Hello. I stepped on a particularly crunchy leaf.
But stuff still happened. So what's up? I'm louvering
it. I'm louvering it. I'm louvering it. Last
week, right as I had finished up doing the episode
of Stuff Keeps Happening, I learned that the
heist of the century took place in France. Imagine
my distress. Me, not talking about the heist
that just happened. Dear listener, when I tell
you that it was one of the hardest days of my
life, When I made the decision to be patient
and wait until this episode, it was not actually
all that hard. I just decided to be patient.
But this episode, we're gonna dive into what
happened at the Louvre. The Louvre. Lou, Lou,
Louvre. Fair warning, despite having taken like
eight years of French, I never actually developed
a capable French accent. I'm going to be saying
the Louvre, and it's gonna suck, but I'd rather
say that than Louvre, which I don't like that,
and I'm just, I'm bad at the guttural R. I don't
know, here we go. First up, the Hall. So the
Louvre has a bunch of important shit, including
like crown jewels from former French royalty.
The kind of stuff that you target... on a heist
to the Louvre. And that's what they did. They
targeted that. They stole eight pieces of the
crown jewels of France. Well, they were going
for nine, but they dropped one. According to
Interpol, they made off with a smattering of
earrings, necklaces, tiaras, and a brooch. They
would have had a crown if they didn't drop it.
That was one that they dropped. Apparently it
was damaged when they were taking it out of the
display case, and then they dropped it and just
moved on. In total, the hall is valued at about
88 million euros or a little over a hundred million
dollars. Let's talk about the crew. It was four
dudes. Four guys, really two guys doing the brunt
of the work, but four guys that we're aware of.
Two doing the B &E, two doing the getaway, the
GOA, the G &A. God, now I want to watch a snatch.
It's a good movie. At time of writing, at least
one dude is in custody. French authorities claim
that they got some suspect who was trying to
flee the country. They may have others, but they're
being very cautious with actually revealing any
information. Best I can tell, there's two people
in custody that are suspects. Not like, you know,
not like we got them. We don't know. Could be
anyone. Could be a fall guy. Could be my plan
worked. What? The timeline. There are two sort
of distinct moments in this heist, about a week
prior to the actual break -in and then the break
-in itself. A week prior to showing up at the
Louvre, they went to a town also called Louvre
and they stole a service utility vehicle. You
know, one of those like cherry pickers, like
the mechanical lifts on the back of a truck.
They basically went to a company and they're
like, give us that. We're taking it. So that's
part one. Part two. is two of the guys roll up
in the vehicle with high viz vests behind the
Louvre. They just rolled up onto the sidewalk
and were just like we're just gonna put this
utility vehicle here. They then used a ladder
on the vehicle climbed up onto a balcony and
broke through a window. The car pulled up at
9 30 a .m. The window was broken at 9 34. They
left the Louvre. at 938. They were in there for
four minutes, during which time they used glass
cutters to cut holes in the display cases and
get the stuff out of there. 936 is when the police
were first informed of anything happening. A
security person at the Louvre pressed the button
that's like the call the po -po button, but at
that point they had two minutes to do anything
about this, at which point... The thieves got
out. They went down the ladder, tossed their
supplies, and met up with their getaway drivers
who were on scooters that went ZOOM, and they
just kind of peaced out. When I say scooters,
I don't mean, like, Razor scooters. That would
probably be the only way this would be more rad.
How? Like, how did this happen? Let's talk about
the security situation. First of all, there wasn't
a camera where they broke into the museum. There
just wasn't. There's just a balcony? next to
a very shatterable window next to the Louvre,
and there was no camera there whatsoever. Security
didn't even know what was going on until, you
know, four minutes into their plan. No one stopped
them from just putting a cherry picker next to
a museum for no reason. It's the kind of thing
that usually somebody's like, hey, what are you
here for? It's just, you know, the perimeter
of one of the most famous museums housing some
of the most expensive things known to man. Why
would we be cautious? Additionally, you know,
they use the glass cutty thingies because apparently
the glass enclosures were bulletproof, but not
cut proof. They were installed when bullets was
the biggest thing they were trying to defend
against and never upgraded. Now, it seems like
that's a pretty major lapse in security. for
something like this, and that's correct, it is.
They've been understaffed and underfunded for
a long time. Weird how that doesn't matter till
it does. But there could be another angle here,
and I want to take this with a grain of salt
because this is coming from authorities who have
a lot to lose if this looks bad, which it does,
but investigators in the case have stated that
there is digital forensic evidence that this
may have been an inside job. It could be that
the information about the lapses in security
were given to the thieves by a security guard
at the museum. That'd be so convenient. It wasn't
our fault. It wasn't the chronic underfunding.
