Hello. I chased the weasel around the cobbler's
bench. But stuff still happened. So what's up?
It's been a very normal go of it for the U .S.
government. Let's just take a look at some of
the things that are going on around our esteemed
administration. We'll start with some aerial
acrobatics. Last week, the FAA just randomly
announced a 10 -day closure of the airspace around
El Paso. El Paso, Texas. It's on the border,
like the restaurant. And no one knew what the
hell was the reasoning for this. Like it was
just a sudden closure. 10 days. No air travel.
Out of El Paso, sorry guys. And then that 10
days ended a few hours later. They were like,
so about that 10 day airspace closure, nevermind.
Why did we do it? The government was asked why.
They didn't have a good answer. First we were
told that there was some kind of security threat.
Then we were told that they shot down a cartel
drone. Then we learned it was a balloon, like
from a party. It turns out the US military used
an anti -drone laser against a balloon and didn't
tell the FAA about it. So the FAA was like, um,
there's anti -drone lasers being fired in our
airspace, we should shut this down. But then
when the FAA was asked, they were like, we don't
fucking know what's going on. And then the DoD
was like, we didn't shoot a balloon down, what
are you talking about? Very competent stuff all
around. But let's move on, we've got a lot of
stuff to get through. Hey Google, narc on me.
Investigative journalists from whatever's left
of the Washington Post found the Department of
Homeland Security is pressuring Google to give
over user information on a whim. A 67 -year -old
man from outside Philadelphia sent an email to
the Department of Homeland Security pleading
with them to be lenient on a deportation case
that he had read about in the news. Quite literally
just a citizen emailing a public office saying,
hey, I'm voicing my opinion here. They then subpoenaed
his Google account. The man opened his email
and found a notification from Google that said,
hey, just so's you know, we just gave your account
information to the Department of Homeland Security
after they sent us a subpoena. And no, we're
not gonna give you a copy of it. So, from receiving
an email from this guy, the Department of Homeland
Security drew up a subpoena, didn't say anything
to the guy, sent it to Google, got his account
information, and he had no way to stop this from
happening. The information that they handed over
included his home address, and his location history,
and his contacts. And then... DHS agents showed
up at his house to question him until they ultimately
found that he didn't do anything wrong, because
obviously, as a reminder, with any corporate
tech infrastructure, that includes Google, that
includes Google Docs, do not use it for anything
that you wouldn't be comfortable shouting into
your local police precinct. This is exactly why.
We've got more stuff, though. Great jobs, y 'all.
Great jobs all around. Got the jobs report coming
in, coming in hot. Got new jobs, like 80 ,000
new jobs. from non -farm payrolls. Amazing. Good
job, guys. Over the last year, we lost almost
900 ,000 jobs. So obviously the jobs report is
hard to trust because Trump fired the person
who was in charge of producing the jobs reports.
because he didn't like the numbers. And obviously
we can't trust that. And also, also, it doesn't
take an advanced economics degree to look around
at the current U .S. landscape for the job market
and assess that it blows. It's pretty frequent
for jobs reports to have these big corrections.
What we saw was the month come in for the jobs
report and then a correction for about a year
long period with more data to actually use as
inputs to get actual accurate numbers. Whether
or not those numbers are accurate still, we don't
know. but they say that we lost about 900 ,000
jobs in the past year, which very, very much
tracks. So yeah, there's that. We're going into
a shutdown. Again, kind of, partially. The US
government is shutting down the Department of
Homeland Security. Fucking rejoice, everyone.
Democrats and Republicans did not manage to come
to an agreement to pass a budget for DHS, whose
budget is through the fucking roof right now
because they wanted to fund concentration camps.
Cool cool stuff guys in the midst of the whole
ice rounding people up into detention camps and
killing citizens on the street thing The Democrats
have said they want to reform ice and and they're
not gonna they're not gonna fund to the DHS Until
they get common -sense reforms for ice Also abolishing
ice is the popular position now. Anyway, they
they did not do that They didn't fund it and
now the DHS is closed For how long? I don't know.
But it's not like a full -scale government shutdown.
It's not like everything is going away. It's
just subdivisions of DHS. Except for the TSA.
