02/18/25

Good morning! It’s Tuesday, February 18th.

Cow Milked While Flying in an Airplane Day

This is real! And also, timing-wise, maybe we skip it this year.

This is a day to celebrate a cow named Nellie Jay, later named Elm Farm Ollie, who was the first  first cow to be flown and milked in an airplane. Yeah, first. Could be more. Could be a lot more. They just did make the news. It was done for the clicks, no wait sorry, it was done to study the effect of height on cows’ ability to produce milk. In the 72-mile flight over Bismarck, Missouri, Nellie’s was milked and the milk was then put into paper cartons and parachuted down to the people watching from the ground.

The 1930s were wild.

They didn’t have streaming back then. Couldn’t watch Parks and Rec 17 times, might as well watch a cow being milked from an airplane.

And that’s a common saying.

And now, the news.

Yet Another Airline Issues

-via AP News, AP News, and Twitter

We start with yet another airline incident, with a Delta plane flying into Canada from Minnesota that somehow found itself upside-down on the ground in Canada. It happened as the plane came in for a landing in Canada and, likely due to strong winds and snow, the landing ended with the plane upside-down.

Notice how there’s not a lot of details in this story?

That’s because there’s not a lot of details right now.

Doesn’t feel great! Trying to make this story light! I’m getting on a plane in a couple of weeks! This plane was missing its right wind and they’re not sure when that happened.

To quote the CEO of aviation safety consulting firm Safety Operating Systems, John Cox: “If one wing is missing, it’s going to have a tendency to roll over.”

Hard to argue there.

All 76 passengers and four crew members were accounted for, and although there have been injuries, there were no deaths.

Not to worry, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy is on it. Prior to a tweet summing up the details of this incident, he tweeted: “America deserves safe, state-of-the-art air travel, and President Trump has ordered that I deliver a new, world-class air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world. To do that, I need advice from the brightest minds in America. I’m asking for help from any high-tech American developer or company that is willing to give back to our country.”

So no one worry, the Secretary of Transportation is holding an open call for anyone that thinks they can be in charge of air traffic control.

Things are going just great.

No no… they in many ways they are going exactly how we imagined.

Meanwhile, late Friday night, FAA workers who were hired most recently and are therefore called probationary employees (just noting that because they’re called probationary and so it could seem like they’re in probation because they’re in trouble. They’re just the newest group of people hired). Anyway, late Friday night hundreds of probationary FAA employees were sent an email telling them that they’d been fired.

Among those fired were employees working on a radar system to detect incoming missiles as well as others who did radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance.

Employees were fired without cause or warning, and without time to leave information to make sure no institutional knowledge would be lost.

It’s expected that more emails were sent over the weekend, and it’s possible that additional employees may show up today and find they are not allowed to enter the building.

And that’s.. the state of flying in America.

Continued Fallout for Adams Corruption

-via AP News, BBC, NBC News, and NY Times

Last week I talked about three people had quit the Department of Justice after Trump directed the Department to drop the charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams.

Over the weekend, that number grew and the seriousness of this moment, where we are watching the Department of Justice, as directed by the president, to drop criminal charges against an elected official as long as he keeps doing what the president and his administration wants – that seriousness has only grown.

Following Danielle Sassoon’s resignation, which I talked about on Friday, six others have quit.

On Friday, one of the DOJ prosecutors who resigned because of this request, sent a letter saying, in part: "If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me."

But of course, to get these charges dropped, there has to be an official request. So after seven people quit, Edward Sullivan finally filed the charges because, reportedly, several prosecutors were told to get together and decide who would file the charges or everyone would be fired.

I realize we’re all in the weeds of this Constitutional crisis but having a full-on trolley problem in the DOJ wasn’t really on my bucket list here.

So Sullivan filed the charges, and now it’s up to Judge Ho to decide whether charges will be dropped.

And on Monday, on top of all of that, four more people have offered up their resignations – the four top deputies to Mayor Adams. They are: the First Deputy Mayor, Deputy Mayor for Operations, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, no relation, has also become the latest Democrat to ask Adams to resign.

Right now, the only option is for Adams to resign or for New York’s governor Kathy Hochul to remove him from office. It’s unclear if that will happen, but as Adams pushes dangerously back against the city’s Sanctuary City laws, expect calls for Hochul to remove him to get louder.

Elon + National Security

-via NBC News, NPR, and NY Times

Over the weekend, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration stepped down after Elon and his team of dorks sought access to information in the department that would give him medical records, banking information, financial and employment data, and even the addresses of anyone with a social security number.

Which is like… that’s so many people, you guys.

As I record this, he does not yet have that information.

Expect that he will.

I’m not trying to scare you, but we have to stay in this. Stay aware. His access to that information is imminent.

Meanwhile, at a hearing on Monday, U.S. District Judge Chutkan said she needed more information and evidence of imminent harm before she would issue a restraining order that would prevent Musk and DOGE from entering federal agency data systems.

Chutkan called the DOGE team’s actions “concerning” and “troubling” but something more than “a generalized fear that this is going to happen.”

Okay but what if the fear isn’t super generalized? What if I can be like so specific about what about him having information keeps me up at night? Is that… anything?

If Chutkan’s name is familiar, she oversaw the case about the time Trump lost the 2020 election, and then instead of having a night where he was a little sad and ate ice cream and listened to the sad Ed Sheeran songs before getting up the next day and deciding to get really into pottery or something, he just did insurrection.

The case was, of course, dismissed.

But it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean he didn’t do insurrection.

He did.

We can’t let that be forgotten.

Department of Education

-via NY Times

In a letter sent on Friday, the Department of Education warned schools that they had 14 days to decide if they will continue to take race into account when making scholarship or hiring decisions, or even consider the idea of race when it comes to “all other aspects of student, academic and campus life” or lose their federal funding.

This applies to any institution, including K-12 schools, that receives federal funding.

The department, on Monday, also canceled $600 million in grants that focused on training teachers in “inappropriate and unnecessary topics” like critical race theory, social justice activism, antiracism, and “instruction on white privilege.”

Like… how to use it? Or just that it exists? Feels like the people sending these letters are already using it pretty well I guess, so that probably isn’t needed.

This is so gross.

Teachers are out here spending their own money on supplies while kids are being forced to read books so old that the curse words scratched into the pages might actually be their parent’s handwriting, and the Department of Education is taking away more than half a billion dollars worth of funding because schools have the audacity to teach the fact that this country was built on stolen land and on the backs of the stolen people.

They want to keep us uneducated. Because they know that education is one of the ways that we will get out of this.

They are small, pathetic, people doing the wrong thing because the thing the fear most is us staying in this fight. Staying educated and staying loud.

No Kings Day

-via Rolling Stone and NPR

Demonstrations took place all over the country on Monday because we aren’t going to let them do this.

Described as No Kings Day, a group called 50501 (50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement) organized the day of protests.

Because this country itself is a protest. We are born of protest. Nearly every forward motion we’ve made, was made first in the streets.

And even as this presidency drags us further and further back, deeper and deeper into a Constitutional crisis, the true patriots, that ones that actually love this country, will not give it up without a fight.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of… SNL. It was the 50th anniversary this weekend and it was just great. Plus obviously anything with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey is going to be an A+ for me.

Also that cow Nellie. That probably really sucked for you – sorry Nellie.

But more than that… more than a cow being milked in a plane and sent little cartons of milk being sent down with tiny milk parachutes… because you’re also incredible, but not a wild waste of money and time… I’m proud of you.