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“I'm kind of in shock. I wanted to feed Mundy and Tara close together. And so I fed Tara over here. She picked up her food and brought it right over to the fence line here so she could be eating with Mundy. So you tell me what that means. I think that is really good.”

“The dominant political story of the year has been the 270-day-long speakership of Representative Kevin McCarthy, whose slim majority in the House of Representatives has enabled a far-right rebellion to exert more weight over the lower chamber. The battle between the rebellious Freedom Caucus and McCarthy has been at the heart of an averted debt ceiling crisis and the annual budget debate nearly devolving into a government shutdown, all culminating in the removal of McCarthy on October 3rd.”

“2021's inflation surge moderated in 2023, while the Federal Reserve continued to raise its interest rates in the first half of the year. The Federal Reserve raises interest rates by 0.25% from 4.5% to 4.75% during its February meeting. This followed a period of intense focus on fiscal policy and banking stability after the failure of several regional banks.”

“The rise of artificial intelligence and large language models dominated not only the economy but has also been at the root of a Hollywood double strike conducted by Writers Guild of America and a SAG APTRA strike. These were part of a larger phenomenon of labor strikes across the country, in which such large diverse groups, such as Teamsters and Auto Workers won new contracts.”

“Mass shootings in 2023 have also continued in high numbers, with 528 occurring as of October 2 according to Gun Violence Archive. Events included a mass shooting inside a house in Enoch, Utah, where eight members of a single family were killed, and another at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California, where eleven people were killed following a Lunar New Year celebration.”