Day 813

• A Michigan man was arrested today near the Capitol -- body armor, high-end bullets, and a badge reading "Department of the INTERPOL".  Oof.  And he's probably one of those who was carrying guns at the Michigan Capitol two years ago or whenever it was.
  
• Governor Fascist DeathSentence of Florida has vetoed the new Spring Training home of the Tampa Bay Rays in his state, due to the messages and $50,000 donation in support of gun-violence education after the Uvalde shootings.
• Prince Andrew has been skipping the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Elizabeth II after catching COVID.
• And now, due to "discomfort", the Queen herself will sit out the second day of events on Friday.  Abundance of caution due to close contact, perhaps?    
• One of the announcements in the E3 substitute for Sony, a large State of Play presentation, is the Summer 2023 (who the fuck are we kidding, this is Square-Enix, people!!) release of Final Fantasy XVI.  It should stand to reason, due to executive producer Naoki Yoshida, that the game shares many mechanical similarities for Yoshida's other Square-Enix project, MMO Final Fantasy XIV.  Since it's apparently PS5-exclusive, it might as well come out in 2025 or 2026 for many users.
  
• More anger, more mayhem.  Man gets pissed off with girlfriend, goes to the Dallas Museum and trashes $5 million worth of stuff.
• Oklahoma and the only two teams to defeat them (Oklahoma State and Texas) all won their first games in the Women's (Softball) College World Series.
• A sudden injury ended one French Open men's semifinal, and Rafael Nadal was advanced to the final to play Casper Ruud of Norway.  Ruud has won eight tournaments since the pandemic restart, and is the first Norwegian ever to seen even a semifinal of any Grand Slam.
• Joe Girardi is out as Phillies manager, the first casualty of the new season.  Psst.  Bryce Harper.  Addition By Subtraction.  (There are others.  He's just the most flagrant.  He's the James Harden or Russell Westbrook of Major League Baseball.)  You're just not spending the money in the right places.
  
• Harini Logan is the 2022 National Spelling Bee champion.  Logan was actually eliminated from the Bee in a new on-stage multiple-choice definitions round (the process is not nearly the same as it used to be when I toiled in it!), and became the first speller to win the championship in a 90-second spell off.
• The process is now far more like a game show (with the spell-off, if I'm reading this right, more like versions of Name That Tune and the Golden Medley Showdown), including the over $50,000 the winner got in prizes.
• The person who coached her, Grace Walters, who, like Logan, is from Texas.  Logan is the fifth National Spelling Bee champion coached by Walters.