Hello. I watched an empire fall in real time.
But stuff still happened. So what's up? It's
cold outside. It's icy. At least around me. It's
also very icy in Minnesota. Still. The snow.
The snow kind of ice. And the - fascist kind
too. I want to start off today by highlighting
that Minnesota really hasn't changed a whole
lot, despite talk about drawing down the forces
there. In Minneapolis, Rene Nicole Goode and
Alex Pretti were both gunned down by ICE agents,
who were then protected by the federal government,
as the citizens who were killed in the streets
were called terrorists. This was a bit of a difficult
thing for the White House to explain, and so
they're like, well, we got to do something. besides
call our own citizens terrorists after we get
them murdered. So what they did, presumably to
not have to keep dealing with this, maybe, was
to get rid of Greg Bovino. Bovina? I've never
looked up how to pronounce his name because I
don't care. We're gonna call him Bovi. Greg Bovine.
Greg Bovino or whatever. He's the fashy looking
dude who like explicitly tries to dress like
a Nazi. He's been the head boy of ICE for a little
bit now going out in the field. Doing all the
flashy stuff and hyping them up talking about
how this is this is our town ice agents Anyway,
they pulled him out of Minneapolis and replaced
him with Tom Holman who is the border czar anyway,
Tom Holman He looks like he's melting all the
time and also I'm pretty sure his soul already
has so he comes in and he talks about drawing
down the troops that are currently there by 700
That entire statement could be analyzed for years.
Drawing down the personnel and talking about
it like it's a war zone is fucking crazy, my
guy. And they're pulling out 700 people leaving
2 ,000 agents, which is more than twice the total
employee count of the Minneapolis Police Department.
Tom Homan went on to refer to Minneapolis as
a theater. You ever heard of the term, like,
the Pacific Theater? You know, like, that's a
war thing. It's a way to refer to, like, a war
front. This is an American city. A cold one.
But it's an American city, not a fucking war
front. Or at least it wasn't supposed to be a
war front. But it turns out that the people in
Minneapolis are still, to this day, hiding people
from feds and trying to not get stopped in the
street by a masked armed guy who's like, show
me your papers. It was just a couple of weeks
ago that I talked about a contact that I have
on the ground in Minneapolis who was telling
me about someone they knew who was being hidden.
I have since received a text message saying they
took her. Every single day people in Minneapolis
are on the ground trying to help, trying to push
back, and making this a huge pain for the administration.
These people are working day and night to make
it so that this administration doesn't get to
get away with this bullshit. We are all very
aware of it because of how strong that local
community has been, and they've been winning.
It is horrendous that multiple people have had
to die for this. And we should be holding the
administration accountable for that. But this
would not be the first time by a long shot that
American citizens died by gunfire at the hands
of government agents on U .S. soil. for standing
up for what was obviously right. Now, of course,
there's a lot of ICE operations going on outside
of Minneapolis, too, and we are also getting
reports now of outbreaks of various diseases
in ICE concentration camps. These outbreaks include
tuberculosis, measles, and COVID -19 in places
that have children. Those classic detention centers
for children that we have. On the topic of children
that our government abducts, by the end of Biden's
presidency, we were taking 25 children a day,
give or take, into ICE custody. It is now at
about 170 children a day being rounded up, thrown
into camps somewhere that, according to the nurses
who have been trying to offer health care at
these camps, they are overpacked by three times
capacity. People have reported that the ICE agents
are more interested in deporting people than
ensuring that they actually are healthy and have
access to life -saving medication or anything
like that. There are so many of them that health
screenings are happening in groups. Public group
health screening. But again, it's not like this
is happening unimpeded. And like, the system
is strained right now. A whole bunch of attorneys
in the Minneapolis area are quitting because
they're like, fuck this. I either don't want
to do this because this is fascist as hell or
this is making my life impossible. Here's a quote
from an attorney who was at her breaking point
in court to the judge. She says, quote, The system
sucks. This job sucks. I wish you would hold
me in contempt so that I could get 24 hours of
sleep. I think that about sums it up. They're
fucking miserable. But that's okay, we can make
them more miserable. We'll get there. Have faith.
