Hello. I studied the blade while you were out
partying. But stuff still happens. So what's
up? It's Labor Day. Do some labor. Wait, that's
not the point. It's Labor Day. It's also September.
Both of those shock me. To be fair, Labor Day
and Memorial Day are both days that just don't
exist in my mind until they happen. But - It's
Labor Day. It's been a noteworthy year after
a bunch of noteworthy years. I'm out of notes,
running low, too much paper. Point being, we're
working our way through this. And it's rough,
but we're just doing our best every single day.
So thank you for being here. Last week's episode
was a lot, but I really appreciate the support.
I put in some focus to make sure there's good
stuff later on in this episode. So we'll get
there, but stateside. At the office of Social
Security, things aren't particularly secure.
You may recall that DOGE, the Department of Government
Efficiency, which was Elon Musk's weird foray
into governance, wanted to get access to Social
Security data. For those who are not experiencing
the freedom of this country, Social Security
is one, the closest thing we have to, like, everybody
having a national ID number, and two, literally
just a number. that we're supposed to protect
with our life. If someone steals your social
security number, they can do a lot of bad things,
like a lot of bad things, like opening up bank
accounts and shit. It's really whack that we
don't have something better than just a number.
It's like if someone found out your phone number
and that gave them access to your bank. Obviously,
it's not that simple, but having someone's name,
address, and social security number can get you
a lot. Anyway, Doge wanted access to the Social
Security Administration for reasons, because
they were like, there's fraud here, but there's
not really evidence of that. Note, again, the
amount of times that Republicans have screamed
that they're targeting waste, fraud, and abuse,
and there have been exactly no lawsuits regarding
waste, fraud, and abuse, which are things that
require lawsuits. So these Musk goons went to
Social Security and despite being told they can't
do this, they took all of the data and apparently
uploaded it to some cloud service. Like they
made a secondary database that has less oversight.
One of the people in charge at Social Security
around like stewarding data resigned because
they basically said, it is now impossible to
do my job. These like barely 20 something year
old tech bros came in, did something without
our permission that's against the rules. And
now I cannot guarantee the safety of people's
information. It is generally frowned upon to
take government information and re -host it elsewhere
without permission and with no oversight. Generally.
Generally frowned upon. There's no upshot here.
The Social Security Administration is down a
guy who's supposed to protect data because he
doesn't think he can anymore. It's just, that's
just, that's where we are now. Okay, moving on.
The CDC! Also lost a bunch of top -level people.
The CDC is the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention. It makes me endlessly mad that they
didn't put AP to like CDC AP or something. But
they are a punching bag for the right, especially
ever since COVID started. They have just been
so angry. about the COVID vaccine. They want
to just completely dismantle the CDC and any
public health initiatives they can. RFK Jr.,
who is a well -documented anti -vaxxer, is the
head of public health in the United States. And
lo and behold! He's been pushing back against
vaccines! The FDA just announced new guidance
for the COVID vaccine, for like, boosters and
whatnot. If you're 65 or older, you can still
get the vaccine. If you're under 65, it gets
far more complicated as to whether or not you
can get this vaccine. Whereas before, you could
just go to a pharmacy and say like, hey, I want
to get a COVID booster, and they're like, cool,
boop! Okay, bye. if you had insurance, mostly.
But now it's just a mess. So much so that individual
states and coalitions of states are trying to
come up with their own vaccine guidance, just
ignoring the Fed, because that's nothing. So
where does it lie? As of right now, here's the
best way I can explain access to COVID vaccines
in the U .S. If you are over 65 and you have
insurance, you can get the COVID vaccine at pretty
much any pharmacy for basically free, if not
literally free. If you are under 65, and you
have a approved pre -existing condition, for
example, asthma, then with insurance, most pharmacies
in most states will give you the COVID vaccine
free of charge. If you do not fall into those
categories, and I'm ignoring, like, children
under 12, then you're basically fucked unless
you pay out of pocket, which might be up to,
like, $250 depending on where you go. Now, you
may be able to find something with or without
insurance. Some insurances might cover more of
it. Some might not cover it at all. Some pharmacies
might cover it. Some states might have different
guidance. Like I said, it's a fucking mess. A
guy that basically every scientist in medicine
across the world says is an idiot is the one
giving them orders now, and they're like, well,
we're just not going to follow them. But now
you're just screwed. Deal with it. Deal with
what they want to do. And if the doctors who
are like educated in the fields that you want
information about. If they ignore the guy with
a worm in his head who eats whales, they're at
risk of like retaliation from the government.
