Hello
I inserted a coin to continue playing,
but Stuff Still Happened.
So what's up?
DeepSeek is a whale of a time.
Let's talk about AI,
and also let's talk about the US
just getting absolutely embarrassed.
As far as marketing goes,
"AI" and "ChatGPT" are effectively synonymous in America,
and the creators of ChatGPT, OpenAI,
just got a big investment from the new administration
to the tune of like $500 billion.
It's not like a direct investment,
it's like a venture to give them support
to do more AI things.
But basically we just put a $500 billion price tag
on trying to improve AI,
while trying to position ourselves
as the leader of the world in technology.
Part of the efforts to make sure
that we are the leader in the world
is to sanction countries that we're afraid of like China,
and make it so that they have worse access to chips
that are crucial for AI development.
Except those sanctions kind of accidentally led
to the production of a new breakthrough AI from China
that beats the hell out of OpenAI.
And it's open source, which is hilarious,
because OpenAI is entirely about selling subscriptions
to their software.
So DeepSeek AI,
they are a Chinese AI research company
that's funded by just like a dude
who was like, we've got this hedge fund money,
let's just pour it into AI, whatever.
Like whereas OpenAI has massive giants like Microsoft
and Oracle behind them.
This is just a dude with a hedge fund.
Granted it's a hedge fund, it's not like it's a small thing,
but there are other AI companies in China
that are backed by massive names like Tencent and ByteDance.
And this is still exceeding them.
So what the hell is this?
Essentially working within the constraints
of not having top of the line chips to work off of,
they just amassed a bunch of less powerful chips
and found a new way to do training
to be more effective on those chips.
The result is an AI that works kind of like chat GPT
that is more effective
and just kind of beats it in every metric.
It's cheaper, faster, it takes less energy to run,
it's more accurate and more capable in math.
And it's just out there for anyone to use.
And while OpenAI is like,
nah, you can't have our secret sauce.
So this has Silicon Valley abuzz.
They're all like, "oh no, how did this happen?"
"It must have been the Black people."
Yes, they're going after DEI.
That is their excuse for why
they just got absolutely trounced.
They're like, well, clearly China got ahead
because Silicon Valley is doing too many DEI initiatives
because they have exactly one line and can never face their own inadequacy.
To be clear, tech and AI especially
are horribly dominated by men,
just absolutely dominated.
I'm talking like abysmal levels of representation
of minorities and women, like 20% or less.
And so efforts that have been going on to say,
"hey, maybe there are more people"
"who can offer something to tech"
"besides nepo baby white dudes,"
that's been viewed as an attack on them.
They're like, "oh, my divine right!"
"My divine right to have this job is under jeopardy!"
because someone else might get it.
And I don't actually fit in a meritocracy.
They will shout meritocracy till the cows come home.
I think that's how that phrase works.
But they're just mid is the problem.
So we got to get rid of all those "Others."
Anyway, one other note about this,
and just to drive home,
how embarrassing all the AI stuff is.
Sam Altman, the head of open AI,
one, never actually got a computer science degree,
and two, carries around a backpack
that he claims has like an AI doomsday button in it.
Like if something goes awry,
he presses this button to shut it all down
and he's the one in control.
It's so lame.
And when I went to go look up articles about this thing,
if you search about Sam Altman's backpack,
all you get are AI generated articles
talking about how Sam Altman is a genius.
It's very wack.
Anyway, DeepSeek R1 is like number one
on the app store right now.
And this is just a funny moment.
Maybe next they'll open source a backpack for us all.
Let's talk about policy.
As a reminder, I am not going to be talking
about moment to moment updates about everything
that comes out of this current fascist's mouth.
That is not helpful.
That doesn't do anything,
but raise your cortisol levels and scare people further.
I don't think that there exists a person out there right now
who has heard this man talk
and hasn't made up their mind about reality.
Instead, I'm gonna be focusing on telling you
about what is actually happening,
like material changes that matter.
So here we go.
The first one is a sub-subcommittee
for subcommittee subcommittees.
During the previous congressional session,
there was a bipartisan,
it was just like a Democrat thing,
bipartisan led endeavor to investigate the January 6 riots
and be like, "Hey, this is not a thing
"that should have happened."
And here's the information as to like just how bad
it actually was.
Quick reminder, there were weapons caches found around DC.
It was a coordinated effort by militias.
They were trying to actually overthrow the government,
like in favor of Donald Trump.
