Latest / Stuff Keeps Happening / Ceasefire No More

Transcript

Ceasefire No More · Stuff Keeps Happening

• 0:00
  Hello.
• 0:00
  I ate a spectacular BLT,
• 0:04
  but Stuff still Happened.
• 0:06
  So what's up?
• 0:07
  Dear listener, I had every intention
• 0:09
  of making today's main story be something uplifting.
• 0:12
  In fact, I posted as much on Blue Sky
• 0:14
  and all my other socials,
• 0:16
  and then an hour later I checked the news.
• 0:18
  Eughh
• 0:19
  That, it was my hubris,
• 0:21
  thinking I could do something fun.
• 0:23
  Now, I've got some good stuff later on,
• 0:26
  but this first story is gonna be heavy.
• 0:27
  It is talking about the ongoing genocide
• 0:30
  against the people of Gaza.
• 0:31
  I'll put timestamps in the description.
• 0:33
  If you're not in a place
• 0:34
  to have this conversation right now,
• 0:35
  you can always skip and come back to it later,
• 0:37
  but that's the first topic.
• 0:39
  Here we go.
• 0:39
  This past week, Israel bombarded Gaza
• 0:42
  with missile attacks and ground troop invasions,
• 0:45
  completely just ending the ceasefire out of nowhere.
• 0:47
  There was a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
• 0:50
  It was supposed to be there for several months
• 0:52
  while they exchanged hostages,
• 0:53
  and they did exchange some hostages,
• 0:56
  and then Israel said, "Fuck it."
• 0:57
  During the brief ceasefire,
• 0:58
  Hamas returned a few dozen of their hostages,
• 1:01
  But Hamas wasn't returning the hostages fast enough,
• 1:03
  and so Israel decided that the next course of action
• 1:05
  is to directly put those hostages' lives at risk
• 1:08
  by bombarding Gaza.
• 1:09
  The first surprise bombardment out of the ceasefire
• 1:12
  killed at least 400 people in Gaza,
• 1:14
  including random men, women, and children
• 1:16
  who have nothing to do with anything
• 1:18
  and are just trying to survive.
• 1:19
  They've been targeting hospitals,
• 1:20
  places of worship, and schools,
• 1:21
  as they've been doing this whole time,
• 1:23
  and they've most recently destroyed
• 1:25
  the only cancer hospital in Gaza.
• 1:27
  I've spent more than the past year
• 1:29
  covering Israel's actions against Gaza
• 1:31
  in the wake of the Hamas attack against Israel.
• 1:34
  Yeah, Hamas did some bad shit.
• 1:36
  Israel then caused a man-made famine
• 1:39
  and killed likely hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
• 1:42
  The conservative official death toll is 50,000.
• 1:46
  It passed that recently, but there are estimations
• 1:48
  that the secondary-degree effects of Israel's actions
• 1:51
  puts the actual death toll
• 1:52
  in the hundreds of thousands of souls.
• 1:55
  Citizens of Israel are protesting Netanyahu's actions
• 1:58
  en masse for all sorts of reasons.
• 2:00
  The man is already facing corruption charges in court.
• 2:03
  He is the prime minister of Israel,
• 2:05
  and he's using his power to undermine the judicial system
• 2:08
  that could potentially hold him accountable.
• 2:10
  Sound familiar?
• 2:11
  In addition to protesting a corrupt politician,
• 2:14
  they're also protesting his escalation
• 2:16
  of the attacks on Gaza,
• 2:17
  and also the escalation of his rhetoric
• 2:19
  into essentially total annihilation.
• 2:22
  Empowered by the Trump administration,
• 2:23
  they are talking much more about eradicating Gaza.
• 2:26
  At the same time that Israel is bombing Gaza
• 2:28
  and killing children by the hundreds,
• 2:31
  they are also expanding their settlements
• 2:33
  in the occupied West Bank.
• 2:34
  Israel has settlements in occupied Palestinian territory,
• 2:37
  and they essentially sign off on papers saying,
• 2:40
  "Yeah, Israeli citizens are now allowed to go in
• 2:42
  "and just take the homes of Palestinians."