Hold. If you like what I do, you can help me
keep doing it by supporting me. You can head
to isupport .dev and there are options for monetary
support or just sharing my stuff and other ways
to help me keep all this going. So thank you
so much for being here. I'm doing this for you,
but I can't do it if I can't feed myself, so...
Thank you anyone who is interested in supporting,
and that's great, let's move on. And now for
sports. We go to the sports desk. It's over here.
Hi, welcome to the sports desk. I'm the same
guy. The Olympics are happening. And the Super
Bowl. The Super Bowl is not at the Olympics.
That'd be funny. The Winter Olympics of 2026
have started in Milan. They are going from the
6th to the 22nd, and a whole lot of people are
gonna do a whole lot of cold stuff. There have
already been a handful of medals passed out,
just sort of like handed out. I haven't competed
yet, so I haven't gotten my medals. But I can
say that Japan got a medal for Men's Snowboard
Big Air. Now look, I know that Men's Snowboard
Big Air... is a really rad sport. I'm not - I'm
not dogging on it. It does sound like a bargain
bin Nintendo 64 game, but grats on the big air,
Men's Snowboard? Of course, we also had the opening
ceremony, which was a whole thing, and JD Vance
was put up on the Jumbotron, and the entire fucking
world booed him. Which is the only reaction,
really, to having JD Vance on a Jumbotron. Over
stateside, we've got the very big bowl going
on. It's when they take all of the superest people
that have... a lot of knowledge of the pigskin
and the gridiron, and they put them in an arena
together with a bad bunny. It is the Seattle
Seahawks versus the New England Patriots this
time around, so that just goes to prove that
the closer you are to the border of Canada, the
more frequently you appear in the Super Bowl.
That's my thesis, because I don't know a whole
lot else about the NFL. The Super Bowl is happening,
like, as I'm recording this, so if you're watching
it, I hope you're enjoying your buffalo chicken
dip. And I'll let you know who won. Here, I'll
edit it in right here. The team that won was
the Seattle Seahawks. Moving on, I want to acknowledge
that the situation in Gaza really hasn't changed.
I'm kind of tired of things not changing. I feel
like things could change a little bit for the
better. Now look, I don't honestly have a whole
lot more to say here. I have spent years now
saying some rendition of the same thing of Israel
has attacked Gaza again. and I don't know why,
and they claim Hamas was there, and then they
don't really give any evidence, and then they
say also, no, we didn't do that, and also it's
a ceasefire. All I really have to say is to encourage
people to be loud. If there's any semblance of
someone suggesting that the conflict, in huge
air quotes, between Israel and Hamas has ended,
it's just not the case. People are still actively
being targeted by heavy artillery while trying
to dig their homes. Out of the rubble. That doesn't
sound like an end of conflict to me. A very different
kind of explosion. A waplosion. The Washington
Post just kind of fucking beefed it. Like, holy
shit, dude. On February 4th, the Washington Post
announced job cuts of 300 people. That's about
a third of their staff. Among the things that
they cut were their entire sports desk, the entire
books desk, their audio and video teams, including
some of their podcasts, their culture teams,
and their foreign coverage teams. What are they
going to report on now? I don't know. They say
they're going to focus on like government and
security. Here's how it went down though, because
this is even crazier. Pretty much with no prior
warning, just the editor had to say, hey, you're
all are getting your jobs slashed. The CEO isn't
here to say that because he's elsewhere. It later
came out that the CEO, Will Lewis, was off at
a party for the Super Bowl while absolutely cutting
his staff to shreds. That didn't sit well with
the team. He's since resigned. Because obviously.
To drive home how sudden and absurd this was,
Lizzie Johnson, a reporter for the Washington
Post in Ukraine, posted that she had been laid
off by the Washington Post in the middle of a
war zone. She had been working out of her car
with no power in Ukraine on the war front where
Russia has been attacking energy infrastructure.
