Bag of Randomness for Friday, April 5, 2024

 

Hold on to your Stetsons, folks! Looks like Reunion Tower stole the sun’s spotlight in Dallas. We’ve got a rare case of a “Ball-lipse” happening – Reunion’s got the sun all eclipsed!

DaughterGeeding got her second hit of the season. It got out of the infield and brought in a runner. You may or may not be able to hear me, and I may have or may not have added a tiny bit of flair. I thought she would be either impressed or upset at it, but her reactions was really more of a “meh.”

The solar eclipse will happen on Monday. Based on what happened during the 2017 solar eclipse in Denver and Wyoming, there will be a lot of traffic.

The Denver Post reported more than half a million cars hit the road in a record-breaking traffic jam total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. Drivers became frustrated after waiting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for about 10 to 12 hours, according to the Denver Post. Wyoming Department of Transportation spokesman Doug McGee told the publication the highway system was taxed like it’s never been before. He said roads weren’t designed for that volume of traffic. And, it wasn’t just Wyoming dealing with traffic. A recent analysis found an estimated 20 million people in the U.S. traveled away from home to another city to view the 2017 eclipse, resulting in substantial road traffic.

Many folks are wondering why a four-minute event will cause traffic issues. You have to remember that totality will only last four minutes, but the actual event will last over two hours. So, there’s probably about 40 minutes in the middle when traffic will congest because curiosity will get the best of us. Many drivers will pull over, and others will drive slowly, looking up at the sky and not paying attention to the road. That’s why I’ll be off the streets, and I’m sure there will be an increase in accidents. Rain is in the forecast, so it may not be as cool of an event as we hoped.

https://twitter.com/DFWscanner/status/1775889200258142441

Top Republican Says Party Base ‘Infected’ by Russian Propaganda

  • Here’s something for you baseball fans to pay attention to so you can say you heard of her before she was cast into the spotlight.
    • Australian two-way fireballer Genevieve Beacom commits to college baseball
      • She’s been on the mound — and at the plate — for Team Australia in the Women’s World Cup at the tender age of 18. She was the first woman to pitch in the Australia Baseball League, taking the mound for manager Peter Moylan’s Melbourne Aces in 2022. She can hit 86 mph on the radar gun. Now, Australian pitching sensation Genevieve Beacom has committed to East Central College, a DII junior college in Missouri.

         

    • I wasn’t aware there were already women playing baseball in college.
      • Beacom is just the latest woman to commit to playing college baseball, joining USA National Team players Olivia Pichardo (Brown University), Elise Berger (Bard College) and Alexia Jorge (St. Elizabeth University) as some of the trailblazers on campus. As women’s baseball continues to grow in popularity and with more baseball programs willing to give chances to female ballplayers, we should expect to see more of this in the years to come.
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Bag of Randomness for Thursday, April 4, 2024

  • I was a big fan of the X-Files. Apparently, it was announced in March last year that Ryan Coogler (Apollo, Black Panther) is doing a fresh reboot of the series. I missed the memo on that one, but I’m intrigued. But what was so great with the original series was the chemistry between the co-stars. I found out about this in this new Chris Carter article. It sounds like Carter no longer has any creative control, so it’s similar to what George Lucus is going through with Star Wars and Disney. The article also mentions how Fox initially wanted a Pamela Anderson type to take the role of Scully. In retrospect, that’s hilarious.
  • A lot of schools are canceling classes for the solar eclipse. That’s not happening at the school BoyGeeding and DaughterGeeding attend. But they will get to go outside and view it, and will be provided with protective sunglasses. In case you want to read the email about it, here you go.
  • I’m not posting this for political reasons; it’s the AI aspect that interests me – ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in GazaThe Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties
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Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, April 3, 2024

  • I need to focus more on the journey than the destination.
  • Ah, I love presidential history and trivia. I play on a trivia team with three close friends on Tuesday nights in Grapevine. If you follow the trivia league on social media, they will give hints to two questions. One was about the election of 1876. That was a really fascinating election, and here are my five most interesting tidbits about it that make it one of the more interesting ones in our nation’s history:
    • Grant was going to run for a third term, but the House (233–18 vote), passed a resolution declaring that the two-term tradition .
    • It was the second of five U.S. presidential elections in which the winner did not win a plurality of the national popular vote.
    • Tilden won 184 electoral votes to Hayes’s 165, 185 votes necessary for a majority. To settle things, Congress created a commission to avoid a constitutional crisis.
    • To date, it remains the election that yielded the highest voter turnout of the eligible voting-age population in American history, at 82.6%
    • As of 2024, this marks the only presidential election in which both candidates were sitting governors.
  • Family of woman found dead on highway angered by Trump’s speech
    • The sister of murder victim Ruby Garcia said she and her family were home watching live, in disbelief, as former President Donald Trump told an audience in Grand Rapids that he had spoken with “some of her family.” “He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” Ruby Garcia’s sister, Mavi Garcia.
  • I’m surprised that someone who has been in the business as long as he has and held the title of Chief would be this sensitive. Not only did he walk out, but he felt the need to share it publicly. Surely, he’s heard a variation of this joke a thousand times. I held off on posting this, thinking it was a bad April Fool’s joke. But maybe I should cut him some slack. We all have our off days.

  • Even though Holy Week has passed, I thought this would be interesting for people of the Christian faith and something they could add to their children’s programs next year.

  • Now, to transition to something totally different. The comments in this tweet were interesting, but I don’t know why the poster wanted to single out men for their answers. I’d like to know how women would rank these.
    https://twitter.com/NoDMsPerfavore/status/1774931787614916988
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Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, April 2, 2024

  • TwitterX really wasn’t much fun yesterday. I usually like April Fool’s Day jokes, but it seemed like everyone yesterday thought they were pulling one over everyone, which was blatantly obvious.
  • I wasn’t a fan of the Texas Department of Public Safety sending me a text at 10:45 PM last night to remind me that my vehicle registration would expire in three months. It’s a legit text, I’m not being scammed. I received an email notification earlier in the day. I don’t mind the text; I’m just surprised they would send one out so late in the evening.
  • After watching Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune came on. I had not been a fan of the show since childhood, so I planned on changing the channel, but the introduction caught my attention. Oddly, the gameshow announcer introduced Vanna White and actor Jared Leto. Then he nonchalantly jumped into hosting, “All right, everybody, grab those devices; it’s time to give away some money. A $1000 in our first toss-up, the category is on the map.” The show then continued as normal, cutting back to regular host Sajak as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t find anything about it online until later in the evening. It was just an April Fool’s joke, which I thought was pretty solid. But, it was not as solid as the April Fool’s Day 1997 when Sajack and Alex Trebek switched hosting duties. I forgot that Pat and Janna played as contestants. It must be odd being a contestant on the show you host.
  • I’m rediscovering my love for the night. I’ve always been more of a night person than an evening person. But, when I married a morning person who was always early to bed and early to rise, I did my best to convert. I was told by her and many others I didn’t need to go to bed at the same time as my then-wife, but I thought that was important and something to build on. I loved those conversations as our day came to an end.
  • That kind of humor will not influence anyone to follow the Christ he claims to follow.https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1773511106868519312
  • Never play Luka in a game of HORSE.

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