Hello. I bought an iced tea for 99 cents. But
stuff still happened. So what's up? Scheduling.
I'm taking a short break. I'm going to be off
for two weeks after this episode. I'll be back
August 18th. August 18th. Anyway, before we just
jump into it, we're doing good today, right?
We're all feeling good today. We're feeling good.
Are you feeling good? Are you feeling good? I
said, are you feeling good? We are feeling good.
Hold on to that. State side. We did it. We outlawed
poverty and mental health issues and homelessness.
It's we fixed it So the United States is very
well understood to be a deeply Christian nation.
That's what we are. We are fundamentally religious
That's not true. Oh, but our politicians are
like that and being the Christians that they
are They love to criminalize the poor now aside.
I know that Christian values are not that the
joke is that they're not doing You get me. So
what am I talking about? Well, the president
has issued another executive order, this one
titled, Ending Crime and Disorder on American
Streets. All that crime, all that disorder from
people existing, people existing in a state that
I don't want to see. Disorder! Essentially, this
is an executive order that clamps down hard on
homelessness and drug use in public and sobriety
programs and housing assistance programs. It
basically pulls back on any kind of homeless
assistance. It prioritizes funding to states
and cities that are going to eradicate homeless
encampments. It pulls money away from housing
first programs, which are programs that take
people who don't have a home, and gives them
a home so that they can contribute. to society.
Instead of doing that, and we'll get to that
in a bit, but instead of doing that, it clamps
down more on requirements for sobriety before
you can get any kind of aid, and otherwise, institutionalize
people. It's all about finding and institutionalizing.
By force. In fact, it goes as far as to give
housing and urban development a directive to
turn over health information from people who
are homeless. to the cops. Here is a quote from
the executive order, quote, Surrendering our
cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither
compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.
My administration will take a new approach focused
on protecting public safety. Couple things. One,
not a new approach. You're trying to put homeless
people in jail. That's what every Republican
does and most Democrats. Second, housing first
programs are overwhelmingly successful. We're
talking about it now. It's been a bit. people
with no ability to think deeper on literally
anything will hear housing first programs and
get all butt mad because they're like well why
are the homeless people getting a free house
i have to pay my my mortgage my mort gauge because
the general way this is all phrased is give homes
to the homeless which yes do that but that's
not even what housing first programs are they
still have requirements to actually get the house
they're still a waiting period sometimes it's
immediate but it's also a housing first Program
there are further steps. The idea is that you
can't fix a broken dam by just plugging a single
crack You got to take the water out and put it
behind a new dam Wait, all right awful metaphor
trying again. Okay different metaphor you work
at the getting your bones broken factory And
your bones are always broken. Every day you go
home and every bone in your body is broken. And
this makes your life really difficult. So there's
an idea that, hey, maybe if we get you in a job
that... isn't at the breaking all of your bones
factory, then you'll be able to heal your bones
and move on to do something different that's
gonna benefit you and the people around you.
But like, it's really difficult to start that
when you've got only broken bones and nowhere
to go because you've got too many broken bones.
This is not much better of a metaphor, but it's
the best I could do. How about this metaphor?
Help the homeless. That's not a metaphor. I want
to talk about Baltimore. I want to talk about
Baltimore because this executive order is just
going to do harm to people. It just does the
thing that we know doesn't work, which is criminalize
being poor. But over in Baltimore, which is a
city that has a somewhat international reputation
for being dangerous or having a lot of homicide,
they've just been enacting social programs since
2022 that has dropped their homicide rate. To
record lows, Mayor Brandon Scott has been investing
in after -school programs and social programs
and housing programs and rehabilitation programs
and recreational programs, and it has plummeted
their violent crime rates. Even the cops, the
Baltimore Police Department, are like, this is,
um... This is actually, this is going pretty
good. In addition, the investments for all this
was just in the millions of dollars, not multiples
of billions or trillions. And the Johns Hopkins
Institute of Public Health estimates that for
every dollar going into these programs, the city
is getting back somewhere between $7 and $19.
If there was a box where I could put a dollar
in and get $7 to $19 out, I would like to put
dollars in that. But I'll settle for putting
dollars elsewhere. It's time for our weekly Epstein
update! It's a new recurring segment of horror
on today's EpState. We've got a handful of bullet
points. Let's see. We got a Gallup poll that
shows that Trump is not doing very well among
anyone, but especially independents with how
he's handling this whole situation. I mean, Democrats
too, but independents is where the swing happens.
He's down to a 37 % approval rating, which is
low. I should note that the Democrats are lower.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson called for
an early recess because he didn't want to have
to do a vote. on releasing the Epstein files.
Democrats were pushing for a vote on basically
that to happen, and instead of doing that, he
went to an early recess. But meanwhile, a subcommittee
of the House Oversight Committee has voted to
subpoena the Department of Justice over the Epstein
files. As all this is going on, Trump maintains
his innocence. We had that South Park episode
about the Epstein file stuff. And now he's in
Scotland, visiting his own golf course in Scotland.
