Hello, I picked a pack of pickled peppers,
but stuff still happens.
So what's up?
Some children's snacks got a little too spicy.
Supermarket chain Little has done a recall
on some Paw Patrol themed snacks,
which is gross to begin with,
stop advertising to children.
But they did a recall on that
because those boxes have a URL on them
that leads to a site that shows a bunch of porn.
Just, hey kids, put this in your phone.
When you go to the site on a desktop,
it's just like a placeholder boarding website.
When you go on your phone, however,
it shows a bunch of hardcore porn.
So you don't want your kid to do that.
Speaking of keeping kids from porn,
God, when did this become the topic of the month?
All right, so last episode I talked about Australia
deciding to not require ID verification
in order for their citizens to watch porn
due to the obvious privacy issue.
Well, now a federal judge has struck down a Texas law
that would have done exactly that.
Republicans in Texas have joined their Republican colleagues
in Utah and Virginia and Louisiana and whatnot
to pass a law that requires you to verify yourself
with the government using a central government database
before you're allowed to watch porn.
Quoting the concern from the judge,
permissible age verification
is using a traceable government issued identification
and the government has access to it
and is not required to delete the data,
just what we've always wanted.
The judge has struck down the bill,
I wanna be very clear that this is not the end,
they're already fighting back.
They very much want to encroach on your rights
because it's impossible to just talk to your children
about healthy boundaries.
The judge that struck down this bill also noted
that you can use filtering and blocking software,
which is much more effective and proactive
and doesn't require a massive invasion of privacy
for all adults in the state, wild.
Let's talk about the very soggy burning man.
The soggy man.
You have probably already heard,
but if you have not,
burning man has turned into a literal disaster.
If you're not familiar with burning man,
it is an annual festival in the middle of the desert
where everybody shows up and builds a temporary city
and sets a big effigy on fire,
but mostly just do a lot of drugs and have a lot of sex.
It is very popular among affluent people
who want to cosplay as poor people.
Where once it was about art and counterculture,
it's now mostly about status and going to burning man.
Like literal celebrities go to it
and also a ton of tech bros
who just wanna do ayahuasca in the desert.
Anyway, there was a rainstorm
and also they're not just in a desert,
they're in an ancient lake bed.
So the rainstorm has activated the soil underneath them
and created something like worse than mud.
Basically it is mud that is way stickier than mud
and you cannot even walk on it
without it just completely covering your shoes
and engulfing you.
You certainly cannot drive.
And so now emergency vehicles and supply vehicles
cannot get in or out.
Porta potties are overflowing,
emergency services cannot access the festival grounds
and someone has already died.
There are also reports of additional deaths,
but we can't really get the information on that
because nobody can get in or out.
Notably the festival being destroyed by inclement weather
happened after climate protesters blocked the highway
to get to the festival.
They were protesting the fact
that there's a bunch of people using private jets
to go to burning man in the desert
and pretend to be environmentally conscious.
Among, you know, many other reasons
to protest for climate change.
Anyway, cops did their cops thing
and rammed their barricade with the protesters right there.
Just took a car and rammed through the barricade.
Not even stopping, not first approaching them
and trying to disband them peacefully,
just ramming their barricade.
That cop then got out of his car,
immediately drew his gun,
started pointing it at the protesters
who were just being peaceful protesters
and started to drag them around and yell at them.
The cop having a temper tantrum is now under investigation
for an excessive use of power.
I'll let you know when he gets his raise.
Oh, speaking of cops doing cop shit,
let's talk about the NYPD spying on you with drones.
So in America, it's Labor Day
and there's gonna be a lot of celebrations.
And if you're doing a celebration on Labor Day
and you're being a little noisy,
the cops might use a drone to spy on you.
See, NYPD has just like way too much money
and for some reason they have surveillance drones.
And while previously they were like,
don't worry, we're not gonna use it to spy on you,
they have now said that they're going to deploy those drones
if they get stuff like noise complaints
so that they can investigate
without having to get off their asses.
But don't take my word for it.
Here is assistant NYPD commissioner, Kaz Dautry.
Quote, if a caller states there is a large crowd,
a large party in the backyard,
we're going to be utilizing our assets
to go up and check on the party.
According to a report from N-Gadget,
the NYPD has deployed drones 124 times in 2023.
This isn't theoretical,
the cops are using drones to spy on you.
Do they need a warrant?
Who cares?
I do, they don't.
On this day in 1666,
the great fire of London hit its peak.
The fire was burning through the city
towards the Tower of London,
which had a lot of gunpowder reserves.
In a desperate attempt to stop the fire,
people stationed at the Tower of London
took the gunpowder and blew up a bunch of buildings
to make a fire break.
I love using explosions to stop fire.
Anyway, it kind of worked.
The fire also consumed St. Paul's Cathedral
and caused the lead roof of the cathedral to melt,
which is quite literally metal as hell.
Lightning round.
Jimmy Buffett has passed away at the age of 76.
To deal with privacy concerns from the EU,
Facebook and Instagram are considering a paid ad free tier.
To deal with not having legs,
Metta has been working on adding legs to the avatars
in their VR metaverse that nobody cares about.
Researchers have trained an AI
to predict what something will smell like
based on its chemical compounds.
And that's one of the best uses of AI I've ever heard of.
I wanna know what stuff smells like.
Self-driving cars in San Francisco are causing chaos.
One person is dead after the cars were blocking
emergency vehicles and just not moving.
The cars were operated by a robot taxi company
that residents of San Francisco have vocally said
they don't want to have.
But the SF board said, nah, we'll expand the program.
There was a show of hate from literal Nazis
near Orlando, Florida over the weekend.
This is your reminder that it is a moral imperative
to punch Nazis in the mouth.
The studio behind Baldur's Gate 3 has said
that the characters you can recruit
were accidentally too horny because of a bug.
X slash Twitter's privacy policy has been updated
to confirm that they will be using your data
to train their AIs.
This includes any art you've posted,
any photos you've posted of yourself,
and anything you've written on Twitter.
Steve Harwell, the lead singer from Smash Mouth,
has entered hospice care.
He's only in his 50s,
but he's got liver failure due to alcoholism.
He lost his kid really early.
He's had it kinda rough.
And finally for today, we have confirmation
that Trump's trial from Georgia
will be live-streamed for free on the internet.
So that's gonna be kind of,
that's gonna be bazonkers, y'all.
Thank you so much for listening
to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to StuffKeepsHappening.online for sources,
bonus content, and a coupon for free.
My name is Endeavorance.
I'll be back on Wednesday.
Take care and be well.