God, I still can't get over that people are in favor
of Donald Trump, of all people.
Quick aside, I guess, like what?
I've spent my whole goddamn life
watching this man get lambasted
for being a terrible businessman and horrible liar.
How did we end up here?
Anyway, subcommittee.
The January 6 subcommittee
from the last congressional session ended
and they were like, "Here's a bunch of footage
"you didn't see before,
"and here's a bunch of stuff you didn't know about before."
And now in this new session,
they're making another January 6 subcommittee
to investigate that January 6 subcommittee
and try to like prove that they were wrong
to prove the things they proved.
Real cool, real cool.
Next up, the Justice Department has said,
"If you are tired, poor, yearning to breathe free...
get bent."
They have directed that any legal service
that receives federal funding must stop helping people
at immigration court.
So people who are seeking immigration to the US
are now stuck trying to fill out forms
in a foreign language with no legal counsel,
while also we're actively trying to deport them all.
I wanna note the US Constitution,
Article 6 does ensure the right to an attorney,
but that only counts for criminal cases.
Speaking of mass deportations, they're happening.
Now upfront, people are really trying to do a gotcha
about how like Obama and Biden also deported
like tons and tons and tons of people, millions.
There is a difference in the method that does matter,
but also doesn't really, because fuck both of them
for also doing all those deportations.
But if we put that aside and accept that everything
is kind of a sliding scale and gray area and whatnot,
there's a big difference here.
Which is that they are intentionally going after
as many people as they can in a shock and awe fashion
and treating them like hardened criminals,
shipping them on military aircraft in handcuffs.
And so some of the countries that have been receiving
these flights are like, "Hey, what the fuck?"
Like you're sending military cargo craft to our airports
filled with citizens who are handcuffed.
These are migrants, not criminals.
And so the Colombian president sent back one of the planes
and was like, "Nah, we'll accept them when you send them
here with dignity."
To which Trump then said, "Well, I'm gonna put tariffs
on you and also clear out your visas
and also add additional scrutiny to all Colombian citizens
coming through customs."
Real normal, just things that are normal.
The Colombian president actually sent a really good
clap back letter to Trump that I highly recommend you go read.
I've linked it in today's newsletter,
but ultimately reversed course and started to accept
the flights.
My read of the situation is that these other countries
are not happy about this.
They are loudly signing to the rest of the world like,
"Hey, this is really happening and this is how they're doing
it, that's not okay."
But something they don't want to do is just play further
with the lives of these citizens.
We're not talking about an empty airplane being sent back
and forth, we're talking about human beings with lives
being rounded up and shipped back and forth,
and they don't want to contribute to that.
Now, I also want to say that the use of military aircraft
to do deportations is absurd, one, and two, far,
far more expensive than civilian aircraft.
Any deportation is expensive and we shouldn't be doing it,
but using military aircraft and time to do it
is an insane waste of money, especially because we're using
it to get rid of people who power the economy
and pay taxes.
Again, undocumented people pay taxes.
Anyway, I want to clear something up.
I want to talk about a thing that I didn't know
and now you can know from having not known.
There's a stat out there that the Trump administration
really, really liked as they were campaigning
and they are putting it everywhere they can,
which is that a vast majority, like over 60% of US adults
approve of mass deportation.
I remember seeing that stat and just my heart.
It took a long time to recover.
Here's the thing.
I wholly disagree with deportations going on, really at all.
I don't believe that it makes any sense
to consider a human being to be illegal on planet Earth.
But if we try to get into the mindset
of people who are being asked these questions,
I can understand someone who is hearing
a ton of anti-immigrant rhetoric.
They're scared, they're confused,
and otherwise don't have a lot of time to pay attention.
And so when they're asked,
"do you support the deportation of undocumented migrants
who were convicted of a violent crime?"
they'll probably say yes.
That is the full survey question.
Undocumented people who have been convicted
of a violent crime.
If you just say undocumented people,
the support for mass deportations plummets
down to basically just the Trump base,
which you're never gonna get below that anyway.
So yes, there are more people than there should be
who are in support of any notion of mass deportation,
and that's gross.
But it's not the average American
just wishing that all brown people were being deported.
It feels that way, because they're loud and terrible,
and it doesn't matter what citizens want,
because the administration that's now in power
is doing the whole deporting everyone,
regardless of what anyone wants.
They're also especially targeting blue areas,
places that did not vote for this policy.
