Hello, I finished researching my unit upgrades,
but stuff still happened. So what's up? Dear
listener, I want to start by just saying there
was a lot of stuff that happened in the past
like 24 hours. Regarding death, lots of shootings,
not great. I haven't really covered a lot of
mass shootings recently, in part because they
just happen constantly. The US has had quite
a few so far this year, as we do every year,
but It's still awful. Longtime viewers will actually
know that what is now referred to as lightning
round in this show was once called rapid fire
and I changed the name because of how frequently
I was saying that in juxtaposition with talking
about mass murder in my own country. So while
there were several high -profile mass shootings
over the weekend I'm just I'm just gonna move
forward. There's so much other stuff to talk
about and these happen all the time and I hate
that I'm saying that but that's Just wanted to
level set stateside. New York City Mayor Eric
Adams is joining Dropout TV. Wait, that was misinformation.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is dropping out
of the mayoral race. So you may recall that there's
been four dudes running for mayor of New York
City. Zoran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams,
and Curtis Lewa. Now, discounting the guy who
wears a beret all the time and made up crimes
that he stopped in the past, we've got three
guys. Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo, and Zoran Mamdani.
Mamdani is leading in the polls by a double -digit
number of points, and Andrew Cuomo is a disgraced
sex pest, and Eric Adams is a criminal. I don't
know what we expected. I don't know what anyone
expected from electing an NYPD official to the
position of a politician in charge of New York
City. You got the crimes that you voted for I
that's just crimes But anyway, Eric Adams has
dropped out probably because somebody bribed
him to do that. He loves taking bribes which
just leaves three dudes left and despite Zoran
Mamdani having a double -digit lead in the polling
despite Quinnipiac which by the way apparently
is pronounced Quinnipiac despite Quinnipiac putting
out a poll showing that even if Eric Adams dropped
out Mamdani would still have a 20 -point margin
Top Democrats have still not endorsed it. Chuck
Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries took time away from
impotently tweeting at Trump to not endorse a
generational figure in their own party. Mamdani
expanded the electorate and is leading over basically
every demographic in the polls, and they're like,
well, you know, we just don't know who to endorse.
Could be anyone. I don't know. Maybe they just
see more of themselves in the disgraced sex pest
than the charismatic leader. That would make
sense. Given how ineffective they've been. Anyway,
mom Donnie looks like he's almost definitely
going to win the race because obviously like
Obviously, but we haven't quite gotten there
yet I I wouldn't be surprised if there's a few
more tricks up the sleeves of the donor class
like at the end of the day All of this is happening,
at all, because the Democrats are more interested
in sticking to their donor -first agenda than
anything else. They'd rather refuse to do the
easiest political endorsement in history than
go against what their donors are telling them
to do. Because for a good chunk of the Democratic
Party, that's all it's about. It's about seniority,
and it's about donor relations. Everything else
is details. Weird why people don't like the Dem
Party. Like, at all. Like, cool, they're not
fascists. Unfortunately, the fascists are delivering
for the people who want that. They're making
good on the whole doing awful things thing, which
is what their supporters want, and that's why
they have supporters. Weird. So let's move on.
Over in Iowa, the Des Moines School District
Superintendent has been arrested by ICE. For
those not in the states, as a reminder, ICE is
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They are
an agency under the Department of Homeland Security.
They are the ones who are essentially a private
army for the administration currently going after
immigrants and people that they claim are illegal.
In this case, they arrested Dr. Ian Roberts,
who is a 20 -year veteran educator working in
Iowa as the superintendent of their largest school
district. ICE claims that he is here illegally,
and they also really want you to know that when
they were chasing him down, he fled and apparently
had money and a gun on him, which I guess is...
Illegal? That's just like, so not a crime! They
claim he's a threat to public safety, which has
been met with complete pushback from the community,
which is like, what the fuck, this guy rules.