It wasn't not taking anything seriously and not
actually caring about the security. It was an
inside job. No one could have stopped this. Anyway,
what's the fallout of this? Not a ton, aside
from like, France is pretty embarrassed right
now. It doesn't look good for the French government,
but also the French government... doesn't need
a whole lot more to not look good right now.
Authorities in France are trying to project strength
and claim that they're gonna get the guys and
they're gonna bring back everything that was
stolen in one piece. One piece! But that's pretty
unlikely, like crime analysts say that this is
the kind of thing that you break them down into
components, you melt down the metals, you get
all the gems out, you send them to a bunch of
different places, get them all cut, and it's
basically untraceable. That's what I should be
doing. Anyway, the world woke up and saw that
like four dudes just absolutely owned France
and stole some crown jewels that had questionable
origins. Most likely worn by royals and such.
I don't know. Feels a little heartwarming. Just
a nice change of pace. Dear listener, did you
know that I stream? I stream twice a week. You
should go to it. You can find my streams on Twitch,
on YouTube, or at live .endeavorance .tv every
Wednesday and Friday starting at 11 a .m. US
East. All of the stream recordings are then posted
to my YouTube channel. There's also an archive
on YouTube of older streams. I've been doing
this for a while, so plenty of content. Check
me out, come hang out. It's me and my dog and
we have a good time. Cool. Anyway. What else
is going on? SNAP is getting snapped. Thanos
would be proud. The U .S. government is still
shut down, and as we roll over into the month
of November, the USDA has now announced that
SNAP benefits will not be paid out for the month
of November. For context, SNAP is also known
as food stamps. It's food assistance programs
in the U .S. It helps people who can't reliably
get food get food. And 42 million Americans depend
on it. That is about 12 % of the U .S. population.
That depends on food assistance programs. Because
we're poor and hungry. Anyway, the USDA is supposed
to pay out funds to states so that states can
help people get food and so on and so forth.
And the Fed is no longer going to be doing that
because the USDA has said, quote, I'm not kidding
when I say that the USDA posted this on their
website in giant letters. thinking that this
is a winning message. Quote, Senate Democrats
have now voted 12 times to not fund the food
stamp program, also known as the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP. Bottom line,
the well has run dry. At this time, there will
be no benefits issued November 1st. We are approaching
an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They
can continue to hold out for health care for
illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures
or reopen the government so mothers, babies,
and the most vulnerable among us can receive
critical nutrition assistance." End quote. I
always love it when the people who are in charge
of giving out food assistance use the withholding
of food assistance and the struggles of those
who won't get that food assistance as a political
chip against the people that they're trying to
blame for not giving out the food assistance
that's totally in their control. Anyway. The
U .S. Department of Agriculture has said no more
benefits, which means that states are now just
going to have to figure out what the fuck to
do. So it's going to be a state by state thing
and you should look up your state and what's
going to happen with your food benefits if that's
something you depend on. What's maddening is
that the USDA put out a statement saying that
they would use existing emergency funds to help
ensure that people still get their benefits a
month ago. That statement has been removed from
their website, and now they're trying to claim
those funds are not, quote, legally available
to them. Essentially, there are multiple multi
-year funds that the USDA can use to fill in
gaps in spending for emergency situations such
as this. They had fully intended to do that a
month ago, but they changed their mind. Nationally,
legal scholars are like, it is insane to claim
that the USDA can't use these funds. A whole
bunch of states have also called out the Fed
being like, what in the fuck? This is going to
cause a lot of people to go hungry. It's really
fucking gross. And if this is something you depend
on and this is adding to your stress, I'm very,
very sorry for the situation that you're finding
yourself in. It's not your fault that these people
have riled up a base that need constant red meat
to stay focused and they're using you. as that
red meat. The only solace is that hunger is a
universal language and it doesn't matter who
you voted for. That vote is not going to give
you the food you need. Anyway, what else? Oh,
on the topic of intentionally hurting our own
citizens. Earlier this year in Western Maryland,
there was torrential downpour that caused near
record flooding and created an absolute disaster
scenario in Garrett and Allegheny counties. Historic
flooding tore through towns as a river raised
to near record levels in six hours. The state
of Maryland applied for federal disaster relief
from FEMA, which is the U .S.'s Federal Disaster
Relief Agency, and that relief was denied. Over
and over again, for months, FEMA had assessed
the damage in the area to be $33 .7 million worth
of damage. That is three times the requirement
for the state of Maryland to apply for that federal
funding. So while FEMA acknowledged the disaster
was well within the requirements, the Trump administration
still repeatedly refused aid, presumably because
Maryland is a blue state. Right next to Maryland,
in fact, like interlocked with the same counties
that were affected in Maryland, is West Virginia.
