Hello. I completed all of my quest objectives,
but stuff still happened. So what's up? No Kings,
again, and still, and again. This past weekend
saw worldwide protests for the No Kings protests,
also known as the No Tyrants protest, if you're
in a place that... does do Kings. If you're in
one of those, uh, one of those Kingler locations,
if you're feeling like this is deja vu, it's
because this is not the first no Kings protest.
And this one was bigger than the last one. The
last no Kings protest saw about 5 million people
take to the streets in the U S this one saw estimates
say about 7 million. That doesn't include counts
from worldwide protests of people going through
the streets in other countries to be like, hey,
the Trump administration fucking sucks. There
wasn't really much violence to speak of. These
were pretty tame marches. It was a lot of people
who were just disgruntled voters going out and
marching. It's about as basic as an American
protest can get. That doesn't mean it's meritless
or useless. Just basic. I only mention that because
Republicans are trying to paint it as a hate
America rally and tried to say that the people
who are going are like dark money funded Antifa
warriors. Meanwhile, if you look at any picture
of the crowd, it's just a bunch of like old white
people holding signs about like brunch and stuff.
Like, yeah, there are libs, but like that's not
violent Antifa warriors like me. I am a violent
Antifa warrior. Hear my battle cry. It is also
notable that the current sitting president of
the United States, a person who is in charge
of a country, posted a handful of AI videos in
response to the protests. One of which is a video
of him with a king's crown on his head, flying
a fighter jet over protesters and then opening
up a hatch to drop what appears to be a bunch
of diarrhea. all over the protesters. That is
a choice, my guy. We're waiting for more details,
but if these numbers hold, this would be the
biggest one -day U .S. protest since, like, 1970.
And the third largest of all U .S. history. Now,
I know there's a lot of people who may say demonstrations
like this. They're saying that it's useless,
it doesn't do anything. Where has this gotten
us? I get your frustration. But to look at the
mobilization of 7 million people... And to say
that that's meaningless is just absurd. Just
because this is not a group of people who are
now ready to start the revolution doesn't mean
it's not valuable. People are radicalized at
varying paces and you can either help chip in
with that or you can complain about it. I would
prefer that you help chip in because liberals
marching and waving signs because they are disgruntled
with the current situation is better than complete
apathy which led to us having this administration
is it gonna fix our situation no no one said
it would and no one said they were trying to
do that nowhere ever was this protest supposed
to fix everything it's a demonstration it's a
show of solidarity it's a pep rally you gotta
have those because you have to show people how
many of us are feeling the same way right now
Anyway, stateside. There was a little bit of
international there. That's why it counts. We
are on day 20 of the U .S. government being shut
down. I had churros last night to celebrate.
Not really celebrating. I just got churros because
I like them. It's day 20 of the shutdown. Congress
is in gridlock. Nothing seems to be moving. this
is probably going to become the next longest
shutdown of all time. It's currently in third
place for longest shutdown of all time, first
place being held by Trump's first term. Essentially,
Democrats and Republicans in Congress are not
voting for passing a bill to keep the government
funded, which is leaving them in deadlock. It's
dumb. I would... I would say it's dumb. I think
that's how I would describe it. We're getting
closer and closer to the point where a government
shutdown actually becomes dangerous for the government,
which is to say, when people start getting hungry,
it's real easy to ignore a government shutdown
and all political discussion when you're not
hungry. So as this continues to drag on, we will
eventually see military and federal families
missing paydays. We'll see a strain on food banks,
and we'll see food assistance dwindle and eventually
snuff out. To try to push out how long it is
before people start to really get hungry, Trump
has signed a thing to make it so that the DOD
is going to move funds around to pay the military,
but that's only going to last like a month, and
they're probably still going to miss their first
payday. So beyond that, we just don't know. It's
just going to keep getting wackier. I do want
to share how this has personally - affected me
please understand that this makes me feel very
vulnerable but i was recently going for a hike
this past weekend and at the nature center the
latrine was closed due to the government shutdown
And so I had to become one with nature. Speaking
of shit, let's talk about text messages between
a bunch of Republicans. Politico recently published
a report that revealed a bunch of text messages
from a Telegram channel between a bunch of young
Republicans. People who are like capital Y, capital
R, young Republicans. So this is where it gets
messy. And this is where the narrative starts
to get real fucked up. So let's be real clear.
