Hello
I ordered the special exactly as it comes,
But Stuff still Happened.
So what's up?
Dear listener,
I— scheduling
Scheduling announcement.
This is gonna be the last episode of
Stuff Keeps Happening
until May 5th.
I'm gonna be taking a
bit of an overdue vacation.
I'll be around, but as for this series,
this will be back in May.
Let's go.
First up, I mean, it's
gonna be the tariffs.
Last week, Donald Trump put
a massive amount of tariffs
on basically every country in the world,
including uninhabited ones.
That's not a joke.
Like he's, he put tariffs on penguins.
The tariffs were far too aggressive,
despite him saying that this
was him going easy on them,
and seemed to have been calculated
by just completely misinterpreting
how macroeconomics works.
Like confusing trade
deficit with like trade policy.
It's okay to have a trade deficit.
That doesn't mean a,
that's not a bad thing.
A trade deficit just
means you're buying more
than you're selling.
It does, that's all.
There are going to be countries
in which we buy more than we sell.
That's just how it is.
Anyway, so the tariffs are bad.
Who would have thought?
If only anyone said anything
about this ever.
Dear God.
Anyway, yeah, he put up the
tariffs and the stock market.
*sad stock market sounds*
It went, "Woo-wee-wee!"
It was just kind of like, "Ah!"
It's really bad.
That's, those are my stock sounds again,
and we're back to the stock sounds.
To put it in numerical terms,
bad.
In the first half day of trading
after the tariffs went live,
we went back a year in the stock market.
A year worth of gains wiped out,
purely because Donald
Trump, a half dead con man,
doesn't understand
how tariffs work still.
And no one was willing
to tell him to stop this.
This is a massive own goal.
And the entire world is laughing at us
and trying to figure out
how to not deal with us
moving forward, which is not good.
It's not like, "Ah-ha-ha!"
Now they're gonna have
to be self-sufficient.
It's a, "Oh, fuck,
Everything is gonna cost way more money."
It's estimated that the
average American household
is gonna be spending
thousands of dollars more per year,
like cars, electronics, food, everything.
Raw materials,
everything's gonna be more expensive.
It's wild.
Just a few weeks ago, people on the right
were talking about
how they were expecting
to get checks from the government
because of how much
money Doge was saving.
They thought the government
was gonna cut people checks,
like another round of stimulus checks,
thousands of dollars per citizen somehow.
And just a few weeks later, now it's,
and you're gonna be paying thousands of
dollars more a year.
Deal with it.
I wish I could give analysis and
thoughtful discussion
and let's try to
understand this and see where we go.
That's just not possible here.
These tariffs are just dumb.
No one wanted this.
No one was ready for it.
We are not ready as a country
to bring back manufacturing.
And you don't bring back manufacturing
by cutting off access
to all supply lines.
Like I can see how a moron would think
that that would bring back manufacturing
because they aren't
considering the broader picture,
which now makes a lot of
sense given the president.
And China, Japan, and South
Korea are working together,
which is whack.
Trade policy's so bad
that China, South Korea,
and Japan are working together.
Yee-haw.
Anyway, if you're pissed,
you can have gone to a
protest over the weekend.
Let's talk about those.
Protests broke out across
the United States en masse
at 1,300 plus locations to
the tune of millions of people.
The protests were largely peaceful.
There have not really been any reports
of any kind of like
widespread violence or retaliation
from cops or counter protesters.
And largely just a
lot of people showed up.
There were about 500,000 RSVPs
across all of the different events.
And organizers are saying
that they far exceeded that
to the tune of like
an order of magnitude.
In some cases, there
would be 5,000 people
who RSVP'd for an event
and 100,000 showed up.
So that happening across 1,300 locations,
we don't have the tally yet,
but it's pretty significant.
Some estimations put it at close to 1%
of the US population having been out
protesting this weekend.
That is gargantuan.
I know 1% doesn't sound
like a lot, but that is a lot.
My favorite take from
all of this have been
the people who are
not for these protests,
trying to downplay them, being like,
well, whatever, it's not that impressive.
But truly the cream of the crop.
Are the people being like,
don't these people have jobs?
On a Saturday.
You did good, buddy.
You tried.
The other thing I wanna
note about these protests
was that there is a very high percentage
of older white people,
older, really 30 plus.
Older meaning not Gen Z.
Y'all show up for shit.
But there was a lot
of discourse beforehand
among black and other
minority communities,
talking about essentially leave this one
to the white people because one,
protesting as a
minority in the US right now
is life-threatening and two,
white people did this to us.
Like we have Donald Trump
because of white people.
Black people almost
exclusively voted for Harris.
And so they're like,
yeah, no, y'all got this one.
Which is fair because black people,
especially black
women are usually the ones
carrying us over the finish line.
They deserve a break.
But let's keep talking protests
because I wanna highlight
a very big protest going on
that's not in the US.
Now I wanna preface this by saying
I had actually written a half draft.
This was going to be a main
story from a few weeks back.
But then something
else caught my attention.
I don't even remember.
Point being this big.
