Mendacious spew, AI sex robots, Florida Man Games
It's National Cheese Doodle Day!
Observations by and for the vaguely disenchanted; information, essential and otherwise, for the day ahead.
Visit KGB Overset for the memes, cartoons, humor, news, and miscellany that didn’t fit in today’s newsletter. You can also follow on Bluesky or Facebook.
Please like and share. It really helps!
Knee Deep in the Hoopla
Adam Zyglis - The Buffalo News
The Trump/Musk firehose of folly continues, and it’s impossible to review all but the most egregious outrages here (like his address to Congress, fact-checked below). The Associated Press, NBC, Aljazeera, and The Guardian are my picks for keeping up to date. Pick one or two, take a look, and come back here when you’ve had enough.
If you felt like Trump rambled on interminably, you’re right. His self-aggrandizing falsehood-fest set the record for the longest address to a joint session of Congress: more than an hour and 40 minutes, breaking the previous record set by President Bill Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union address, which ran one hour, 28 minutes and 49 seconds. But let’s reserve some sympathy for those brave and hardy fact-checkers, who risked their typing fingers and sanity trying to keep up in real time with Trump’s mendacious spew. Hats off to NPR, Politico, and Politifact. Hope you guys get paid by the pound.
If you’re a real glutton for punishment, the Democratic response can be seen here. (It’s only about ten minutes.) Personally, I’d recommend Bernie Sanders’ response. It’s twice as long, but a lot more fun.
Social Security and sex robots: Musk veers off script with Joe Rogan. The appearance — Musk’s most extensive solo interview since the beginning of Trump’s second administration — offered a window into his worldview that was by turns crude and contradictory. Musk defended his efforts with his Department of Government Efficiency, alternatively casting it as existential and downplaying its scope, while expounding on not-safe-for-work matters like A.I. sex robots.(New York Times gift article). (Video)
The chickens may not be as sick as you think: Major egg companies may be using avian flu to hike US prices, new report finds. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.
Trudeau hits out at 'dumb' tariffs as Trump warns of further hikes against Canada. Trudeau accused the US president of planning "a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us. That is never going to happen. We will never be the 51st state," he told reporters on Tuesday.
What to do when you’re a Republican congressman and the citizens at your town hall are complaining about the present state of the government? House Speaker Johnson tells GOP lawmakers to skip town halls after an onslaught of protests.
“The second annual Florida Man Games were held over the weekend outside St. Augustine. Sadly, several contestants were disqualified for testing negative for meth.”-Seth Meyers
People in North America will see a giant X on the moon this Thursday. The Lunar X (also known as the Werner X) is a clair-obscur effect in which light and shadow creates the appearance of a letter 'X' on the rim of the Blanchinus, La Caille and Purbach craters of the Moon. There is no truth to the conspiracy theory that aliens are playing a game of interplanetary tic-tac-toe.
Shirt of the day (click on image)
KGB Quote of the Day:
“Every time something really bad happens, people cry out for safety, and the government answers by taking rights away from good people.”
--Penn Jillette (Wikipedia link)
(More Penn Jillette quotes from the KGB Quotations Database)
Among other things, today is- in no particular order of importance-
Ash Wednesday, Reel Film Day, International Day for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Awareness, World Energy Efficiency Day, Cinco de Marcho, International CVS Awareness Day, Stop Bad Service Day, National Absinthe Day, National Poutine Day (Canada), Dissociative Identity Disorder Awareness Day, Discover What Your Name Means Day, National Cheese Doodle Day, and National Potty Dance Day.
On This Day:
1770 – Boston Massacre: Five Americans, including Crispus Attucks, were fatally shot by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War five years later.
1836 – Samuel Colt manufactured the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.
1853 – Piano company Steinway & Sons was founded by Heinrich Steinweg (later Henry Steinway) in New York City. (Video)
1872 – George Westinghouse patented the air brake. (Video)
1907 - First radio broadcast of a musical composition aired by inventor Lee de Forest, who transmitted the performance of Rossini’s William Tell Overture from Telharmonic Hall in New York to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
1933 – Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party received 43.9% at the Reichstag elections, which allowed the Nazis to later pass the Enabling Act and establish a dictatorship.
1953 – Joseph Stalin, the longest serving leader of the Soviet Union, died at his Volynskoe dacha in Moscow after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage four days earlier.
1955 – Elvis Presley made his first television appearance on a local video broadcast of the popular radio program "Louisiana Hayride" from the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport, LA. (Video)
1956 – "King Kong" broadcast on television for the first time. (Video)
1960 – Elvis Presley was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army.
1963 – American country music stars Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and their pilot Randy Hughes are killed in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee.
1970 – The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations.
1970 – "Airport" premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Filmed in the widescreen 70mm Todd-AO format, it featured composer Alfred Newman’s last film score.
1981 – The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, was launched by Sinclair Research and would go on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world.
Read for free with Kindle Unlimited! Quotes by or about persons born on this date (Click on link after name for quotes):
1853 – Howard Pyle, American author and illustrator (d. 1911)
1955 – Penn Jillette, American magician, actor, and author (Video)
1958 – Andy Gibb, English-Australian singer-songwriter and actor (d. 1988) (Video)
Other birthdays:
1908 – Rex Harrison, English actor (d. 1990) (Video)
1927 – Jack Cassidy, American actor and singer (d. 1976)
(Jack Cassidy as actor Oscar North portraying the comic book character “Jetman” on the short-lived but critically-acclaimed 1967 CBS series “He & She”. Read an interesting take on how the liminal show helped to transition television out of sweet and/or rural comedies and into more sophisticated humor here.)
1932 – Paul Sand, American actor
1934 – James B. Sikking, American actor (d. 2024) (Video)
1936 – Dean Stockwell, American actor (d. 2021) (Video)
1946 – Murray Head, English actor and singer (Judas in original Jesus Christ Superstar album.) (Video)
1954 – Marsha Warfield, American actress (Video)
1963 – Joel Osteen, American pastor, author, and television host
1966 – Aasif Mandvi, Indian-American actor, producer, and screenwriter (Video)
1975 – Jolene Blalock, American model and actress (played T'Pol on Star Trek: Enterprise.
Commentewear! - Shirts with attitude
If you like KGB Report, please share with a friend.
Subscribers get all content for free. If you sign up for a paid subscription, you get my eternal gratitude, and maybe some occasional photos of the dogs and cats here at the South Park Casa de Pelaje y Cajas de Arena.
Old KGBReport.com archives (not the stuff here on Substack)
Current weather in South Park, PA (Personal station on Weather Underground)
KGB Quotations Database Search (KGB Quote-A-Matic)
DCL Dialog Online (an archive of my DCL Dialogue columns which appeared in DEC Professional (later renamed Digital Age) magazine from March, 1987 through December, 1995.)