So yeah, the CDC, the CDC head was fired. the
Trump administration got rid of her, and then
a bunch of top other people from the CDC resigned
because they were like, what the fuck? These
aren't shadowy figures that are like making determinations
about how they're going to trans your kids. These
are infectious disease experts, people who study
how disease transmits between humans and wildlife,
shit like that. And they're just gone now, and
there isn't political will to replace them. This
administration is going after research universities,
public health research, basically all science.
Scientists are fleeing the US currently. It's
really sad, and it's especially sad because it's
just a bunch of scared dumb people who voted
for this. And the people who are actually doing
the research and keeping those scared dumb people
alive have to deal with the fallout of those
scared dumb people. Maybe be a little less dumb.
Maybe be a little less scared. maybe think a
little more about how your actions impact those
around you. Anyway, speaking of bad policies
that shouldn't be a thing, Trump's tariffs have
been declared illegal by a court. An appeals
court found that Trump's sweeping tariffs on
basically every country in the world are unconstitutional.
That's not a power he has. However, they're keeping
the tariffs in place. For now. Even though they're
unconstitutional. A court in this land has said,
yes, we acknowledge that the executive branch
is illegally taxing citizens, but we're going
to let it keep happening because it would be
too much effort to stop. So here's what's happening.
They basically said, look, this is unconstitutional,
but there's been so much will they, won't they
with the tariffs that we're just going to leave
them in place because we know the Trump administration
is going to appeal this. And so I'm personally
mad because a package that I ordered before the
tariffs went into effect got tariffed. So if
you voted for Trump, you owe me $62. So are the
tariffs going away? Probably not. This is likely
going to the Supreme Court. The Trump administration
is going to appeal it. Trump has already categorized
this court ruling as something that could potentially
destroy the United States of America. Once again,
this is a court ruling about whether or not the
executive branch can issue tariffs. It's going
to destroy us. We'll see. U .S. citizens have
paid billions and billions of dollars in additional
taxes to the Trump administration. That's what
the tariffs are doing. Countries have done stuff
like Halting shipments to the US none of this
had to happen and it's just it's so frustrating
because so many people Very clearly said this
is not how it works. We shouldn't do this This
will be bad for everyone and and and and then
we're here last thing for stateside And then
I promise there's there's a lot of good stuff
coming up. Okay, there's a lot of good stuff.
I Promise, there's a lot of good stuff later.
But last thing for stateside. What is it? Oh
FEMA was hacked Kristi Noem, infamous dog murderer
and head of the Department of Homeland Security,
announced that 24 people had been fired from
FEMA's IT department after a massive security
breach. Now, this is cool, this is cool. Apparently,
there was some foreign actor that hacked FEMA,
and they called it a threat to not just the organization,
but the nation's security as a whole. How do
we find out about this? We find out because Kristi
Noem was like, hey, I fired some people. Let's
move on. FEMA was hacked, and so I fired people.
Wait, why do you care about the FEMA being hacked
part? Wait, what does it matter? And so the Trump
administration wants to use this as another reason
to shut down FEMA, which is a thing they've been
trying to do this whole time. This is real. The
Trump administration fired the head of FEMA for
suggesting that FEMA should continue to exist.
That was not in line with this administration's
policies, and so they fired the head of FEMA.
For those who aren't, again, freedom, FEMA is
our disaster relief organization, and our president
wants to dismantle it. Because of lies. Like
he wants to - I was gonna move on, but he specifically
wants to dismantle it because of lies about what
FEMA did slash does. Like enough people on Fox
News said enough lies about FEMA's response to
enough things that Trump believed them. And now
he wants to dismantle disaster relief. So that's
cool. Hey, you want a break? I wouldn't mind
a break. Sometimes life is a lie. and so I escape
into the world of video games. A while back as
a video gamer myself, I made a secondary YouTube
channel, Endeavorance Games, in which I uploaded
various gaming content. I'm excited to say I
have resurrected that channel, and already there
is a new episode of the return of a Minecraft
Let's Play series that I used to do a while back.
The series is called Minecraft Sisyphus Edition,
and it follows me attempting to beat Minecraft
on hardcore mode despite not really knowing how
to do that. So it's just me going in with one
life, trying to beat the game. If I die, I restart.
But check out Endeavorance Games and that video.
