07/08/24

Good morning! It’s Monday, July 8th.

National Video Game Day!

Tetris. Mario. Wario. Oh Dr Mario! Excitebike… all video games.

And now, the news.

French and British Elections

-via NPR (Britain) and AP News (France)

Okay, so today there will be two episodes. This episode you’re hearing is a normal news episode. There should also be another episode in your feed. That one will cover the current mess, I mean state, of the election. There’s just too much going on to only do one episode.

But while the state of our current election is, uh, unstellar at best, France and Britian each had vital elections last week and we’ve got the results.

First, Britain – in May, then-Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who became the first British Asian to hold the title of Prime Minister when he was appointed in October of 2022, called for something called a snap election.

A snap election is an election called earlier than scheduled. There was meant to be an election this upcoming January, but instead, he called for it earlier. The way things work in British elections is voters elect a member of parliament and the leader of the party that has the majority of UK’s 650 constituencies becomes Prime Minister.

For the last 14 years, the Conservative Party has been in power, but people are not super loving how things are going lately. Brexit is not as popular as it was, Boris Johnson was, you know, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss didn’t outlast a head of lettuce.

Sunak called the snap election hoping it would buy him political power, but instead, in a genuinely shocking outcoming, the Labour Party, which is more center-left party, pulled out a win. The new prime minister is Keir Starmer – a human rights lawyer who is rumored to be the inspiration for the Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones universe.

Something super important about this vote is that not everyone was super stoked about Starmer, but they also understood how important not falling into a far-right situation. So they voted tactically. They called it a tactical vote, but that’s not like – that’s not cute and fun. So some people called it a taccy v. Just a little taccy v.

And if a cheeky little nickname is what saves us from the fall of democracy… I’m here for it. Let’s open up those writers rooms and start coming up with our own version of that!

That win shocked the boots off the world, until France said – oui oui. I’m so sorry. Also I regret nothing.

While the Brits were voting, as were the French and it would appear that the first projections show The New Popular Front, which is a leftist group, has won the most seats.

The President’s centrist group took second place and while a far-right alliance increased their seats, it was expected that they would run the table and they didn’t.

Next Macron will need to make some political decisions about the future of France, and the fact that the far-right faction even gained seats is, obviously, not the best. But in this moment, while we stand on edge of a very uncertain political future, at home and abroad, let’s take this for what it is – a sign that most voters don’t want to see a far-right future.

We just need to make sure those voters who feel the same way here in the States also feel the same way.

Hopefully, these two elections are a good sign for us here.

Hurricane Beryl

-via CNN

Hurricane Beryl, which already killed nine people in the Caribbean islands last week, is expected to make landfall in Texas as a Cat One storm likely by the time you hear this.

The trajectory shows it landing between Corpus Christi and Galveston. So if you live in those areas… I’m probably not the first person to tell you about this storm but still – you gotta be real careful. In fact, Texas’ lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, is worried that not enough people have left the area yet. 121 counties are in the state’s disaster declaration area.

Weekend Shootings

-via ABC 7 (Chicago) and CBS News (Kentucky)

Four people were killed, and another three were injured, after a mass shooting at a birthday party in Kentucky on Saturday. The suspect fled, and, following a car chase, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after the car drove into a ditch.

And in Chicago, a weekend of shootings left at least 98 people shot and at least 17 dead. These shootings include at least three mass shootings in the city.

In all, over the weekend, at least 33 people have died nationwide.

This may be new information to you, because I watched the news all week and had to dig for this information. Nothing really seemed to break through over the weekend besides the fact that Biden, who has been old since he became old is, in fact, old.

33 people dead.

It’s guns.

John Cena Retiring

-via Washington Post

But of course, nothing shook up the news more than the announcement on Saturday that John Cena would be retiring from wrestling at the end of 2025.

Did you know that he was still wrestling? I sure didn’t. I thought he’d fully transitioned to acting. This isn’t really a big story but, you know – I didn’t want to leave with just those stories. So there we go – John Cena, of Parks and Recreation fame, will give us one more year of wrestling and then he’s out.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of voters who went to polls thinking “man, that far-right stuff is not a good idea. Lemme not vote for it.”

They’re little taccy V.

Now that they’ve handled that election, they can surely turn their attention to Ted Lasso season 4.

I’m also proud of John Cena. Sure. Why not. I want to be clear that I do like that guy, I just didn’t know he was still wrestling is all. No judgement! I just didn’t know.

But more than that, more than The Prototype, which is John Cena’s wrestling nickname and I for sure looked that up… because you are also a prototype. A prototype of greatness… I’m proud of you.