activist Harry Belafonte (1927), actor Robert Conrad (1935), singer Roger Daltrey (1944), actor Alan Thicke (1947), actress Catherine Bach (1954), actor/director/producer Ron Howard (1954), singer-songwriter Nik Kershaw (1958), actor Javier Bardem (1969), singer-songwriter Kesha (1987), singer-songwriter Justin Bieber (1994), NFL player Tyreek Hill (1994), and NFL player Ja'Marr Chase (2000).

And now I have to go shower and dress and do responsible things for awhile. Enjoy your day.