That One Time

Texas' weather varies widely, from arid in the west to humid in the east. The huge expanse of Texas encompasses several regions with distinctly different climates: Northern Plains, Trans-Pecos Region, Texas Hill Country, Piney Woods, and South Texas. Generally speaking, the part of Texas that lies to the east of Interstate 35 is subtropical, while the portion that lies to the west of Interstate 35 is arid desert.

Texas ranks first in tornado occurrence with an average of 139 per year. Tropical cyclones can affect the state, either from the Gulf of Mexico or from an overland trajectory originating in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Those originating from the Gulf of Mexico are more likely to strike the upper Texas coast than elsewhere. Significant floods have occurred across the state throughout history, both from tropical cyclones and from stalled weather fronts.

Northern and western sections of the state average snowfall annually due to their colder average readings each winter. For one week in February 1956, a snow storm of historic proportions struck northern Texas. The maximum amount measured was 61 inches (150 cm) at Vega with Plainview receiving 24 inches (61 cm) in one day. El Paso, in Far West Texas, received 22.4 in (57 cm) of snow during a 24-hour period December 13–14, 1987. For central and southern sections, snowfall is considerably more unusual. In February 1895, a large area of southeastern Texas received over 12 inches (30 cm) of snow, with peak amounts near 30 inches (76 cm) at Port Arthur. More recently around Christmas of 2004, up to 13 inches (33 cm) of snow fell along the middle coast, with the maximum occurring at Victoria.

The worst cold snap to occur statewide occurred during the last half of December in 1983. Four stations recorded their longest continuous readings at or below 32 °F (0 °C) on record. At Austin, the temperature remained at or below freezing for 139 hours. At Abilene, the period at or below freezing totaled 202 hours. Lubbock saw temperatures at or below freezing for 207 hours. The Dallas-Fort Worth airport measured temperatures at or below freezing for a total of 296 consecutive hours. Snow which fell on December 14 and 15 across northern Texas stayed on the ground until New Year's Day of 1984.

And now it's the year 2021, Jake Mammal and Oliver Cuttle find themselves in another Texas cold snap.

Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. (born August 3, 1977) is an American football quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League. He spent the first 20 seasons of his career with the New England Patriots, where he was a central contributor to the franchise's dynasty from 2001 to 2019. Brady is widely considered to be the greatest quarterback of all time.

Super Bowl LV was an American football game played to determine the champion of the National Football League for the 2020 NFL season. The National Football Conference champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the American Football Conference champion Kansas City Chiefs, 31–9. The game took place on February 7, 2021, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, the home stadium of the Buccaneers, marking the first time that a team hosted a Super Bowl. Due to COVID-19 protocols limiting the stadium's seating capacity to 25,000 fans, it was the least-attended Super Bowl.

The Buccaneers' victory was their second and made them the only team other than the Baltimore Ravens to be undefeated in multiple Super Bowls. They finished the regular season with an 11–5 record and a wild card berth to advance to their second Super Bowl appearance through the guidance of several new acquisitions, most notably veteran quarterback Tom Brady in his first season away from the New England Patriots.

Jake Mammal and Oliver Cuttle discuss Tom Brady's legacy, in addition to Texas secession and crypto currency. It's another wild ride.

THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE!

Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway is an American political consultant and pollster, who served as Senior Counselor to the President in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. She was previously Trump's campaign manager, having been appointed in August 2016; Conway is the first woman to have run a successful U.S. presidential campaign. She has previously held roles as campaign manager and strategist in the Republican Party, and was formerly president and CEO of the Polling Company/WomanTrend.

Conway lived in Trump World Tower from 2001 to 2008 and conducted private polls for Trump in late 2013 when he was considering running for governor of New York. In the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, Conway initially endorsed Ted Cruz and chaired a pro-Cruz political action committee. After Cruz withdrew from the race, Trump appointed Conway as a senior advisor and later campaign manager. On December 22, 2016, Trump announced that Conway would join his administration as counselor to the president. On November 29, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Conway would oversee White House efforts to combat the opioid overdose epidemic.

Since Trump's inauguration, Conway has been embroiled in a series of controversies: using the phrase "alternative facts" to describe fictitious and disproven attendance numbers for Trump's inauguration; speaking multiple times of a "Bowling Green massacre" that never occurred; and claiming that Michael Flynn had the full confidence of the president hours before he was dismissed. Members of Congress from both parties called for an investigation of an apparent ethics violation after she publicly endorsed commercial products associated with the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump. In June 2019, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel recommended that Conway be fired for "unprecedented" multiple violations of the Hatch Act of 1939.

Conway announced in August 2020 that she would be leaving the White House at the end of the month. This came after months of a public feud between herself and her teenage daughter, Claudia, who lambasted her in the media, politically and personally, and threatened to seek legal emancipation.

Jake Mammal and Oliver Cuttle discuss Conway's latest Tweeter debacle.

Out with the old and in with the new, the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States took place on January 20, 2021, before noon (EST), marking the commencement of the four-year term of Joe Biden as president and Kamala Harris as vice president. The inaugural ceremony took place on the West Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. and was the 59th presidential inauguration. Biden took the presidential oath of office, before which Harris took the vice presidential oath of office.

"America United" and "Our Determined Democracy: Forging a More Perfect Union"—a reference to the Preamble to the United States Constitution—served as the inaugural themes.

