Hello. I wore my comfiest pants today.
But stuff still happens.
So what's up?
Threads is hanging on by a thread.
That joke has been- I'm sorry, that was too easy.
After a bombastic launch,
Threads has already lost like half their user base.
Who could have seen this coming?
This really should not be a surprise,
because Threads was not really a normal social media launch.
Like it was sort of an extension of Instagram.
It's really just a standalone app version of like
what could have just been a new tab in Instagram.
And so yeah, they had incredible sign up numbers.
And it looked like it was going to be this amazing, amazing thing.
And then like a week later, half the user base was gone.
Weird. Almost like it was hype and a one click sign up flow.
Now I don't think that Threads is going away.
I don't think that Threads is dead by any means.
In fact, I think Threads is going to be around for a long time.
I also think that Threads has a pretty decent chance
of ending up just being rolled into the main Instagram app.
Like I would not put a pass to them to just make a new post type.
That's just called Thread.
And then just incorporate that into the normal feed.
Like that seems like a better product, honestly.
But what do I know?
I've only spent the past half of my life building consumer software.
Anyway, at the end of the day, Threads wanted to try to become
the new default place to post things online.
And I just don't think it ever really got there.
I mean, I still don't think I don't think it's ever going to get there.
I think Instagram is still just that space.
But hey, we're all talking about Threads.
We're all talking about AI.
And we all forgot about the metaverse, which is because they did too.
I want to talk about the ongoing coup situation in Niger.
But before I get to that, I do want to have a quick aside.
I know it's also Niger.
I'm going to say Niger.
I have an ongoing struggle with knowing what to refer to countries as.
Like, should I say Mexico or Mexico?
I am a Native American English speaker, and in American English, it's Niger.
But apparently locals say Niger.
And so is it appropriate for me to say Niger or is it insulting for me to say Niger?
Um, I don't know the answer to that.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say Niger.
Okay, so there's a coup going on in Niger.
The presidential guard took the president captive.
Uh, some Western countries are not calling it a coup yet.
That sound, it passes by coup bar.
I'm going to start this by saying that a lot of the reporting around this is going to be
very heavily biased, especially from the West, who were the ones that were colonizers in Niger.
The state is used as sort of like a Western stronghold in the area to fight enemies of the West.
And so disruption of that state is of course going to piss off the West.
Specifically France and the U.S. who are the primary subjects here.
There are protesters on the ground who are saying essentially fuck France and also they're saying
like they're supportive of Russia and Russia is in return supportive of them.
And that global geopolitics is a mess.
And also of course no populace is unanimous.
Like it's not like every single person in that state wants this to happen.
But again, it's a mess.
And so now since the coup is essentially anti-EU, anti-U.S. sentiment,
the West is saying like we're going to stop giving you aid payments,
which was really our way of kind of paying you off to let us use you as a proxy.
This is a very ongoing and confusing situation.
And I encourage you to keep an open mind and put yourself in the shoes of somebody who's
living there and be careful about just taking everything at face value from Western outlets,
including myself.
The Pentagon is not happy today for multiple reasons.
So one, there is a dude.
He's an engineer.
He was working in the Department of Defense and he stole a bunch of communications systems
and communications and administrator keys and a whole bunch of stuff he shouldn't have.
He just kind of had it back in his house where he was storing it.
And then they found all of it.
He's going to super jail, but this never should have happened in the first place
because there were people already blowing the whistle on this guy like a long time ago
and they didn't catch him.
Anyway, here's a quote from the warrant that describes this man.
He, quote, sold radios and radio equipment, worked odd hours, was arrogant, frequently
lied, displayed inappropriate work behavior and sexual harassment, had financial problems,
and possessed classified equipment.
End quote.
Sounds like a cool guy.
The other reason the Pentagon is big mad today is because they found out that there's Chinese
malware like embedded in a lot of our critical systems, especially like energy infrastructure.
And we don't know when they could activate it.
