Hello. I accurately identified the tomb of Tal
Rasha, but stuff still happened. So what's up?
Here in the United States of America, we are
watching as our government is essentially choosing
to not use existing funding to help feed its
own citizens. Hungry populations are famously
well -behaved. The government is shut down because
the U .S. is not a normal country. We don't do
things that make sense, so instead of like, working,
to have a new budget while paying for services
using the previous budget that was already agreed
upon, we just don't pay for services now. A thing
that's not normal. Like the US is really great
at walking around saying, we're the best, our
constitution rules, and then we have shit like
this. Where it's like, why is this even possible
in our government? The answer is, it's a bad
system. But let's just move on. So here we are
with tens of millions of Americans wondering
how they're going to eat tomorrow. And meanwhile,
the government is pumping hundreds of billions
of dollars into masked federal goons tackling
people on the street for Fox News clips. So we're
all watching this happen and there's not a whole
lot that we can do to stop it. But instead of
just feeling helpless, let's talk about a few
things that you can do to actually make a direct
difference in people's lives. No doubt you've
already heard about how food banks in the United
States are just slammed right now between federal
employees being furloughed, military employees
not getting their paychecks, and SNAP not actually
going into effect from November. Everyone's trying
to get food. Here's the thing about food pantries.
They're not a replacement for nutrition assistance
programs. They're a backstop. They're not equipped
to handle this kind of a situation. Even in a
scenario where every food bank in the country
was well stocked and well staffed, they still
wouldn't be able to handle the load that is on
them right now. You know, the load that's supposed
to be handled by the federal government of the
country that we live in. with regards to ensuring
that people can eat. Anyway, I know I can see
it in your eyes. You're concerned that I'm about
to tell you to volunteer. Guess what, bucko?
I am. But I'm gonna do it in an interesting way
and then I'm gonna talk about mutual aid for
people who don't think they're volunteering.
Let's go. Volunteering rates in the United States
took a huge dive at the start of COVID and we're
starting to see them tick back up a little bit.
We recently saw a 5 % increase in the number
of people who said that they were formerly volunteering
in the past few years. So that's a good trend.
More people doing more things, that's great.
Unfortunately, we're also watching as the current
generation of primary volunteers who are largely
older are aging out. And, of course, a lot of
people right now are wondering how they can eat
tomorrow and don't have a lot of time to volunteer.
So, like, I understand that not everybody can
volunteer, not everybody has the time for it.
Also, if you can make the time for it, it's very
important. Of course, right now, a really important
thing, and something we're seeing a lot of, are
protests against ICE, and the federal government,
and all the bullshit that they're doing. So if
you're watching these protests, and you're like,
wow, I wish I could be out there, but, you know,
I have reason XYZ why I can't go out and protest,
or it doesn't make sense for me to go out and
protest, would you be able to organize stuff
by expiration date, maybe? Because volunteering
at your local food bank is extremely doable,
and they almost definitely need you. Typically,
it's a matter of just showing up at a certain
time. You don't need to bring anything. They
teach you how to do anything that needs to be
done, and they'll give you a task that you're
able to do. If you're not able to lift big, heavy
things, they're not gonna have you lift big,
heavy things. They might have you pack up grocery
bags, organize stuff, go out shopping, meet people,
actually, like, you know, cross off giving out
the bags and stuff. There's a bunch of different
work to do, and it ranges from physical to mental
work, so just anything. that you can do to help.
Now I want to be clear that, like, volunteering
won't fix it. Volunteering is not gonna fix this.
Like, it just won't. I already said at the outset
that even if all of these places were perfectly
staffed and perfectly stocked, it doesn't solve
the problem. But not doing something because
it's not the fix to everything is a bad reason
to not do something. And doing something in this
case could result in literally putting food...
in the hands of a person who's hungry. You may
also be interested to know that the recent uptick
in people volunteering is largely driven by millennials
and people who are generally marginalized and
underrepresented. So if you're a person looking
for a social network of new folks who are like
-minded and have good hearts, it's not a bad
way to meet people. Let's talk about mutual aid,
the sort of like alt -punk goth sister. of volunteering.
