Your Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, July 16, 2024

  • We are hosting the MLB All-Star Game and other activities this week in Arlington, and things did not get off to a good start with the Home Run Derby last night.

  • Here are the 10 states with the poorest quality of life
    • CNBC released its ‘America’s Top States for Business’ report, which considers quality of life in its ranking.
    • The states with the poorest quality of life in 2024 are Texas, Indiana and Alabama, according to the report.  
    • Texas’ anti-LGBTQ legislation, restrictive abortion policy and poor healthcare are all reasons it has the worst quality of life, according to the ranking.
  • Alec Baldwin’s reaction when the prosecutor was on the stand and asked if she called him a homophobic slur.
  • Why, why isn’t this named the Earragator?!
  • I love everything about this. Grandma needed to be put in her place, if you ask me.  She’s too entitled to wait a few minutes tells me all I need to know about her.<

  • This was all over social media yesterday. – Donald Trump’s assassination attempt in real time from different angles!

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Your Bag of Randomness for Monday, July 15, 2024

  • For those of you who have been upset at me for not writing much as of late, this one should make up for a little.
  • One obvious story is dominating the news, so the deaths of Richard Simmons, Dr. Ruth, and Shannen Doherty were easily overlooked.
    • I always found Dr. Ruth endearingly warm-hearted. But she was a tough girl; according to Military.com, she was a military sniper, all four feet and seven inches of her.
      • As a sniper with the Haganah, forerunner to the modern-day Israel Defense Forces (IDF), she was so accurate, she could put five rounds in the center of a target at will.
    • Richard Simmons used to annoy the heck out of me. But as I matured, I started to see a kind mind that was just trying to inspire those who had a difficult time losing weight or being healthy. I was too much of a homophobe to appreciate his energetic and motivational demeanor.

    • I can’t recall ever watching a single Shannen Doherty show or movie. 90210 was on Fox, and at the time, Mineral Wells television cable didn’t offer the channel, so I also missed out on a lot of early Simpsons stuff. When it did become available, my church’s youth leader discouraged us from watching that kind of show, and I followed suit.
  • Maybe we can unplug the U.S., wait 30 seconds, and then plug it back in.
  • Due to layoffs, this is my last week at work for my current employer. After my divorce, I looked back at life and regretted not taking more risks. I decided to take one, leave the company where I had worked for over 12 years, and try something new. I didn’t even make it a full year at the new place. Like Sinatra said, “Regrets, I have a few.” Unlike Sinatra, I don’t have “too few to mention.” So, in the last four years, I have lost my wife, family, house, church, job, and, for a long period of time, my health. At least my dogs are still alive, and I hope I haven’t just jinxed that.
  • In my Twitter feed, a post appeared from a woman who proudly announced that she was getting a divorce after 30 years of marriage. In the comments were replies from other women who were also married for a long time and also proudly stated how they initiated their divorce. What happened to the sanctity of marriage and keeping a family together? Of course, I’m aware some were in abusive relationships, and divorce may have been their best option, but the way they express themselves makes it look more like they are going through a mid-life crisis and just want to be free of a commitment they made. Though my faith says I shouldn’t, I doubt I can ever truly forgive my ex for tearing apart our family and not trying anything to save it, like being willing to at least go to one counseling session. Of course, continued parental alienation and false accusations don’t help. Maybe one day I’ll get there. I can’t recall if I mentioned this, but I did ask if she’d like to bury the hatchet and if we could make amends (but not reconcile) because it would be best for the children, and she flatly said no.
  • I think President Biden was scheduled to be at the LBJ Library at the University of Texas in Austin today.
  • After the attempted assassination attempt on former President Trump, I bet so many people, without thinking about it, posted things to social media that could get them fired. I also bet that many Republican speech writers had speeches written and ready to go for the RNC before Saturday’s event and have since been working feverishly on new drafts.
  • I’m going to tick a lot of Trump supporters off today, and I doubt many will even be able to read this entire post. It is possible to both denounce the horrific violence against Donald Trump and continue to be honest about the person he is and the trauma he’s caused in this country. But I’m sure a lot of my liberal friends will be upset at a lot of things I write today.
  • I like candidates who weren’t shot in the ear.
  • “I’m really scared we might become a politically divided nation now that someone shot at the man who tried to overthrow the government and is campaigning for president under the promise that he’d jail his political opponents.”
  • For all of you worried this event will lead to an automatic victory for Trump, let’s look back at history. Surviving an assassination attempt didn’t help get TDR or Gerrald Ford re-elected. Ford actually had two assassination attempts.
  • There’s a bit of a Texas connection here; the folks at the Demolition Ranch weren’t exactly happy that the shooter was wearing their apparel.
  • If you spent your teen years in an SBC youth group like I did, you learned about the prophecy in the book of Revelation, which was all over Twitter.
  • I don’t think anyone else noticed this guy but me; I think most of the news outlets framed him out of the shot.