And then she found out that she was laid off
in a car in the middle of a war zone. Jeff Bezos
bought the Washington Post in 2013. for $250
million, which is like, fuck all. This is the
paper that exposed Watergate. This paper has
76 pooled surprises. It started in the late 1800s.
Like, regardless of anyone's current outlook
on the media and the news and whatnot, it's wild
that Jeff Bezos is so much more interested in
lobbying Trump that he'd rather just annihilate
the Washington Post. It doesn't sound like he
was super happy with how this was all handled,
but it's not like he hasn't been doing active
harm to the Washington Post reputation for a
while now. You'll recall that right before the
election last year, he personally stepped in
to stop the Washington Post from endorsing Kamala
Harris. Now, did that change the election? Probably
not. But that's not a thing that you should do
if you are a billionaire donor who owns a newspaper.
Hey, maybe fewer billionaires owning newspapers,
please. Here's a very good quote from a former
executive editor of the Washington Post, Martin
Barron, quote, If you are Elon Musk, you are
not liking Europe. There you go. I helped you
out there. Elon Musk has been beefing with the
EU and multiple individual states at the same
time. Last week, French authorities raided Twitter's
headquarters in Paris because of the whole Grok
generating non -consensual images of children
thing. Quick recap, Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok
is baked into Twitter now, and you can ask it
to remix images that people have posted, including
images of other users, and in some cases, children.
People have been using this feature to undress
people en masse. Notably, that's bad. Not long
ago the EU hit Twitter with a big old find about
a whole bunch of other stuff and messing with
the blue check marks and shit and Britain's been
looking into them for privacy concerns and now
France is looking into them for the whole child
porn thing. Musk's response to basically all
of this is to say that the EU is tyrannical and
unfair and being political? Yes. It turns out
when you want to operate for profit in a country,
you have to adhere to the regulations. I don't
think that's gonna get through to Elon. I don't
think he has a super great grasp of regulations
and adhering to them. Speaking of which, we have
some new stuff about Doge. There was a court
filing about the whole Doge situation back when
Elon Musk was like, I'm gonna be in the government
now. And yeah, they did the dumb shit that we
were assuming they did. A court filing shows
that Doge employees were doing a whole bunch
of nefarious shit with social security data that
they were not supposed to have access to, including...
uploading it to third parties that were not approved,
such as CloudFlare. This means an unknown amount
of unknown data from the social security database
was sent over an unauthorized third party, and
we have no idea what it was, where it is, or
how much might be retained. Neat! That's not,
that's not me, actually. Here is an idea. Elon
Musk, but not. Any takers? Lightning round! The
Clintons will be testifying in front of Congress
over the Jeffrey Epstein stuff. They're pushing
to make it a public hearing. It's going to be
a disaster. GameStop employees have a new dress
code. They gotta wear polos and stuff. I don't
know why this made my list of nudes, but it's
in there. Okay, here's a more salient gaming
thing. Valve has released a statement saying
that their upcoming array of new hardware, including
the new Steam machine and their new VR headset
and stuff, is going to be delayed and possibly
more expensive. They chalk this up to essentially
the situation with AI right now. If you've tried
to buy any hardware parts, it is way too expensive
for parts that should not be expensive. So they're
basically saying, hey, the market's fucked, we're
figuring it out. Today host Savannah Guthrie's
mother was abducted, and we don't know where
she is, and they've been trying to figure that
out. There was a ransom note and everything,
and there's just not really any information about
what happened. They've apparently been in contact
with the abductors. I can't even... I cannot
imagine. Don't... abduct people. That's my PSA
for today. And finally for today, according to
an analysis from the Wall Street Journal, if
you take all the spending that AI companies have
been doing as a portion of GDP, it rivals the
Louisiana Purchase. It's like double the cost
of the Interstate Project. Like... that's a lot
of money! I am once again... casually requesting.
Just... One of those billions. Just a single
one. Thank you so much for listening to today's
episode of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head to skh
.news for sources, bonus content, and a second
Louisiana purchase. I'm buying Louisiana back.
My name is Endeavorance. We'll talk again soon.
Take care and be well.