Everyone who worked with him has been blindsided
by this, and the institutions that actually employed
him said that they did multiple different background
checks to look into criminal records and citizenship,
and there were no issues. But he is black, and
he was born in a different country, which apparently
is enough to detain a man on the street. We don't
know a whole lot more right now. He's been taken,
he has retained a lawyer, and local communities
have been outraged by this. Regardless of anything,
this very much is the federal government coming
into a district in a state, abducting a key political
figure, and no one knows why. I can now safely
walk the streets without worrying about a veteran
educator teaching things to the youth. Cool.
What a real country. The other thing that our
government is really good at doing aside from
abducting people is shutting down, which might
happen tonight. The US federal government is
potentially going to shut down as the Republicans,
who, again, control all three branches of government,
are blaming the Democrats. Now, don't get me
wrong. I love blaming the Democrats, too. It's
a national pastime. But you're in control of
the entire fucking government. Essentially, the
budget is about to run out, and Congress needs
to pass a budget. And so Republicans have made
a bill to keep the government open, but it was
crafted entirely by them and doesn't include
anything for the Democrats. And Democrats are
like, we want concessions. And Republicans are
like, no. Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate
for this to pass, and they don't have 60 votes
because they don't have 60 senators. So they're
essentially saying we demand that you capitulate
to a one -sided piece of legislation, and if
you don't, we're gonna blame you for it. This
is not... unusual, this is usually just like
if there is a party that's fully in power they
do this, like they blame the party that's the
minority party for being obstructionist. In reality,
this is in theory supposed to be where bipartisanship
comes into effect, but bipartisanship doesn't
exist. And so instead, we are all just wondering
what the fuck's gonna happen tomorrow. So, if
it does go through, which at time of recording
it's very likely, it very well could change by
tonight, but who knows? Here's what to expect.
A lot of government services will stop. Basically,
anything that's not considered essential will
stop. If you depend on a specific government
service and you are concerned about it being
halted, I recommend searching to see if that
is considered essential or not. Some government
employees are going to be essentially just put
on leave. Some government employees are going
to have to continue to work without pay and get
back pay later. But mostly, it's just going to
be very expensive. Like, it's not cheaper to
shut down. Because all of the problems that accrue
while we're shut down need to be handled and
the back pay and it's a mess. The other thing
that we're watching right now is that Trump is
seemingly positioning a threat to fire a ton
of federal employees as leverage against the
Democrats. Like he has instructed his people
to essentially draft up plans to fire mass numbers
of federal employees if the government does shut
down. Which essentially is just Trump using American
workers' livelihood as a bargaining chip. against
the Democrats to ensure that the Democrats vote
for a bill that is deeply unliked by the American
people? Bipartisanship in action. And on the
topic of firing a ton of federal employees, they
already did that. And it's been bad. Elon Musk's
Doge efforts to fire a ton of government employees
resulted in the government having to rehire a
bunch of them, essentially creating a seven -month
-long taxpayer -funded paid vacation for the
people that Doge claims they fired, at least
for a good portion of them, because they have
to bring people back in because they fired too
many people and now they can't function properly.
And they're like, whoops, how could nobody have
seen this coming? Anyway, none of this releases
the Epstein files, which is... Interesting. Hello,
dear listener. If you like what I do and you
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Goes a really long way. I'm also on a whole bunch
of social media places. Follow me wherever the
social media is. I'm probably there. Moving on.
Elsewhere. Venezuela is preparing for a potential
invasion from the United States of America. Images
have been surfacing around the internet of elderly
people in Venezuela in militia training, carrying
guns crawling through the dirt. The US has now
extra judiciously killed 17 Venezuelan citizens
using military force. These boats that they keep
claiming that they're bombing that are drug boats
have not been proven to be drug boats and are
just us murdering foreign civilians. And so now
Venezuela is like, well, you're positioning a
lot of boats on our coast. You're shifting aircraft
to bases closer to us. We're going to prepare
for war. Now, obviously, if the U .S. decided
to do a full out invasion of Venezuela, the militia
wouldn't do a whole lot. But and I want to be
hyper clear about this one. for everyone who's
outside the US. We don't want this. There may
be a small contingent of weird losers who are
like gung -ho about the idea of rooting out Whatever
fantasy has been woven by Trump, but the average
American is losing the ability to afford rent,
food, and medicine. We're not walking around
hoping that we launch new war fronts into other
countries. Our leadership does this because it's
what keeps the money flowing. We don't want this.
