Hello. I defeated the rival form of Typhon. But
stuff still happens. So what's up? I'll tell
you what's up. The guy who wants us to call him
the Secretary of War... Seems to really want
to do war which like shouldn't be surprising
So for months now the US has been bombing ships
in I would say off the coast of Venezuela But
it's like on both sides of Central America side
note. Are we still calling it Central America?
Is that is there a better name for it? Probably
is anyway, so we've now bombed over 20 vessels
killing nearly 90 people at least last I checked
I don't know if it's happened again since I started
recording and while none of these strikes have
been Okay, because we're not at war and these
aren't military targets, and none of this is
how anything works, it's actually happening.
Like, it's still just happening. Pete Hegseth
has recently come under fire because, well, he
put people under fire who shouldn't have been
put under fire. We essentially learned that with
one of their earlier strikes, they hit it twice.
Once to try to blow it up, and then again to
kill any survivor. That's a war crime. That's
a war crime already. And so politicians from
both sides of the aisle are like, okay, well,
there's only so much that we can just kind of
hand wave. Unless you're Tom Cotton, in which
case you can hand wave anything. Because Tom
Cotton actually went on to defend that the people
that were bombed the second time, they weren't
shipwrecked. They were on top of their wrecked
ship. Standing on top of the wreckage of their
ship. They're perfectly fine. And a direct threat.
to the U .S. military. So there's a whole bunch
of stuff going on here. There's essentially a
report that Hegseth said kill everyone, which
is also a war crime. There's an admiral that
they're trying to pin this on saying like he
made the decision to do it. Hegseth never said
that, but also Hegseth is like I would do that
though. All the while Trump is trying to like
not be a part of this, but he's very much a part
of this because he is the commander in chief.
It's just all him. The US government's attempt
to justify this is that these boats are full
of drugs. They're claiming that everyone that
we've killed is a narco terrorist. But we don't
know that because they provided exactly no evidence
for any of them. As I was trying to find a shred
of anything, I found an article that the White
House posted in which they're basically saying
If you don't believe us, you're the problem.
They just state as if it's a fact that these
are narco -terrorists and that we are doing good.
And that this is justified. There's no links,
there's no link to any law, there's no citations
to anything. It's just an article published by
the White House that says, we are right. It's
insultingly dumb. And I'm very, very tired. of
being told that the sky is yellow. So look, the
gotcha that they're trying to go with for this
is that if you are against these strikes on vessels
against civilians of a nation that we're not
at war with, then you must support narco -terrorism.
This is because that's just the way that all
political discussion has devolved at this point.
To be very, very, very clear, this isn't a thing
we have to do. We have... a Coast Guard, so even
if 100 % of them were funneling drugs that were
going to be injected directly into all of the
children of America, we still don't need to use
missile strikes against tiny boats full of civilians.
Like I know that you or I are probably not in
danger of our boat being struck in the waters
off of Venezuela, but hey, people sail sometimes.
And boats exist in places. Maybe we shouldn't
set a precedent of saying, there's a boat. Let's
bomb it. I gotta warn you, bro. Netflix is buying
Warner Bros. Yeah, this was a big one. Last week
it came out that Netflix is going to be purchasing
Warner Bros. Or at least they're going to try.
They are moving towards that purchase now for
72 billion dollars. Can I please have one of
those? Now, WB was not in a great place. They
had a lot of debt. They were not doing well,
but they weren't. actively seeking to be purchased.
But then Paramount came in and gave an unsolicited
offer to purchase all of WB, that includes their
studios, streaming services, and networks. Those
networks being CNN, TNT, Discovery, etc. So that
was like, whoa! Whoa! And suddenly a bunch of
other companies that are really interested in
not letting Paramount have that jumped in. And
so we saw Comcast and Netflix also make offers.
Now, I want to call out that Paramount... was
recently taken over by the Ellison family. Larry
Ellison of Oracle ownership. His son is at the
head of Paramount. That is why CBS has recently
been fucked up because CBS is under Paramount
and they installed Barry fucking Weiss at the
head of CBS, which I'm still wrapping my mind
around. All the while, Oracle is angling to own
TikTok in the US, and the Ellison family is extremely
closely tied to the current US administration,
and specifically the Trump family. So, like,
this is essentially the Ellison family trying
to buy all of WB. All of it. That is HBO. That's
Game of Thrones. Harry Potter. The DC universe.
AND CNN, TNT, Discovery, all their serial networks.
But instead of that, they went with Netflix's
offer, which was actually only going after the
streaming services and studios. They did not
want the live TV. There was already a plan to
spin off those live networks into their own entities,
separate from WB to begin with, so they're gonna
let that happen and then just take what's left.