It's pretty nebulous when you just say mutual
aid. What the fuck is it actually? In practice,
mutual aid is essentially just being a good person,
but with a cool name. It's essentially networking
in your local community and providing support
where it's needed. It might be monetary support,
it might be getting food to hungry people, it
might be making sure that those who do not have
houses are safe in the winter. In my case, a
mutual aid network that I was part of was...
Doing a lot of work just passing out clean undergarments.
That's important. It's not gonna fix the world,
it's not gonna solve climate change, it's not
gonna undo the rising tide of fascism, but it
is gonna help someone be a little less hungry
and have clean underwear. And that's what's like
actually important. Helping people actually get
things that they need. You gotta find a group
in your area, they may be official or less official,
and ultimately you just gotta get involved and
ask them how can you help. You will almost definitely
find people there who are seasoned activists,
who know the community, know what's actually
needed, and can direct that effort very well.
But unfortunately, there's not a lot of effort
for them to direct, so here is a resource. I'm
including this in a link in the description.
It is a website that lets you look up mutual
aid groups in your area. It's not comprehensive,
but it's a great starting point. I will also
link to this other map where you can look up
food banks in your area to try to find a place
that you may want to volunteer or donate to.
You should know that right now most food banks
are saying donate money rather than food items
because they know what food items they actually
need. At the end of the day, all I'm saying is
it takes a village. There are people out protesting
and actively impeding ICE officers from kidnapping
people on the street, and that is critically
important. Also important is making sure that
food moves to the places that need it. And if
the government is not willing to help feed our
neighbors, then that really just... Comes down
to us. Anyway, what else? It's not a bubble.
It's a bubble. It's not a bubble. Nvidia is now
the world's first five trillion dollar company.
This comes just three months after Nvidia became
the world's first four trillion dollar company.
This is largely because it's not a bubble. It's
a bubble. Nvidia is now so valuable that their
company's valuation rivals most of the world's
GDP, only being beaten out by China and the US.
Although I want to be clear that that's a meaningless
stat. That is, that is apples to oranges. It's
really, it's actually like apples to, like, pterodactyls.
But it's more like the fact that we're talking
about the valuation of a company in comparison
to the size of economies. Like, that's kind of
the point being made here. Like, hey, that's
a, that's a big company. Essentially, at this
point, Nvidia has reached national security interest
levels. And it's in the US's best interest to
just keep pumping money into everything that
has AI labeled on it. And so I've compiled a
list of recent investments. across the AI space
just so we can take a look at how the tech industry
is just an ouroboros of too much money. Stick
with me here. The Trump admin partnered with
OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to make a company
to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into
AI. Oracle announced a purchase of $40 billion
of NVIDIA chips. SEC filings show that OpenAI
was one of several large contracts with Oracle
valued at $30 billion. Google announced a $25
billion AI data center project. Nvidia and AMD
agreed to pay the US government a cut of all
their sales to be able to resume sales in China.
The Trump administration takes a 10 % stake in
Intel on behalf of the US government. OpenAI
and Oracle sign a $300 billion contract for computing
power over five years. Nvidia buys cloud services
from CoreWeave for $6 .3 billion, which ultimately
gets inflated up into the double digit billions.
Nvidia then announces a $100 billion investment
into OpenAI and AMD, reach an agreement for OpenAI
to take a 10 % stake. of AMD causing AMD stock
to spike. OpenAI partnered with Broadcom to start
making chips. Oracle also cut a $20 billion deal
with Meta to provide more computing capacity.
Google is gonna start supplying Anthropic with
chips to the tune of hundreds of billions of
dollars. And the US Department of Energy partnered
with AMD at a valuation of a billion dollars.
Some of that is normal business. A lot of that...
is companies investing back and forth forever.