With our taxes, but hey a lot of congresspeople
are about to go back to their home districts
and hopefully We'll be getting another round
of wonderful clips from town halls make them
feel it elsewhere for this section I'm just gonna
talk about Gaza that situation that's going on
there right now I know I've talked about this
basically every week for over a year, but it's
It continues to escalate For months now, Israeli
soldiers with the aid of private US contractors
and of course US munitions have been unloading
indiscriminately on hungry Palestinians seeking
food at designated aid sites. They continuously
cite chaos and claim that Hamas is doing something
that merits unloading tank rounds on civilians.
But the reality is, famine is setting in in Gaza.
There's already widespread starvation, children
dying of hunger. And all of this is done because
Israel is intentionally starving them. Now Israel
has started doing a quote temporary strategic
pause or whatever where they're gonna bring in
aid trucks and they're gonna claim that they're
gonna allow humanitarian aid in but that's just
We know that that's not gonna matter. We know
that there's not gonna be enough aid that's gonna
get there And we know that it's absolute chaos
already. Slightly reducing the amount that you
are assaulting them is not gonna change anything.
But as reporters in Gaza are literally documenting
their own starvation, the world is starting to
take a little bit more note as to what's exactly
going on there. And it's not enough, it's never
gonna be enough. I'm talking about, like, France
is going to recognize Palestine at the UN. That's
not enough, but it's... Something. It'll never
be enough unless everyone that's been involved
in the ongoing support of this genocide are brought
to justice. And I mean everyone. Our politicians
continue to gleefully endorse the brutal annihilation
of an entire population of people in what is
supposed to be one of the most sacred areas to
the religion that's supposed to be the dominant
religion in this country. But what we can do
right now is ensure that the suffering of the
people in Gaza does not fall silent outside their
borders. Remain loud on their behalf. Never let
the politicians live any of this down. And make
sure that people in your life know what's happening.
These are our tax dollars. Funding a Holocaust.
Free Palestine. No child should be dying of starvation
mere miles from opulence. But hey, let's move
on. Because, and this is very important, We still
have to. Let's talk about that tea app. Bring
the vibes back up. It's not a good vibe story,
but we're gonna bring the vibes back up regardless.
You may have heard about this app over the past
week. This app... It actually came out in 2023,
but it exploded in popularity over the past week
or so. The concept is basically, what if women
had a place where they can privately discuss
dangerous men in the dating scene in their area?
Like, okay, I get it, makes sense. It got hacked.
So men got big mad about this app. And by men,
I mean like wee little babies. Wee little babies
with wee little baby hearts and who can't control
their emotions. They were like, ow, women have
a place to talk about me behind my back. Why
is that concerning to you? Anyway, it pissed
off a bunch of dudes on the internet and dudes
on the internet pissed off at women do dumb things
and so they found a bunch of images that this
app had been storing in an unsecured place on
the internet. These are images of content from
the app, user profiles, user selfies, in some
cases identification, and they were storing that
in an unsecure location. I say hack, people have
been saying hack, headlines have been saying
hack, it wasn't really a hack, it was just this
app was made by people who had no business making
an app. I've seen reports that the app was, quote,
vibe -coded, but I was not able to independently
verify that myself. Vibe coding is essentially
letting an AI take the reins and letting it drive
an app development process. You know, instead
of following best practice, you're just following
the vibes, which is not a good way to make a
secure app. especially a secure app that requires
people to upload identification and market it
as private. Somewhere along the lines, they had
data that found its way into essentially a public
file server. And they forgot about it. And they
were like, um, yeah, oh, that data was originally
secure. Like that was their response. So look,
this is not me victim blaming, but I do want
to equip anybody who might feel hurt by this
with some general tools to help prevent this
from happening in the future. While I understand
the desire to have a place that feels like a
safe space to be able to help each other out,
totally, don't give your personal information
to relatively new apps. Period. If an app requires
identification, like photos of your government
IDs, and it's not a bank, make absolutely sure
you trust them. Like genuinely go and read their
privacy policy, if you can. If you read words
that make you scared, even if you don't understand
them, you probably should second -guess it. Especially,
again, if it says that it's supposed to be private
and secure. Really, just stay frosty. And I think
this is an okay idea, like the concept of the
app, it makes sense, but that's what, like...
group chats are for. Because the issue here is
a bunch of people trusted a single point of failure
and that single point of failure failed. And
in doing so, it just shared a whole bunch of
information about women who are specifically
trying to avoid dangerous men. So, stay frosty.
RuneScape players, rejoice! We've figured out
how to spam high alchemy in real life. What?
What, you think I didn't know about Falador?
What? You thought I wasn't in with the Lumbee?
Anyway, disclaimer. I'm about to talk about a
thing that is not peer -reviewed science. This
story is about a pre -published paper. It has
not been peer -reviewed. It is simply being looked
at by various people who find it interesting.
Let's get hyped about it anyway, because it's
kind of cool. Alchemy, like the actual like alchemy
like turning like lead to gold or really like
metal to go - something to gold. You know, getting
all Midas with it. It's a thing that humans have
been trying to do for basically ever. It's like
the Holy Grail, which is gold. There you go.
