New Outlook hijack, sex workers know a recession is coming.
It's World Rat Day!
Sorry for the delay and today’s abbreviated edition. The latest Windows Update appears to have force-installed that abomination known as New Outlook, and it took some time to reverse the changes the app made to my system and regain control. Birthdays will return tomorrow, unless some other involuntary curse is cast on my machine.
Observations by and for the vaguely disenchanted; information, essential and otherwise, for the day ahead.
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Knee Deep in the Hoopla
The Trump/Musk firehose of folly continues, and it’s impossible to review all but the most egregious outrages here. The Associated Press, NBC, Aljazeera, and The Guardian are my picks for keeping up to date. Check out one or two, take a look, and come back here when you’ve had enough.
Asian shares sank again on Wednesday as the latest set of U.S. tariffs, including a 104% levy on Chinese imports, went into effect.
White House says iPhones can be made in the U.S. It won’t be easy. Some consumers are buying iPhones before the tariffs hit the company, which makes its products in China, Vietnam and India. (Washington Post gift article.)
Sex workers already predicted there's a recession coming — here's how they know. The past has shown that nontraditional measures like brothels, beer and lipstick can tell us a lot about the economy’s health.
Rachel Maddow looks at the bizarre, frivolous demands of members of Donald Trump's staff even as vital public services are being cut in the name of waste. (Video)
AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its journalists. Court affirms on First Amendment grounds that the government cannot punish the news organization for the content of its speech.
Abruptly eliminating Social Security phone services threatens access to benefits. The Trump Administration is making it harder for eligible Social Security beneficiaries to access their benefits by eliminating phone services, forcing millions more people to seek in-person help even as it cuts thousands of Social Security Administration (SSA) staff. At the same time, increasingly frequent website outages are making it harder to seek service online.
'Gay beam machine': Right-wing pastor makes startling claim about TSA airport scanners. "It appears having a guy touch you all over place, on its face, seems worse, but you don't really know what those things are doing to you. They can just take a picture of me naked? Like, no."
US expected a big travel year, but overseas visitors — angered by Trump — are heading elsewhere.
Shirt of the day (click on image)
KGB Quote of the Day:
"I urge one and all to live this life as if there is no reward in the afterlife and to do it in a moral way that makes it better for you and for those around you, and that leaves this world a little better place than when you found it."
--Hugh Hefner (Wikipedia link)
(More Hugh Hefner quotes from the KGB Quotations Database)
Among other things, today is- in no particular order of importance-
National Winston Churchill Day
KGB REPORT STUFF! (Click on link) On This Day:
1413 – Henry V was crowned King of England.
1483 – Edward V (aged 12) succeeded his father Edward IV as king of England. He was never crowned and was presumed murdered after incarceration in the Tower of London with his younger brother Richard (the "Princes in the Tower")
1682 – Robert Cavelier de La Salle discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River, claims it for France and names it Louisiana.
1731 – Welsh mariner Robert Jenkins' ear was cut off by Spanish Guarde Costa in the Caribbean, catalyst for a later war between Britain and Spain.
1768 – John Hancock refused to allow two British customs agents to go below deck of his ship, considered by some to be the first act of physical resistance to British authority in the colonies.
1784 – The Treaty of Paris, ratified by the United States Congress on January 14, 1784, was ratified by King George III of the Kingdom of Great Britain, ending the American Revolutionary War.
1816 – African Methodist Episcopal Church organized in Philadelphia.
1833 – First free tax-supported public library created in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
1860 – On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville made the first known recording of an audible human voice.
1865 – Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.
1866 – Civil Rights Act of 1866 enacted over President Andrew Johnson's veto.
1869 – Hudson Bay Company ceded its territory to Canada.
1909 – The U.S. Congress passed the Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act.
1923 – In Adkins vs Children's Hospital, the US Supreme Court found that the federal minimum wage legislation for women was an unconstitutional infringement of liberty of contract, as protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. (Adkins was overturned in 1937 by West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish.)
1937 – The Kamikaze arrived at Croydon Airport in London. It is the first Japanese-built aircraft to fly to Europe.
1939 – African-American singer Marian Anderson gave a concert at the Lincoln Memorial after being denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
1945 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident, was executed by the Nazi regime.
1945 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission was formed.
1947 – The Journey of Reconciliation, the first interracial Freedom Ride begins through the upper South in violation of Jim Crow laws.
1957 – The Suez Canal in Egypt was cleared and opened to shipping following the Suez Crisis.
1959 – Project Mercury: NASA announced the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dubbed the "Mercury Seven".
1967 – The first Boeing 737 (a 100 series) made its maiden flight.
1969 – The first British-built Concorde 002 made its maiden flight
1976 – “All the President’s Men” received wide release in US.
1991 – Georgia declares independence from the Soviet Union.
1992 – A U.S. Federal Court finds former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega guilty of drug and racketeering charges.
2003 – Iraq War: Baghdad falls to American forces.
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