Random News: March 16, 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 16, 2025, and it’s a Sunday. Here I am, your dude in a bathrobe, slurping down coffee like it’s going out of style, and taking a look at the news so you can have some idea of what’s happening around you.

• I also have a live music show today at 2pm, which is always the top thing on my mind any day I wake up and know there’s a performance on my schedule.
• It means that I’ll be running through the new songs in my set, warming up my voice, tuning my guitar, and all the things one does to not be shitty.
• I care a lot. Okay, let’s do the news.
• I want to talk about a story I saw shared widely yesterday about Fabian Schmidt, a legal US resident who was detained by immigration officers at Logan Airport in Boston and is now being held by ICE at a detention facility in Rhode Island.
• Schmidt, who moved to the U.S. in 2007 and received a green card in 2008 that was recently renewed has no active issues in court. He’d been visiting Luxembourg and flew back to the U.S. on Friday.
• He was violently interrogated at the airport for hours, was stripped naked, and put in a cold shower by two officials.
• The immigration agents also pressured him to give up his green card. He also was given little food or water, suffered sleep deprivation, and was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.
• His family have acquired attorneys and been working with the German consulate in hopes to have him released on bail.
• This is America.
• And I’d say you can count on a lot more of this happening. Legal residents being shipped off to foreign lands for no reason at all.
• Or at least with no legal justification.
• Example: the Dump administration deported more than 200 people who it claims are members of a Venezuelan prison gang to El Salvador this weekend.
• Dumpy cited the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a seldom-used law that gives the president authority to detain or deport nationals of an enemy nation during wartime.
• Wartime? With Venezuela?
• Problem: yesterday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued an emergency order that stopped the administration from using that act to deport anyone, adding that the administration should turn planes already in the air around.
• And earlier in the day, in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and others had blocked the administration from deporting five Venezuelan men for 14 days.
• Did Dump respect the law and obey the order? No, Dump has never felt that laws apply to himself… just to everyone else. So despite the court order, he sent them anyway.
• Am I saying these Venezuelans are wonderful, kind people and not violent gang members? No, I have no idea. But once you start allowing stuff like this to happen, with rogue agencies ignoring courts, it’s one of the sure signs of the end of a democracy.
• Side note: the last time a president invoked the Alien Enemies Act was WWII, during which 31,000 suspected enemy aliens of mostly Japanese, Italian and German descent were placed in internment camps and military facilities.
• And the law requires war to be formally declared — which only Congress has the authority to do.
• So here we are in a dictatorship. It’s not coming; it’s here.
• Moving on.
• Remember during the campaign last year when Dump accused Democrats of keeping us constantly involved in military actions?
• This morning, the Dumpster ordered airstrikes against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen, and issued a warning to Tehran. Iran is the backer of the Houthis.
• Is this merited in some way? Perhaps it is. The Houthis represent a threat to global shipping and world economies. They attack both military and commercial ships on one of the world’s busiest shipping corridors.
• But that’s not my point here. It’s that everything Dumpy claimed to be able to easily fix, from the Russia/Ukraine conflict to inflation to US military involvement, was all 100% bullshit.
• Let’s move on.
• We usually save our weather news for further down this list, but I’m compelled to mention it in a position of higher prominence.
• At least 35 people have been killed in a recent bout of unusually vicious weather. I’d call it “formerly unusual,” because global man-assisted climate change will cause unexpected and harsh weather events for the remainder of our species’ existence on this plant.
• Violent tornadoes, high winds, and blinding dust storms decimated homes and other structures across a wide swatch of the U.S. from Alabama to Missouri to Texas and all points between.
• I hope you’re all okay out there.
• In other news…
• Greenland usually seems like a very peaceful place, but even remote northern islands aren’t immune from the chaos of Lord Dumplepants.
• Hundreds of Greenlanders took to the streets yesterday to protest against Dump's stated goal of taking control of their island.
• Video footage showed crowds gathered in the capital, Nuuk, waving Greenland's flag and holding signs with messages such as "Respect Greenland's sovereignty," "We are not for sale" and "Make America Go Away" — which is actually a pretty funny take on “MAGA.”
• Rallies were also taking place in other towns on the island. Jens-Frederik Nielsen, leader of the center-right Demokraatit party that won this week's parliamentary election, was joined by outgoing Prime Minister Mute B. Egede to lead protesters toward the US consulate on Nuuk's outskirts.
• Good for them. They’re not going to lie down and accept this shit.
• Moving on.
• You might not be aware how important international travel is to the USA. Let me tell you… it’s worth billions and billions of dollars to US businesses at a time when the economy has started to appear wobbly.
• So under this environment where hate is being fomented toward anyone who’s not American — and definitely people who aren’t white — why in the world would anyone want to come to the US on their holiday?
• Same goes for business travel. Why take a chance of being attacked for your accent or your facial features or the color of your skin? Why book the flights and hotels and restaurants?
• International travel to the United States is expected to slide by 5 percent this year, contributing to a $64 billion shortfall for the travel industry.
• So now Canadians are skipping trips to Disney World and music festivals. Europeans are eschewing U.S. national parks, and Chinese travelers are vacationing in Australia instead.
• Notably, the hospitality and leisure industry has posted two months of job losses at a time when the broader labor market is growing.
• Can’t they just make up for the loss of international income with domestic travelers?
