Hello.
It is officially cold enough for cozy sock season, but stuff still happens.
So what's up?
Imagine getting a million dollar speeding ticket.
A man in Georgia was caught going 90 in a 55 and received a speeding ticket from the state.
The cost of the ticket was 1.4 million dollars.
When he saw this he was like, oh what?
What?
And so he called the state for some clarity.
Upon calling the court, they said, well, you can pay it or show up in court.
So he showed up in court.
It turns out that that was a placeholder number and the maximum fine was actually $1,000.
The state has since said that they're going to adjust their placeholder to avoid confusion in the future.
Imagine being the person who was like, yeah, we need to put a random number here to just hold the space until we figure out how much to actually charge people.
1.4 million dollars seems to make sense.
That certainly won't cause anyone to become radicalized.
A vote known as the Voice was recently held in Australia.
It was a measure to give indigenous and First Nations people more representation in the state.
The idea was to give them an actual mechanism to influence policy and just give them more rights in general.
A yes vote would have been to do that and a no vote would have been to not do that.
And no won by about 20 points.
Now, of course, this is mostly a country turning its back on the people who they marginalized to settle their land.
Because it is.
There is a contingent of First Nations people who reject the basic premise, though, saying that they don't want to be included in a constitution made by a state that doesn't represent them.
Regardless of interpretation, the fact remains that Australia and many countries across the globe have a lot of work to do to do right by their native peoples.
We do not speak of the speaker in this house.
And neither do Republicans.
The Republican controlled House of Representatives in the U.S.
is still in complete disarray as they haven't been able to select a speaker for over 10 days now.
First, it was going to be Steve Scalise, but he pulled out.
And now the current front runner is Jim Jordan.
But a lot of people don't like Jim Jordan for a lot of reason.
Jim Jordan has allegations in his past about him helping to cover up sexual assault against students that he oversaw in college.
This makes him a pretty good face for the Republican Party, similar to how Bob Menendez is a good face for the Democrat Party.
However, Jimothy is not actually all that popular in his own party, being very far right and Trump-aligned and, you know, participating in the whole January 6 thing.
And so a lot of his party is not willing to vote for him.
Democrats have also said that they're not going to vote for him for obvious reasons.
And so he might just not have the votes.
There's also murmurings that he might force a vote to happen sooner than they're ready,
which could potentially result in a Democrat being elected to Speaker of the House.
That would be an actually hilarious twist of fate, even if it's not going to really change much.
A content warning for this next segment.
I will be discussing death and the death of children.
There will not be pictures and I will not be graphic, but I will be discussing the ongoing situation between Israel, Palestine and Hamas.
I want to start off by saying in no uncertain terms that Israel is an apartheid colonizer state
and is not representative of the general will of global Jews around the world or even its own citizens.
It is a political power armed to the teeth and backed by the West that has been assaulting Palestinians for decades.
There is no drawing a line between the conflict.
Palestinians have suffered significantly more than Israelis in this conflict.
After the attack on the Israeli people by Hamas that left over a thousand people dead or captured,
Israel has responded by killing far more people than that.
This is what Israel does whenever they're able to get the world on their side to further their ethnic cleansing.
Of course, the attack on innocent civilians is horrific.
However, Israel has responded with war crimes.
They have cut off food, water, power, points of egress, internet access and basically all hope from the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza Strip is home to over 2 million human beings.
The average age there is 18.
The excuse that Israel will use for their actions is that they need to eradicate Hamas from the region.
They'll point to the fact that Palestinians put Hamas into power by voting for them.
What they won't note is that that election happened nearly 20 years ago.
And again, the average age there is 18.
The following numbers are almost assuredly a severe undercount of the deaths.
But at time of recording, there have been 724 child deaths reported so far among the 2,200 people that have been killed by Israel.
This already exceeds the death toll from the Hamas attack.
So is that enough?
Famously, an eye for an eye fixes everything.
Millions of people are currently trying to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip and aren't able to get anywhere
as points of egress are either blocked off or being actively attacked.
And during all of this, Israel has the unwavering support of the United States and many other western nations in doing all of this.
US Democrats still strongly support Israel and for some reason US Republicans who are typically saying that America needs to be less involved in global affairs want America to do more here.
I can't put my finger on why.
Huh.
Really just a humdinger.
As always, I recommend seeking out and uplifting black and indigenous voices on this matter.
Their perspectives will be more rooted in lived experience and cultural understanding in the face of a never-ending effort to whitewash, defang and recontextualize the history that led us here.
I find it unsurprising but disappointing that America, a country founded on colonization, genocide, slavery and apartheid,
and who teaches all of us that that was a big no-no that we should never do again,
is supporting what's going on here.
Again, unsurprising but disappointing.
I want to close out this statement by saying in no uncertain terms that criticizing the state of Israel is not an anti-Semitic act.
On this day in 1793, Marie Antoinette was executed by guillotine as a result of the French Revolution.
She was the final queen of France before her neck got a little bit too close of a shave.
Marie Antoinette is famous for her let them eat cake quote, which is surprising because pretty much everybody agrees that she never actually said that.
The moral of the story here is don't be French royalty unless you've eaten the chop chop fruit.
Lightning round.
Twitter is further cracking down on sex workers and adult content, limiting its reach and essentially trying to make it so that they can't really operate on that platform very well.
After a nearly two year long saga, Microsoft has officially closed their deal purchasing Activision Blizzard.
That is a lot of intellectual property under one company.
It's giving Disney.
Speaking of gaming, somewhere, somehow, someone purchased a brand new Wii U in 2023.
It is reportedly the only new Wii U that was sold since May of 2022.
The Wii U is a good console with terrible branding.
And finally for today, Netflix plans to open up brick and mortar stores, which is inherently hilarious, but they're not going to be like a movie rental place.
It's going to have experiences and shopping and food, all of which will be related to like Netflix IPs.
I'm a little scared.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
I had to stuff keeps happening to online for sources, bonus content and unbelievable deals on unbelievable items.
My name is Endeavorance.
I'll be back on Wednesday.
Take care and be well.
And also don't forget to leave a review and also share this with people.
Thank you.
OK, bye.