Young Republican here definitionally means 18
to 40. The term young Republicans here is specifically
referring to a national organization of young
Republicans. And that's the name of it. They
mean young as in first half of life, not teenagers.
So what this was, was a big trove of texts that
had the exact awful shit you would expect. I'm
not going to quote it. I'm not going to show
it. It's just. racism sexism uh death murder
killing jokes uh rape jokes all all of the things
essentially the exact kind of humor that you
would expect from a 15 year old boy and so when
it says young republicans have text messages
that have rape jokes in them it's like yeah duh
only the yeah duh was actually referring to a
35 year old in one case and someone who's currently
in this u .s administration And I mean it, like
the text, like they said things like, I love
Hitler and the things you're not supposed to
say, you know, the things that they always want
to say, but can't. That's kind of something they
would say in a hidden Telegram channel while
turning around and yelling at anyone who would
insinuate that they're racist. It's so fucking
transparent. So this was enough that the actual
organization, the National Young Republicans.
Folks, they called on these people to step down
because they were in like positions of leadership
within the organization. It's almost like modern
young conservatism preys on young boys and their
feeling of being left behind by society for the
very real sense of isolation that they're feeling
and the lost and stolen future. that truly has
happened to them. It's almost like there's a
bunch of people out here who feel hopeless and
left behind. And the only ones they have to turn
to are the worst among us. Among us. Exactly.
Our system uplifts the most selfish, horrible
people to the highest echelons. Places that were
only ever reserved for gods. And so in lieu of
a responsible masculine figure, we have Donald
Trump. as our president, posting AI videos of
him literally shitting on his citizens because
that's what he thinks communication should be.
Am I offended by that video? Not even remotely.
Don't give a shit. Am I upset about the fact
that the leader of a country that holds me at
gunpoint to pay them taxes is doing that in response
to the citizens? Yeah, I feel like that's not
a good use. of the leadership position, you know?
Anyway, I don't remember what I was saying, but
racists. So J .D. Vance decided to defend the
racists essentially by saying, oh, well, you
know, that's just how kids talk. 18 to 40. So
he was trying to do the line of like, oh, it's
young Republicans. It's just some teenagers.
It's just locker room talk, whatever. That's
just how kids are. And honestly, he's not wrong.
That is how kids are. And he stopped short of
saying. And that's a huge problem for our culture.
And we must address it because the normalization
of dehumanizing our fellow man is antithetical
to the American project. He could have said that,
but he didn't. He didn't say that. Instead, he
said, talking about gassing Jews is just how
kids are. Over in Alaska, there has been some
terrible wreckage from a typhoon that hit on
October 12th. Remnants of a typhoon hit southwestern
Alaska, annihilating villages, primarily those
of indigenous people. Folks who have had generations
in their towns, towns that don't exist anymore.
Floods rolled in and shattered records of flooding
by a long shot. Houses were taken off their foundation
and were floating far enough to be crashing into
each other. Here's an excerpt from alaskapublic
.org with a person describing what it was like
on the ground. Quote, Carl said that houses were
pushed off their foundations and scattered across
Kipna. He was in a house with 14 family members
during the storm, six of them children, when
the four bedroom house started drifting around
2 a .m. At one point, he yelled to his family
to brace when it looked like they were going
to strike another house. He estimates his home
traveled half a mile before it came to rest.
End quote. There's been a flurry of rescue efforts
and the National Guard has been deployed. The
head of Alaska's National Guard said that this
might be the biggest off -road network operation
in 45 years for the National Guard. And unfortunately,
officials are assessing the damage and predict
that it's so severe, it might be more than a
year and a half before people can return to their
homes. Homes which mostly are gone now. But again,
these are largely indigenous towns, and the folks
living there have a deep connection to that land.