• 2:45
  This isn't empty land where they're just going in
• 2:47
  and building a wonderful new place to live.
• 2:49
  No, they're going in and quite literally
• 2:51
  kicking people out of their existing homes.
• 2:54
  Israeli citizens are protesting this.
• 2:56
  People across the world are protesting this,
• 2:58
  and most importantly, Jews are protesting this.
• 3:01
  I wanna talk about Zionism and how it's not Judaism.
• 3:04
  The two are not the same.
• 3:06
  In fact, the majority of Zionists are not Jewish.
• 3:09
  They're evangelical Christians.
• 3:11
  Zionism is a political ideology
• 3:13
  that first was shut out into the world
• 3:15
  between the late 1800s and early 1900s.
• 3:18
  It is predicated on an actual Jewish belief
• 3:21
  about the return to the homeland.
• 3:23
  There is a belief that there is going to be
• 3:25
  a divine intervention or a miracle
• 3:27
  that essentially allows Jews to return
• 3:29
  to what we call Palestine.
• 3:31
  Zionism is essentially the belief
• 3:32
  that we should use military action
• 3:34
  to force this to happen rather than the miracle.
• 3:37
  Or rather they're like, nah,
• 3:39
  we're gonna make a miracle happen
• 3:40
  by ethnically cleansing the people who currently live there.
• 3:43
  But why are evangelical Christians supporting this?
• 3:47
  Unfortunately, the answer is a death cult.
• 3:49
  The reestablishment of Israel
• 3:50
  and the return of Jews to their homeland
• 3:52
  is a step in a prophecy towards the second coming of Christ
• 3:56
  that evangelical Christians subscribe to.
• 3:57
  The second coming of Christ being, of course,
• 3:59
  the herald of the apocalypse, the rapture.
• 4:01
  They are quite literally trying to muster up
• 4:03
  political and military force to establish Israel
• 4:06
  as a step towards a prophecy that ends with all of us dying.
• 4:11
  I wish I was making this up.
• 4:12
  Unfortunately, there's a lot of reading you can do about it.
• 4:15
  I've linked to it in today's newsletter.
• 4:18
  It's really fucked up.
• 4:19
  But I just want to make it abundantly,
• 4:21
  extraordinarily, extremely clear
• 4:24
  that to be against the state of Israel
• 4:26
  is not to be anti-Semitic.
• 4:28
  I am not a religious person,
• 4:29
  but I do have religious family,
• 4:31
  and I am looking forward to spending time
• 4:33
  with my Jewish family having a Seder for Passover next month.
• 4:36
  I have nothing but respect for Jewish culture,
• 4:38
  Jewish traditions, and the Jewish faith.
• 4:40
  That's not Zionism.
• 4:41
  It's why we've seen so many Jews and Jewish faith leaders
• 4:44
  at anti-Israel protests,
• 4:46
  because it doesn't stand for them, and it's insulting.
• 4:49
  This is a geopolitical militaristic plan
• 4:51
  that is leveraging their faith
• 4:54
  as a shield against criticism.
• 4:56
  Unfortunately, there's not a lot that we can do
• 4:58
  as individual people to help this situation,
• 5:01
  but you can talk to the people in your life and inform them.
• 5:05
  Let them know what's going on.
• 5:07
  Tell them about this.
• 5:08
  While people are unable to afford food here at home,
• 5:11
  we are sending billions of dollars of military aid
• 5:14
  to help a country that is not us protect themselves,
• 5:17
  quote unquote, from the people who already lived there.
• 5:20
  Weird how the people who were living there
• 5:23
  aren't super thrilled about a bunch of foreigners coming in
• 5:27
  and colonizing their land.
• 5:28
  I feel like there's a story in, I don't know,
• 5:31
  maybe this country's history that could like inform us
• 5:34
  as to how much of an atrocity this is,
• 5:35
  but I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about that.
• 5:38
  Moving on to policy.
• 5:39
  I guess this is policy, but really it's just kind of a treat
• 5:42
  just to kind of lighten the mood a bit.