Now, um... That sucks. It sucks because Netflix
is notoriously bad about doing good to the people
in the industry. They don't want theatrical releases,
they don't want a writer's room, they don't want
quality, they want profit. So they do whatever
is the cheapest way to get something made that
will make a profit. And like just generally Netflix
is not well known for treating people in the
industry pretty well. At all. And so a lot of
people who work in the entertainment industry,
especially writers, are freaking out about this.
And rightfully so. But I genuinely do not know
what a better outcome would be here. Because
if it wasn't gonna be Netflix, it was gonna be
Larry Ellison. I mean, his son. But come on.
That doesn't make it better? Uh, it doesn't make
it better at all. But hey, maybe now is the time
to start getting more into supporting independent
media. At all. Moving on. Sorry about check marks.
The European Commission recently hit Twitter,
I'm not calling it X, with a 120 million euro
fine for check marks. Alright, that's the headline.
Let's talk about what it actually is. So I want
to start by saying a year and a half ago, in
July of 2024, the EU warned Twitter, hey, you're
not doing things right per our laws and we're
gonna fine you if you don't fix it. So this didn't
happen out of nowhere. But what is actually happening?
Essentially, the EU has non zero amounts of tech
policy that requires tech firms to actually adhere.
To some laws. Sometimes. It's wild. The EU has
essentially found that when Musk took over Twitter
and changed the way that verification checkmarks
work, he created a situation that was rife with
fraud and scams and general distrust from users.
If you are a person who lives a normal life and
doesn't follow the intricacies of how verification
processes on niche social media websites work,
let me give you some quick context. Back in the
day, Twitter had a problem with people making
accounts that were impersonating some public
figure. So they made a veri - system where they
could go in and put a blue check mark next to
your name if you were who you said you were and
were a public figure in danger of being impersonated.
The big ones that got this were like companies,
politicians, journalists, celebrities, stuff
like that, right? Now this process was not perfect.
It did not evenly distribute check marks to people
who deserved it and it definitely wasn't always
going to the people who should have a check mark.
But it did mean that Twitter validated that the
person who says that they own this account is
that person. That is not what blue checkmarks
do anymore. When Musk took over, he made it so
you could just pay a fee to get a blue checkmark.
So people would make an account, like Disney
real, and then get a blue checkmark and start
posting bullshit. And so this was just chaos
for a bit and they had to like undo that and
pause it and fix it. It's dumb. It was completely
avoidable. They could have just retired the blue
checkmark. Say like, hey everyone, we're going
to phase out the blue check over the course of
the next year or so. We're replacing it with
the green dildo of you are cool. That's pretty
Musk coded, right? But look, it's not actually
just the checkmark stuff. It's more than that,
right? Yes, that was dumb. But also Twitter is
supposed to keep a repository of information
about who's paying for advertisements so there
can be transparency there. And they're not doing
that. And also, also, they shut out all public
researchers from being able to access data on
Twitter and do research for things like hate
and extremism online, stuff like that. That was
just crushed the moment that Musk took over.
And so the EU was like, hey, because of these
things, these violate our policy. If you want
to operate here, you got to adhere to our policy,
to which Musk didn't do anything and now is being
fined and now is calling for the EU to be dissolved.
That is his response. That is his response to
a 120 million euro fine to the richest man in
the world who recently got a pay package that
could go up to a trillion dollars. A minor fine
to adhere to local rules. too much dissolve the
EU look I'm not a fan of the EU myself as in
as in the legal entity that the state entity
I'm not a huge fan of state entity that's what
I'm getting at I don't hate you Europeans I very
much love you and Europe is wonderful and y 'all
are great clarified that cool I am NOT a huge
stan of the EU and and legal entities and shit
don't be a fucking baby All of the Muskelline
people are trying to paint this as if the EU
is attacking American freedom of speech, which
is just ridiculous. It is a company operating
overseas, not adhering to local policy and being
fined for it. Yeah, that local policy is not
the same as our policy. You're going to come
across that when you look around the world. Sometimes
people do things a little different. Now, I want
to say, like, it doesn't even really matter if
they pay or not. Like, at the end of the day,
what we need is a strong restructuring of how
social media works. Especially for people who
are not US -based. A bunch of people around the
world are using foreign social networks all the
time because they're based in the US. All that
bullshit about, oh, China's stealing your data.
Like, that happens. just as much, if not more,
with U .S. tech companies. And it's becoming
a major problem overseas. So what should we replace
them with? Tech companies that are overseas?
