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Hello, you beautiful podcast listeners. This is Endeavorance. I just wanted to record a quick heads up.

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The fourth story of today's episode does talk about animal abuse.

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I don't go into specific details about the abuse, but there are mentions there.

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So just a fair warning that's in this episode. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy

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as much as you can. Take care, be well, I'll see you in the next one.

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Well, I guess I won't see you. You'll hear me in the next one. All right.

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Bye bye. Hello. I wore a comfy sweater today, but stuff still happens. So what's up? Victoire!

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The strikers did it good. They did great. The writer strikers, the ones who were the writers that

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striked, they did good. And they reached an agreement with Hollywood executives that

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shouldn't have taken this long. Let me try that again. The writers guild have won their strike,

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tentatively. After months of striking, they reached an agreement with Hollywood executives to get

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concessions on, you know, paying them what they're worth. Weird. This could have happened at any time

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and only didn't happen because of corporate greed. They were not asking for very much. They were just

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asking to be paid for their work. Contractual wins include better royalty payouts, protections from

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being replaced by AI, and protections from just like malicious cancellations of shows. The

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executives thought that they could starve out the people who actually make the art that they profit

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from, but it turns out the worker solidarity outlasted the executives desire to fuck them over.

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Won't somebody think of the poor shareholders? Oh, but speaking of companies doing dumb shit in the

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face of striking workers, Ford is hitting pause on their 3.5 billion dollar electric vehicle battery

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plant that they're going to build in Michigan. Despite literally billions of dollars in publicly

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funded subsidies for this facility to be built, Ford is citing the striking auto workers as like,

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oh no, we can't build this facility because it's too spooky because because the employees might not

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be there. As opposed to, you know, reaching a deal with the workers who would staff the building

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that you're being subsidized to build. Quoting the ever fire United Auto Workers president Sean

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Fain, this is a shameful, barely veiled threat by Ford to cut jobs. We are simply asking for a just

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transition to electric vehicles and Ford is instead doubling down on their race to the bottom.

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Notably in the face of this decision, the state of Michigan is like, okay, but what if we just

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throw more money at Ford? Maybe they'll build it then. I love that. I love it when all of our

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taxpayer money is being given to private companies to do things that the private companies can just

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decide not to do. That has worked out in the past many times and has always resulted in good things.

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So the big cops are now investigating the little cops in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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You haven't heard Baton Rouge, which is a police department that's largely known for being

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horrible, has been using a warehouse to torture people. They refer to it as the Brave Cave and

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they take detainees there and do horrific things to them because that's what cops do. If you were

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here to argue that isn't what cops do, I would point to the fact that this is what cops are doing.

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Now the Baton Rouge Police Department is no stranger to scandals. They have them all the time.

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In fact, their current police chief was brought on after a massive scandal in 2016 and he was

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supposed to clean up the department and quoting him, this is a literal quote, there were some

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mistakes made. Although the police chief did say that when he found out about the torture warehouse,

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he went to the FBI himself and he was like, hey, investigate this, I guess. But for some reason,

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I find it hard to believe that the literal police chief was not aware that he had cops in his

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department taking people to a warehouse. Like there's footage. What? It remains to be seen

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what's going to happen as a potential fallout from this. But hey, maybe we shouldn't have people in

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positions of authority who can do that. And hey, maybe when people are saying all cops are bastards,

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it's because they're referring to people participating in a broken system that is viewed

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as irredeemable. But I didn't go to police boy school, so maybe I'm just not aware about the

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extremely helpful method of torturing people in a warehouse. Maybe that's just, you know, that's

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just good cop behavior. You may have already heard about Neuralink, Elon Musk's company that's trying

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to develop a brain implant chip for humans to control computers or whatever. And you've

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probably heard about how they've been doing a lot of animal abuse and they're testing for that. But

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you may not be aware of just how bad it actually is. While Musk has been publicly trying to downplay

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the effect that they've been having on these animals, saying that they've only been testing

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on animals that are near death anyway, and that they're doing everything they can to minimize harm,

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that's just straight up not true. A report from Wired, which did a bunch of actual investigative

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digging and talking to employees and whatnot, found that they just brutalized a bunch of monkeys

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and other animals, thousands of them. I will not go into the specific details about what was done

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to these animals, but suffice to say, it's horrific. And they were essentially made to live in

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excruciating pain for weeks on end until ultimately being euthanized. The SEC is potentially

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investigating the just absolute lies from Musk as he was trying to sell Neuralink to investors

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and whatnot, just lying about the animal abuse and the danger of the thing that they're building.

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I want to be clear that brain implant technology has incredible potential when approached like

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ethically and from a standpoint of improving human health and capability. There are a ton of

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people who have things like locked-in syndrome, who are otherwise bedridden and can't communicate

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with the world. Having something in their brain that would allow them to communicate more easily

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would be incredible. And that's just one extreme example. There are a ton of actually good medical

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applications, and there are also existing firms that are working to make this stuff

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with better results. But again, a lot of the focus is on Musk because of course it is. And

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in very Elon Musk fashion, he's just pushing back on any notion of doing things safely in the hopes

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of just making something flashy. I'm looking forward to the medical benefits from places that

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are doing this for the purposes of medical benefit and not beaming ads directly into your brain.

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On this day in 1975, Spain used the death penalty for what is hopefully the last time in the history

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of their country. They executed five people who were members of anti-fascist and separatist movements,

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and that sparked international outrage and almost condemnation from the U.N. I say almost condemnation

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because while there was a proposal to condemn Spain and their use of the death penalty in this case,

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the United States stepped in and was like, well, hold on now. After the United States intervened,

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ultimately what was put out was just a generic statement about human rights that didn't even

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mention Spain specifically. To this day, the United States remains in the vast minority of

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countries that still use the death penalty. Lightning round. Marking the fifth year anniversary

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of popular streaming service dropout, they will be officially canning the college humor brand.

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U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has said that she would raise the retirement age

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for social security benefits for only young people. She's previously said that 65 is way too low of

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a retirement age. An EU report has found that Twitter has the highest ratio of false information

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and Russian propaganda from any of the major social platforms. Game engine company Unity has

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U-turned on a lot of the stuff they were doing with their new pricing model, but it might be a

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little too little too late. Reddit is now looking into potentially being able to pay out to users

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via Reddit gold after all that stuff that happened with the protests on their website recently,

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and they lost a bunch of traffic. It's not great for them right now. Amazon Prime Video is going

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to start having ads because of course they will. And finally for today, a judge has ruled that

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Donald Trump committed billions of dollars worth of fraud over and under inflating the value of his

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properties to benefit him depending on the scenario. Elevating his value to get loans and

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deflating his value to avoid taxes. The Trump organization may have to entirely dissolve. We

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don't quite know yet. We're going to see that unfold over the next couple of weeks. And hey,

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an announcement. I will be attending Packs Unplugged December 1st through 3rd in Philadelphia.

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I'll be there doing content stuff, so that's pretty exciting. And if you see me, come say hi.

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Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head to

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StuffKeepsHappening.online for sources, bonus content, and a big light in the sky.

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My name is Endeavorance. I'll be back on Friday. Take care and be well.