• 5:44
  The original creator of the Pirates Booty brand of snacks,
• 5:48
  the like puffed cheese corn things,
• 5:51
  has lost his damn mind.
• 5:52
  Robert Ehrlich.
• 5:54
  He lives in a small town on Long Island called Seacliff,
• 5:57
  where he recently declared himself to be the mayor.
• 6:00
  They recently had a mayoral election.
• 6:02
  The incumbent mayor was running unopposed for a third term,
• 6:05
  and a week before the election,
• 6:07
  he walked into the town center and said, "I'm the mayor.
• 6:11
  "Give me their office, and all of you are fired."
• 6:14
  To which the municipal employees were like...
• 6:17
  "What?"
• 6:17
  They said that they've never seen this guy
• 6:19
  in any sort of civics context before,
• 6:21
  and they were like, "What, are y'all right there, guy?
• 6:24
  "You need help?"
• 6:25
  So this dude has a coffee shop
• 6:27
  where he's been collecting votes.
• 6:30
  I'm doing massive air quotes right now.
• 6:32
  He spent the past like four years
• 6:34
  basically telling people to vote for him,
• 6:38
  and then he would just like collect their quote unquote vote,
• 6:41
  and then he claimed that those were valid in this election.
• 6:44
  But in reality, after the election happened,
• 6:46
  he lost 1,064 votes to 62.
• 6:50
  But he doesn't believe that.
• 6:51
  He says it was rigged, he says it doesn't count,
• 6:53
  and he says that back in 1268,
• 6:57
  the Vatican took three years to choose a pope,
• 7:00
  which is why he's allowed to use the votes
• 7:02
  that he collected over four years to become mayor.
• 7:05
  He claims that he now holds the record
• 7:07
  for the longest election, beating out that pope.
• 7:09
  Get fuckin' bent, Pope!
• 7:11
  When asked by reporters if he's going to run
• 7:13
  in two years to try to actually become the mayor,
• 7:15
  his response was, "I am the mayor.
• 7:18
  "Why would I have to run if I'm already the mayor?"
• 7:20
  So that's fun.
• 7:22
  Several European countries and Canada
• 7:24
  have issued travel advisories against the United States,
• 7:28
  given how dangerous it is to try to come here
• 7:30
  as anyone who's not a US citizen right now.
• 7:33
  Denmark, Canada, Finland, Germany, and the UK
• 7:36
  have all issued advisories
• 7:37
  and updated their travel information for going to the US,
• 7:40
  basically saying, "Comply, because otherwise,
• 7:42
  "they're going to detain and torture you."
• 7:44
  A Welsh tourist was recently detained by ICE for 19 days,
• 7:49
  held in a detention facility
• 7:50
  with 24-7 fluorescent lighting because of nothing.
• 7:53
  She was transported in chains and handcuffs.
• 7:56
  The crime that she committed, being here as a visitor.
• 8:00
  She was here on a tourist visa,
• 8:02
  and she was staying with people
• 8:03
  in exchange for helping them out around the house.
• 8:07
  And ICE somehow took that as unlawful employment
• 8:10
  and detained her.
• 8:10
  She's literally an artist just visiting America,
• 8:14
  staying with some people, helping them out
• 8:15
  around the house so that she can crash in a bed.
• 8:18
  And they detained her for 19 days and deported her.
• 8:20
  She's back home with her dog, whose name is Bojangles.
• 8:25
  This, of course, comes right after last week,
• 8:27
  where I talked about a German national
• 8:29
  that was detained by ICE despite having a US green card,
• 8:33
  and he was essentially brutalized,
• 8:34
  borderline tortured by ICE agents at Boston Logan Airport.
• 8:37
  Meanwhile, the Trump administration has enacted
• 8:39
  a 1700s wartime law that gives him the authority
• 8:43
  to essentially just deport people who are brown.
• 8:46
  It's called the Alien Enemies Act,
• 8:48
  and he basically said that we are at war
• 8:50
  with a South American gang,
• 8:52
  and so he's identifying random people
• 8:54
  that he claims are associated with that gang
• 8:55
  without proof and deporting them
• 8:58
  to a foreign prison in El Salvador
• 9:00
  that was explicitly built
• 9:01
  to effectively torture its inmates.