Okay, moving on. Elsewhere. All right, this one
sucks. And then I promise it's a lot of good
afterwards. But it's Israel. Israel launched
an airstrike against Yemen that killed their
prime minister. The situation in Yemen and the
surrounding area is not clear cut. I will acknowledge
that. But what happened here is Israel just bombed
the head of government of Yemen. The argument
is that the Houthi who are in control of the
Yemen government are a terrorist group that threatens
Israel and so they got to do this to defend their
national security, which is just what they say
about literally everyone they bomb. The Israeli
military claims that Yemen used cluster munitions
against Israel recently. I have not been able
to find an independent source outside of the
Israeli media that verifies that. At the same
time, they're ramping up their attacks on Gaza,
specifically Gaza City, which is declared as
a famine zone and is also now being bombed more.
The international reaction is unimportant, I
would say. I would tell you what the international
reaction is, but it's the same that it always
is, which is what the fuck are you doing? Followed
by nothing. I will say there is some movement.
There have been more Western countries that are
saying they're going to acknowledge Palestine
as a state, which is whack. that that's considered
progress. So this is really new. We don't have
a lot more information here right now, but as
of now, the people of Yemen have taken to the
streets and demonstrated in huge numbers a desire
to retaliate and standing in solidarity with
the people of Palestine. but I think we are overdue
for some good news. So let's look at Africa,
where there is some really interesting movement
in mRNA research for Ebola vaccines. You might
not know this, but Africa is large. It's real,
it's big. It's like, it's like real big. Like,
let's see. I'm gonna take a big sip of a drink.
It's bigger than that. Mmm. So now imagine that
you are a vaccine and you want to travel into
someone's arm in Africa. It's kind of difficult
if you are a traditional vaccine because you
need to be transported at a very low temperature,
just like me. And Africa is very big and does
not have a whole lot of places to re -up on cold
while transporting long distance. So distributing
vaccines is notoriously difficult. But mRNA vaccines
trend towards shelf stable and are much faster
to iterate on to tackle new strains. So there's
been increased research and efforts put into
production facilities to make mRNA vaccines in
Africa to target things like Ebola. It's not
perfect. The investments can be slow. Some things
have started and stopped, but it's happening
and it's a good move. mRNA vaccines got a lot
of flack during the whole COVID thing, because
again, conspiracy theorists, but they are safe.
They are effective. and they are the right tool
for this job. So it's really cool to see more
investment into all that going on. Technology
slash science, which I guess that last one was
also science, but whatever. Technology. If you
have cancer, just open yourself up in MS Paint
and edit that shit out of there. It was that
easy this whole time. Researchers at the University
of Minnesota have successfully used CRISPR gene
editing to fight against gastrointestinal cancer.
Researchers took 12 patients with late -stage
GI cancer, which is largely considered not very
treatable, and they used gene editing to convince
cells to better go after the tumors. They, like,
went in and deactivated a certain gene that I
guess made the, like, immune cells too shy or
something? And boom! There goes the cancer! Several
of the patients saw reductions in the size of
their tumors, and one of them saw a complete
disappearance. of their tumors. Imagine having
late stage cancer that you told is untreatable.
And now it's gone. Gene editing is spooky. I'll
acknowledge that. It sounds a lot like eugenics.
It sounds like it could go pretty bad pretty
quickly. But I want to clarify that this is like
exploratory research. This is not a thing that
you're going to go to the spa and just get some
treatment done real quick anytime soon. It's
expensive, it's invasive, it's rare, but this
gives us a lot more information on how we can
target these aggressive cancers. So that's pretty
fucking rad. Let's talk about space radio. Radio
-free space. What up, y 'all? It's your boy,
Glorbomb. Welcome to mornings with Glorbomb.
That was like my little intro thing. I'm a shock
jockey, but in space. Space has a lot of stuff.
Some of it's radio waves. Some researchers in
Canada were listening to the space radio and
they heard a giant blast of radio waves. To be
clear, it's not literal radio. They don't have
an FM tuner listening to all the aliens jamming
out in their garage. But yeah, there was a huge
blast of radio waves that some researchers had
picked up and they were like, what the hell was
that? The radio waves were spectacular, bigger
than anything we've ever seen. We didn't know
where they came from. So the scientists sprung
into action and found it. With the use of several
telescopes, including the ever -famous Jimbly
Wimbly Simbly Timbly, they found it. They traced
the radio waves back to essentially a giant field
of gas that's a birthing ground for stars, slash
graveyard. Basically, it's a bunch of gas with
a lot of stars in it doing a lot of gaseous star
stuff. It could have been that some stars merged,
maybe one of them imploded or exploded or did
some star things or turned into a pulsar. Whatever
that is, something star -ish happened. And then
it... sent radio waves at us. Now, this is kind
of not a big deal. It's not aliens. It's not
a garage band from space, but it's pretty fucking
rad that we were able to trace it back as quickly
as we were able to. We now know that we can do
this and we can better say, oh, we just got like
a big blast of radio waves. We know how to pinpoint
that back to where it came from and figure out
what's going on. Scientists have described the
act of locating the origin of these radio waves
as like trying to spot a quarter from a hundred
kilometers away. So, hooray for the jimbly wimbly,
Google is entering their Apple era. If you use
Android, you might be aware that you can sideload
apps pretty easily. 99 % of the time, on iOS,
if you want to install an app, you have to install
it through the App Store, and to get an app on
the App Store, you have to get it approved by
Apple. This means there's a pretty rigorous set
of rules to actually get into the App Store,
and they test it for stuff like malware, things
like that. It's not perfect, but that's what
they do. On Android... That hasn't been the case.