It's their life, it's their livelihood. Even
in the face of absolute destruction and disaster,
while there were evacuation efforts going on,
the people of this town were hesitant to leave.
It's all they know. It's all they want. It's
just to be home. And I cannot blame them for
that. If you want to donate, I've included links
in the description of this episode. Elsewhere,
there was a cease... Never mind. The ceasefire
that Israel and Hamas have mostly agreed to that
the U .S. was fostering has all but fallen apart
already. I almost had enough time to write a
draft. before it fell apart. Essentially, since
the start of the ceasefire, Israel has still
been killing and bombing people in Gaza and has
been escalating it over time. Recently, they
did a bunch of airstrikes in the region of Rafah
because they claimed that Hamas was shooting
at Israeli soldiers there. Hamas says that they
can't even get to that region right now. Israel
is pointing to the violence at the hands of anti
-Hamas militias fighting against Hamas. Civilians
and journalists have been getting killed as these
militias are roaming around. Israel has already
tried pausing aid distribution and claims they're
going to get right back to it soon. it's hard
to believe their claims because they also said
that every single hospital and school and faith
center in Gaza was secretly a Hamas operation.
Oh, you know what? Throw refugee camps in there
too. There is not one intact hospital in Gaza.
They have all been destroyed or damaged by Israeli
strikes. And I wish it wasn't this overtly evil,
but we have confirmation from Israeli media that
Israel has been arming the militias that they
are saying. are going against Hamas and causing
a bunch of violence in the area. Netanyahu himself
and his cabinet secretly approved the distribution
of weapons to militias to send into Gaza that
they then used as an excuse to continue attacking
Gaza. I don't think any reasonable person really
expected this to be a ceasefire that actually
held. I had some hope purely because I've seen
so much. and I just want it to end. I do not
like the terms of this ceasefire, and I never
really thought it was going to hold. I didn't
think it was a good one. I really wish that killing
would end. Speaking of killing, Russia and Ukraine.
Fuck. Let's go through this quick. Russia and
Ukraine, it's still going on. It's still ramping
up. Russia has been amping up their drone strikes
and missile strikes on cities in Ukraine. And
in response, Ukraine has been striking deeper
and deeper into Russia's mainland. There are
reports that Ukraine has hit enough oil refineries
in Russia to have reduced their oil refinery
capacity by like 20%. Zelensky went to Trump
to ask for Tomahawk missiles, which if given
them, that would severely change the balance
of power. And Trump thought about it and then
said no, and then also said, stop fighting and
just use the current battle lines as the map,
which is what Putin wants to do. What a surprise.
But anyway, France is having a time of it. It's
been like a year and a half of just absolute
chaos in the French government. Last summer,
the far right in France won a bunch of seats
in parliament, more than people had expected.
And in response to that, the current president
of France, Macron, he was like, let's try that
again. And he called it a snap election. Essentially,
that was just like, hey, let's do a do -over.
