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January 1st, 2023:

Weekend link dump for January 1

I’m sorry, but the year 2023 still sounds like something out of a science fiction story to me.

The sordid history of Ticketmaster apparently includes that company getting a boost from former Sen. Phil Gramm.

“The US Senate is a fundamentally broken institution. Democratic judges need to account for that in their retirement decisions.”

“A freelance producer for ABC News also gathered dirt on critics of a consulting firm’s powerful clients.” A truly bonkers story.

“You Can Now Sue Movie Studios for False Advertising With Deceptive Trailers”. You can thank Ana de Armas, or more specifically two of her fans, for that.

“The 5 ‘known unknowns’ that will define 2024″.

About damn time: “West Point will remove Confederate symbols from its campus”.

“A List Of All The Jan. 6 Committee Witnesses Who Pleaded The Fifth“. A real rogue’s gallery in there.

Meet Bessie Mae Kelley, pioneering female animator from the 1920s whose story is just now being told.

“From a spacecraft the size of a refrigerator plowing into an asteroid (deliberately) to a helicopter trying to catch a rocket plummeting back to Earth, 2022 offered surreal moments in space that could have been ripped from the pages of a science fiction movie script.”

RIP, Thom Bell, Grammy Award-winning producer, arranger, composer, and one of the architects of Philadelphia soul music.

“The question of why the Trumpian populist right is so consumed with hatred for Ukraine—a hatred that clearly goes beyond concerns about U.S. spending, a very small portion of our military budget, or about the nonexistent involvement of American troops—doesn’t have a simple answer. Partly, it’s simply partisanship: If the libs are for it, we’re against it, and the more offensively the better. (And if the pre-Trump Republican establishment is also for it, then we’re even more against it.)”

No, Buckminster Fuller was not a cryptocurrency prophet.

‘Home Alone’ reimagined in the style of ‘The White Lotus’ opening credits“. And generated by an AI, which makes it even creepier.

RIP, Kathy Whitworth, pro golfer whose 88 LPGA Tour victories, six more than Sam Snead and Tiger Woods had on the men’s tour, makes her the winningest golfer of all time.

“Netflix is reportedly developing a Stranger Things anime series set in 1980s Tokyo that will be labeled as the franchise’s first official spinoff.”

“Three years on, the pandemic — and our response — have been jolting. Here’s what even the experts didn’t see coming.”

“The Dog Not Barking about a U.S. Recession”.

RIP, Pele, all-time soccer legend. I had the opportunity to see him play a game with the NY Cosmos of the old NASL at Giants Stadium in the 70s, and yes, he scored a goal, the only one in a 1-0 Cosmos win. I have no recollection of how I came to be at Giants Stadium watching a Cosmos game but I’m glad I was there.

“Sherlock Holmes will finally escape copyright this weekend”.

RIP, Benedict XIV, Pope Emeritus.

RIP, Barbara Walters, trailblazing TV newscaster and anchor.

Here are your 2022 Golden Duke winners.

Thirty million Texans

We reach another milestone.

Fueled by migration to the state from other parts of the country, Texas crossed a new population threshold this year: It is now home to 30 million people.

New estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau put the state’s population as of July 1 at 30,029,572 following years of steady growth. This makes Texas the only state, other than California, with a population of more than 30 million.

The state’s population has been on an upward trajectory for decades, accompanied by demographic shifts that have reshaped everything from its politics to its classrooms as people of color have powered its growth.

Texas’ population increased by 470,708 people since July 2021, the largest gain in the nation. Texas regularly holds that top spot on the bureau’s annual population updates. Roughly half of that growth came from net domestic migration — the number of people coming to Texas from other states — while the other half was split almost evenly between net international migration and natural increase, which is the difference between births and deaths.

The state’s source of population gains often fluctuates year to year. The bureau’s estimates from 2010-19 showed Texas’ growth based on natural increase and net migration, including both domestic and international, were close to even over the decade.

I imagine that between the pandemic and Trump-instituted restrictions, the numbers for international migration have trended down. We’ll see how that affects the next decade.

On a related note, looking at the historic Census figures for Texas, thirty years ago the average State House member in Texas represented about 120K people. Twenty years ago that would have still been less than 150K people. Now that State Rep has 200K constituents, and rising. A State Senator now represents nearly one million people. We’re not going to do anything about that, but we really ought to think about it. Just putting it out there.