Despot humor, COBOL, better hot dogs.
February 18, 2025
Be sure to visit KGB Overset for all the memes, cartoons, humor, news, and miscellany that didn’t fit in today’s newsletter.
Knee Deep in the Hoopla
Kim Warp in The New Yorker
Judge to rule swiftly on effort to block DOGE from assessing data and firing federal employees.
Social Security head steps down over DOGE access of recipient information.
A team from Elon Musk’s SpaceX to review air traffic control system. These are the same geniuses who misinterpreted Social Security’s COBOL code and alleged there were claimants in the system that were 150 years old. In the meantime, Musk’s Tesla again has the highest accident rate of any auto brand.
Governor weighs removing NYC Mayor Adams after his top deputies quit amid criminal case turmoil.
Intense flu surge gripping the US is the worst in years, CDC says.
January 6 insurrectionists take Trump pardons to horrifying level. Rioters are using Trump’s pardon logic to argue that they can’t be charged for some other heinous crimes.
Earth is about to become uninhabitable, much sooner than expected. But that’s just considering natural forces, and it’s nothing to worry about.
Meanwhile, tar balls wash ashore on Florida beaches, but the source of the sticky black goo is a mystery.
Older AI models show signs of cognitive decline just like humans. Swell.
11 things that are affordable now, but will be too expensive for the middle class within a year.
The unexpected hot dog brand that's far superior to Ball Park
Shirt of the day (click on image)
KGB Quote of the Day: Helen Gurley Brown
Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.
--Helen Gurley Brown (Wikipedia link).
(More Helen Gurley Brown quotes on the KGB Quotations Database)
Among other things, today is- in no particular order of importance-
Cow Milked While Flying in an Airplane Day, Crab-Stuffed Flounder Day, National Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, National Battery Day, National Drink Wine Day, Pluto Day (Pluto Discovery Day), and Thumb Appreciation Day.
Some persons born on this date with quotable quotes (Click on link after name for quotes):
1838 – Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher (d. 1916)
1892 – Wendell Willkie, American captain, lawyer, and politician (d. 1944)
1922 – Helen Gurley Brown, American journalist and author (d. 2012)
1931 – Johnny Hart, American cartoonist, co-created The Wizard of Id (d. 2007)
1931 – Toni Morrison, American novelist and editor, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2019).
1950 – John Hughes, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2009)
Other birthdays:
1745 – Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist, invented the battery (d. 1827)
1848 – Louis Comfort Tiffany, American stained glass artist (d. 1933)
1862 – Charles M. Schwab, American businessman, co-founded Bethlehem Steel (d. 1939)
1906 – Hans Asperger, Austrian pediatrician and academic (d. 1980)
1918 – Freddie Blassie, American wrestler and manager (d. 2003)
1919 – Jack Palance, American boxer and actor (d. 2006)
1925 – George Kennedy, American actor (d. 2016)
1933 – Yoko Ono, Japanese-American multimedia artist and musician
1950 – Cybill Shepherd, American actress
1952 – Juice Newton, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1954 – John Travolta, American actor, singer and producer
1957 – Vanna White, American television personality
1964 – Matt Dillon, American actor
1965 – Dr. Dre, American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur
1968 – Molly Ringwald, American actress
On This Day:
1885 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is published in the United States.
1930 – While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
1930 – Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.
1954 – The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles.
1970 – The Chicago Seven are found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
1972 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono end a week of co-hosting the syndicated "The Mike Douglas Show"
1977 – The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle is carried on its maiden "flight" on top of a Boeing 747.
2001 – FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He is ultimately convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
2010 – WikiLeaks publishes the first of hundreds of thousands of classified documents disclosed by the soldier now known as Chelsea Manning.
2021 – Perseverance, a Mars rover designed to explore Jezero crater on Mars, as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, lands successfully.
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