INTERNATIONAL OPEN DATA DAY UPDATES
Mind Your Zeroes and Ones!
-First, A PITCH! These will not be often enough to get too annoying (I'm not NPR), but for those who feel the inclination to, please spread these posts to friends so they can subscribe to get them in their inbox and, if you feel the desire, to leave a "tip" at the appropriate links. Thus far I have about 18 subscribers and have received a handful of tips which are deeply appreciated - and yes, I am beginning to think about extra stuff I can do for those who do subscribe and/or leave tips (you get the summaries of hearings when I do them? special columns? super-secret food porn?) and will be doing SOMEthing for all of you. Plus, there are rumblings that Facebook may try to do some of the oh-so-smart registering-and-demanding-payment thing that has served Elon Musk so well at Twitter, so ya never know over there/here (depending on where you're reading).
-Pitch complete! On to my super-subjective snarky updates!
-Despite speaking to a room that, at best, was 3/4 full, Ex-President Trump took the stage at the equally not-well-attended CPAC Conference yesterday to accept a "win" of a straw poll for President (with arch-nemesis Gov. Ron DeSantis opting not to appear, not a surprise) - and did so with a 105-minute speech that, even for Trump, featured some of the crazier, goofier, and (should he ever get close to power again) scarier things he has ever said. Among the, um, highlights ...
-Trump insisted that President Biden has "hidden" Trump's Mexican border wall. (He did not say where.)
-Trump fantasized about Russia destroying the building housing NATO headquarters while insisting "we are closer to World War III than ever before."
-Trump claims he "didn't know the words" "grand jury" or "subpoena" and described the multiple investigations as "lynch(ings) for doing nothing wrong."
-Trump promised "the largest domestic deportation operation in American history," tent cities to move "homeless and drug addicted people" into.
-Trump promised to pay "baby bonuses" to generate a new baby boom, then somehow made that sentiment worse by adding "Oh you men out there are so lucky, you are so lucky, men."
-And, whereas in 2016 and 2020 Trump promised to be "your voice," in 2024 he revealed a new promise: "I will be ... your retribution."
-Speaking of DeSantis, in case there is any question about HIS approach, late last week his foot soldiers in the FL legislature filed legislation that, if passed, would "require any blogger writing about government officials to register" with the state of FL - in other words, DeSantis' central argument for the GOP is to do many of the things Trump and the UltraMAGAts want to do without the baggage of being Trump. Polling indicates they are the only two serious candidates for the GOP nomination, with recent polling giving Trump the edge within the GOP even though head-to-head polling against Biden shows DeSantis to be a much tougher candidate. (And, as always, polling more than a year out of a campaign are just opinions with 500 or so people chiming in.)
-In Ukraine, there are now conflicting reports emerging about the status and fate of the city of Bakhmut. Just days after claiming Russia had surrounded the city with only one exit road, a new video released yesterday from oligarch and Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin implied that the entire Russian defense front in the east of Ukraine would collapse if Russia did not support Wagner - a private mercenary Army run by Prigozhin, a man nicknamed "Putin's chef" for controlling all the catering businesses in Russia. (Money in blintzes, eh?) Whether this signals yet more division within Russia, and whether Prigozhin or Putin may need to take care around windows, remains to be seen - all for a city that apparently has little strategic military importance.
-Slava Ukraini!
-And in celebrity fight news, Chris Rock used his first-ever live comedy special on Netflix last night to finally take his turn to discuss last year's Academy Awards slap he received from Will Smith. Rock first pointed out that, yes, it hurt - because Rock is physically smaller than Smith ("He played Muhammad Ali! I played a piece of corn in POOTIE TANG!") but that Rock opined that the incident stemmed from an alleged affair Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, had with one of her son's friends (but not Rock - "I have no ... entanglements...") and that both Pinkett and Smith reportedly openly discussed ("We've all been cheated on - none of us have been interviewed by the person that cheated on us on television."). Rock continued, "Everybody called (Smith) a b*tch - EVERYbody - and who'd he hit? ME!" You can find clips of the entire routine all over social media. No comment as of this time from the Smiths.
-On this date in 1770, British forces fired upon a mob and killed five men in what became known as the Boston Massacre. On this date in 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill first used the term "Iron Curtain" to describe Soviet influence in Eastern and Central Europe. On this date in 1966, Marvin Miller became head of the baseball players' union, marking the beginning of what is arguably the most successful union in union history. On this date in 1971 a crowd in Belfast first heard Led Zeppelin play "Stairway to Heaven" live. And on this date in 2002, THE OSBOURNES premiered on MTV.
-Happy Birthday to Emmett Culligan, Carroll Rosenbloom, Rex Harrison, instant noodle inventor Momofuku Ando, James Noble, Laurence Tisch, Earl Woods (Tiger's dad), Dean Stockwell, Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, Charles Fuller, Rep. Mary Rose Oakar, Paul Sands, Michael Warren, Murray Head, Rocky Blier, Eddy Grant, Elaine Paige, Marsha Warfield, Penn Jillette, Teena Marie, Andy Gibb, Aasif Mandvi, Michael Irvin, John Frusciante, Eva Mendes, Paul Konerko, Wally Szczerbiak, and Amanda Shires.
-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Crispus Attucks (see Boston Massacre), battery inventor Alessandro Volta (seriously), Sergei Prokofiev, Patsy Cline, Mohammad Mosaddegh, Jay Silverheels, Red Saunders, Yip Harburg, John Belushi, Gary Merrill, Ed Flanders, Richard Kiley, and Michael Stanley.
-Feed the Worms: Chinese Communist leader Zhou Enlai entered Earth on this date. Joseph Stalin and Hugo Chavez both bought it on this date.