  • Humor for fellow liberal Star Wars fans.
  • Everyone is now familiar with the photo of the year, the seminal image. Even this lib will admit it’s pretty rockstar. The photographer was Evan Vucci; here’s his Twitter. According to his Instagram bio, he’s affiliated with Team Lloyd Irvin and has even won some accolades for his MMA side quests. He won the Pulitzer for this photo in 2021. In this clip, you can see him run from one part in front of the stage to the side of the stage to get the pic.<

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  • Trump is a threat to democracy. Warning voters what a second Trump term would bring so they could be informed so they can vote against him isn’t inciting violence. And Democrats should be careful with their language and not say things like the former president needs to be eliminated. Trump had slates of fake electors from states that he lost (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin)in order to fraudulently overturn an election and told the Georgia Secretary of State on a phone call to find 11,780 votes is a legitimate threat to democracy.
  • We’ll see if Trump will continue to be a threat to democracy. It will all depend on the message and tone he sets at the RNC. Everyone wants to turn down the temperature in our politics, but Trump (and his supporters) have raised the thermostat for a while. You are lying to yourself or delusional if you disagree; there’s plenty of evidence:
  • Biden said we beat Medicare. He ain’t radicalizing anybody. Even if he did, the Conservative Supreme Court said he would be immune because it would be an official act, which was Trump’s argument.
  • I’m not wearing a tinfoil hat. I promise. But as I’ve often said, so much stuff in politics nowadays is stranger than fiction. That if it were written in a book or movie of fiction, everyone would say it would never be plausible. I’m also not a conspiracy theorist, and I feel Occam’s razor will prevail, but here are some of my observations that might make it appear that I am:
    • People were literally pointing out the shooter setting up and notified authorities, but they didn’t take any action? Maybe they were taking action, and that’s why the law enforcement sniper had him targeted, but surely they would have moved in and escorted Trump off stage if there was even a hint of a shooter in the area. Regarding the video I provided in this bullet point, that BBC reporter was masterful. I read that he’s legally blind, but I haven’t confirmed that.
    • I’m going to guess that temperatures were in the 90s at that event. The shooter was wearing short sleeves and was lying on a hot metal roof. You would think he would be better prepared and wear long sleeves. Did he lay a towel down? Something is not clicking. And the ladder didn’t raise an eyebrow?
    • The shooter was a registered Republican but donated $15 to the Biden campaign. It is weird both ways you look at it.
    • I’m no doctor or medical student. I wouldn’t say I liked biology. The ear is mostly cartridge, right? Trump bled more than I would expect for an ear wound. It’s almost too hard to believe that he was only grazed by the bullet and the blood is not from flying glass. I know that’s been reported, but no one has mentioned any broken glass on the stage. There’s a small chance his ear got cut as he was pushed down, but I think from all the photos I’ve seen, the timing of events would been off. I know nothing about guns and bullets, but kinda think the speed/power/velocity of the bullet would have done more damage. Just look at the man’s life and tell me he’s not the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
    • I’m no law enforcement or Secret Service expert. But I have read a lot of books and watched enough specials to know that once shots are fired, the protocol is to crowd the president and whisk him away off stage and to a running exit vehicle like they did in Nevada in 2016.