Cool.
Technology.
Oh, speaking of technology, I apologize as I'm about to go off.
Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the company that makes, no, I burp.
Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the company that makes chat GPT, but he's got a side
project called Worldcoin.
Worldcoin is being pushed by a company that calls themselves tools for humanity because
of course they do because unchecked tech bro hubris is among one of the most predictable
diseases on the planet.
So this guy is like, I'm going to make Worldcoin a cryptocurrency that's based on proof of humanity.
We scan people's biologics and get them access to the cryptocurrency.
This means that it's a cryptocurrency that's supposed to supplant the entire global economic
system by using your biological footprint to determine if you have money.
Rather, it uses your biologics as like your wallet.
But that means that like all of your money is directly associated with your fleshy body.
When posed as a sort of like boon to humanity in a way to get people UBI, it's very easy
to be like, oh, this is a good idea.
And then if you think about it for more than half of a second, you realize how bad of an
idea it is.
But tech bros do not think about it for more than half of a second.
They say, ooh, here's an idea.
I'm going to save humanity because that's my purpose on this planet as a smart white
man.
Anyway, it turns out people don't want to look into the literal orb that they built.
They have an orb that scans your iris to get access to a cryptocurrency.
People weren't super into doing that.
And so they started going to countries with a lot of poor people and they were like, hey,
we're handing out money.
Stand in line and let us do this thing real quick and you'll get money.
And so they onboarded about 500,000 people who didn't really know what the fuck was
going on.
And they're like, yeah, this is a huge victory.
We're making world coin is a thing.
Look how many people already signed up.
There are already black market sales of world coin biometric scans to have multiple identities
in world coin.
It's so predictably bad.
This upon a time, the tech sector made a pretty okay cell phone and now every single dude
on the planet has to revolutionize the world and disrupt an industry every fucking day.
Otherwise, I don't know, we might be happy and not have to worry about economics for
a minute.
I don't know.
It's truly a mess and it's really wild how it's always the same guy, not the literal
same guy, but it's the same guy on this day in 1715, 11 ships carrying treasure back
to Spain from the new world sank in a hurricane for the coming months afterwards, a bunch
of sailors and pirates and privateers tried to get as much of that treasure as they possibly
could.
And to this day, some of that treasure can wash up on the shore.
But here's the really important part.
This event was the opening scene of Assassin's Creed Black Flat.
So thank you history for giving me the good pirate game lightning round.
Elon Musk put a giant flashing X sign on top of their headquarters and didn't have a permit
and also it's shoddily held there by like sandbags.
And also also it flashes towards an apartment building.
And so people who are living there are just like fucks real swell guy.
Carly Russell, the woman who's at the center of the fake kidnapping story that went viral
recently is currently being investigated and charged.
Her attorney has stated on her behalf that this was all made up and she was acting alone
and it's just a very weird story.
Trader Joe's has recalled multiple items this week alone, including fully cooked falafel,
which quote may contain rocks.
After beefing with and then forcibly removing moderators, Reddit is now asking for more
moderators.
NASA is launching NASA Plus, a streaming service that's going to have free ad-free space
content because everything has to be plus.
Come watch Stuff Keeps Happening Plus on my live stream today.
Fans at Taylor Swift's concert in Seattle both nights danced so hard that it registered
as a 2.3 magnitude earthquake.
This stadium is kind of famous for having these quakes when the fans go wild.
If you are a fan of Path of Exile, Path of Exile 2 has now been announced to be its own
standalone game where previously it was supposed to be a huge expansion, it's gotten so big
that it's now going to be standalone.
And finally for today, Moscow was hit by a drone strike the night before they were going
to have a military parade and they're saying a whole bunch of stuff about nuclear retaliation.
Don't freak out, they say that literally all the time.
They shouldn't.
Eh?
But don't freak out.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Had to Stuff Keeps Happening online for sources, bonus content and melty cheese on a pizza.
That's where the cheese goes.