There was a raid in New Jersey recently
that was a warrantless raid on a private business
where they were like,
"Hey, we think you have undocumented people here."
They detained American citizens
under suspicions of not being American citizens.
New Jersey voted overwhelmingly against this policy.
They didn't want this, and it's starting there.
Now it's for shock and awe,
but it's also so that people in red states
who did vote for this can see it on TV
without it actually impacting
their local community and economy.
At least not yet.
It's gonna happen soon enough,
but right now they're getting their PR.
That's all they're getting,
and that's all they need to manufacture further consent
for more.
Anyway, I'm spiraling.
If you want a no-nonsense way to keep up
with the movements of the Trump administration,
I highly recommend checking out
the Associated Press' campaign promise tracker.
It's just a grid of the things that he said he would do
and what he has done in those spaces, if anything.
Last thing for policy, DOGE.
It's just rebranded USDS.
The USDS, the United States Digital Services,
was established by Obama to fix the healthcare.gov website.
Remember that whole fiasco?
They essentially were like,
hmm, we should probably have some people in the government
who are not absolutely terrible at programming.
So they hired on some programmers,
they fixed some stuff, they stuck around,
and they started doing more digital upgrade stuff.
Now, with Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency
that Elon Musk is supposed to head
is literally just that with a different name.
The executive order verbatim just renames
the existing USDS.
So what this means is that the Department of Government
Efficiency is less about slashing $2 trillion
from the government, like they said they would,
and more about upgrading some software, maybe.
We'll see.
They're gonna do as much destruction as they can,
regardless, but it's mostly just IT.
Now, of course, there's also the executive order
that tries to state that everyone is either male or female,
and ha ha, the executive order accidentally classifies
everyone as female technically
because they don't know anything about anything.
None of that matters.
The impact of the executive order
trying to erase trans people, that does matter
because it's more fuel on that fire.
But the whole wording of the bill
and whether or not it's accurate,
not something to dwell on.
They don't care.
The people who they're trying to please got the message.
So, yeah.
Reminder, never try to gotcha a Nazi.
They don't care.
Hey,
this takes a lot of work.
And I really, really, really appreciate
that you all are supporting me doing this.
It means the world to me.
If you want to take it a little further
and continue to support me more,
sharing this huge helps a ton.
But you can also sign up for a paid subscription
at skh.news starting at $5 a month or $50 a year.
Or you can check out my merch store,
merchfrom.dev
There's stuff that you can purchase there
to look real cool and support me.
I've also got a Patreon with a ton of backlog
of bonus content and whatnot.
I just recently posted the January Q&A video.
It's a long one.
So, you know, there's that.
I hate plugging even my own stuff.
So that hurt.
Let's move on.
Corpo watch.
That was my, this one has an intro theme.
Hey, remember when Walgreens and Target
and a whole bunch of other companies were like,
hey, there's too much shoplifting going on.
That's why we're raising our prices.
So we're gonna start putting all this stuff
behind locked doors,
but only in places with high Black populations.
That little ditty?
Well, now they came out and they're like,
well, fuck, that was a bad idea.
Cause it turns out when you put locks
on things that people want to buy, they buy less of it.
So the Walgreens CEO on an earnings call was like,
yeah, we done fucking goofed.
Oops.
Meanwhile, at Netflix,
you better get your Arcane in now
because they're raising their prices.
Again!
Right after announcing record subscriber numbers
between the whole no sharing passwords thing
and live sports events like the Jake Paul, Mike Tyson fight,
which why?
Record subscribers, record subscription.
LIGHTNING ROUND
Y'all, we got rid of the murder Hornets.
They're gone.
After Elon did his very obvious Nazi salute on stage
in front of the entire world to see,
a bunch of communities on Reddit have decided
to block any links to Twitter slash X.
Rolls Royce is part of a contract
to build a nuclear submarine for England
to the tune of 9 billion pounds.
The currency not weight.
Better be a nice sub.
A January 6th writer who was pardoned by Trump
was arrested basically a day later
for outstanding gun charges.
And finally for today, Colorado's Supreme court
has ruled that although the elephants in captivity
at the Colorado Zoo are indeed majestic,
they can't have lawyers apply for petitions
for their freedom because they're not people.
They didn't have a trunk to stand on.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode
of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to skh.news for sources, bonus content,
and your own anti-AI backpack.
My name is Endeavorance.
I'll be back on Monday.
Take care and be well.