Hello.
I produced this whole show for you.
Because stuff has happened.
So what's up? There it is!
Paid Twitter.
We knew this was coming and they're trying to make it not appear like a big deal, but it's...
We know what they're doing.
Twitter will begin testing their new Not A Bot feature in the Philippines and New Zealand.
This feature requires you to verify your phone number and pay an annual subscription fee in order to use Twitter.
Without giving them your phone number and credit card information, you can read tweets, but you can't post anything.
The subscription is currently priced at $1 a year, in theory making it just a verification that you can provide a credit card.
Which famously stops bad actors.
They don't have money.
Or any stolen credit cards whatsoever.
But fear not, because Ol' Musky says this is gonna help fight bots on the platform.
Again.
Never mind all the other things that were supposed to help fight bots on the platform.
This one's gonna do it.
Just give me your phone number and credit card information.
To use Twitter.
It's gonna be a good idea.
I would like to remind you that there was a time on the internet where you didn't have to constantly prove your identity and use your real name everywhere just to be able to, you know, use services.
I know it's weird, but you used to be able to just like make an account somewhere and...
Use the internet.
Somehow things didn't just absolutely implode, but it was notably harder to track you and constantly sell ads to you.
I also find it frankly insulting that they're like, nah, this is just a subscription to help fight against bots and it's only a dollar.
Don't ask questions. Just start paying for Twitter. Let's normalize it.
Anyway.
Jimothy ain't it.
Uh...
In the US House of Representatives.
Nailed it.
US Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio made a play for Speaker of the House yesterday, forcing a vote before he actually had all of the votes in hand.
Jordan is a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, the very far right group within the Republican Party, which is a very far right group.
The Freedom Caucus is who booted the existing Speaker of the House, and now they're putting forth their own guy.
And they're basically saying, we'll continue to tank any efforts unless you put our guy up front.
This does not sit well with some holdouts in the Republican Party, and 20 of them yesterday did not vote for Jordan, which didn't give him enough votes to win.
He can only afford to lose three votes from his own party.
So he's got a bit of a ways to go.
This is far from over. He can continue to call votes forever, basically, until he eventually wins.
Oh, and also for some reason, Sean Hannity and other Fox News personalities are getting involved with representatives trying to convince them to vote for Jim Jordan.
You know, that very normal thing that should be going on for our representatives, who are supposed to represent people.
I guess one could make an argument that Sean Hannity is people.
That'd be a long shot argument.
Well, the CIA fucked up, and also Twitter fucked up.
They kind of both fucked up.
So on Twitter, if you have a URL in your profile and it's too long, it might get truncated.
They'll like cut off the last few letters and just put a dot dot dot there or something.
Well, the CIA's Twitter profile, which is a gross sequence of words, has a link in their profile that goes out to a Telegram channel to securely give them information if you want to be an informant.
That link got shortened by Twitter.
And so while the link is supposed to be T.me slash securely contacting CIA, it is instead shortened to T.me slash Shirley Contt.
A security researcher noticed this and got that URL pointing to their own Telegram channel.
So if someone didn't actually click the link, but instead like copied and pasted it or saved it for later, they would have a URL that took them to a Telegram channel that was not actually the CIA.
Don't you love it when a major intelligence agency uses a URL on a privately held platform to point to a different privately held platform to give them information?
That's how all of this should work.
What a real country. What a real Internet.
I have an unfortunately horrifying update to share about the situation in Gaza, a hospital in Gaza that was packed to the brim with people who were trying to recover from the ongoing attacks on the strip has been bombed.
More than 500 people have been killed and it is just an absolutely devastating scene.
Israel claims that the bombing happened from a misfire from militants in Gaza.
Palestinian officials claim that it was Israel who bombed the hospital, to which Israel says, nah.
Basically, every international power has just reaffirmed their existing stance on who they side with and blaming the other side.
There's also a lot of outcry talking about how Biden hasn't been doing enough to further peace talks in the region.
And so it's his fault. There's both Russia saying that and also Republicans and some Democrats are saying that in the U.S.
Biden will be heading to Israel to reaffirm his support for the state.
And he was originally going to be meeting with leaders of Jordan as well.
But that meeting has been canceled because they basically said there's there's no resolving this with a talk with Biden right now.
The U.S.'s stance on the hospital bombing is that it seems like it wasn't Israel.
But that's about as far as they've gone. They said that they'll need some clarifications.
Cool, guys.
Meanwhile, the U.N. is saying stop hurting citizens and stop issuing evacuation orders that are impossible to follow.
Stop it. That'll fix it.
On this day in 1867, the United States formalized their purchase of Alaska from Russia.
They purchased the big old swath of land that looks like a dude kind of like doing a kick for seven point two million dollars,
which in today's money is about one hundred and fifty one million.
This day is now observed as Alaska Day in the state.
However, native Alaskans are not happy about that.
They've made it clear that Alaska was never Russia's to sell to begin with.
And so the U.S. shouldn't have been able to buy it to begin with.
There's been an ongoing push that's been gaining steam over time to replace Alaska Day with Reconciliation Day.
Lightning round.
YouTube is rolling out a whole bunch of updates across all of their apps,
and they're also rolling out new measures to try and prevent you from using ad blockers.
Reddit is winding down their crypto based community points system because lol crypto.
SpaceX is currently in talks with Israel about deploying Starlink internet access into the conflict area.
Apple has rolled out a new Apple Pencil.
It's the Apple Pencil USB-C, which is confusing because there's the Apple Pencil 1, the Apple Pencil 2, and the Apple Pencil USB-C.
Well done, guys.
LinkedIn will be laying off about 700 employees in a joke that is too easy, and I'm going to go ahead and pass on it.
Speaking of layoffs, Bandcamp has laid off about half of their employees as the sale from Epic to Song Trader has finalized.
The Bandcamp union is not happy about this and is going back to Epic for a bargain.
And finally for today, the record for the world's hottest pepper has been broken with a new pepper called Pepper X.
It is reportedly three times as spicy as the Carolina Reaper, and it's like made by the same people who made the Carolina Reaper.
They also apparently made it like 10 years ago and just kind of sat on it, and they're like, eh, we'll reveal it eventually.
A quick update from me, it must be a day that ends in Y because I am updating my streaming schedule once again.
I'm going to be streaming on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
For exact times, take a look at my social profiles.
I'll be posting the schedule later today.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to StuffKeepsHappening.online for sources, bonus content, and a long ramble about my family's history before actually getting to the recipe that you're looking for in the first place.
My name is Endeavorance. I'll be back on Friday.
Take care and be well.