You can basically install any app on your phone
from basically any source, and there's not a
whole lot stopping you from putting whatever
the hell you want on the Play Store. But as Google
is continuing to try to compete with Apple, they
have acknowledged that that's a big security
issue. I will say, a lot of people specifically
use Android for the flexibility that they're
calling a security issue. But if you're like
an IT professional and you're trying to lock
down a suite of phones for a corporation or something,
you know this is a problem. So, starting next
year, Google is going to take a more Apple -y
approach. They're going to lock down what you're
able to install on major approved Android devices.
Which is gonna be basically all of them. If it
has Google Play services installed on the phone,
that's a device that's going to be affected.
And that's... most of them, unless you've, like,
installed a third -party Android operating system.
Which, like, great if you did, but you probably
didn't. So just a heads up, if you're somebody
who likes to use third party software on Android,
you install APKs, you sideload, whatever, you
might want to look into making sure that you're
going to be able to do that on your phone next
year. But let's talk about automating cybercrime.
First, there was crime, then we made it cyber,
but now it's automated. Beautiful. A single hacker,
not even a hacker, a single dude used Anthropics
quad code. to extort 17 companies to the tune
of millions of dollars. You may have heard the
term Vibe coding. Vibe coding is using something
like ChatGPT, Cloud Code, to build apps without
really doing a lot of programming. You just tell
the AI, I wanna build this app, and it's like,
okay, and it tries to build it for you. Someone
did Vibe hacking. With cloud code and essentially
what they did was use it for every step of the
way to identify and extort 17 companies first
They used it to identify their targets. They
were like hey Which which companies would be
the best to extort then they had it right malware
to steal information from these companies Then
they had it analyze the data that was taken from
the companies to figure out what should be used
to blackmail the companies then Sent the email
to the companies saying like hey, I got your
data. Give me money All of this was done by one
dude. It was a ridiculously fast turnaround.
It was a huge wave of cybercrime. And it was
one guy using a publicly available subscription
-based software. Anthropic, the people who make
Claude, they were like, oh, well, you know, we're
looking into it and we're trying to make sure
this doesn't happen. You know, just be careful.
As far as I know, the guy has not been caught,
which is just wild. We also don't know who the
17 companies are, but we do know that one of
them was a defense contractor. So someone was
able to use an AI to hack a defense contractor
with vibes. Lightning Round. The Florida concentration
camp alligator Alcatraz may actually be shuttered.
It's looking like they may actually vacate per
the court order that I discussed last week, despite
the fact that DeSantis is trying to push back
against that. After a grand jury refused to charge
him with a felony, the guy in DC who threw a
sandwich at a fed is being charged with misdemeanor.
K -Pop Demon Hunters is now the most viewed movie
on Netflix. If you haven't watched the movie,
go do that. It's so fucking good. Some dude in
Canada went on a mission. His wife's wedding
ring accidentally fell off her finger when they
were cleaning some stuff up outside. Found its
way into the trash. The guy figured out what
landfill it would be at and dug through the trash
to find it. He is quoted in saying that he was
optimistic that he could find it. What a guy.
There's unearned male audacity that does bad
things. And then there's unearned male audacity
that finds a literal wedding ring under tons
of garbage after geolocating which landfill to
go to. A piece of art that was lost after Nazis
stole it from a Jewish curator 80 years ago.
turned up in an ad for real estate in Argentina.
And finally for today, a Walmart vice president
in their tech sector has been let go after being
caught getting kickbacks from contractors to
the tune of millions of dollars in exchange for
favoring those contractors. If anyone wants to
pay me millions of dollars to contract for Walmart,
I'm all ears. Thank you so much for listening
to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to skh .news for sources, bonus content,
and the location of your lost wedding ring. My
name is Endeavorance, we'll talk again soon,
take care, and be well.