• Not even close, and now with the economy volatile and people’s retirement funds being decimated, Americans are even more likely to lessen or cancel vacation plans altogether.
• Thanks Dump (slow clap).
• Let’s move on.
• Since St. Patrick’s Day is on a Monday this year, many places are celebrating the holiday today.
• Places with big Irish populations, like Boston, MA, consider this a big day for celebrating their heritage and the contributions of all those who hail from the Emerald Isle.
• And of course, Chicago dyes a whole-ass river bright green just for fun.
• I’m pretty sure it — like a number of US holidays — is an excuse for people to drink a lot of alcohol and do shitty things.
• But whatever. Enjoy. I’m not here to crumple your four-leaf clover. We’ll talk more about the holiday on the actual holiday, which is tomorrow.
• And now for some morbid news… literally.
• 3.2 million people die every year in America. At the turn of the 21st century, less than 30 percent of them wanted their bodies to be cremated.
• Now? It’s more than double that, at 62%. I, too, want to be cremated. Having a body laying around and decomposing in a box underground sounds… horrifying and gross.
• So let me ask you: what do you do with the remains? And I ask this from a personal standpoint; my dad’s ashes have been sitting on the top shelf in the closet where I keep my towels since 2017. I genuinely do not know what to do with them.
• Well, about half of the people surveyed said they would prefer to have their remains scattered in a “sentimental place.”
• But that means that now, nearly a million incinerated Americans are annually coating the sequoias at Yosemite, and choking the loons on Golden Pond, and sprinkling the churros on the Santa Monica pier.
• My favorite cremation moment in the history of cinema was the scene near the end of “The Big Lebowski” where the Dude and Walter take Donnie’s ashes in a Folgers can to a Southern California cliffside, and they end up blowing straight back into Jeff’s face.
• Goodnight, sweet prince.
• I almost died laughing, thereby requiring more ashes to need places for disposal.
• But seriously, maybe give your family and friends some ideas on a responsible way to disperse what’s left of you after you shake your mortal coil.
• And now, The Weather: “amanhecer” by terraplana
• Let’s do a chart. We’re getting in the wayback machine today, 60 years ago this week to March 1965.
• I am negative 4.25 years old. Where am I?
• 1. My Girl (The Temptations). 2. This Diamond Ring (Gary Lewis And The Playboys). 3. You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' (The Righteous Brothers). 4. The Jolly Green Giant )The Kingsmen). 5. Eight Days A Week (The Beatles). 6. Tell Her No (The Zombies). 7. King Of The Road (Roger Miller). 8. The Birds And The Bees (Jewel Akens). 9. Ferry Cross The Mersey (Gerry And The Pacemakers). 10. Downtown (Petula Clark). 11. The Boy From New York City (The Ad Libs). 12. Hurt So Bad (Little Anthony And The Imperials). 13. Stop! In The Name Of Love (The Supremes). 14. I Go To Pieces (Peter And Gordon). 15. Red Roses For A Blue Lady (Bert Kaempfert And His Orchestra). 16. Goldfinger (Shirley Bassey). 17. Laugh, Laugh (The Beau Brummels). 18. The Name Game (Shirley Ellis). 19. Can't You Hear My Heartbeat (Herman's Hermits). 20. Twine Time (Alvin Cash & The Crawlers).
• From the Sports Desk… March madness is for women too.
• The official bracket for the NCAA Women’s basketball will be released today. South Carolina, UCLA, USC, and Texas should be the headliners when the bracket is announced, with UConn right behind the No. 1 seeds.
• I’m sure some of you care about college sports a lot. I don’t, but don’t let that stop you from being excited about it.
• Today in history… Samoset, a Mohegan, visits the settlers of Plymouth Colony and greets them in English, "Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset.” (1621). The Army Corps of Engineers is established to found and operate the United States Military Academy at West Point (1802). Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, MA (1926). Ninety percent of Würzburg, Germany is destroyed in only 20 minutes by British bombers, resulting in at least 4,000 deaths (1945). Launch of Gemini 8 with astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott performing the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit (1966). Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and Vice Admiral John Poindexter are indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States (1988). Mississippi formally ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery (1995). The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 2,997.10, the single largest point drop in history and the second-largest percentage drop ever at 12.93%, an even greater crash than Black Monday (2020).
• March 16 is the birthday of astronomer Caroline Herschel (1750), US president James Madison (1751), physicist Georg Ohm (1789), comedian Henny Youngman (1906), mass murderer Josef Mengele (1911), US first lady Pat Nixon (1912), politician Charles Goodell (1926), actor Jerry Lewis (1926), opera singer Christa Ludwig (1928), film director Bernardo Bertolucci (1941), TV host Chuck Woolery (1941), singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker (1942), actor Erik Estrada (1949), singer-songwriter Ray Benson (1951), singer-songwriter/guitarist Nancy Wilson (1954), NFL player Ozzie Newsome (1956), rapper Flavor Flav (1959), singer-songwriter Patty Griffin (1964), NBA player Blake Griffin (1989), musician Wolfgang Van Halen (1991), NBA player Joel Embiid (1994), and MLB player Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (1999).

So… yes, I have a show at 2pm today, at Templemore in Second Life. Come if you can. Otherwise, do whatever you’re doing that makes the world a better place in which to live. Or clean your room, or something. That’s a start. Enjoy your day.