07/06/23

Good morning! It’s Thursday, July 6th.

International Kissing Day.

Hey, how about International Kissing After Getting Consent Day, ya’ll?

And now, the news.

Shooting in Louisiana

-via CNN

Once again, we start how we start here in America – with at least 4 dead and 7 injured after a 4th of July block party in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Original reporting only found three people dead, with a fourth victim found in tall grass. Officials are now using drones to search the area for other possible victims.

No arrests have been made.

Yusef Salaam Elected

-via NY Times

Yusef Salaam, who was one of the Central Park Five, which were five young men wrong accused and jailed for the rape and assault of a jogger in Central Park in 1989, has been elected to the Harlem City Council.

Yusef was accused of the horrific crime at just 15 years old, and spent seven years in jail before being found innocent in 2002.

He says he plans to focus part of his time on the City Council overhauling the city’s criminal justice system.

Hottest Day on Earth

-via Washington Post

Hey, on the 4th were you like “dang, it’s really hot” but then thought, eh it’s summer and maybe it’s just always hot?

Well… Turns out, the 4th of July was one of the hottest days in about 125,000 years. Because of how we used aerosol cans and also a whole political party keeps pretending like climate change is just God hugging us closer.

Actually it was that, plus the return of the El Niño pattern and the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Temperatures in Africa actually reached 122*. So, you know… keep cool. But also be smart about how you keep cool, because we ALL need to keep cool. Use hand fans, maybe?

Gas Leak in South Africa

-via Huffington Post

At least 16 people are dead, including 3 children, after a toxic gas leak in Johannesburg, South Africa. Emergency services first said 24 people had died in the leak, though it is unclear why there is a discrepancy. Let’s hope it’s because some people were saved, and that number does not climb any higher.

Israel Ends Deadly Raid (But Also Threatens More)

­-via CBS News

On Wednesday, the Israeli military pulled troops from the West Bank after an intense two-day operation that left at least 13 Palestinians dead, dozens more injured, and thousands of more driven out of their homes.

This was the most intense Israeli military operation since 2002’s 10 day assault that left 52 Palestinians dead. However, since 2002 Israel has carried out almost daily raids on the West Bank.

However, although troops have stopped the current raid, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already warned that this won’t be “a one-off.” So, unfortunately, more violence is expected in the area.

Jack Smith Subpoenaed AZ SOS

-­via AZ Central

On Wednesday we learned that U.S. Department of Justice Special Jack Smith, aka Coach Beard, subpoenaed the office of Arizona’s Secretary of State, possibly as recently as May, to be like – “hey? Remember when Trump was all, ‘oh! Georgia Sec of State Brad Raffensperger, sure would be cool if you just like dug around the couch cushions or whatever and found the exact amount of votes that would help me add the state to my win column.’ And Also remember how on the hit podcast, Here’s What’s Happening, the charming host would always note that it was weird because just winning Georgia wouldn’t help him win the presidency? Well, maybe do you think it's possible he also called YOU to find some missing votes?’”

Once again – I’ve nailed the impression.

I don’t have an impression of Coach Beard (though if I did, it would probably be something like “Oh, hey Ted. Come back to Richmond. You’re very clearly in love with Rebecca and she’s very clearly in love with you and you would be a cute, tall, family.), but I am NAILING the Coach Beard as Jack Smith impression.

Anyway, the subpoenas were not previously known, though it sounds like everyone did comply with the requests.

Kelly Clarkson works hard, but Jack Smith works harder.

Eh, I guess I don’t know if that’s true. They might work the same amount of hard, just in VERY different ways.

Threads

-via Vox

And now, a not-at-all important story that I’ve been so excited to talk about.

So last weekend, ding dong Elon Musk tweeted that there would now be limits on how many tweets per day you could see. And it varied whether you were a Twitter Blue subscriber or not (and by varied I mean, it was as low as 300 for some people, while subscribers could see up to 6,000.

Which is so wild to me because imagine buying a website, running it into the ground, and then telling people the only way they can use the free thing is to pay for it. And if they don’t pay for it, they can’t spend as much time on it. Even though, in theory, spending more time with a free thing would actually entice you to perhaps buy.

Anyway, it’s very silly though some people believe he didn’t want to actually limit tweets, but instead there was a tech error on the backend.

Stick with me on this story, please. That’s all just super chronically online stuff.

Anyway, that happened and people were rightfully annoyed. We’re all kind of over Twitter anyway, because of how it doesn’t work right and also the guy that runs it is a fascist who doesn’t think people without kids should vote and also a conspiracy theorist and also an antisemitic white supremacist. So, you know… he’s not for many people.

So that was this weekend. On Wednesday, Instagram launched their new Twitter-style site, with a lame name, called Threads.

And although it’s still very new on the scene, and also the whole Meta-Universe thing is very annoying for me on the tech side (don’t worry! I’ve already bored you once, I’m not gonna do it again), it’s nice to see what could be an actual competitor. We’ll see what it looks like.

I guess I’m not that excited to talk about Threads because it’s new (I am on there though! @kimmoffat), but just more excited to remind you how terrible Elon Musk is. Both as a person AND as a business person. Neat!

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of… well we’re never proud of Elon Musk. We stay proud of Kelly Clarkson, Coach Beard, all of Ted Lasso, as well as Rebecca in general because she always needs a special shoutout and also Jack Smith.

But more than that… because I don’t know any of those people and some of them are fake… because you are real… I’m proud of you.