Hello. I burned my tongue while testing some
pasta. But stuff still happened. So what's up?
We found the coolest rock ever. Humans have been
around doing a lot of stuff, doing a lot of rock
collecting, but we found the coolest of them.
Ever. On Mars. Also possibly life on Mars, but
the rock is more important. So a few billion
years ago Mars had like an atmosphere and running
water and stuff like that. It is not currently
a few billion years ago, which makes it difficult
for us to identify life on Mars. We can't quite
go to a telescope and just see like Martian Jeremy
just sort of like splorking it, whatever that
means. But let's talk about this rock. The Perseverance
Rover found a cool looking rock. It rolled over
a rock that had some spots on it and the scientists
were like, that's a cool rock. It was cool enough
that they looked further into it, and what they
found was that those specks were actually evidence
of material that is the output of a potential
organic reaction. Essentially, they found some
minerals which, to our knowledge, can only be
created one of two ways, one of which requires
intense heat. The other is from organic interaction,
and this rock was at the bottom of a cold riverbed,
so it probably wasn't the heat. Now, it could
have been something else that we just don't know
about. We don't know what we don't know, but
this is cool. They've been studying this for
a year, and they are confident enough to say,
like, hey, this might be the closest we have
to confirmation of life having existed on Mars.
The way that they could actually confirm it is
by sending out a mission to bring back a sample
and studying it, but we've been cutting a lot
of funding to NASA, so that's probably not gonna
happen. But it was a really cool rock. Stateside!
I already made a video about Charlie Kirk, and
I'm not gonna rehash too much here. There's way
too much stuff going on around the world right
now to be focusing on this one thing. for too
long, so real quick. Last week, Charlie Kirk,
a popular conservative commentator most well
known for his Prove Me Wrong series where he
debated liberals on college campuses, was murdered.
Since then, there has been a massive amount of
escalation between commentators calling for war
despite most elected officials saying that this
was awful and then condemning political violence.
After about a two -day manhunt, the suspect was
taken into custody by his own father so that
the FBI didn't even get the guy but that didn't
stop them from turning around and having a press
conference where they were like we got him i
am not going to dive into the details about the
suspect because frankly there's too much dust
in the air right now and i trust me i have seen
the takes from all sides this has been an embarrassing
stretch for the news media there have been so
many things that have been published and retracted
from institutions that i respect and Have been
shaken by I usually give grace to outlets because
like I know they are just going through their
filter of their editor but generally have strict
reporting requirements for actually saying what
is a fact and A lot of that has just been busted
over this past week. And so until we have more
concrete information, I'm just gonna move on
Let's talk about that Venezuelan boat that we
bombed. There has been new reporting around the
boat carrying 11 people that the U .S. military
bombed, killing everyone on board off the coast
of Venezuela. This was already kind of fucked.
Like, this was already a thing where it should
not have happened. The military does not have
the authority to go after foreign civilians,
period. But now it turns out that national security
advisors have briefed the press in a closed -door
conference about how the boat was actually headed
back to shore. The boat... was heading back to
Venezuela when it was bombed. And it was bombed
twice. Once to blow up the boat, and again to
kill the survivors. This is awful. Like, it's
awful. And international legal experts basically
all agree this is fucked and illegal. Except
there's not much that can happen. Like the ICC,
the International Criminal Court, one, can't
really do anything about the US, and two, can't
really do anything unless it's systemic, which...
It is, but it needs to be more systemic. Legal
experts have drawn connections between this and
someone like Rodrigo Duterte who did a lot of
extrajudicial killing and is now being held by
the ICC and tried for crimes against humanity.