      But for the life of me, I don’t understand how a man who was just shot at could stick his head above the Secret Service human shield huddled around him so he could yell and first pump the air to encourage his voters to fight. You would think the Secret Service wouldn’t want to give the shooter or a possible second shooter another chance to blow his head off or shoot him in the chest.
  • Female Secret Service agents took a lot of criticism.
    There were a lot of Melissa McCarthy jokes about this one.<

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  • This skit, I’m sure many will find distasteful, sure was arranged quickly.<

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  • Does anybody remember Tim Robbin’s movie, Bob Ross? There are a whole lot of similarities with Trump, and the actor did a great job of addressing the issue on Twitter yesterday.
  • When Reagan was shot and was about to be operated on, he famously joked with the doctors that he hoped they were Republicans. One of the surgeons replied that today, they all were Republicans. Someone tried to link that moment with Trump’s. Apples and ornages, lady. Apples and oranges.
  • Ending on a lighter note, Reagan’s greatest improvised moment.


    While I remember this event, I don’t remember that Dubya brushed off the Secret Service agent with a smile at the five-second mark. The poor agent looked perplexed and didn’t know what to do, and I’m afraid his superior chewed him out later.

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Your Bag of Randomness for Friday, July 12, 2024

  • The MLB All-Star Game is in Arlington, Texas this year and they are selling some ugly merchandise. That right there will cost you $149.99. Sadly, some sucker is going to buy that at full price.
  • I wonder how many times the current World Series champions have hosted the All-Star Game.
  • In anticipation of Biden’s press conference yesterday, I wondered where it would be held. The setting matters, and I just wanted to know if he would be taking questions in an environmentally friendly White House or something like a cramped hotel conference room. I thought typing “Where is President Biden’s press conference today?” into Google would give me an easy answer. I couldn’t find an answer on the search results page or the top four choices it gave me. I started to kick myself, saying I needed to use AI because it would just spit it out, and Microsoft’s Copilot gave me an immediate answer with several sources within a second. For the heck of it, I compared it with the other AI models I use. Surprisingly, ChatGBT gave me a very incorrect answer, citing the White House’s briefing and statements pages. It appears it was confusing campaign announcements in Pennsylvania. Google’s Gemini told me to basically use Google, “I can’t help with responses on elections and political figures right now. While I would never deliberately share something that’s inaccurate, I can make mistakes. So, while I work on improving, you can try Google Search.” Perplexity also gave me a correct answer with several sources.
  • I was watching another WWII documentary yesterday. Roosevelt attended the Yalta conference in February 1945 and didn’t look well. He did two months later. I wish I could find some detail on the physical toll he was in and what his mental acuity was like speaking with Stalin and Churchhill. He was 63, so I’m pretty confident he was with it, but being in poor health and traveling to Europe sounds taxing.
  • Do you know what a higher rank in the Soviet Army was, a General or Marshall? I didn’t know until I looked it up. It’s the latter.
  • ‘Miss AI’: World’s first AI beauty pageant crowns winner
    • Meet Kenza Layli, a Moroccan lifestyle influencer who hopes to bring “diversity and inclusivity” to the AI creator landscape. With nearly 200,000 Instagram followers, and a further 45,000 on TikTok, Layli is entirely AI-generated, from her images to her captions and buzzword-filled acceptance speech.
  • Vouge has done a smart thing and hired JFK’s only grandson as a political correspondent. Jack Schlossberg will combine his background in law and business (he received his JD and MBA from Harvard) with the self-described “silly goose” tendencies he displays on social media, and he’s a free spirit and quite loquatious. He’s unmistakably Kennedy and certainly takes after his uncle, JFK Jr, but a lot more personable. He likes to wear black because of Johnny Cash and is taking ballet lessons to help with an injury. Keep an eye on this 31-year-old.

     

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    A post shared by Jack Schlossberg (@jackuno)

    • I found this part of the interview interesting:
      Was there a moment—family story, speech, policy—that really connected you to your grandfather?I was in 10th grade, taking US history, and we were learning about the Kennedy administration. I felt uncomfortable, so I was goofing off. The teacher called on me and tried to make me look stupid by asking me what the Kennedy administration’s policy was in Laos—which I still don’t know the answer to after many years of trying to figure it out. Nobody does. I was really embarrassed. That day I went home and started reading. That’s when I started getting serious about learning about my family and got really inspired by it. <
      @luke.mcquillan JFK’s grandson would absolutely enchant Little Edie. #littleedie #greygardens #jfksgrandson #jackschlossberg #impressions #comedy #funny #fypシ゚viral ♬ original sound – Luke McQuillan️‍

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  • A lot of guys were expressing their love for Detective Danielly De Andrade of Hollywood, Florida, on Twitter yesterday. She’s originally from Brazil.

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