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• Usually, I could easily tell you the name of the White House Press Secretary since they were always delivering the news. I can’t name the person who now occupies that role because I don’t think there’s been a press briefing under her watch. But, I do see that she tweets every now and then.
• Airline introduces baby seat map to allow passengers to avoid infants
• A former Texas judge is sentenced for accepting cash bribes stashed in beer boxes
• A teacher has apologized for telling students to write captions for photos of freed slaves and to ‘make it funny’
  • The teacher at J.W. Dodd Middle School instructed three eighth-grade classes to write captions for the images of Reconstruction-era sharecroppers, telling students to “make it funny,” and “don’t bore me,” according to a statement from Freeport Public Schools Superintendent Kishore Kuncham.
• The Atlantic – Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why? – “Not religious” has become a specific American identity—one that distinguishes secular, liberal whites from the conservative, evangelical right.
• Male clergy reading actual comments shared by parishioners to female clergy
  
• The Font That Makes Everyone Read Faster – Cheddar Explains
  

It’s academy tradition to sound off a cannon using a blank shotgun shell whenever the team scores, according to the sheriff’s office. But authorities said an alumnus of the school who brought his own cannon to Saturday’s homecoming game against Massachusetts Maritime Academy had loaded it with black powder and “a substance that he had made into a wad.” The referee was struck by the wad and taken to a hospital with injuries that weren’t considered life-threatening.

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• Rarely do I ever set the clothes dryer to anything other than the medium or low heat setting. I read somewhere long ago using the high heat setting damages clothes faster. It sounds correct, but I’ve never looked it up to verify.
• I’m not a “car guy” so I don’t know if this is normal or odd behavior. One of my neighbors and his wife drive a Lexus and an Acura. Neither can be more than two years old. The cars, not my neighbors. Each day when they pull into their garage, they pop the hoods and turn on two wall-mounted fans directed at the engines and then set the garage door to only be opened a quarter of the way.
• The first standalone marijuana reform bill in our nation’s history passed in the House of Representatives yesterday and I didn’t see any televised news coverage of it since there was much other news coming out of Washington. Not too long ago, that would have been the top story on the evening news.
• I knew the Amber Guyger trial would be covered by the national news, but I didn’t expect them to it covered on the national evening news every day this week.
• Dallas City Council Votes To Rename Olive Street ‘Nowitzki Way’
• Labradoodle creator says it’s his ‘life’s regret’ – He’s become concerned that an influx of copycat cross-breeds has created health problems for many dogs.
• I totally forgot about this Disney park which was going to be built in Virginia during the late Nineties – Revisiting Disney’s America: The Theme Park That Never Was
  • In November 1993, CEO Michael Eisner announced that Disney would open its third U.S. theme park near the rural town of Haymarket, Virginia. “Disney’s America” would focus on “the nation’s richness of diversity, spirit, and innovation,” said Eisner at the time. The park would be arranged into nine sections, loosely focusing on significant periods of U.S. history. One land would focus on the founding fathers while others would feature a 20th century farm, world war battlefields, factories of the industrial revolution. The park would also cover some potentially controversial topics too, like turn-of-the-century immigration, Native Americans, and slavery.
• The Atlantic – My Husband Paid Me to Do Housework – We wanted to address a systemic, gendered imbalance. It didn’t really work.

• Muscle memory is a funny thing. While driving north on SE 25th Avenue in Mineral Wells to take a right on U.S. 180, I instinctively tapped the breaks to slow down so I could gently go over the railroad tracks. However, the railroad tracks were no longer there. I can still remember my father giving me driving lessons, driving down that road with him for the very first time with me in the driver’s seat, and him gently telling me to slow down as I approach that area to keep from damaging his car.
• Anytime I answer with an “OK”, DaughterGeeding instinctively chimes in with spokesperson appeal, “Just OK is not OK, especially when it comes to your network. AT&T is America’s best wireless network according to America’s biggest test. Now with 5G evolution, the first step to 5G.”
• One of the better stories told at the celebration of my friend’s 20th year preaching at his church was the time a woman of size asked to be baptized. My friend is not a large nor a strong person, and if you are familiar with the Baptist tradition, they do a full emersion. The pastor and person being baptized stand in waist-level water, who would then lean the person backward, basically dunking the person fully in water and lifting him or her back up. My friend wanted to get this right and not make it awkward for the woman, so he asked one of the “roundest” and heaviest men at the church if he would come by the day before so he could practice on him. That man said he was baptized about fifteen times that evening. In case you were wondering, the lady in question moved out of state years ago.
• This woman’s Haunted Mansion Ride Themed Halloween Gown (with moving doom buggies and ghosts) is highly impressive. Her Instagram shows it in motion.
  
• Those Boston Dynamics robots continue to get scarier and scarier.