So like that's kind of it. Like we are still
pressuring Venezuela a lot with military force
and that's weird. We claim that we are at war
with gangs within Venezuela, which allows us
to go to war with Venezuela because we say that
their government is involved with the gangs,
but we're not at war with the government, we're
at war with the gangs. It's gross, and I don't
want to go to war with Venezuela. What? Well,
let's talk about Chicago, where it's gotten quite
icy recently. Ice has landed in Chicago and has
already started causing havoc, chaos, and already
murdered someone. The Department of Homeland
Security has launched Operation Midway Blitz,
which, quick aside, The government naming a law
enforcement operation like some kind of military
operation with regards to one of their own cities
within our sovereign borders is fucking whack.
Just wanted to put that out there, just as a
little kernel. But anyway, they've been causing
havoc. And no one in Chicago wants this. Silverio
Viegas Gonzalez was murdered by ICE. He was a
42 -year -old cook at a restaurant in a suburb
of Chicago, and he was driving when ICE accosted
him in unmarked cars. They cornered him in his
car, got out, and started to approach the vehicle.
Witnesses in the area described it as people
thinking that it was a robbery at first. These
men approach his car, start saying things at
him, and he's not fully fluent in English, so
he's like, what the f— What the fuck is going
on? Who are these people in these unmarked cars?
Presumably thinking it was a robbery, he hit
the gas and tried to speed away, and in doing
so, ICE claims that he dragged one of their agents,
who then opened fire. ICE maintains that since
he tried to escape and in doing so hurt an agent,
that he is the cause of his own death because
the agent used acceptable force. I would argue
that... Chicago doesn't want ice there. And here's
ice in Chicago, and a man's already dead because
of it. I learned from my Charlie Kirk video that
a person having children makes it so that them
being killed is completely unacceptable. So for
those who need to know that number, the guy had
three kids. Since the killing, local organizers
have banded together and come out in force. There
have been incredible demonstrations, and community
organizers and faith leaders alike have made
statements of unity. It's really been amazing
in general in all the places that ICE has been
sent in force to see people rising up and pushing
back. It's almost like when people don't want
an oppressive force in their locality, you shouldn't
try to do that. It's almost like they didn't
fucking vote for you. So far in 2025, 15 people
have died in the custody of ICE, and this is
only really on pace with 2020, where we had an
excess of deaths from COVID. Meanwhile, the ICE
raids are already creating a chilling effect
for foreign investors. That raid on the factory
in Georgia? South Korea's pissed! They recently
published an article explaining what those people
went through in ice custody. They were chained
up. They had to lap up water because they couldn't
use their hands or feet. They had about a fist
sized hole to see the sky. They were held for
days. They had one toilet and the only real privacy
was a sheet to go over the lower half of their
body. These are people whose crime was some paperwork
didn't have a certain check mark on it. I'm sure
that'll be good for business elsewhere. It turns
out you can hold criminal leaders accountable.
Brazil has sentenced their former president Bolsonaro
to 27 years and three months in prison. He was
found guilty of attempting a coup to maintain
power after the elections in 2022. Now, Bolsonaro
has already said this is a witch hunt, blah,
blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera. The things
that they say. Trump also was like, well, that's
like what they did to me, which was also a witch
hunt. But the wildest part is that U .S. Secretary
of State Marco Rubio made a statement that the
U .S. was going to respond in kind like. The
US was going to retaliate for Brazil doing this?
To which Brazil's response was essentially, the
fuck you on about? This is, as far as I know,
the second former president just this year to
go to jail in a country that's not the US. Someone
tell Merrick Garland about this. Meanwhile, Israel
has struck Qatar, and they are not happy. Israel
launched an airstrike against Hamas leaders who
were in Qatar, which is a US ally, and where
some peace negotiations are supposed to be happening.
peace negotiations that were interrupted by hellfire.
This got worldwide condemnation pretty much immediately,
including from the UN Security Council, including
from the US. The US, for once, agreed to vote
for a condemnation of actions taken by Israel.
Except the condemnation letter specifically does
not say Israel. It references the attacks, but
it doesn't say who did it. It just says that
the attacks are awful. Can't be too specific.