Like, even Trump supporters, one of the things
they kept pointing to with him was that he wasn't
going to start new wars. Obviously, that's a
bullshit statement. But still, even his own supporters
were excited about the idea of no new wars. As
of now, we're not actually at war, although the
leadership of Venezuela says that we're in an
undeclared war. International eyes are watching
this closely and aren't happy with how the US
has been acting recently, to put it a little
mildly. Let's move over to the flotilla making
its way to Gaza. There's been a few of these
now, but essentially activists have put together
a large flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to
bring to Gaza. Dozens of ships representing 44
different countries are bringing aid in this
flotilla, and the flotilla has come under attack
by the Israeli military. After initial reports
of drone attacks from the Israeli military on
the flotilla, NATO countries have deployed warships
to support the flotilla. Spain and Italy at this
point have both sent multiple ships to support
the flotilla, and the Italian Minister of Defense
is quoted in saying, Israel has been using drones
to drop flares and other explosives and some
kind of flammable chemicals on these ships. They
also committed a major war crime, which is they
jammed their radios and forced Abba to play through
the ship's radios. Also forced starvation. Israeli
media is trying to label the flotilla as terrorists.
They even tried to say that Hamas organized this.
They want to say they're terrorists so they can
get away with just killing them or holding them
in, quote, terrorist -grade prisons. But since
Israel is an international pariah at this point,
most countries aren't having that. And like I
said, warships supporting the flotilla. The Fotillas
should reach Gaza this week, so we'll find out
if they are finally successful or if Israel pulls
some other bullshit. One other note on Israel,
actually. So Microsoft has a contract with Israel's
military to give them cloud infrastructure to
do their Israeli military stuff. As a reminder,
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, they're defense contractors.
They provide infrastructure for war. Anyway,
The Guardian reported that apparently Israel
had used Microsoft's cloud. to perform mass surveillance
on Palestinians. And Microsoft was like, oh,
oh, we looked into that and that might be true
actually. Oh, oh, hey, no one could have seen
this coming. Oh, maybe we'll pause their account
while we investigate further. So Microsoft has
like paused the contract with the Israeli military,
specifically regarding defense efforts. They
still have other contracts with Israel in general.
But finally, after months of external and internal
protests for Microsoft, they've finally done
something. All it took was being associated with
what is now labeled by the UN as a genocide.
Over in China, no bummers, the Chinese government
is expanding censorship efforts to prevent social
media from being too sad. Essentially over in
China, there is a growing sentiment, wouldn't
you know it, among young people who feel like
hard work won't really get you anywhere. And
so there's been a lot of pessimism and nihilism
in social media, and the Chinese government is
like, that's not good for the future. China's
no stranger to clamping down on speech to direct
public sentiment, but it's kind of an obtuse
way to go about things. They're basically saying,
hey, sentiment is bad right now, so let's just
crush bad sentiment, rather than... fix what's
causing the bad sentiment. Sound familiar? So
they're starting a two month long initiative
where they're gonna basically go after various
social media platforms and say, hey, you have
to actually prevent all this negative pessimism
or you're gonna be fucked. They're not like going
after individual people and being like, you're
a sad person. Go to jail! That's not what's happening.
Something pretty interesting here though is that
it essentially means that the Chinese government
has formally acknowledged this souring sentiment
among young people, which is not something that
they're usually excited to do. The fact that
they have made a formal program to tackle it
means that they're signaling we're aware and
acknowledging that we have a problem on our hands.
And China doesn't tend to like to show the world
that they've got problems on their hands. Now
I can't help but think about how... China's trying
to crush negative sentiment on the internet,
and over in the US, there is currently a massive
effort to chill -free speech that might be critical
of the current administration, or critical of
America, or really critical of anything. Major
tech companies have been cozying up to the current
administration. Fuck, Tim Cook giving Trump a
golden trophy? Like what? Remember, the social
media companies are not there to provide a service
for you to be able to have your reach and platform.
