06/22/23

Good morning! It’s Thursday, June 22nd.

It is both national kissing day AND national onion ring day. Which is quite the combo, if you ask me.

And now, the news.

Titan Update

-via AP News

Let’s start with the story that, if my TikTok For You Page is any indication, has gripped the entire world’s attention. Or at least the country’s.

I’m talking, of course, about the search for Titan, the submersible that disappeared Sunday on its way to view the Titanic. Since Sunday, the search has been on for the vessel that stopped communicating about 90 minutes into its dive.

As a reminder, there are five people on it.

Side note, and I’ll get into the update in a second but, it just feels important to remind everyone that there are five people on this submersible. Would I have spent $250,000 to go look at Titanic from a tiny window? No. But I also don’t know what it’s like to have so much money that a quarter million is like – eh. Sure. That’s not just walkin around money. That’s like… that struttin around money!

But there are five people on board the submersible and chances are very high that they are alive right now, as I record this, but still will not survive. An absolute horror.

So just… I’ve seen people on TikTok and Twitter doing their little bits and jokes and like… come on.

As a reminder, this unfortunately is not a fast- moving story, as in it’s a search-and-rescue mission that is very firmly in the search part. However, there is a serious ticking clock element here, as estimates are that, by noon on Thursday, the submersible will run out of air.

There was a brief moment of hope on Tuesday night, when Rolling Stone first reported that sounds had been detected, likely from banging from inside the submersible. While that did offer a chance to narrow the search, they still, as of this recording, do not know where the Titan is.

We’ve also learned more about the company that sent the vessel down – OceanGate. Not a great for, as it turns out, probably not the best company. In fact, a 2018 lawsuit included the company’s director of marine operations, David Lochridge, saying their testing and certification were insufficient and would, “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.”

That 2018 lawsuit was a wrongful termination suit – because after Lockridge brough those concerns up, he was fired.

I’m recording this around 6p on Wednesday. All I can really say right now is… let’s hope for a miracle.

Justice Alito Stays Bad

-via NY Times

Now let me tell you the story that was all over my Twitter page (besides Ted Lasso because again, I cannot stress this enough, the Twitter algorithm is broken. Am I the only one having this issue? I’m not kidding, I liked ONE Ted Lasso tweet. I’m not even clicking these other ones And yet – like 60% of my feed is a bunch of people who really really really need to go touch some grass and relax about the Ted Lasso finale).

Anyway, here’s the story – ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom, has released a bombshell of a report about a Supreme Court Justice’s friendship with a GOP billionaire who, in turn, had cases before the Court. And that friendship just happened to include vacations and trips on the billionaire’s private jet.

“Oh Kim, that’s old news.”

No it’s not! It’s a different justice! It’s a different billionaire friend!

Last month we talked about Justice Thomas. This is Justice Alito.

You, of course, remember Justice Alito as the absolute Mayor of Ethics-ville who almost certainly had his little grubhands on the Dobbs leak (aka the ruling that overturned Roe) and the reason we know this is because he was factually named as the leak of the Hobby Lobby ruling (that’s the one that said companies don’t need to cover birth control on their health insurance plans if it goes against their religious beliefs, even though those may not be the beliefs of the employee just trying to get some dang health insurance). And the reason we even know about THAT leak is because, after the Dobbs leak, someone that used to be very into the anti-abortion movement reached out to Justice Roberts to say, “hey, if you’re looking for the Dobbs leaker, heads up, there was another leak that no one knew about it also it was Alito that did it.” And when Justice Roberts didn’t return his calls, he had to go to the New York Times. And THEN Roberts was like, we’re gonna figure this out! But then a half second later, probably when he realized the leak was coming from inside the robes, he was like – “we exhausted every option. And like… woof. No solving this mystery! What a bummer. If only wishing made it so, am I right?”

So that’s just a reminder of who Justice Alito is. He’s not the most moral, which is not the most best trait for a Supreme Court Justice.

ANYWAY, so ProPublic has this bombshell report about A-Leak-O and his little friends. Being the reporters that they are, they reached out to A-Leak-O for comment. And instead of being normal he… took a pre-emptive swing in the opinon section of the Wall Street Journal to say – “omg? So now I can’t even have rich friends and conflicts of interests? I can’t leak rulings, I can’t have conflicts of interest. Then what is even the point of this job that I will get to keep forever and never get fired from?”

Part of his defense, by the way, is that he only rode on the PJ because the seat would have been empty anyway. “It woulda been so sad! I’m a good guy!”

Anyway, so this isn’t great and uh… we’ll see. The Court will do nothing, and Constitutionally-speaking, it’s tricky but something has to get done. Because like… come on… all jokes aside, this is the highest Court in the land making decisions that affect all of us.

FTC Sues Amazon

-via NPR

The Federal Trade Commission filed suit against Amazon on Wednesday, saying that tricked people into buying Prime memberships that were purposefully hard to cancel.

I… don’t have anything else to add to this story. It just happened.

Paris Gas Explosion

-via CNN

At least 37 people were injured on Wednesday afternoon, with four people still in critical condition and at least two people missing, after a gas explosion in central Paris caused a fire.

No alarm was set before the explosion, the cause of which is still being investigated though early signed shows it may have come from the building that houses the Paris American Academy.

House Censure’s Schiff

-via CBS News

Hey, remember last week when the House tried to censure Adam Schiff for his role in investigating the times that Trump was badman but enough Republicans voted with the Democrats to thwart efforts?

Well… um… seems that reporting may have been a little premature. Because on Wednesday, Adam Schiff became the 25th Housemember in US History to be censured. And I say that because it’s important to remember how rare this punishment is. Because it is meant to be serious. And instead, we have an unserious Republican party that does not want to solve real problems and instead just settle scores.

Wild. And for Trump, too. I mean, cult mentality is bad and dangerous. Full stop. For anyone. But for Trump? It’s like… bad, dangerous, and just so embarrassing.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of onion rings and let me tell you why – when done well, they’re really good. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: onion rings are deceptively difficult to do well.

But more than that – more than the first bite of the way-too-hot onion ring I had on Monday… because you are done exactly right… I’m proud of you.