Anyway, after the attacks, Trump was like, oh,
well, that was stupid, and that won't happen
again. To which Netanyahu clarified, yes, that
actually may happen again if Israel wants to
do it. So I'm not sure who's going to be sitting
at the table with Israel in the future. The EU
is already talking about trying to end trade
deals and more sanctions are incoming against
certain members of parliament and settlers. So
like, maybe don't bomb everyone. That's been
my strategy. And I've got friends. Speaking of
friends, NATO is... basically a country group
chat. Several Russian drones were shot down and
collected as debris in Polish airspace. This
is the first time that a Russian drone has been
detected crossing into NATO borders, and it's
also the first time that a NATO member has fired
ammunition in this war. Following the drone's
presence, they invoked Article 4 of NATO, which
you might not be familiar with Article 4, you
might know Article 5. Article 5 is the, yo, you
mess with my friends, you're gonna mess with
the whole crew. That's it's that article right?
It's the one where it's like you fight any of
us you fight all of us My boys got me article
four is yo, you mess with us. We're gonna have
a drum circle about it We're gonna we're gonna
have a mixer. We're gonna have a get -together
at the local community center We're gonna bring
snacks and chat article four is essentially like
hey y 'all this happened what? Can we have a
chat about it? Like, can we talk about what we're
going to do? But it's still notable. It's a notable
step. It's only been used eight times since the
formation of NATO. Not long after that whole
incident, drones were then detected in Romanian
airspace, and they actually gave permission to
their fighter pilots to shoot the drones out
of the air, and the fighter pilots chose not
to to minimize collateral damage. Russia maintains
these drones were perfectly innocent. They had
had a great explanation. They were simply on
their way back from striking Ukraine. It's just
a return trip. Can we just borrow your airspace
real quick? We're just gonna do some war stuff.
It won't be a problem. Don't worry about it.
Alright, we're gonna talk Nepal and then we've
got so much cool technology shit to talk about.
So Nepal. That was fast. Nepal essentially just
had a revolution. Like in real time. It's whack.
Things got real real real fast. Here's a timeline.
September 4th, the government of Nepal bans a
bunch of social media apps. This pisses off a
lot of people, especially the younger generation,
who are already feeling like they have no real
future. At the same time, a handful of apps are
not banned, and so organization begins there,
places like Discord. September 8th, thousands
of people march towards Parliament. Cops open
fire on some of the protesters and 19 people
die on the first day. That makes everything way
worse, and in an attempt to... calm things down
a bit. They try to unban the social media apps,
but it's too late. September 9th. Parliament
is burning. The then prime minister resigns and
escapes off the roof in a helicopter. A bunch
of other high -level officials' houses are burned
down. Casualties increase. September 10th, things
settle down a little bit. There's initial discussions
between protesters, the army, and representatives
of the government about what happens next. September
12th, former Chief Justice Karke is named as
the interim prime minister and is the first prime
minister of Nepal to be a woman. Notably, consensus
for her appointment happened on Discord. Which
is just like, like that's now in their history.
Like, that's gonna go in a book. The protesters
turned around and immediately became a cleanup
crew. They started to clean up their country
and put things back in their place. As of now,
the death toll is at 72, with a little over 2
,000 people injured. The newly appointed interim
prime minister is looking to do right by the
families who lost people in the uprising. There
are elections scheduled for March 5th, 2026,
and we're just gonna see what happens. I do want
to note that the people who were cast out of
the government, the corrupt politicians that...
they rose up against, they're complaining, and
they feel that they should be reinstated. There
there, you did your best. If you like what I
do and you want to help me keep doing it, and
you want to help me not be beholden to, like,
advertisers and stuff, head to isupport .dev.
There are a whole bunch of ways to support my
work. I've got Patreon, Ko -Fi, YouTube memberships,
a merch store, but if money is not really an
option, just sharing my content goes a very long
way. Thank you so incredibly much for being here,
and there's a lot of new folks. So, hi. Uh...
