Hello. I put my thing down, flipped it, and reversed it.
But stuff still happened.
So what's up? It Eclipse. It's Eclipse Day.
It's time there's an eclipse today.
Um, a sort of a total one. Totally an eclipse.
If you're in North America, you're almost definitely aware,
possibly on the road or already where you're at to go look at the sun.
Do that carefully. Y'all, I'm serious.
Like, I'm I'm for I'm for so serious right now.
Sunglasses aren't enough. Use the big boy eclipse glasses.
It's important.
So the scientific explanation of an eclipse is it's when the moon goes in front of the sun
and punches it in its stupid butt-ogly face,
and then the sun's like, I've been hit! I've been hit!
And then it runs away, never to be seen again for a few minutes.
It doesn't leave us forever. Like, some people.
But yeah, if literally any bit of the sun is visible,
don't be looking at it with your fleshy, fleshy eyes. Like, it'll just burn them.
And then you won't be able to see.
And if you can't see, then how are you going to see why kids love, uh,
the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?
Not sponsored. I hope that's not Kellogg's. Is that Kellogg's?
It's General Mills. All right, we good.
Anyway, have fun looking at the sun. Do it safe.
Uh, I guess have fun looking at not the sun.
It's pretty wild. I was at the 2017 one in the path of totality, and it's it is weird.
It does get noticeably cooler and then like birds stop singing and is, is weird.
Keep up the boycott because McDonald's is big saw-wee.
McDonald's has reached an agreement to buy back all 225 locations that they have in Israel.
Those locations have been operated by a franchisee in the region who has been vocally supportive
of the occupying army of Israel as they commit a genocide against the people of Gaza and Palestinians at large.
They've been giving free food and donations and whatnot to the IDF,
and people haven't been very happy about that, and they've been protesting McDonald's.
And it's working. They are buying back from this franchisee all of these locations
in the hopes that this is going to help at all.
Little too little too late, y'all.
But of course, uh, McDonald's business operations are not the primary news coming out of that region right now.
There's been a lot of really horrible shit.
In a recently published testimony from Israeli intelligence officials,
they talked about an AI system that they've been using to determine who to kill in Gaza.
Using a computer to figure out who they should kill next.
That's normal. That's cool.
Yep, they also talked about the complete willingness to just have a ton of civilian casualties
that they were just fine with that. They vocally fine with that.
Beyond that, of course, seven aid workers were recently actively targeted and murdered by the IDF,
with multiple consecutive airstrikes targeting the known whereabouts of marked aid vehicles.
They were literally working with Israel to coordinate their movements,
and they were viciously attacked.
And so this has put US officials in a bit of a bind.
It's really difficult to do this many backflips at once.
You gotta explain how this isn't a war crime, right?
And it's, it's, they're having some trouble.
If you are a creative writing student, this is a great opportunity.
Because our leadership could seriously use your help in figuring out how to connect these plot points.
As for the rest of us, we'll just have to continue to suspend disbelief.
Hey, that's a nice record you got there, YouTube.
It'd be a shame if someone shattered it, and it'd be a shame if it was Discord.
Ha ha!
Discord accidentally shattered YouTube's record for the most number of views in 24 hours on a single video.
It was their April Fool's joke?
They, they popped a video that said that they were adding loot boxes to Discord,
which would be funny if it wasn't a thing that they might actually do eventually.
But they popped up a video for everybody using Discord with their April Fool's gag,
typical tech company April Fool's gag.
But they didn't ever actually unload the video when you closed out of the pop-up,
and it was also set to loop.
So it was just silently looping in the background.
And so everybody who was on Discord on April Fool's day was essentially bot netting YouTube,
just silently adding to the view count of this video in the background, all day, constantly.
And it's like an 18 second video or something like that.
It racked up over a billion views in 24 hours,
obliterating the previous record, which was held by, well, yours truly.
Follow me on YouTube, and if you're watching this on YouTube,
So congrats on your newfound success, Discord.
You are, you're truly a YouTuber now.
Maybe you can use this new clout to fix your mobile app.
After you go for a hike, it's important to check for ticks.
And it's also important to check for blue check marks.
Sometimes they just latch onto you and you don't want that.
It's not good.
They carry a lot of diseases.
