Hello. I removed the label from the side of my
mattress. But stuff still happened. So what's
up? This is what happens when line only go up.
Last episode I talked a good bit about Nvidia
being five trillion dollars and all the cross
investments happening in the space of AI and
all the big tech companies that are spending
billions upon billions of dollars and how bubbly
it is. Guess what? Over the past week, Metta
had their earnings report, and afterwards their
stock plummeted 11%. This is because at the earnings
call, essentially Zuckerberg was like, yeah,
yeah, yeah, we're spending a bunch of money on
building out data centers and AI and stuff, but
here's the thing. We gotta do more of that. It's
okay, because he went on to explain why they
have to do more of that. The explanation was,
because. They're like, look, we're building a
lot of cool things that are gonna make us a lot
of money, but we need to keep building out infrastructure
in the meantime, so that we can do that in the
future to get the money that we think we're going
to get. It's that classic, like, third degree
of made -up money. Anyway, investors didn't love
that, and MetaStock showed it. It lost 11 % in
a day, almost 13 % over the week. They're very
happy that the weekend hit. Now, it may continue
to crash, or it may have just been a correction,
but let's talk about another player here, OpenAI
and Sam Altman. The alternate man is the CEO
of OpenAI, which is the company that makes ChatGPT.
He's essentially the poster boy for AI in America.
And he's perfect for the role of poster boy of
AI because all he does is make shit up and lie
about how good AI is. OpenAI is looking at over
a trillion dollars of spending commitment in
all the deals that they've made to spend on infrastructure.
They're not making a trillion dollars. They're
not making a trillion dollars. They lose money.
on every dollar they get right now. They're like
three dollars out for every dollar in. To hit
the revenue targets to be able to do the spending
that they're talking about doing, they need to
increase revenue by nearly three thousand percent
by 2029. Otherwise, oops, all the while, AI is
not actually doing all that much. A bunch of
companies have been trying to roll out AI and
haven't really figured out how to stick the landing.
If you're not specifically a tech company who
is specifically building around AI, it doesn't
really make sense for adoption. Yes, there are
companies that have like bet big on AI and they
have gone gangbusters. And they are very few
and far between when compared to all of the companies
that have been told to use AI everywhere. Welcome
to my steel factory. We're an AI first steel
factory. That's Raul over there. He's an artificial
intelligence now. Say hi, Rahul. And so here
we are with hundreds of billions of dollars being
spent back and forth, building out infrastructures,
building a ton of data centers to support something
so that AI will do something so that will make
revenue from the product, which is something.
Sam Altman keeps promising artificial general
intelligence as the end goal here, and all these
companies are scrambling to try to reach that,
presumably? But that's not a thing. It is somewhere
between eating up their own hype about what AI
actually is, and knowing that they're lying about
what AI actually is. But what we effectively
have are a bunch of tech CEOs trying to sell
the world's biggest case of snake oil. They have
a whole bunch of investors on the line saying,
just put your faith in us. We're gonna make this
happen. This is real, we promise. While year
after year, these companies are increasing their
operational expenditures, and it doesn't look
sustainable. And here's the problem with trying
to con an entire planet. You can't quite skip
town. Anyway, what else is up? Dear listener,
it's the next morning. I record usually the night
before so that I can edit and post the next day,
and that's my fault. It's on me that things happen
because I record saying one thing and that ensures
that that's not gonna happen. So as I was recording
yesterday I said that the government shutdown
does not appear to be ending anytime soon and
then eight Senate Democrats decided to side with
Republicans to move forward with ending the shutdown
with no concession. This right after a massive
victory for the Democrats and basically a mandate.
for being progressive. The Democrat senators
who are voting to cave are all in safe seats.
Nothing that's up for reelection soon. Which
means that's almost definitely what the plan
was. This is what happens in politics. They pick
who's going to fall on the sword based on the
current political landscape. So I just want to
be clear that the government's not going to reopen
immediately. There's still procedure that has
to happen. So like, hang on. I also want to say
this about voting because I tried to endorse
the idea of voting before all this happened and
I'm now seeing a whole lot of people saying like
I'm done with voting forever. So I want to talk
about that real quick. My stance on voting remains
that it is the minimum viable participation.
Voting is not a big deal, and it is not the end
of your ability to impact the world we live in.
It's a thing that happens every once in a while,
and you check a box, and then you go back to
doing meaningful work. Because we don't vote
our way out of the situation we find ourselves
in. We have to work to create the conditions
that undermine the systems in place that are
keeping us down. A lot of people are saying that
they'll never vote for the Democrats ever again,
and like, I'm not a Democrat, I don't give a
shit who you vote for, but consider the following.
It might be a lot easier to take over the Dem
Party from within than to go third party. Now
there's a lot of ways to go about doing things,
but if you look at what happened with the GOP,
MAGA essentially took over the existing party.