But a nuclear fusion research company in San
Francisco has published a paper from authors
that actually have some scientific background
about a potential process to do alchemy using
nuclear fusion. Now, asterisks. One, we don't
have nuclear fusion energy. We don't have that.
Seeing as that's a prerequisite for this proposal
for how to do alchemy. It's a bit of a roadblock.
It's still very theoretical and pretty abstract,
but from what I understand, scientists are kind
of vibing with it. They're excited about the
idea. I did learn one other thing, re -alchemy
and science. Turns out that researchers at CERN,
the very large... Hadron Collider, they also
saw alchemy happen. For a tiny fraction of a
second, particles in the particle accelerator
fucked with their protons and switched their
elements, which is rad. Temporary elemental shift.
Damn. So I guess we've kind of already done alchemy,
but I can't hold a bar of gold, so what's the
point? Oh, also this proposal would make radioactive
gold, to be clear. It would apparently have to
be safely stored for 13 years before humans could
actually use the gold, so... Gaming! Last week
Ozzy Osbourne died, and following that, exactly
nobody of any cultural significance died. Only
Ozzy Osbourne. And so publisher Double Fine,
the producers of the 2009 game Brutal Legend,
made their game free. for 666 minutes. Brutal
Legend is a fever dream of a game that stars
Jack Black and it features Ozzy Osbourne and
it's a lot. Oh, hey, I am a liar. I'm a swindler.
I'm a downright bibber. My pants are on fire.
One of me only tells the truth and also I only
lie. I've been made a liar because the developers
of Hades 2 are doing another patch before it
goes. to 1 .0. It was like two weeks ago that
I reported that there's not gonna be another
patch, that the next release of Hades 2 would
be 1 .0 and I would be happy, but they were like,
psych, we're doing one more. All right, last
thing for gaming, you probably knew this one
was coming. Gaming is entering its prude era,
or it's always been there, and it's just getting
worse again. So recently, gaming platforms Steam
and Itch both pulled a bunch of adult -themed
games from their catalog. They took out a bunch
of porn games, basically, and they cited that
payment processors were pressuring them to not
list adult games and stop selling adult games
using those payment processors. So both Steam
and Itch were like, ah, you know, the payment
processors are telling us that we can't do this
thing, so we have to take the games down. So
Steam and Itch are pointing to like Visa and
MasterCard as the reason that this is happening,
right? There's other stuff going on like, you
know, Stripe, a very popular payment processor
that I believe Itch uses. If you've never heard
of Stripe, they just do payment processing. But
they are essentially just a company that sits
in front of other banking networks and makes
it easier to use banking networks. So Stripe
will usually get a lot of flak for taking down
a business that doesn't conform to their relatively
restricted policies, like you can't sell porn.
But... comma disclosure comma as a indie game
developer and prior employee of stripe i actually
am aware that they are beholden to the banks
i don't like it either but they are beholden
to the bank now don't get me wrong There are
plenty of reasons to criticize a company like
Stripe. There is a massive industry of just payment
processor middlemen who just each take a little
bit of money off of each transaction and add
basically no value to anything. It's very parasitic
and we should just have a standard system for
transferring money for free. That is a thing
that some countries actually have, but the states
just does not. At least not at scale. But the
actual people setting this policy are The banking
partners. So your Wells Fargo, your Visa, MasterCard,
even PayPal. PayPal is technically a bank. And
so what happened is like an anti -porn think
tank wrote an open letter to all of these payment
processor companies and they were like, ah, these
game platforms are selling bad stuff on there.
And it's not good. The group is called Collective
Shout and they talk about being against the pornification.
It's okay to be sexual. That's what humans are.
So this group writes a whole open letter to the
heads of a bunch of these payment platforms and
then just days later, foop, no more porn games.
If you want to make an impact here, I've linked
to the open letter in my newsletter and it lists
out the heads of all the companies they actually
reached out to. You can call those companies
and lodge a complaint. Be good to the call center
people though, they're not the ones setting the
policy. Lightning round. Paramount is finally
buying Skydance Media after the FCC approved
the merger after... Paramount capitulated to
Trump. Very fun. AI Startup Humanly is offering
an AI -generated video interview system. So you
apply for a job, and instead of just not hearing
back, you waste your time talking to an AI. In
the US, FEMA, our disaster relief organization,
is now going to be offering a fund to states
to build concentration camps. Apple released
betas for the new updates to their operating
systems across all their devices, and it makes
everything all glassy. It's weird. It's fine.
Some interesting new research showed that developers
who were using AI -assistive tooling thought
that they were 20 % more productive, but actually
learned that they were 19 % less productive.
And finally, for today, a 150 -year -old company
in the UK was brought to its knees and destroyed
from a single employee's weak password. That
is how a ransomware company got in, destroyed
their systems, and ended the company. the person
whose password it was has not been informed because
they were like, who wants to be carrying that
weight? Thank you so much for listening to today's
episode of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head to skh
.news for sources, bonus content, and your very
own AI interviewer. My name is Endeavorance.
We'll talk again soon. Take care and be well.