If you recall, after Elon Musk accidentally purchased Twitter,
one of the first things he did was make it to the blue check mark,
just meant you're paying him a monthly subscription to use Twitter,
and not you're an account that's noteworthy.
This became an embarrassing symbol, because it just meant I'm an active Elon Musk stan.
Please look at my check mark.
It was so embarrassing that they actually rolled out the ability to hide the blue check mark,
even if you paid for it.
And now they've changed course.
Twitter started to put blue check marks on notable accounts,
accounts that had enough of a following of verified subscriber accounts.
Doesn't matter.
Point is, people started getting blue check marks again,
against their will, and it caused panic.
People are so against being seen as a person who likes Elon Musk
that there was actual distress when they got a blue check mark.
Hey.
Get off Twitter.
On the topic of Musk, the real quick bonus thing,
Reuters published a really in-depth piece about how Tesla is pivoting their business strategy
away from an affordable EV and towards robo-taxies.
This move being in response to other companies catching up
and making cheaper EVs more accessible and Tesla can't keep up,
so they're trying to figure out what to do.
And this made Musk all sad and angry.
And so he just tweeted being like,
Oh, we're going to make an announcement and Reuters is lying.
He was like, yeah, no, yeah, maybe they published that article,
but I'm just going to give a vague sense that we're going to make a big statement.
And they're lying.
Trust me.
And also, of course, he posted that right after markets closed,
but that's besides the point.
Anyway, at this point, having a Tesla is like the physical real life version of a blue check mark.
So I don't know, dog.
In gaming news, Final Fantasy 14 is having their housing lottery,
because even in the world of video games,
we cannot escape the housing market in 2024.
If you are a player of the critically acclaimed MMO with a free trial
that includes the entirety of a realm reborn
and the award-winning Heavenshorn expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime,
you'll be able to put in your bid on an in-game house all throughout this month.
And finally, live the dream of maybe having a house.
You could be a digital homeowner.
Completely different vibe.
If you haven't heard the story around this game, potions a curious tale.
Let me fill you in real quick.
Renee Gittens, who is a TikToker and, well, just general internet person,
has been building this game for like 10 years.
And it's been a solo effort as far as I'm aware.
She finally released it on Steam on International Women's Day this past month.
And everything was looking good.
But this is me.
I'm EA right now.
This is me being EA.
And what EA did was they were like,
hey, it's International Women's Day.
Let's release like a dozen re-released games on Steam.
Ha ha.
So Renee released the game and then EA was like,
we're gonna take a big old dookie over all the store.
And they just buried her.
This is of course heartbreaking and not very International Women's Day of them.
So she went to TikTok and told her story, which went pretty dang viral.
She got a bit more of the attention that she deserved,
but I would say that the game still deserves more attention.
So if you are interested at all in like cozy, approachable, fun games,
and you like the theme of witchy potion stuff,
which is all the way up my alley, check out Potions of Curious Tale.
Not sponsored.
I just like indie game developers.
Lightning round.
What the fuck?
Massive shock.
Trump is suing his co-founders of Truth Social
right after they went public and then the stock crashed.
OpenAI made a voice cloning tool thing that they claim works too well.
Cool guys.
Great. All right.
While North America is having a total solar eclipse,
Europe is working on making artificial solar eclipses.
They're going to launch a space telescope thingy
that can make its own solar eclipses so they can look at the corona of the sun.
Not the beer.
Bernie Sanders Vermont office was set ablaze.
It's being investigated as arson.
You know those Amazon like just walk out stores that you just like pick up items and walk out?
And they claim that it was AI tracking you and putting together your cart for you.
Well, one, those are going away.
And two, turns out the AI was a thousand workers in India watching you on cameras.
Artificial intelligence.
Google killed their podcast app because it was an app made by Google.
Two planes at Heathrow kind of bumped into each other on the runway.
Just a little love tap.
Just a little aerial love.
And finally today, speaking of the air,
the White House has asked journalists to stop stealing stuff from Air Force One.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to StuffKeepsHappening.Online for sources, bonus content,
and further instruction on just how safe you should be when you're looking at the sun.
If you are listening to this on some form of podcast app that has some form of rating system,
I would greatly appreciate if you left a rating and review.
It would very much help me out.
Thank you so very much.
My name is Endeavorance.
I'll be back on Monday.
Take care and be well.