In June, West Virginia saw a similar disaster
and they got their relief funding in July. West
Virginia is a red state. For international viewers,
a blue versus red state in the U .S. means which
way it went for the presidential election. So
like a red state went for Trump, a blue state
went for Kamala Harris. Trump famously is withholding
as much as he can from blue states as retaliation.
What's really sad here is that the counties affected
in Maryland, Garrett and Allegheny County, swung
for Trump 70 -30, Garrett actually more like
75 -25. So in doing this, in punishing a blue
state, he's actually just punishing millions
of people who voted for him. And I'm not saying
this as a, haha, they got what they voted for
kind of dig. It's just sad. It's the same thing
as when a disaster hits Florida or Texas and
people cheer because there's a lot of Republicans
there or they swing red, like, no. That's gross.
Even with that logic, if you take Garrett and
Allegheny County, that means that 25 and 30 percent
of the people living there didn't vote for this.
They did quote the right thing with their vote.
No one deserves this. We're held hostage by a
fucked up system. And watching the federal government
pick and choose which citizens are worth saving
based on where they fall geographically in the
country is fucked. So hey, maybe use disaster
relief to relieve disaster for your citizens.
who voted for you. I truly don't give a shit
who you voted for. If your house is swept away
by a river, I think you should get some help
from the government. And they're, you know, helping
people having disasters agency. Speaking of disasters,
let's talk about Amazon Web Services. You probably
were impacted by this. This past week, Amazon
Web Services had a major outage in their US East
One sector. AWS is Amazon Web Services. It is
a giant cloud service provider that corporations
can basically rent servers and services from
to build their apps. There was a major DNS issue.
that took down a large chunk of AWS for 15 hours.
Instead of getting super technical about what
happened, I'm gonna use a bit of a metaphor,
because it's not, you would leave this video
if I actually started explaining what happened.
Imagine, if you will, a restaurant, and this
restaurant has three different receptionists.
It's a high -end restaurant, and at the start
of the night, management gives the receptionists
a seating plan. Receptionists A, B, and C all
got the seating plan for that night, but receptionist
A went out for a smoke break. While he was out
on that smoke break, B and C got a revised seating
plan from management. They're like, we actually,
we're going to do this instead. And so A comes
back from their smoke break and they see that
there's a different seating plan on the desk
than the one that they were given. And they're
like, that must be an old one. I'm going to toss
this aside and put mine here instead. And then
they started to try to seat people and it was
a fucking disaster. That's basically what happened.
There's a system that's supposed to route data
to places and that system got tripped up. Didn't
know which places to send people to because of
a timing error. and oopsie daisy all of my apps
if you're wondering specifically it was a dns
issue with dynamo db and and that if you know
what those words mean you know why it was catastrophic
so it took about 15 hours during which time basically
half the internet dissolved worldwide outages
affecting dozens of countries untold billions
of dollars likely lost always good we love a
good amazon outage this happens not infrequently
It happens infrequently, but not infrequently
enough. Lightning round! Prince Andrew's gonna
stop using the Duke of York title, largely because
of the whole, he's a pedophile thing. One of
the guys in that leaked young Republicans chat
with all the racism, turns out he was a Vermont
state senator and has since resigned. The US
is continuing to bomb boats off the coast of
Venezuela, despite providing zero evidence that
they're narco -terrorists, as this administration
keeps claiming. Speaking of blatant corruption,
Trump pardoned the founder of Binance, which
is a crypto company that has deep ties to Trump's
crypto schemes. The CEO of the company had previously
pled guilty to facilitating money laundering.
And finally for today, after an angry word from
his estate, OpenAI has made it so that you can't
generate AI videos of Martin Luther King Jr.
on Sora anymore. Or at least they're trying to
do that. What a bad idea. I'm referring to computers
when I'm saying that. Thank you so much for listening
to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to SKH .News for sources, bonus content,
and a great deal on various gemstones and precious
metals. My name is Endeavor, and we'll talk again
soon. Take care and be well.