• 9:03
  We do not know who the administration has sent
• 9:05
  in total to this prison.
• 9:07
  There's not information,
• 9:08
  and they are stonewalling judges who are demanding it.
• 9:11
  They were supposed to have turned the plane around,
• 9:13
  made air when a judge caught wind that this was happening,
• 9:15
  but they didn't.
• 9:16
  There also may be a professional soccer player there,
• 9:19
  and ICE mistook his tattoo celebrating his favorite
• 9:22
  soccer team as a gang tattoo.
• 9:25
  Because racism,
• 9:26
  I'm gonna be super, super clear about this,
• 9:28
  that these people have not had charges brought against them
• 9:32
  and had no due process,
• 9:33
  and we don't even know the roster of people
• 9:36
  that were deported.
• 9:36
  It very well could be that there are
• 9:38
  full legal US citizens among them.
• 9:42
  We straight up don't know.
• 9:43
  And so yeah, it's not really a good idea
• 9:46
  to come to the US right now.
• 9:48
  Sorry, tourism industry and trade and general stability.
• 9:53
  Promo, this is the self promo section.
• 9:56
  I have a Patreon and a merch store
• 9:59
  and a website and a Discord community.
• 10:03
  End of promo.
• 10:04
  Technology.
• 10:05
  I'm gonna brutalize this.
• 10:06
  Arve Hjalmar Holmen is a resident of Norway,
• 10:10
  and he asked ChatGPT, "Hey, what do you think about me?"
• 10:14
  He prompted ChatGPT asking,
• 10:15
  "Who is Arve Hjalmar Holmen?"
• 10:18
  To which it responded, quote,
• 10:20
  "He was the father of two young boys, aged seven and 10,
• 10:24
  who were tragically found dead in a pond near their home."
• 10:27
  Oh.
• 10:27
  So this man was a little shocked
• 10:29
  because he does have two kids,
• 10:30
  and they are about that age, and they also are alive.
• 10:33
  And so he's filed a complaint with OpenAI,
• 10:35
  who was like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no,
• 10:37
  we've upgraded our systems, don't worry about it."
• 10:39
  It's unclear exactly where the bug in the system was
• 10:43
  that accused the user of double homicide
• 10:45
  against their own family, but you know, it happened.
• 10:48
  Hopefully they patched that out.
• 10:49
  Meanwhile, over in the UK, the United Kaaaangdom,
• 10:54
  a human rights activist named Tanya O'Carroll
• 10:56
  has sued META and, well, won a settlement.
• 11:00
  Back in 2022, she sued META over use
• 11:03
  of her personal information to sell targeted ads against her,
• 11:06
  META being the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
• 11:09
  Now, the UK is a country that has a lot of problems,
• 11:12
  but they also have some kind of privacy laws,
• 11:15
  unlike the United States.
• 11:16
  And she basically argued that they were not respecting
• 11:19
  her right to privacy, and they were using her data
• 11:21
  against her wishes to target ads to her.
• 11:24
  And so Facebook came to the table and said, "Okay, fine.
• 11:27
  We'll stop doing that for you specifically.
• 11:29
  What a resolution."
• 11:31
  But regulatory agencies in the UK are taking another look
• 11:35
  because this does set precedent, and hey,
• 11:38
  maybe Facebook shouldn't be able to do that.
• 11:40
  Facebook makes 98% of their revenue off of selling ads
• 11:44
  based on data they've collected about you and sold.
• 11:47
  They've done a very good job over the past 20 years
• 11:50
  of convincing the entire general public
• 11:52
  to not care about their data
• 11:53
  and put no value on it whatsoever,
• 11:56
  so that they can make billions
• 11:57
  and fund Mark Zuckerberg's weird midlife crisis.
• 12:00
  A few years back, Apple made a tweak to iOS
• 12:03
  that changed the way that apps
• 12:04
  are able to actually track people.
• 12:06
  They had to request specific access to track you,
• 12:09
  and you could just say, "No."