No! We shouldn't do that. That's not better.
I mean, kind of. But in my humble opinion, decentralized,
small, community -based social network systems
is the way we gotta go. Right now, we have all
these social networks that are these big, centralized,
massive tech platforms. Twitter, Meta, what's
another one? It's basically just all meta at
this point. With these systems, if you wanna
use them, you gotta be on these specific platforms.
You wanna talk to anybody who's on Instagram,
you gotta be on Instagram. That's not a thing
that needs to happen. The internet is an open
system. Right? Like, we don't need new technologies.
We certainly don't need crypto to have a decentralized
internet. The internet is decentralized by default.
What these tech companies have done is make everyone
collectively forget that while centralizing all
of these interactions into one place. Their websites.
They've slowly conditioned people to be afraid
of the internet. You leave an app, you click
on a link in Instagram, you're going to get a
thing that says, like, whoa, buddy! You're leaving
Instagram. You could be going anywhere on the
internet. You have no idea what they're gonna
do. They could kill you. There are alternatives.
I'm not gonna sit here and claim that, like,
all this stuff is ready to just one -to -one
replace everything we've got. But federated systems
like Macedon or, to a lesser extent, Blue Sky
allow for communities to self -host and maintain
their own social networks while still being able
to talk to everyone else on the internet. Think
of it like this. Right now, we have these giant
skyscrapers. That's Twitter, that's Meta. If
you want to be on their platforms, you have to
have space in their building. Now, their building
is pretty big, and they're trying to build a
lot more to house more people, but ultimately,
it's a lot easier for them to just put in cameras
and watch everything you do and sell that for
money, all the while shrinking the room that
you have in their limited space. every year until
there's basically no room to move. But damn,
it's just so convenient because you can hop on
that elevator and head up a few floors to see
Joseph. Hi, Joseph. What I'm arguing for is a
city instead of a singular building. Everything
in the city is interconnected. All the people
living there can still go talk to all the other
people who are living in that city, but they're
not all congregated in one building. It's a bunch
of smaller buildings and coalitions and groups
that are all communicating with each other, but
are setting their own rules for their specific
domicile. That's essentially what a federated
social network is. It is a community managed
server that can communicate with every other
server out there, but this one's ours. We choose
what content can be posted. We choose who can
communicate with us. If they're going to be evil,
we can just cut them out. Anyway, I'm gonna make
like a whole video on federated social networks
later. Let's move on. Give me your face, Canada.
If you live in Edmonton, I'm sorry. Your local
police service is doing a pilot program testing
AI -powered facial scans to detect potentially
dangerous people. So this just started like last
week, but the Edmonton police service is using
their Axon body cameras with facial recognition
that is tied back to a database to identify potentially
dangerous people. Here's a quote from the Edmonton
Police Service Acting Superintendent, Kurt Martin.
Kurt, I'm going to need you to shorten that title.
So the Edmonton police go on to clarify that
the data that they're training this with are
mugshots that they've taken. Which is cool, it's
cool, it's cool. It's cool when any state is
like, hey, so you know when we deemed that you
did a crime and we took you in and we forced
you to let us take a picture of you, and now
we're feeding that into a robot to find you better.
And nothing bad can ever happen when you trust
a robot. Now, Axon, the company that's doing
the cameras with the AI facial scan, they've
been doing police body cameras for quite a while.
And if you're not familiar with Axon, you might
know them by their former name, Taser. Same company.
But back in 2019, Axon published this little
ditty about AI ethics. Quote, Their post goes
on to talk about how it's really dangerous to
do facial recognition scanning and that that's
not what they're doing. They're just doing face
detection to see if there is or is not a face,
not whose face it is. But, but, but now they
are. Anyway, hey, maybe if this does roll out
further, cops would finally have their body cameras
on. But also maybe we don't roll this out further.
Lightning round. In a totally not embarrassing
move, FIFA invented their own Peace Prize and
gave it to Donald Trump. California's energy
grid is no longer dependent on coal. It is still
dependent on gas. Bitcoin, and crypto at large,
but Bitcoin specifically, saw a 33 % drop in
value over the past few months. And finally for
today, there's been a record -setting number
of bear attacks in Japan, just north of Tokyo.
And this includes a guy that was attacked by
a bear in a public bathroom. He's okay. Very,
very thankfully. But my god! Nightmare! Thank
you so much for listening to today's episode
of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head to SKH .News for
sources, bonus content, and the location of every
bear around Tokyo. My name is Endeavor, and we'll
talk again soon. Take care and be well.