Tom Lehrer's final bow; Trump caught cheating at golf; Air Farce One; FCC to "babysit" CBS; Gwyneth Paltrow's G-Spot; Florida Man redux.
It's National Milk Chocolate Day!
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Knee Deep in the Hoopla
A legend has departed.
Arguably the greatest musical satirist of our time, Tom Lehrer, has died at 97. The New York Times published a decent obituary (free article). Other obits, which include links to performances on YouTube: Washington Post (gift article), Variety, BBC, The Independent, NME, Hollywood Reporter, Daily Kos, Associated Press (AP).Trump caught cheating at golf. [I know, it’s not exactly a surprising revelation, but this time there’s video.]
Stephen Colbert is practically daring CBS to shut him down early. "Over the weekend it sunk in that they’re killing off our show. But they made one mistake: They left me alive!" [Late night tv ain’t what it used to be. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson averaged 15 million viewers each night. That’s triple the viewership all the current late night shows combined. Some say the era of late night talk shows is coming to an end.]
The Supreme Court has hit rock bottom. For the court’s conservative bloc, the line between upholding the Constitution and serving as Donald Trump’s personal attorneys has all but disappeared.
Trump is trying to hide the cost of renovating his new Air Force One. A recent $934 million transfer of funds to a classified Pentagon project may hold a clue.
FCC to appoint a babysitter to make sure CBS isn’t anti-Trump. FCC commissioner Brendan Carr says CBS will have a "bias monitor."
The Tea app was intended to help women date safely. Then it got hacked. The company estimates that 72,000 images, including 13,000 verification photos and images of government IDs, were accessed.
Trump’s imaginary numbers, from $1.99 gas to 1,500 percent price cuts. The president likes to cite specific numbers to bolster his claims. They are often wildly improbable — or just impossible. [As Andrew Lang once observed, “Politicians use statistics in the same way that a drunk uses lamp-posts- for support rather than illumination.”]
DOGE builds AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations. The “department of government efficiency” (DOGE) is using artificial intelligence to create a “delete list” of federal regulations, according to a report, proposing to use the tool to cut 50% of regulations by the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
Six ways AI could cause the next big war, and why it probably won’t.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI is poised to wipe out entire categories of human jobs. They will be "just like totally, totally gone," he remarked, throwing his fellow humans under the bus.
Intel stuns Wall Street with 25,000 layoffs as jobs crisis deepens. The Company will shrink its workforce from about 99,500 to 75,000 by the end of 2025; abandon factory projects in Germany and Poland; slow the pace of construction on major facilities in Ohio; and consolidate operations in Costa Rica into bigger hubs in Vietnam and Malaysia.
A new Covid variant is here. NB.1.8.1 has made landfall in the United States, and it's more transmissible than other variants. The current vaccine should still be effective.
“Woke” Superman versus MAGA whiners—guess who won? It wasn't Fox News.
Gwyneth Paltrow marks her territory with X-rated parking sign at Goop headquarters. Not really X-rated, but a double entendre: “Reserved for G-Spot”.
Woman's drunken night ends with taking home a seagull carrying bird flu. Well, she could have taken home someone else.
Florida man arrested after beating up golfer over slow play, deputies say.
Quote of the Day:
Life is a food chain, and it's better to be the diner than the dinner.
--Jim Davis (Wikipedia link)
(More Jim Davis quotes from the KGB Quotations Database)
Today’s holidays:
Buffalo Soldiers Day, National Hamburger Day, National Milk Chocolate Day, National Soccer Day, National Waterpark Day, World Hepatitis Day, and World Nature Conservation Day.
Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA.
On This Day:
2021 – Dusty Hill, American musician (born 1949)
2016 – Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination for President.
2013 – Died: Eileen Brennan, American actress and singer (born 1932)
2005 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army called an end to its thirty-year-long armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland.
2004 – Died: Francis Crick, English biologist and biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule. (born 1916)
2002 – Nine coal miners trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, were rescued after 77 hours underground.
1984 – Games of the XXIII Olympiad: The summer Olympics opened in Los Angeles.
1978 – The film “Animal House” was released. (Video)
1971 – Pop music’s first charity single, George Harrison’s "Bangla Desh", was released. (Video)
1969 – Died: Frank Loesser, American composer (born 1910)
1965 – Vietnam War: U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson announced his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.
1954 – The film “On the Waterfront” was released. (Video)
1951 – Walt Disney’s animated musical “Alice in Wonderland” was released in New York. (Video)
1945 – A U.S. Army B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building killing 14 and injuring 26.
1938 – Hawaii Clipper disappeared between Guam and Manila as the first loss of an airliner in trans-Pacific China Clipper service.
1932 – "White Zombie", considered the first feature length zombie film, was released. (Video)
1932 – U.S. president Herbert Hoover ordered the United States Army to forcibly evict the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C.
1896 – The city of Miami was incorporated.
1868 – The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified, establishing African American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law.
1794 – Executed: Maximilien Robespierre, French politician, (born 1758)
1750 – Died: Johann Sebastian Bach, German organist and composer (born 1685)
1741 – Died: Antonio Vivaldi, Italian violinist and composer (born 1678)
1655 – Died: Cyrano de Bergerac, French poet and playwright (born 1619)
(For comprehensive lists of the day’s historical events, check here, here, and here.)
Some Birthdays:
1974 – Elizabeth Berkley, American actress
1958 – Terry Fox, Canadian runner and activist (died 1981)
1954 – Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan colonel and politician, President of Venezuela (died 2013)
1947 – Sally Struthers, American actress
1946 – Linda Kelsey, American actress
1946 – Jonathan Edwards, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1945 – Jim Davis, American cartoonist, created Garfield
1931 – Darryl Hickman, American actor (died 2024)
1929 – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, American journalist and socialite, 37th First Lady of the United States (died 1994)
1922 – Jacques Piccard, Belgian-Swiss oceanographer and engineer (died 2008)
1915 – Frankie Yankovic, American polka musician (died 1998)
1907 – Earl Tupper, American inventor and businessman, founded Tupperware Brands (died 1983)
1901 – Rudy Vallée, American actor, singer, and saxophonist (died 1986)
1866 – Beatrix Potter, English children's book writer and illustrator (died 1943)
(A more complete list of today’s birthdays.)
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