Jake Mammal and Oliver Cuttle discuss the flurry of executive actions President Biden signed during his first three days in office. The thirty executive actions Biden took in the first days of his administration include: halt funding for the construction of the border wall, reverse travel ban targeting largely Muslim countries, impose a mask mandate on federal property, ramp up vaccination supplies and require international travelers to provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test prior to traveling to the US.

Parler is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service. Journalists have described Parler as an alternative to Twitter, and users include those banned from mainstream social networks or opposing their moderation policies. Launched in August 2018, Parler markets itself as a free speech-focused and unbiased alternative to mainstream social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

On January 8, 2021, two days after the storming of the United States Capitol, Google announced that it was pulling Parler from the Google Play Store, contending that its lack of "moderation policies and enforcement" posed a "public safety threat". Also on January 8, Apple informed Parler that they had received complaints about its role in the coordination of the riot in Washington D.C., the existence of "objectionable content" on the service, and that they had observed that "the app also appears to continue to be used to plan and facilitate yet further illegal and dangerous activities", in violation of Parler's own guidelines forbidding such content. Apple requested Parler submit a "moderation improvement plan" within 24 hours or face removal from the app store. On Parler, Matze posted that Parler would not "cave to pressure", and accused Apple of being anti-competitive. Apple followed through with their warning the next day, removing Parler from the app store on January 9. Apple CEO Tim Cook later explained that in the company's view, "free speech and incitement of violence" do not have "an intersection". Cloud communications company Twilio ended service to Parler, which made the service's two-factor authentication system stop working; Okta also denied them access to their identity management service, resulting in Parler losing access to some of their software tools. In addition, the database company ScyllaDB terminated its relationship with Parler, who had been using Scylla's Enterprise database.

On January 9, Amazon announced that it would suspend Parler from Amazon Web Services, effective at 11:59 p.m. PST the next day. Echoing Google's rationale for dropping its version of the Parler app, Amazon said that Parler's failure to police violent content made the site "a very real risk to public safety". Parler went offline when Amazon withdrew its cloud computing services as scheduled.[6][86] On January 11, Parler sued Amazon under antitrust law, saying that the suspension of services was "apparently motivated by political animus", and had been carried out with the intention of benefiting Twitter by reducing competition.

Jake Mammal and Oliver Cuttle discuss the implications of such a shutdown, in addition to UFO and alien documentation recently released to the public. 

On January 6, 2021, thousands of insurrectionists and rioters supporting United States President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn his defeat in the November 2020 presidential election stormed the United States Capitol. After breaching multiple police perimeters, they occupied, vandalized, and ransacked parts of the building for several hours. The insurrection led to the evacuation and lockdown of the Capitol building and disrupted a joint session of Congress assembled to count the electoral votes and formalize President-elect Joe Biden's election victory. What a way to kick off 2021, right?

Jake Mammal and Oliver Cuttle discuss what 2021 will look like. Are there better times ahead? Jake and Oliver get sidetracked with alien and UFO discussion, but what good discussion doesn't veer off into extraterrestrial talk?

The year of our Lord 2020 has been one heck of a year. 2020 was a leap year that started on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2020th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 20th year of the 3rd millennium, the 20th year of the 21st century, and the 1st year of the 2020s decade.

2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Geospatial World also called it "the worst year in terms of climate change" in part due to major climate disasters worldwide, including major bushfires in Australia and the western United States, as well as extreme tropical cyclone activity affecting large parts of North America and the United States. A United Nations progress report published in December 2020 indicated that none of the international Sustainable Development Goals for 2020 were achieved.

Jake Mammal and Oliver Cuttle reminisce over the best, worst, and top events that occurred in the year of our Lord 2020.

In December 2020, Texas GOP Chairman Allen West alluded to secession after the Supreme Court denied a lawsuit spearheaded by the Lone Star State seeking to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. West rebuked the SCOTUS in a statement, saying that "law-abiding states" should "form a Union" after the decision to deny the lawsuit set forth by Texas. Seventeen additional states and over one hundred congressman had backed Texas' effort to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Each of the four states played a key role in securing Joe Biden's win.

"The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 U.S. congressman, has decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences," West said after the ruling. "This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the U.S. constitution and not be held accountable."

"This decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic,"  West continued. "Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution."

Texas is already home to some of the largest public and private companies in the United States. Additional companies are fleeing the expensive coastal states in droves to relocate to the Lone Star State. Influential members of society, such as Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, have also packed up and moved to Texas.

With Texas secession on the horizon, Jake Mammal and Oliver Cuttle discuss how great Texas already is, in addition to what the future holds for the ever-growing region.

TikTok, known in China as Douyin, is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance. The social media platform is used to make a variety of short-form videos, from genres like dance, comedy, and education, that have a duration from 3 to 60 seconds. It is an international version of Douyin, which was originally released in the Chinese market in September 2016. Later, TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China; however, it only became available worldwide, including the United States, after merging with another Chinese social media service Musical.ly on August 2, 2018.

Various governmental agencies and private businesses have imposed bans on the video sharing service TikTok. India and the United States have cited concerns about the app's ownership by the Chinese company ByteDance and have attempted to ban it from app stores, though in the case of the U.S. this ban has been halted in a legal dispute between TikTok and the Trump administration. In Indonesia and Bangladesh, the app has banned citing concerns with pornography.

Jake Mammal and Oliver Cuttle held out on joining the social network for as long a possible, but all good things must come to an end. In the year of our Lord 2020, Jake and Oliver joined TikTok. Jake Mammal discusses his experience with the social network, alongside Oliver Cuttle.