Hello. I wore the beanie that my Twitch chat picked out.
But stuff still happened.
So what's up?
Um, shit's on fire.
Or it was.
And also will be.
We'll get to it.
But in LA, there's currently a state of emergency because a fire completely
engulfed Interstate 10.
Okay, maybe not the whole interstate, but a chunk of it was engulfed by a fire.
And now it's closed.
The fire did not start on the interstate.
It started nearby and made its way over to the road.
But once it got there, it was like, oh, yeah, I could take a joy ride.
Unfortunately for us, fire taking a joy ride isn't great.
First responders worked hard to take care of the fire.
And there's people in hazmat suits, like evaluating what's going on.
There's like structural engineers making sure that it's safe for cars to go vroom
vroom on the bridge.
But it's still closed.
According to Gavin Newsom, governor of California, there is a 24-7 operation on
this, and also people are encouraged to work from home to not have to drive on it.
And with this interstate closure, they're worried about all the traffic that's
going to go elsewhere now because roads are such good infrastructure.
Anyway, the world is zero sum.
And since that fire was taken care of, it's time for a volcano to erupt in Iceland.
If you were not aware, that's how that works.
Apparently.
All right.
Iceland, right?
Okay.
So they have a corner and that corner is the Southwest.
And in that Southwest corner is a volcano that's going to erupt.
Why does my brain work that way?
I don't know.
You're just going to have to deal with it anyway.
This volcano is due to erupt and they know this because there have been over a
thousand earthquakes leading up to it.
While many of these earthquakes were very small, you typically don't want to
ignore a thousand earthquakes.
Oh, also like a gaping hole just kind of appeared in a town somewhere.
So they're like, okay, uh, maybe we should get out of here.
A small town of a few thousand people near the volcano has been evacuated.
And at this point, they're just waiting.
Well, it was originally considered that this might be a pretty dangerous
eruption. The latest that I have seen from scientists on the ground there is
that it might actually be less of an intensive eruption than expected.
Where it as bad as it could be, it could have actually impacted the air quality
of like the entire Northern hemisphere, but they're not really expecting that
to be the case.
It's possible, but they're there.
It's not likely.
So instead, instead of like a whoosh, it might be more like a poop.
If you, if you, if you know what I mean, you know what I mean.
Tesla pissed off Swedish workers.
You're not supposed to do that.
Tesla workers in Sweden are demanding for Tesla to accept a proposal for
collective bargaining and have a contract with the union.
Tesla headed by Elon Musk is famously anti-union.
Musk actually went as far as to once get in trouble for posting on Twitter, a
threat to his own employees.
When his employees were considering unionizing, he was found guilty of union
busting there and then he appealed the decision and it was upheld.
But now in Sweden, over a hundred metal workers have walked off the job at
places that service Tesla vehicles.
And in a show of solidarity, other unions are jumping in.
Doc workers are refusing to deliver Teslas.
There are painters unions that are refusing to paint Teslas.
Basically anybody who can is lending their solidarity.
Additional unions are threatening to join in over the coming weeks.
If Tesla continues to not listen to the collective bargaining, they will
essentially continue to pile on until Tesla does the thing that virtually
all employers in that region already do.
They have been referred to by trade organizations as not a serious employer.
If you're an American watching this, by the way, listen to the
words that I have said here.
It is standard procedure to have a trade union that fights for your working
conditions in other countries.
Standard.
It's also standard to get like multiple months of PTO per year.
That's, that's not the case in America, but I digress into the end of that segment.
A content warning for this next segment.
I'll be discussing the ongoing situation in Gaza.
I will not be graphic.
Israel is continuing their outsized retaliation on the
civilian death toll in Gaza has risen past 11,000.
There's 11,000 lives that have been snuffed out about half of whom were children.
Recently, Israeli forces stormed one of the last operating hospitals in
the evacuated region where doctors, nurses, and other caretakers were
taking care of active patients, including newborns.
These hospital staff members chose to stay behind despite evacuation orders
to take care of people who couldn't otherwise be treated.
They are risking their life to stay there and take care of others.
I have read reports of doctors in the hospitals attempting to help
patients during active shelling.
Israel maintains that Hamas is secretly operating underneath the hospital.
And so they need to continue to attack it.
They have not provided any proof for that.
And that is a claim that they have made many, many times in the past,
not just in this conflict.
It is exceedingly rare that Israel actually provides proof for their
claims of why they need to go and attack a hospital.
Now, I am not in the business of trusting what Hamas has to say.
And their response to Israel claiming that they are there is, nuh-uh.
But I do not care.
My tax money is going towards military support for this operation against my will.
Shouting Hamas while pointing at something does not make me want to
give you the thumbs up to bomb hospitals.
And I would hope that most people would want a little bit more evidence
before being like, yeah, I'm going to go to the hospital.
Yeah, send military into that hospital where there's babies and sick people
trying to live in the region that was told to be evacuated because bombs are happening.
I want to say in no uncertain terms and with absolute honesty,
that the amount of respect I have for these caretakers in that hospital is immeasurable.
You are an inspiration.
The world would be a better place if more people shared the heart of those caretakers.
On this day in 2022, the Earth's population crossed eight billion, an estimated population.
No one actually counted.
Well, we kind of counted.
I mean, we sort of counted.
We, we, it's a, we crossed the mark.
Okay.
The United Nations dubbed that day the day of eight billion, which is not a very
creative title, but it makes sense.
Also, apparently, even though nobody asked, the Philippines picked a baby to be
the symbolic eight billionth person.
They're like, ah, that one.
That's the eight billionth one.
Lightning round.
As the details of the recently won SAG-AFTRA contract has come out, people are a little
spooked because the actual protection for AI doesn't really go far enough.
There were dissenting voters and several thousand members of the union are not super
happy about the wording.
So we shall see if that goes back.
A Jewish school in Montreal has been targeted by gunfire twice in the past week.
This is a reminder that anti-Semitism is not AIT and is a reminder that you can be
critical of Israel while not being anti-Semitic and a reminder that most people
who are critical of Israel are not anti-Semitic.
Cool.
Moving on.
The U S House of Representatives has just voted to pass a bill that would extend
funding for the government a little longer.
Again, the shutdown has been moved out by a couple of months.
Again.
And also the Republicans tried to vote against their own thing.
Again.
There were 95 dissenting votes, 93 of whom were Republicans on their own proposal.
It's expected that the Senate is going to pass the bill and we're not going to have a
shutdown, but we're going to be right back here in the new year.
So there you go.
Nepal has banned TikTok, citing that it is, quote, detrimental to social harmony.
I cannot say I disagree.
Speaking of wildly popular social networks, Donald Trump's Truth Social has apparently
lost $73 million since launching last year.
And finally for today, if you have a PlayStation 5, you can pick up Sony's new
handheld PS5 streaming device, which streams from your PS5 to the device.
And that's it.
And I, what?
It's like a steam deck, but you have to have a PS5 on a network and accessible to play it.
What?
What is even happening anymore?
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to Stuff Keeps Happening.online for sources, bonus content, and an endless supply of ice water.
My name is Endeavorance.
I'll be back on Friday.
Take care and be well.