Multiple banks are like, hey, y 'all, it's a
bubble. Like, it's a bubble bubble. The current
investment is in the hundreds of billions of
dollars per year across these companies, and
it's expected to continue to grow, and analysts
are likening it to the dot com bubble, which,
if you recall, sucked. Win it first! I don't
want it. I don't want a bubble. I don't want
bubble. Anyway, once upon a time, Nvidia's whole
deal was like convincing gamers to buy a new
chip to render some polygons a little faster.
And now it's whatever the fuck this is. Speaking
of not a bubble. Lots of tech layoffs. The tech
industry has been going through a whole bunch
of layoffs. This is not anything new. This has
been going on for years now. It went from like,
oh, we hired too many people during COVID to,
oh, now AI is a thing that's replacing jobs and
also we're gonna lay off anybody who doesn't
come back to the office. But also we're gonna
lay off people who are doing AI work because
the AI is not actually producing a whole lot
of value. It's a lot. But here's a few layoffs
from recent days. Amazon laid off 14 ,000 people.
There was an original announcement about 30 ,000,
but it ended up being 14 ,000. It was about 4
% of their corporate workforce, and they're citing
that it was not financially driven. Not AI driven,
but culture driven. Those 14 ,000 people just
fucking sucked, I guess. Applied Materials is
laying off 1 ,400 people, which is 4 % of their
staff, citing low sales. Automaker Rivian is
laying off 600 people, that's 4 .5 % of their
staff, because of the expiring EV credits, among
other things. Meta is laying off 600 people from
their AI subgroup, citing bloat. I would argue
that AI is bloke. Essentially, these companies
just chronically over -hire and then figure out
what to do with people. And then we keep landing
in this position. Combine that with the culture
of just buying as many companies as you can and
creating work done in departments and then laying
off those people as well, and you've essentially
just got a monopoly disguised as a failing economy.
Anyway, I'm just gonna keep hammering this home
as loud as I possibly can. Hey, um, there's too
much money in tech and these people shouldn't
be in charge of the future of humanity. Let's
move on. Recently, a cargo ship pulled into the
port of Baltimore on the east coast of the United
States of America. This is not interesting because
this happens all the time. Psych, idiot. It was
actually somewhat interesting this time. Loser.
The boat that pulled into Baltimore is a sailing
ship, a sailing cargo ship. Quick aside before
I start talking about all this, far be it from
me to heap praise onto global shipping companies.
So that's not what I'm going to do here. A decent
bit of this is greenwashing, and I'm trying to
cut through that as best I can. Please understand
that I just I just like ships. I like sailing
ships. They look cool. And so this makes me happy.
Let's talk about it. So freighters, they carry
things to and fro over the ocean. Impressive
stuff, except not great because they burn oil.
Which is made of dinosaurs. Those pterodactyls
that we were comparing the oranges to earlier.
Apples, too. Whichever we were comparing them
to. We burned the juice from the pterodactyls
to do shipping. And that's not great. And so
we're trying to find a better way to go about
doing that. Lo and behold. Win. Essentially companies
are making big sailing ship versions of cargo
ships. And they're trying to say that this is
a new green revolution or whatever. To be clear...
There's still a lot of work to be done there.
But as we make strides in materials manufacturing
and aerodynamics research and shit like that,
we're starting to get to a point where it's becoming
more feasible to use big sails on cargo ships
to at least help the engines. In the case of
the ship that recently docked at Baltimore, the
Neoline Origin, the goal is for it to be primarily
a sailing ship. In reality, it still has to use
a motor plane. The Neoline Origin is one of a
small cohort of ships that is trying to do something
like this. It's like 70 in total across the world.
And while they did pull into Baltimore with their
inaugural trip recently, they were also delayed
because the sails were damaged due to weather
along their route. So like it's it's understood
to still be a problem. But hear me out. It looks
fucking rad and sailing ships are so cool. I
think we can agree that those are scientifically
proven points. So this ship is not going to fix
global warming. In fact, even if we did replace
all of our freighters with purely green energy
powered ships, freight is still not good for
the ocean. Just in general, trash, oil, waste,
destroying ecosystems, et cetera, et cetera.