And we've seen from Mamdani that a progressive
can trounce an election as a Democrat. So like,
might as well just pick up the infrastructure
and name recognition that they've got. and run
with it. So look, I'm not a registered Democrat
and I would actually recommend that if you are
in a relatively safe blue state and especially
a state that has open primaries, if you're a
registered Democrat and you're fucking pissed,
just switch to independent. Those numbers will
terrify them. Seeing people change their party
registration will terrify them and show them
that they need to fucking change. Because establishment
Democrats want to do everything they can to change
exactly nothing because they don't want to disrupt
what they've set up for themselves, which is
a non -stop flow of donor funds. But if you make
it overtly clear that they'll lose even the ability
to get donor funds at all, they might actually
do something. Or better yet, primary the fuck
out of them. And better yet than that, primary
the fuck out of them and then vote to completely
change the entirety of how our government is
structured because this is fucked and not working
for anyone. Now let's move on. This past Tuesday
in the United States of America, we had our elections
and it was a Democrat blowout. Democrats outperformed
across the board. In basically every state, there's
a narrative on the right saying that it's just
a night where Dems won in Dem states. That's
not true. When you dig down into the data, when
you dig down into the margins of victory, it
is a bleak picture for the Republican Party.
And then, of course, in addition to Dems just
overperforming everywhere, Zoran Mamdani is now
the mayor of New York City, or will be on January
1st. He's the mayor -elect. Mamdani, you might
know him as a horrifying... terrorist who's going
to destroy the entire country now that he got
the popular support from people in his city to
make him the mayor. That guy. And he's also a
goober. Mamdani got over a million votes for
mayor of New York City. The city has a little
over 8 million people living there. Not all of
them can vote or will vote. The million vote
threshold in the New York City mayoral election
is like, it's a goalpost. If you can hit that,
that's a mandate. It's rare to see and it's honestly
incredible given that Zoran Mamdani was running
against his own fucking party. He beat Andrew
Cuomo in the primary. Cuomo then turned around
and ran as an independent and enjoyed endorsements
from Democrats and Republicans alike. Billionaires
and establishment politicians worked overtime
to try to undermine Mamdani's campaign and it
didn't work. Billionaires dumped millions of
dollars into trying to go against this guy who
just kind of smiles and is relatable. Oh, and
his policy is about addressing the cost of living
crisis, that thing that affects us all. And so
we've got Andrew Cuomo, who basically was trying
to run on a platform of I'm Andrew Cuomo, and
then later turned his platform into Zorad Mamdani
is going to do 9 -11 again. I guess it didn't
resonate with voters as much as like, hey, you
shouldn't have to pay like half of your income
for rent. But regardless, conservatives are having
a very normal one about it as they are advocating
for denaturalizing and deporting him, just stripping
him of his citizenship. They've come up with
some story about how he like lied on his paperwork
or something and therefore they should be able
to remove the citizenship of a duly elected official
and deport him from the country, despite these
people also hating cities. Mondani's platform
is essentially just like bring New York City
to on par with most other major cities in the
world that have like accessible public transport
and services. Maybe like invest in the working
class a little bit. Maybe. Let's talk about UPS
and Fireball. In the early evening of this past
Wednesday in Louisville, Kentucky, a UPS -run
aircraft crashed and exploded. All three crew
members on board and at least 11 people on the
ground were killed in a dramatic explosion. What
we know about the crash is that right after they
started doing their takeoff procedure, one of
the engines straight up fell off and started
dragging along and sparked a fire and then a
few seconds later, boom. The plane crashed right
through two nearby businesses absolutely annihilating
them. It's really tragic. It's really fucked
up. We don't know all the specifics, like we
know what exactly happened in terms of causing
the crash, but we don't know what conditions
led to this happening. There's an investigation
ongoing and it's gonna take a while, likely months
if not longer. In the meantime, UPS and FedEx
have grounded all of the aircraft of that same
variety. It was an MD -11. But speaking of grounding
aircrafts, the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration,
has announced that they're going to start restricting
commercial airline usage in America as long as
the government shut down. If you had travel plans,
I'm very sorry. The FAA straight up came out
and said, hey. Airlines. You need to cut 4 %
of your flights. And we're going to ramp that
up over time until you need to cut 10 % of your
flights starting on November 14th. So we're already
seeing hundreds of flights cancelled. It's going
to get up into the thousands of flights cancelled.
The only thing that comes close to this level
of impact to air travel in the States was the
beginning of COVID. Now this is happening because
of the government shutdown, air traffic controllers
aren't getting paid because they're government
employees, and not having air traffic controllers
being paid makes for dangerous airspace, and
the FAA is using that as a bargaining chip to
try to tip the scales and make the government
shutdown more risky to continue politically.
Because doing that with our food stamps wasn't
enough. The government is actively arguing to
claw back Food stamp money? And say, hey, states,
states who tried to help people get food, undo
that. While the FAA is like, nope, can't travel.