Let's move on. Technology! Okay, I'm going to
try to get through this without going too deep
into each individual one, but I might because
it's cool. There's just a lot of neat tech stuff
recently. All this has happened in the past like
five -ish months. First up, how do you want to
be powered by sand? A town in Finland is using
a giant sand battery to heat their town in the
winter. It's just got deployed. Essentially,
it's this device that's just a big silo full
of sand and pipes, and it gets heated up by renewable
energies. Sand is really good at maintaining
heat without breaking down as a material, so
they can heat this thing up to extreme temperatures,
and it just kind of stays there. So during these
sunny and warm months, they can use renewable
energy to heat this thing up, and it can stay
hot throughout the winter and heat the entire
town. Not like emanating heat from the one place,
but there are pipes in it that can then take
air, heat it up, and deliver it to places. That's
rad. And like, there have been heat storage systems
before, but this is sand. Like, it's pretty available
and pretty cheap. There's still drawbacks. It's
mostly good for heating. It's a lot worse to
try to convert that. back into electricity, it's
not very efficient that way. But still, a single
big thing of sand to heat a whole town? I'm genuinely
floored by, like, I had to double, triple, and
quadruple check because they're saying it can
hold the heat for months at a time. That's just,
I can't reconcile that in my head. I guess the
point is, who needs classic batteries when you
can just use sand? Except, let's go back to classic
batteries. You are most likely familiar with
lithium ion batteries, which power most consumer
electronics. They're those good good batteries
that every once in a while explode. It just makes
for a little, it's just a little fun, you know?
It's a little side thing it does. So inside lithium
ion batteries is sort of like power sludge. And
that's the thing that can blow up. I'm so tired!
It's like the end of the day and I'm recording
late because there was like a music festival
literally behind where I live and so there was
no way I could record. So - Bear with me. Lithium
-ion batteries. They are good, but mostly they
suck and they blow up. So let's talk about how
ion storage systems is working on a solid state
battery that shows some serious promise. This
is a Maryland -based company that is working
on a solid state battery. The idea is that instead
of having that power goo, you just have like
a brick of battery material that just holds power.
Like a power crystal. They should call them power
crystals if you need a marketing person! Talk
to me! Yo, they're power crystals, not batteries.
So they're working on these power crystals, and
they could be potentially up to 50 % more efficient
by size, and also have virtually no chance of
just exploding. This could be transformative
for a lot of consumer electronics and things
like electric vehicle adoption and safety. There
was a bunch of research into solid -state batteries
years ago, but it kind of fizzled out because
nothing really worked. But this company has been
giving prototypes to the military and to a couple
of private tech firms that have not been identified.
both of which are giving good feedback. So you
might have your very own power crystal soon in
several years. Power crystals! Power goo! Anyway,
koalas be fucking. Did you know that koalas be
fucking? And it's not good for them because chlamydia
is rampant in koala populations. Is this common
knowledge? Am I just learning this? Scientists
at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia
have been developing a vaccine for chlamydia
for koalas. for like a decade. Apparently chlamydia
rates in some koala populations can be as high
as 70%. They'd be fucking. But chlamydia is bad
and is threatening their entire population. So
instead of trying to find each individual one
with chlamydia and treat it, they're trying to
make a vaccine and introduce that into the population.
They did it. It got approved. Now they need money
to actually distribute it, so if that's what
they're working on now, hopefully that happens.
Big day for copper alloys! Actually, huge day
for copper alloys. Have you ever heard of a super
alloy? It's like an alloy, but make it super.
Super alloys are metal alloys that maintain their
structure at incredibly high temperatures very
close to their melting point. Think like taking
a bar of iron and you heat it up to near -melting,
but it still doesn't bend. Basically that. These
have some very specific uses, but they are mostly
made of... I don't see, I don't know actually.
I'm going off my notes. They are mostly made
of nickel, cobalt, and iron. Those are elements.