And the far right got more seats. from the two
over since then macron's been doing everything
he can to try to keep the government from just
falling apart but there's not enough people in
any group to form a coalition that lasts and
so there's just been like a rotating door of
prime ministers and recently another one came
and went there's been protest after protest after
protest mass mobilizations just shutting france
down this is what happens when you have strong
labor force by the way these were like union
planned protests uh join the joining union joining
union there were also just like civilian protests
like there was really impressive other protests
going on beyond just just the organized union
ones but still the people in france are protesting
government cuts and an increase in the retirement
age shit like that they're basically saying like
hey why is our life getting materially worse
under your leadership huh side note uh here's
a really good idea leadership of a country that
improves things i got a million of these anyway
yeah it's just kind of a mess in france there's
just protest after protest after protest prime
minister after prime minister after prime minister
uh and the far right coalition's leader was found
guilty of embezzlement and isn't allowed to run
for office for five years so they're really having
a time of it that's all i can really say technology
bad technology let's talk about sora OpenAI recently
launched an app called Sora, and you probably
have already heard about it, but it is an AI
TikTok app. Essentially, it is a endless scrolling
feed of AI -generated videos, and all that you
do is generate AI -generated videos and then
put them into a feed. So it's a feed of literally
just slop. And so in classic OpenAI fashion,
they didn't know, or more likely didn't care,
what was going to happen when this app hit the
general public. And it did, and wouldn't you
know it, copyright infringement abuse you can
generate video of other people some people would
busted brains can opt in to being put into these
videos. Sam Altman himself is one of these opt
-ins, and people have already generated CCTV
footage of him shoplifting. Like, it's so blatantly
stupid. Now, OpenAI probably thinks they can
get away with basically anything forever, and
they might be right, but this move pissed off
content lawyers from Hollywood to Japan. Hollywood's
like, hey, why are you able to generate footage
of... our copyrighted material. In Japan, they're
like, why the fuck can people generate, like,
entire anime sequences from our material? Like,
this is our cultural export. You're trying to
claim that you have divine right to train some
kind of exploitation machine with it? And so
it didn't take long to get stuff like SpongeBob
in a Nazi costume and shit like that. And OpenAI
was like, oh, whoa, whoops. Their original plan
to handle copyright was opt out. If you have
a copyright on something and someone somewhere
made a video, you can apply to opt out of having
that content be usable. It's insane. This is
where we are. And this is why I'm basically always
saying, stop showing abject deference to tech
bros. This is dumb. We don't need to live like
this. Copyright law is a mess, an intellectual
property. It's important in some ways and abused
in many ways. But I'm always here if somebody
wants to sue Sam Altman. Let's talk about depression.
I have it. Scientists at McGill University have
isolated brain cells that they believe are affected
by people with depression. We've known for a
long time that depression is physiological. Depression's
not just you're sad a lot. Depression's your
body doesn't have the right chemical balance
to make it so that your brain doesn't want to
just end. Trust me, I didn't want to have it
like that. I didn't mean to. Anyway, we've known
that it's physiological in nature, but we don't
have a lot of insight into the specifics of what
brain cells are doing what differently with people
with depression versus people without. So these
science boys took a hundred cadavers. Science
boys do the coolest thing. Anyway, the science
boys took a hundred cadavers and looked at their
brains. About 40 of them did not have depression
and 60 of them did. They were able to isolate
two different types of cells that had notable
difference that were consistent between the cadavers.
I'm not going to pronounce them because I don't
want to sound dumb. And I did. look it up but
what does this actually mean unfortunately it
doesn't mean a ton but it does mean that we're
making progress we don't know what we don't know
correlation is not causation so they can't just
say well we now know how depression happens because
of these two brain cell types you know next steps
would look like figuring out if there's a before
and after death difference with these brain cells
and learning more about if this is a result of
depression or a cause of depression but it's
movement in a of potentially having a better
understanding of mental illness and more ways
to counteract it so that hopefully someday I'll
be able to stop taking the pills that make me
not want to go dark. Lightning round. There was
a guy who worked in the US Department of Energy
and he recently lost his security clearance after
his computer tried to upload about 200 ,000 images
of porn. to a backup over the government network.
It was reportedly his lifelong collection. For
the first time in 20 years, the U .S. passport
has slipped out of the world's top 10 most valuable
passports. We were number one a decade ago. I
wonder what happened over the past decade. OpenAI,
again showing their excellent judgment, announced
that they will soon be allowing ChatGPT to again
act like your friend, boyfriend, therapist, stuff
like that, including sexting. This is a great
idea and very good. And finally for today, a
guy in Indiana found a 4 ,270 -year -old human
skull. Like, yeah, we knew people were there
then, but that's an old skull. Like, very old.
I wonder whose it was. Wasn't mine. I don't think.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode
of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head to skh .news for
sources, bonus content, and a map to where I
hid the other 4 ,270 -year -old skull. My name
is Endeavorance. We'll talk again soon. Take
care and be well.