It is at this point that I'm realizing that if
you're not a member of the freest country in
the world, you have no idea what the fuck I'm
saying. Department of Homeland Security. It's
the people who run border control. And the TSA
is airport security. The TSA is apparently mostly
considered essential, so they're largely going
to be in operation unchanged. So no worries there.
But also, TSA is fucking bullshit too, so. How
could I forget? This should have been the headline.
The Dow is over 50 ,000. or at least it was recently,
Pam Bondi was testifying in front of Congress,
being grilled about a whole bunch of things,
including the Epstein case. The hearing started
off ridiculous and just continued to get more
so, to the point that we now have historic record
of a sitting attorney general of the United States
of America saying to a representative of Congress,
and I quote, you're a washed up loser lawyer.
Bondi was essentially being asked questions that
she couldn't answer, such as, why are you protecting
pedophiles? And she didn't want to say because.
So instead she just went into full -on deflection
mode, to the point that she started saying just
absurd shit. For example, the Dow is over 50
,000, and that's what we should be talking about.
The head of the justice system in the United
States of America was like, why are you asking
me questions about justice? We should be talking
about the stock market doing well. Not a whole
lot came from this, aside from just a bunch of
screaming and everybody trying to get clips for
social media, but God damn, Pam Bondi was a mess
in this hearing. But you know what wasn't a mess?
The Dow. It was over 50 ,000. For those who don't
know, the Dow is like a common reference point
index of the stock market. Finance stuff. We're
not done with just this fucking clown car of
an administration because we need to talk about
RFK Jr.'s cocaine toilet. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
the somehow head of Health and Human Services
in the United States of America, I cannot believe
that statement. He went on Theo Von's podcast
and said that he's not afraid of germs because
he did cocaine off of a toilet seat. I just want
to fact -check real quick. This is actually the
most relatable that RFK has ever been. I'm not
a cocaine off the toilet seat kind of guy myself,
personally. But I get the energy. I understand
it. But here's the thing. That's not the kind
of energy that I want from the head of Health
and Human Services. overseeing multiple measles
outbreaks, while advocating against getting the
measles vaccine. Or vaccines. A few health agencies
are calling for him to resign. That's not gonna
happen. But hey, bring back having elected officials
not talking about their cocaine usage off of
a toilet, and then turning around and setting
our health policy. We've got more! We're still
going! While all of this is going on, over the
past four weeks there's been a massive sewage
spill in the surrounding area around Washington
D .C., as sewage has been pouring into the C
&O Canal and Potomac River. At time of recording,
there's been an estimated 240 million gallons
of raw sewage that's made its way into the Potomac,
and apparently was made worse by a bit of the
equipment that they've been using to try to clean
everything up, getting destroyed by a huge wad
of flushed wipes. Do not flush wipes, especially
if they say flushable. They're not. At time of
recording, there's not an issue with potable
water from municipal systems, but they do say,
hey, maybe don't go swimming in the sewage. And
also, it smells pretty bad around the sewage,
apparently. Which I would assume this is an honestly
massive ecological disaster, and the cleanup
is expected to take basically the rest of the
year at least. Last thing for government, and
I did cut a few things for time, we're also posturing
for war with Iran, still, again. Trump has sent
a second aircraft carrier to intimidate Iran
during talks about nuclear stuff and Israel.
The same fucking things that we're always talking
to them about. And bombing them about. The things
that we're always bombing them about too. There's
a lot of rhetoric going around about free Iran
and like, yes, in the context of what the people
there want. I don't think it's the United States
job to go in and do regime change in Iran. Again,
again. So that's just a quick summary of some
of the quirky little things that our little goobers
are up to these days. I don't even know anymore.