• 12:11
  This was so catastrophic to Facebook's business model
• 12:14
  that they took out multiple full page ads in newspapers
• 12:17
  and launched a whole campaign against it.
• 12:19
  They were essentially saying, "If we can't use data
• 12:22
  that people don't even know we're collecting about them,
• 12:25
  we're gonna not have a business,"
• 12:26
  to which I would say,
• 12:29
  "Okay."
• 12:29
  Oh, speaking of data,
• 12:31
  there's an AI company called Clearview AI
• 12:33
  that has been making waves and headlines for a while
• 12:36
  because what they're doing is scraping public data
• 12:39
  and trying to create a massive searchable database
• 12:42
  of everyone.
• 12:42
  You know when you watch a movie
• 12:44
  and there's the spy agency or whatever
• 12:45
  and there's the big screen
• 12:47
  and they've got some footage, they zoom in,
• 12:49
  they get the perps face
• 12:50
  and they're like, "Run facial recognition."
• 12:52
  Then another box pops up
• 12:54
  and it scans through a whole bunch of faces
• 12:56
  until one of them is like, "Match found!"
• 12:58
  They're trying to build that.
• 12:59
  And they have actually built that.
• 13:01
  They've basically just scraped as much information
• 13:02
  as they can from the internet, from social media,
• 13:05
  and creating profiles on everyone
• 13:07
  so that they can do an image search for your face
• 13:09
  from security footage.
• 13:10
  But recently, 404 Media, shout out,
• 13:13
  they're doing amazing work right now.
• 13:14
  But 404 Media recently broke that Clearview
• 13:17
  was trying to purchase hundreds of millions
• 13:19
  of arrest records, including mug shots,
• 13:21
  social security numbers, cell phone numbers,
• 13:24
  home addresses, and more.
• 13:25
  They tried to strike a deal with an organization
• 13:27
  that has a big database of crime records
• 13:30
  for attorneys to use.
• 13:31
  They can use it to make a case
• 13:32
  and reference former cases and whatnot.
• 13:35
  But Clearview was like, "I want that."
• 13:37
  Clearview and the other company that had this data,
• 13:39
  they entered a contract and that fell apart
• 13:43
  and now they hate each other.
• 13:44
  Clearview paid them a million dollars,
• 13:45
  which is fucking nothing for that much data,
• 13:48
  and that money has not been returned
• 13:50
  because of a cited breach of contract.
• 13:52
  But Clearview also says that the other people
• 13:54
  breached contract and now it's going to courts
• 13:56
  and hopefully they eat each other alive.
• 13:58
  Clearview exists to sell their products
• 14:00
  to law enforcement and investigative agencies.
• 14:02
  So...
• 14:04
  yike.
• 14:05
  Let's talk about science.
• 14:06
  Science stuff.
• 14:07
  This is fucking crazy.
• 14:09
  This is, okay, here we go.
• 14:10
  This is one of the best things I think I've gotten
• 14:12
  a chance to talk about in quite some time.
• 14:14
  It didn't really happen super recently, but last month.
• 14:17
  A research team at Purdue University
• 14:19
  released a new open source computer model called NuFold
• 14:23
  that is essentially going to enhance our understanding
• 14:25
  of RNA research by decades.
• 14:27
  Let's take a step back.
• 14:29
  RNA, it's the younger brother to DNA,
• 14:33
  the spindly little dudes that make us exist.
• 14:35
  RNA is something we don't have a super good grasp on.
• 14:40
  We get it, but we don't have the best handle on it.
• 14:43
  But it's also the key to a lot of medical advancements
• 14:46
  that we're hoping to have soon.
• 14:48
  There are treatments and vaccinations and therapies
• 14:52
  that can be done if we get a stronger understanding
• 14:54
  of the structure of RNA.
• 14:56
  Like specific RNA structures.
• 14:58
  But the problem is it's very difficult right now
• 15:00
  to just figure that out aside from trial
• 15:03
  and error experimentation.
• 15:04
  But this research group has created a computer model
• 15:07
  that can essentially aid in the prediction
• 15:10
  of what an RNA structure would look like
• 15:12
  at the atomic level.
