Things That Happened in 2023 Well, I am back, things were great for Christmas, but then the flu ripped through everyone and I seemed to resist it. I had the flu shot only 3 days prior and it seemed to have saved me. There was a terrible release of malware at the end of the year on the dark web and it should concern everyone. One of the most powerful pieces of malware was updated, it was named Medusa and it affects hundreds of web sites, and all sorts of software we use on our computers, and phones. It was given away as a Christmas present to the criminal community. The software is ransomware. NASA has a problem. It wants to send the ashes of a Star Trek fan to the moon along with the ashes of Gene Roddenberry, his wife Barrett Roddenberry, Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley and James Doohan. It turned out when the Navajo Nation found out about this they sent a letter to NASA asking them to put off the launch date because they consider the moon part of their religious beliefs and feel this is a desecration. I guess we will have to wait and see what transpires. I would like to take a look at some of the things that went on in 2023. It was a good year in some ways and a very bad one in others. The bad part had to do with wars, attacks and the relentless flood of illegal immigrants coming over both borders. We usually only hear about the southern border, but people are sneaking over the northern border also. There could be about 190,000 who came in over the northern border last year. That normally would have been a record breaker in the old days, but there were an additional 2.4 million coming over the southern border plus what are known as got a ways. Remember this has been happening for years and the numbers are staggering. SpaceX has had a supper successful year of launches. Some were full of gloom and doom when the Starship didn’t have a perfect launch and even exploded the first time. They failed to remember this was being tested and we have to expect problems and that are what test launches are for. SpaceX is picking up a lot of business and its cargo launches to the International Space Station have been very successful. There was a big worry about New Year’s Eve in Manhattan. Crowds of hundreds of thousands of people were expected and did show up. It was thought this scene might become a target for terrorists groups or individuals, but the police did a great job and everything went mostly smoothly. I say mostly because a car did hit eight people. The car had been driving the wrong way on the street. There had been an argument and when the police went toward the car it sped away hitting other cars and the people. It was not believed to have been a terrorist attack. In 2023 we found out something about the universe we did not know. We know we are not capable of hearing and seeing beyond a certain range and the range seems to be quite limited. We found out because of this there was something happening we couldn’t detect until 2023 and that was the universe is making a hum, but it is beyond our hearing capabilities. It seems to be coming from giant dead stars which are spinning very fast. Theories on the formation of the universe were dropping fast as the James Webb space telescope has found out some really amazing things about our universe and has probed itself to be a miracle of science. We all seem to be interested in dinosaurs. We thought we knew most everything about them by now. Even some small kids seem to know a lot. In 2023 something new was found out which surprised scientists and this was the Isle of Wight had its own types of small dinosaurs which were herbivorous. People and companies started to turn on electric cars. Articles started to appear pointing out their flaws. Sales of electric vehicles in the United States declined substantially and dealers became overstocked. Some of the car makers cut back on production. Many people felt they just were not what they wanted and one company ran a test by driving one hundreds of miles and was not happy with the charging situation. The United States began to get involved in protecting ships and even Israel from missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea. There had been well over 100 attacks on our bases by Iran proxies according to the news outlets. Cargo ships have called on our navy ships for help and we have been shooting down the drones and missiles aimed at the ships and aimed at Israel. The war in Ukraine raged all year and is still going on. The United States has sent over 75 billion dollars to that country according to Kiel Institute for the World Economy. This has irked some in congress who want a better accounting for where all this money is going. Is it actually all going for the war effort or will we find out some of it is lining the pockets of some people? Speaking of wars, 2023 saw a war start between Israel and Hamas in Palestine. The Israelis were attacked and slaughtered during a surprise attack and retaliated and are still fighting. It is not clear as of yet whether the war will spread. In entertainment, the biggest hit in the movie theaters in 2023 was the movie Barbie. We found out something no one realized and that was Taylor Swift had a huge effect on things. She became Time Magazine’s person of the year. Her effect on ticket sales when she showed up to events was phenomenal. Scientists did something for the first time. They took cells from two make mice and created live offspring. Skin cells were used from the tails of the animals and these were used to create eggs which were then implanted in female mice. Other scientists scored a first by drilling into the earth’s mantle and recovering rocks. This has been tried many times and never succeeded before. The population of Japan reached a new age level. More than 10 percent of everyone in Japan became at least 80 years old. Births slowed to their lowest rate in the history of the country. Japan now has the world’s oldest population and I am sure this is worrying their government. I would like to end this article with an interesting but worthless bit of information. Actor Edward Norton found out he was related to Pocahontas. She is his 12th great-grandmother.
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