However, nickel, cobalt, and iron are not as
conductive as copper, but copper hasn't really
had an alloy that can actually act as a super
-alloy. Until now. Because Martin Harmer, leading
a team at Lehigh University, has discovered a
method for, like, atomically constructing stronger
copper. Quote, Essentially, they wanted a more
conductive super alloy option, and they went
down to the atomic level. and analyze the structure
of the materials, and effectively use the flaws
in the structures to create reinforcement points.
If you think about, like, how can I even describe
this? Think about a stick, and you take it and
you go to bend it, and as you're starting to
bend it, bits and pieces of it begin to crack
and spike up. That stick is pretty weak, right?
Like, you bend it and it cracks at its fractures.
What if, instead of cracking at its fractures,
you reinforce all those points, And now it's
really strong. So you go to bend it, and it doesn't.
That's the end of the analogy. I did a great
job with it. So how does this help us? I don't
know. But it's being hailed as one of the top
10 scientific discoveries of the year. Last thing
for science, let's talk about flamethrowers.
Let's talk about plasma flamethrowers, specifically.
Let's talk about plasma flamethrowers that recycle
plastic, specifically. Engineering researchers
in South Korea made a plasma torch that is capable
of taking plastic and breaking it down into core
components to be reused and recycled. They are
able to take some plastic scraps, put it in their
machine, and in just 0 .01 seconds it's exposed
to so much energy that the plastic just breaks
down back to its base components. This is still
nascent, it's not quite industrial grade and
it won't be for several years still, but if it's
powered by renewable energies, it could be a
completely zero -emission method of recycling
plastics. The only other zero -emission method
of the recycling plastics is... me. Gaming. Nintendo
did a Nintendo Direct, and holy shit, new Fire
Emblem. They're making a new Fire Emblem. Did
you see? Did you see they're making a new Fire
Emblem? Allow me to talk at you about Fire Emblem.
No? Don't click away. My retention stats, wait!
Nintendo did a Nintendo Direct, they announced
a whole bunch of stuff, and here are a few highlights.
A Fire Emblem game. Alright. Metroid Prime 4
is going to be released on December 4th, 2025.
It's finally happening. They are releasing a
bundle of Mario Galaxy and Mario Galaxy 2 as
a re -release. They announced the sequel to the
Super Mario movie called the Super Mario Galaxy
movie. There's gonna be a new Mario Tennis, which
I want to highlight because I just have a weird
affinity for Mario Tennis. I specifically loved
Mario Tennis 64. I don't know why. There's a
whole bunch of more announcements. I've linked
to it in my newsletter. You can find the links
at there. And our last story for today, we're
going to talk about Sony pulling a Hasbro. Back
in June, in the UK, a video game reseller had
his house raided by the cops and had some of
his merchandise taken. The merchandise in question
was a box of old Nintendo development kits for
some old consoles. The guy was like a video game
reseller. He just like collected stuff and resold
it. And he went to a clearance sale for a Sony
headquarters. He bought stuff ranging from furniture
to boxes of old crap, and among them was... this
box of dev kits. So he eventually gets a prospective
buyer that's kind of sus, and a month later,
the cops show up at his house, arrest him, charge
him with money laundering, and confiscate the
box. There's an important detail here that clears
a few things up, which is that those aren't Sony's
dev kits. Dev kits are rented out. So Sony had
those dev kits on rent from Nintendo, and probably
accidentally threw them out. and then went to
the cops and had the cops go after the guy who
ended up with them because of Sony's mistake.
This is all allegedly, I should be clear, it's
just the current state of play. That's how it
looks. I say they pulled a Hasbro because this
very much reminds me of the time that Hasbro
sent the literal Pinkertons to go collect Magic
the Gathering cards that had not yet been released
that accidentally found their way into someone's
house. Imagine getting like shot. because of
an unreleased Magic card. Thank you so much for
listening to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to SKH .News for sources, bonus content,
and more stolen paraphernalia from the Sony office.
My name is Endeavourance, we'll talk again soon,
take care, and be well.