They are there to make money. In the future,
I plan to make some videos about how you can
be a more independent digital citizen, so if
that is interesting to you, let me know in the
comments, or reply, or at me, or something. Reach
out! Let me know that you want to see that. GAME
IT! Stardew Valley 1 .7 is gonna be a thing,
but don't get hype, but I mean you're gonna get
hype. Stardew Valley is just one of those games
that has been getting updates consistently for
free since its release well beyond what anyone
expected. I would say like Stardew Valley and
No Man's Sky. I don't know what else comes close.
I'm genuinely curious. If you have another game
you can think of, let me know. But Stardew Valley
1 .7 has been confirmed, and developer Concerned
Ape has said that he doesn't want to hype it
up too much, but it is gonna be a thing. I will
say that when 1 .6 was confirmed, and he also
said he didn't want to hype that up too much,
it finally dropped with a massive amount of content
and a complete overhaul for modding utilities
for the community. So Concerned Ape saying that
a new patch shouldn't get too much hype is evidence
that we should get hype. Sorry, dude, you did
this to yourself. EA Sports. It's deeply unethical.
Jared Kushner, Silver Lake, and Saudi Arabia
are going to be the new owners of Electronic
Arts, a massive game publisher. EA, who is well
-hated for a lot of reasons, makes FIFA and Madden.
They're gonna be fine, but a joint venture that
includes Jared Kushner and Saudi Arabia's public
investment fund is gonna be taking EA private
for a record -setting $55 billion. What does
this mean? Not a ton, probably. I mean, EA is
a shit company, and now they're just kind of,
like, solidifying that and going private? Like,
being privately shitty? I genuinely do not know
if this makes them any worse. Just being associated
with Jared Kushner and Saudi Arabia's investment
firm. Is EA even shittier now, or are they...
is this less shitty? At the end of the day, massive
corporations taking private by private equity.
This just kind of keeps happening. I'm not, I'm
not too broken up about it because I don't remember
the last time I played a game that EA published.
I guess The Sims? The Sims is also won, if you
like The Sims. If you like The Sims, you are
now supporting Jared Kushner. I'm so sorry. Sony
had their big games announcement thing streaming
thingy called State of Play recently. There was
a bunch of announcements. Here's a few of them.
Gran Turismo 7, it's gonna be a thing, seven
hole Turismos. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
is coming to PlayStation. If you haven't played
Microsoft Flight Simulator, it's bonkers. They
have like the entire world mapped out in like
three dimensions. You can crash a plane into
your own house. Nioh 3, Nioh? I've never played
that game. They announced some PlayStation branded
wireless speakers. Okay, and a bunch of remasters.
Deus Ex remastered, Dynasty Warriors 3 remastered,
a bunch of remasters. I'm gonna link to the full
announcement of everything in my newsletter.
You can check that out in the description. Lightning
round! Non -peer -reviewed alert! This is not
a peer -reviewed paper I'm about to talk about,
so don't take it as gospel. But researchers have
submitted a paper for peer review which looks
into the role of LLMs like ChatGPT in encouraging
people to continue to be shitty. You know, like
when people go to an AI and they're like, this
situation happened. Am I the bad guy? And the
AI is like, no, you did everything perfectly
right. And everyone who told you to stop punching
them in the dick was just being too sensitive.
You're absolutely right. Punching people in the
dick is a love language. A literal school child
dismantled a gun that his friend brought to school.
He was concerned about the danger of the gun
and had experience in hunting with his family.
So this school child dismantled the gun to remove
the threat. He was then expelled because he didn't
tell a teacher about the gun. We are really good
at teaching our children the best lessons. Spaceballs
2 is in production. I didn't know this was happening,
but it's in production. And finally, for today,
Dominion Voting Systems, who's been in a lawsuit
with Rudy Giuliani for a while, has settled the
lawsuit, which was a $1 .3 billion lawsuit. with
confidential outcomes. We don't actually know
what the settlement was, but that has been settled.
Notably, Giuliani has had to sell everything
he owns, because the dude's bankrupt and dying.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode
of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head to SKH .News for
sources, bonus content, and a button that charges
Rudy Giuliani $1 .3 billion more. My name is
Endeavorance. We'll talk again soon. Take care,
and be well.