So putting some sails on some boats is not going
to make the world fixed. But it's a cool step
in the right direction. And I don't understand
this. Maybe somebody who, like, knows psychology
can explain this to me. But when I look at a
ship with sails, I just feel better about that
ship than I do when I see one that doesn't have
sails. It's just like, ah, yes, that's what boats
supposed to be. That feels right. That's human.
I see a freighter with no sails. I'm like, get
this the fuck out of my face. What are you doing?
I have no idea what's going on with me today.
Last thing about the neoline origin and this
like specific ship. They actually sell the option
to ride along on a voyage if you want. It's like
several thousand dollars, but you get a room
and you can just go on like a month long trip
on this boat. That's neat. Anyone up for some
slight mutiny? Did you enjoy Halloween? I hope
you did. Personally, I got spooked because I,
my president, decided to post on his social network.
And that's spooky. Specifically, Trump decided
to celebrate Halloween by posting on his social
network that the US is considering going in,
and I quote, guns a -blazing into Nigeria. This
is one of those things that I didn't realize
was even simmering in right -wing circles, but
it turns out that right -wing elected officials
and podcasters, etc. have been pushing this conspiracy
that there is a coordinated genocide against
Christians in Nigeria. and it has culminated
already into the President of the United States
saying, hey, Nigeria, we're gonna cut off aid
and you need to address this problem or we might
invade you. To which Nigeria's response was,
what? See, there's not a genocide of Christians
in Nigeria. And to say that is to basically say,
I don't understand how the world works. Before
jumping into specifics, let's just cover a few
baseline facts. One, the United States is not
a Christian nation. and certainly not some sort
of global Christian defense network. Two, international
experts agree that there's not a genocide going
on in Nigeria, and not even a thing that could
be construed as one. And yet, three, there are
multiple major humanitarian issues going on in
Nigeria right now, which result in the deaths
of Muslims and Christians. Overall, more Muslims
have been killed by these conflicts. Currently,
Christians have a higher probability of being
targeted in certain regions. But it's important
to understand that Nigeria is almost 50 -50 Muslim
and Christian. And so if there's people getting
killed in Nigeria, mathematically, it's probably
going to be one of those two religions. Now there
is religious -based violence happening in Nigeria
at the hands of fringe militias that are mostly
off to the north. And while there is fighting
between Christians and Muslims happening in Nigeria,
it's not because of religion. It's because of
resource ownership disputes. In reality, have
there been Christians targeted for being Christian?
Yes. And also, that's not a genocide. And also,
also, is still bad. Those can all be true. But
ultimately, the GOP is currently drum -beating
about going after Nigeria over a thing that they
can't really do anything about because it doesn't
exist. Nigeria is dealing with problems from
the militias in the north, and they're like,
hey, you want to give us, like... Support and
doing that? Cool. But those militias are largely
killing Muslims, because they're in the north,
and in the north of Nigeria, it's primarily Muslim.
So essentially, by willfully misinterpreting
geopolitical events, the Trump administration
is roundaboutly arguing that we should support
Nigeria in defending Muslims. What a woke -ass
administration. Lightning wrap! Elon Musk launched
Grokpedia, his Wikipedia, quote, competitor.
It's largely just an AI slop remix of Wikipedia
articles with right -wing talking points woven
in. It's really really it's just unreadable.
Microsoft Teams will soon start tracking whether
you are or are not connected to your corporate
network and your manager will be able to see
that. A man in the UK was jailed after looking
up information about a court case of which he
was a juror. during the court case. That sucks.
And finally for today, a US Navy helicopter and
fighter jet both went down in the South China
Sea while they were doing, quote, routine operations.
Don't worry about it. Thank you so much for listening
to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to skh .news for sources, bonus content,
and location on a free helicopter and fighter
jet. My name is Endeavorance. We'll talk again
soon. Take care and be well.