Fuck your Thanksgiving. So we're having a real
normal one over here stateside. Unrelated, does
anyone have a flat and need a roommate anywhere
else? I've got a dog. Let's talk about the state
of things in Gaza. It's been a handful of episodes
since I've talked about Gaza. I just want to
give an update. There was the ceasefire that
we saw. I'm going to put that in huge air quotes.
That was me doing air quotes. Since the ceasefire
between Israel and Gaza was announced, surprise
Israel has been bombing Gaza. They've been shooting
and shelling all over Gaza. On the 28th of October,
they killed hundreds of people with airstrikes.
Israel's justification for this is that they
were responding to activity from Hamas. They
provided no evidence. I feel like I don't even
need to say that at this point. The ceasefire
agreement was supposed to allow 600 trucks of
aid a day into Gaza, and that's not happening.
It's more like a hundred a day. That's because
the Israeli military is preventing the aid from
actually making its way in, and they haven't
opened all the ports of crossing that they said
they would open. And so food, medicine, and fuel
is just languishing in warehouses, not making
its way into the people who need it. Meanwhile,
in Israel there is political turmoil. It's not
because of what I just said, it is instead because
of leaked footage of a brutal sexual assault
of a Palestinian prisoner at the hands of the
IDF. A top Israeli official leaked this video
showing soldiers brutalizing a man. I'm not going
to even describe it. The response to the leaked
footage was not to say this is unacceptable and
we're going to clean ranks in our army, it was
to criticize the leaker. Netanyahu's assessment
of the situation is that this is a huge public
relations attack on Israel by way of showing
the world what Israel does to its prisoners.
I don't have the capacity to reconcile this level
of repugnance. So let's talk about video games.
I need a change of subject. True fans of my work
would know that back at the end of 2024, I put
up a video giving a handful of predictions of
what would happen this year. One of those has
come true. Roll the clip. We've been told that
GTA 6 is for sure coming out in 2025. This is
an easy one. I don't think that's happening.
Now, that was the easiest prediction, like, of
all time, but I'm right. GTA 6 has been delayed
effectively a year. It'll now come out on November
19th, 2026. Sorry, let me rephrase that. It'll
now be delayed again, some time before November
19th, 2026. All the while, Squeenix is squeening
up. What? Square Enix is doing a bunch of layoffs.
They are laying off a bunch of people in the
US and the UK as they're consolidating their
development efforts in Japan. Notably, in the
same presentation where they announced these
layoffs, They also said that they're trying to
move towards having AI cover 70 % of their quality
assurance work in the next handful of years.
That's a bad idea. That's a bad idea. That's
a bad idea. It's not a good one. But lastly,
they truly did the switch again. I want to preface
this by just saying this is not me glazing, this
is just... Reading statistics. The Nintendo Switch
2 is like the strongest console launch in history.
Nintendo put out sales numbers recently showing
that the Switch 2 has sold over 10 million units
in its first four months. By comparison, the
PS5 took twice as long to sell less than that.
Granted, the PS5 had a lot of supply chain issues
at the start of its launch. But Nintendo has
had to continuously increase their sales projections
as they've been outperforming sales this whole
time. Now... I know there's a lot of people who
are really upset about the Switch 2. They are
upset about its pricing, they're upset about
the game pricing, they're upset about the technical
capabilities, they're upset about many different
things. And I'm not telling you that you're wrong
for wanting more from Nintendo, or wanting Nintendo
to not be such a shitty company. Because they
are very litigious, and very greedy. And there
was a lot of argument before the Switch 2's launch
that people should push back against buying a
Switch 2 or something like that, but like...
This was always going to happen. A lot of people
have a Switch, and therefore have a games library.
The Switch is also aging out. Its hardware wasn't
particularly good when it came out, and it's
now like a decade old. So there's a lot of people
with a games library, and here comes Nintendo
saying, hey, it's a Switch, but again, and now
can do 4K output, and it plays all your games.
Here you go. Yeah, that was gonna, that was gonna
fly off the fucking shelves. Lightning round.
Reminder, lithium ion batteries sometimes just
like... explode, and a dude in an airport in
Australia had that happen to him, and he caught
fire. Sorry, my guy. If you live in Paris, you
can apparently now make a donation to try to
restore an old gravestone in city limits, and
you'd get a chance at getting your own grave
plot in city limits. There's like a very limited
number of plots available, and they want to restore
gravestones, so they're like, hey, we'll auction
off some grave plots if you want to give some
money. I want to be buried in Paris. Denmark
has become the latest country to pass a law banning
social media for users under the age of 15. And
finally for today, scientists are doing research
into how to create textual descriptions of what
someone is looking at based on brain scans. Neat!
Neat! Neat! Thank you so much for listening to
today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head
to skh .news for sources, bonus content, and
a textual description of what I'm looking at
based on my brain scan. My name is Endeavorance,
we'll talk again soon, take care, and be well.