Because there are massive
record-breaking protests in Serbia
as they are pushing back
against their authoritarian government.
This actually started
back in November of 2024.
And it started with a roof collapsing.
And now they might
overthrow their government.
Like that's the dominoes here.
So back in November,
a roof at a railway
station in Serbia collapsed
and killed 15 people.
And this happened
right after construction
to renovate the station had completed.
The renovation was
slow and behind schedule
and indicative of basically everything
that's been going on
with their government recently,
just not being good for the people.
And so what was a construction mishap,
if you wanna call it that,
has turned into a
massive countrywide protest
against an authoritarian regime
that is not working for the people.
After the collapse,
there was an investigation
and basically nobody
was held accountable.
And people were like, fuck
it, we're done with this shit.
And so as with many protests,
it began with students
blocking access to their campuses.
And that has evolved
into the largest protests
that the country has ever seen.
Just last month,
there was a single protest
that had 300,000 people
taking to the streets,
which broke the record
for their country's history.
And to this day, there
are still ongoing protests.
Unfortunately, it's kind
of a stalemate right now.
The government hasn't really budged
and the protests haven't
really made a lot of progress
aside from getting
people out to protest more.
And so we're just in this holding pattern
until one side breaks.
We'll see, but pretty
much where we're at right now
is both sides are just waiting for a win.
Keep at it, people.
Never give up, trust your instincts.
A wise man told me that.
A wise...
fox...
told me that
Hey, this is a self
promo spot real quick.
You can head to skh.news.
I've got a newsletter, it's free.
You can also support me
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Got a Patreon, it's not free,
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and there's a lot of content there.
Merch store, also not free,
but you get stuff if you pay.
Moving on, gaming.
All right, Switch 2,
let's talk about Switch 2.
It's like a Switch, but
they made another one.
Nintendo did their big
reveal of the Switch 2
and it made a lot of people happy
and a lot of people big mad.
Gamers, let's talk real quick.
Come over here.
All right, gamers, it's
just me and you, all right?
What's up, gamer?
Gamers, can we calm down?
Just a smidge.
I understand that
there's a lot to be upset about
in the world and in the gaming industry,
but can we calm down just a scooch?
We were less than 24 hours out
from the Switch 2 announcement
when people were already
coming into my comments
from last week's video in
which I simply mentioned
that Switch 2 pre-orders were going to go
in effect in April.
And I already got
people in my comments saying,
"The Switch 2 is ass and it's terrible.
Don't buy a Switch 2!"
Y'all...
It's a consumer electronic.
You don't need to pick a tribe.
You don't need to have a camp.
I'm genuinely shocked that
we're still doing console wars,
I guess is where I'm at,
but let's get to the Switch stuff.
The Nintendo Switch 2 is going to be
priced at 450 bucks.
What you get with that is a new device.
It's got a bigger screen, a
1080p LCD screen, not OLED.
It's not an OLED screen,
which is one of the reasons
that the gamers are Big Mad.
It will support up to
120 FPS in handheld mode,
which is wild and I did not expect that,
and up to 4K 60 FPS
output in docked mode.
The dock now has a fan in it
to help cool the device down
so it can do more stable performance.
I will note that they
do say 4K 60 FPS output
in compatible games,
waiting to see what that means.
Aside from that, the
Joy-Cons connect magnetically now
instead of that
chunky, chunky, chunky thing,
which fun story, the
first thing that happened
with my Switch was somebody took it
and put the Joy-Con on backwards
and I thought they broke it.
That was like day one,
the day the Switch came out.
They made the kickstand better.
It's got more internal storage.
They're adding like a video chat thing
that runs like two frames per second.
Doesn't look all that
great, to be honest.
Other than that, like it's
honestly just a updated Switch.
Like it's just, it's a, personally,
I just one day Switch
that could do 4K output
and run games a bit more smoothly.
That's literally it.
Am I giving Nintendo a pass?
Never, fuck Nintendo.
They're extremely consumer hostile
and extraordinarily litigious.
Nintendo is not a good company,
but they do make it a good video, Jane.
But the thing that
has people very big mad
about the Nintendo Switch 2,
is that the games will
cost anywhere between like 60
and $90.
Specifically with an
upcharge on physical media,
as they're trying to push
more towards digital media.
There's new digital
media sharing options,
but like it sucks and it
shouldn't be going this way.
And I agree.
But to be mad about $90 games in 2025
is to ignore the fact
that games have been $60
since like 2005 and
nothing stays at the same price
for 20 years, except for
like the Costco hot dog.
And the only reason
that price hasn't changed
is because the Costco CEO
has threatened to murder you
if you change it.
So yeah, that's a real story by the way.
Anyway, two more quick
things about the Switch too.
It will also be backwards compatible.
Three more things.
It'll be backwards compatible.
They brought back
fucking DS download play.
If you remember that,
there's gonna be
support for having a game
and people can like
download the game temporarily
to their console to play with you.
And that's gonna work on
Switch one too, which is rad.
But also, also we're
coming back to the tariffs.
Nintendo announced that Switch pre-orders
would start April 9th.