Let's move on. Artificial intelligence. Do I
get money now? I said the words. You may have
heard that there's a few companies out there
trying to do AI stuff. They're advertising it
a little bit. But I want to talk through the
growing trend of these companies talking about
their products as if it's some massive threat.
to humanity and an existential crisis for the
world. I wanna start real quick by just saying,
when I say AI, I'm not actually referring to
real conscious intelligence. It's just a shorthand
to refer to these things that we're all kind
of just labeling AI at this point. I hate that
this stuff is called AI because it's not intelligence,
but it's just easier to say AI. So let's just
agree on that. OpenAI and Anthropic. They are
the creators of ChatGPT and Claude respectively,
two of the biggest names in the AI space right
now. Both of these companies are racing to an
IPO. That's when a company is listed on the stock
market and they get a huge payday. Think about
how much money is currently flying around in
all the AI spaces and then think about how much
money they have to gain from going to market
and letting people buy in from the public. But
also also think about the risk of not being able
to deliver on all of the promises that they've
made. And so if you want to cash out, you got
to be the first one to get to the market, because
if you're the second and people already know
that it's not worth investing in, you're fucked.
So we're seeing a whole lot of bluster from these
companies about how powerful their systems are,
to the point of being an existential threat to
humanity, and yet these random CEOs are supposed
to be the ones that we trust to manage these
things. We've seen engineers thinking that these
systems are sentient. Google fired someone over
that. Anthropic even put out research about model
welfare, you know, worrying about the experiences
and emotions of AI models. These are computer
programs. This is not consciousness. There are
two things happening here. One is marketing,
and the other is genuine psychosis. So like a
lot of this is marketing. You're gonna see headlines
from journalists that either don't understand
what they're talking about or took a big paycheck
from one of these companies to write a big thing
about how there's belief that these AIs are sentient,
and it's always in the passive voice. There is
belief that there is sentience here, not AI is
sentient. It's a really effective marketing strategy
if you're trying to get a ton of people to invest
in your company. If you say, my company is so
important that it cannot be ignored, otherwise
it's a threat to humanity. So like, yeah, obvious
marketing is super obvious, but the other part
of this is kind of scarier. which is the genuine
psychosis. You're maybe familiar with the stories
of people, like, falling in love with an AI chatbot
or being driven to kill themselves by one. OpenAI
recently pulled down ChatGPT 4 .0, which is,
like, the model that most people were dating.
It was the most intimate and, like, malleable
model until people were able to craft a partner,
like, a character that they formed an unhealthy
relationship with. And then the subscription
tech service company took down their subscription
service, and now people are experiencing genuine
pain. That is a form of psychosis on the user's
end, but on the other side, some of these developers
truly believe that they are building God. It's
a religion to them. It's the next phase of humanity.
It's their version. of colonizing things. They
believe, truly, that they are building the next
evolution of humanity, somewhere between Peter
Thiel with uploading our consciousness and so
it's the intersection of marketing and genuinely
profiting off people's confusion and psychosis
and that's terrifying and gross. At the end of
the day, these are just computer programs. They're
just rolling a bunch of dice, taking random numbers,
and then checking a big ol' reference sheet,
and trying to produce output that's somewhat
congruent with the input, both a bunch of randomness
thrown in. It's a bit more complicated than that,
but ultimately, that's basically all that's happening.
It's not making decisions based on anything but
prior inputs that it's been given to try to follow.
Anyway, uh, it's not intelligence. It's just
software. Lightning round! Iraqi Customs detained
a package that they thought might have had ancient
historical significance. It turns out that it
was a collector's edition of Claire Obscura Expedition
33. The CEO of Salesforce made a joke about ICE
monitoring his employees. His employees were
not very happy with that joke. An AI feature
update for Notepad on Windows 11 added a massive
security vulnerability. Yet again, it seems like
Omega 3 is very good for you. It now seems like
there's a link between Omega 3 and a reduced
chance of early onset dementia. MrBeast acquired
a banking app. MrBanks. Not content with just
staying in the US, North London now has an outbreak
of measles with at least 60 children in the area
being infected. After 88 years, Gallup will no
longer track presidential approval rating. They
say this has nothing to do with political pressure
from the presidency. And finally for today, it's
Britney, bitch, as Britney Spears has sold the
license to all of her music for about $200 million.
I am also selling the license to all of my music
for $200 million, if anyone's interested. Thank
you so much for listening to today's episode
of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head to skh .news for
sources, bonus content, and the entire library
of Britney Spears music, because I bought the
license. My name is Endeavorance. We'll talk
again soon. Take care and be well.