• 15:13
  Now I'm not gonna pretend
• 15:14
  that I actually understand all of this,
• 15:17
  but largely it summarizes to this.
• 15:19
  Medical research has a need to be able to visualize
• 15:22
  and sequence proteins and other components of being a person.
• 15:26
  And the better we can do that,
• 15:28
  the faster we can iterate on treatments and medication.
• 15:31
  And this is a huge step in that direction.
• 15:34
  Anyway, you don't wanna be an alpha male,
• 15:36
  but you definitely don't wanna be an alpha gal.
• 15:38
  Alpha gal syndrome or AGS is a thing that you can contract
• 15:41
  after being bit by a certain type of tick,
• 15:44
  which can give you an allergy to red meat,
• 15:46
  like full on anaphylactic shock allergy.
• 15:49
  Ticks are tiny little blood sucking insects
• 15:51
  and they're not great.
• 15:53
  In fact, they suck a lot.
• 15:55
  They cause a lot of diseases.
• 15:57
  Anaphylactic shock red meat disease.
• 16:00
  But specifically AGS was associated with lone star ticks
• 16:03
  as opposed to holding like a deer tick,
• 16:05
  which is more commonly associated with Lyme disease.
• 16:07
  This is different from that,
• 16:09
  except recent cases suggest that there might be
• 16:12
  other types of ticks that are able to give somebody AGS.
• 16:15
  There have been cases reported up and down the East Coast
• 16:18
  of the United States and into the Midwest
• 16:19
  in regions where the lone star tick is not usually found.
• 16:23
  So there's more research going into this,
• 16:24
  but I wanna be very clear, don't freak out.
• 16:26
  This isn't new and this isn't escalating at a rate
• 16:29
  that merits you to freak out and never go outside again.
• 16:33
  But in general, if you go out into the deep woods
• 16:36
  or you're walking around some tall grass
• 16:37
  going on a hike or whatever,
• 16:39
  check yourself for ticks afterwards
• 16:40
  and check your friends and check your pets, all of it.
• 16:43
  And unfortunately, yeah, check all of the crevices,
• 16:47
  all of them, even that one.
• 16:48
  Lightning round
• 16:49
  A historic fort in England suffered damage to its walls
• 16:53
  after somebody assaulted it
• 16:54
  by shooting 40 golf balls at it.
• 16:57
  Damn, it's hella artillery.
• 16:59
  Google is paying out nearly $30 million
• 17:01
  to settle an anti-discrimination case
• 17:03
  in which they were accused of uplifting white
• 17:06
  and Asian employees more than anyone else.
• 17:08
  The Trump administration released the files
• 17:10
  on the JFK assassination,
• 17:12
  which is the conspiracy theory equivalent
• 17:14
  of jingling some keys.
• 17:15
  Like, yeah, it's not, it's fishy.
• 17:18
  Are we on this still?
• 17:19
  An Australian woman got caught trying to sell
• 17:22
  two partially digested toes
• 17:24
  that a dog threw up on the internet.
• 17:26
  I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
• 17:29
  And finally for today, Blue Sky,
• 17:31
  which I am on and you should follow me on,
• 17:33
  made more money selling shirts making fun of Mark Zuckerberg
• 17:36
  than they have on their actual offering
• 17:39
  of selling custom domains.
• 17:40
  On Blue Sky, your handle is like a website, it's a domain,
• 17:43
  and they have an option to purchase a custom one.
• 17:46
  And they made a shirt making fun of Mark Zuckerberg
• 17:48
  and that has outpaced sales already.
• 17:51
  Time to pivot.
• 17:52
  Thank you so much for listening
• 17:53
  to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
• 17:55
  Head to skh.news for sources, bonus content,
• 17:58
  and my shirt making fun of Mark Zuckerberg.
• 18:02
  I do have a merch store, but I don't have that
• 18:05
  in my merch store.
• 18:06
  Anyway, my name is Endeavorance.
• 18:07
  I'll be back on Monday.
• 18:09
  Take care and be well.