And then Trump was like,
"We're gonna do the tariff at you."
And then Nintendo was like, "Oh, sike."
So at least in the US, Switch two
pre-orders are on hold.
First, they came for the
gamers and I said nothing
because I was a scrub.
Second thing for gaming, and
this is a kind of short note,
but they're making Tony
Hawk Pro Skater 3 plus 4s,
like they're the combo game
after they did one and
two earlier and it was good.
They've been announcing the
soundtrack for these games
and people got a little spooked
because it wasn't the exact same
soundtrack as the original.
It eventually came out
that Tony Hawk himself,
Mr. Anthony Hawk is
apparently having a bit of a role
in choosing the soundtrack for this game.
And he's like, "Look, y'all, you can
experience new music.
It's gonna be okay."
He picked a few new
songs from the soundtrack
from existing artists
from the original games.
He was like, "Just
like, listen to more stuff.
Try something new."
And then he had to assure people
that there would be
more of the original tracks
coming soon in further reveals.
Like calm down.
Just kind of gonna
point back to the section
earlier in this video where I was like,
hey gamers, can we come here a second
and just chill momentarily?
Technology, really
medical science, I should say.
How about your brain?
Does your brain like to talk?
You've likely heard of Neuralink,
Elon Musk's like brain implant company
that killed a bunch of monkeys.
There have been a bunch
of other research firms
that have been doing brain
computer interface research
for quite a while.
And there was a massive step forward
in that research recently.
Researchers were able to get
a chip into a person's brain
that was able to
synthesize speech from thought
in about three seconds.
This is a big deal because a
lot of these chips right now
require you to think
through like an entire sentence
that it then has to work on
and figure out what you wanted to say.
And then it spits out what
it thinks you wanted to say.
This new chip can almost
real time speak for you
by just reading your thoughts.
So with basically a three second delay,
it can read what you're thinking,
synthesize it into speech
that sounds like your
original voice and put it out there.
And so this is an amazing step forward
for people with complete
paralysis and locked in syndrome,
anything that prevents you from being
able to communicate.
It also means that we're one step closer
to being able to airdrop
memes to each other's brains
by just thinking,
which is either going to
be the best or worst thing
to ever happen.
Over on Twitter, it's bad.
The EU may hit Twitter with
up to a billion dollar fine
for breaking their digital services act
by fucking with how
like the check mark works.
If you recall the blue
check on Twitter used to mean
this is a verified profile
of somebody who is notable.
It now just means this
person's paying for Twitter.
It caused massive
confusion when people just started
to register blue check marks under
whatever name they wanted.
And that pissed off a lot of people.
It made it a lot harder
to suss out what's real
and what's a bot.
It's a lot worse now.
So the EU was already
planning to find Twitter,
but given that it is a
privately owned platform
and given that must privately
owns other companies as well,
they're using the total sum of the
companies that he owns
to calculate the fine,
which is why they're
potentially going to be doing
up to a billion dollars,
which would be quite funny.
Apart from that, there was a
massive data breach of Twitter
back in January, where about
200 million users got hacked.
A user posted the leaked data
from this recent hack merged
with a hack from January
of 2023 for a massive trove
of data covering about 200 million users,
including their emails, names, locations,
all that good stuff.
It's unclear how the hack took place,
but the data seems legitimate.
And the original poster was like,
it seems like Twitter has
no idea this even happened.
So that's fun.
Congrats, Twitter.
Get off Twitter.
Lightning round.
Starting today,
Meta is going to be ending their
fact-checking services
in the US.
Cory Booker managed a 25 hour filibuster
on the Senate floor.
And regardless of what you think the
impact of that will be,
that is a physically impressive feat.
The man starved himself
and didn't use the restroom
for 25 hours.
And it seems he was trying
to beat the previous record,
which was 24 hours and 18
minutes set by Strom Thurmond
while he was preventing the passage
of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Oof.
To help protect our country's seamen
from icky concepts of gender,
the Naval Academy has
removed about 400 books
from their library in
their anti-DEI efforts.
The TikTok sale may have
been blown up at the last minute
by the Trump tariffs,
as China's obviously not
happy about all of this.
And so they're like,
well, hold the fuck on.
Let's go back to the drawing board.
After admitting that they
have mistakenly deported
an innocent man to an El Salvador prison,
the Department of
Justice has fired the attorney
that was working on
behalf of the government
trying to prevent bringing back that guy.
Not because they had a change of heart
and they want to do good now.
They weren't happy with
the way he was arguing
that we shouldn't have to
bring back the innocent man.
He embarrassed the government
by not properly preventing the judge
from bringing back a dude
who didn't get due process
and committed no crimes.
And finally for today,
oil company Chevron has
been fined $744 million
for their ongoing role in the destruction
of Louisiana wetlands.
Can we quintuple that
fine and then do it again?
Thank you so much for
listening to today's episode
of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to skh.news for
sources, bonus content
and even more fines for Chevron.
I'll find them.
My name's Endeavorance.
I'll be back May 5th.
Take care and be well.