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Siege on Chicago · Stuff Keeps Happening

• 0:00
  Hello. I girlbossed too close to the sun. But
• 0:05
  stuff still happened. So what's up? Let's start
• 0:08
  with a fun fact. I want to have some fun before
• 0:12
  the rest of the facts. It's a brutal one. So
• 0:15
  let's have some fun. Just a little bit of poetry
• 0:17
  for ya. Telephones. Some people would say that
• 0:20
  telephones are useful. They let us talk to each
• 0:22
  other from a distance to be clear this is not
• 0:25
  a telephone. This might be a telephone. If you're
• 0:27
  watching on a phone, it is. That's how you can
• 0:29
  tell. But back in the day, in not on your phone,
• 0:34
  how did we get voice from one place to another?
• 0:36
  Didn't have broadband, didn't have cellular towers,
• 0:40
  we used wires. But how did we get those wires
• 0:42
  everywhere, and especially how did we connect
• 0:45
  all of the rural households across this gargantuan
• 0:48
  country? The answer is equal parts ingenious
• 0:51
  and metal as hell. Barbed wire. In the late 1800s,
• 0:55
  a patent expired from Bell regarding the telephone
• 0:58
  system, and so a bunch of companies were able
• 1:00
  to come in and build out additional telephone
• 1:02
  networks. A popular thing at the time was to
• 1:05
  do a thing called a party line, where you basically
• 1:07
  have a bunch of households on a single telephone
• 1:10
  line. Different ring patterns were meant for
• 1:12
  different households, so everyone's phone would
• 1:14
  ring, but if it wasn't your ring pattern, you
• 1:16
  weren't supposed to pick it up. You could, and
• 1:19
  anyone could listen to any conversation. No privacy,
• 1:22
  but it was cheap. So that's that, but where does
• 1:24
  the barbed wire come in? Well, telephones needed
• 1:26
  telephone lines, and telephone lines required
• 1:29
  infrastructure to put them down. Guess who already
• 1:32
  had a lot of wire everywhere? Farmers. If you
• 1:35
  had a bunch of pasture, if you had livestock,
• 1:37
  if you had whatever you wanted to fence off your
• 1:39
  land, you probably had barbed wire going all
• 1:41
  around your property, which meant that there
• 1:43
  was already a network of connected wires across
• 1:46
  rural America. At least, there was a lot of...
• 1:49
  wire already. They were able to reuse it. They
• 1:52
  tapped into the barbed wire networks and used
• 1:54
  them as makeshift telephone lines. This was effective,
• 1:57
  cheap, and was in use all the way up to the 1970s.
• 2:01
  So that's cool, unless you had a particularly
• 2:03
  wily cow, in which case it might just like walk
• 2:05
  through the barbed wire and fuck up your conversation.
• 2:07
  But, you know, stateside! It is day six of the
• 2:11
  United States government shutdown, and there
• 2:13
  does not appear to be an end in sight. As of
• 2:15
  now, nearly two million federal workers are either
• 2:17
  working without pay or on unpaid leave. In a
• 2:20
  couple of weeks, we'll see the pay periods for
• 2:22
  military and federal workers come and go, and
• 2:25
  that will increase the stakes of the shutdown
• 2:27
  significantly. All the while, no actual talks
• 2:30
  have been happening between the parties. Instead,
• 2:32
  our leadership is currently in a meme war, in
• 2:35
  which the president is tweeting racist memes
• 2:37
  about the leaders of the Democratic Party. Trump's
• 2:40
  only attempts to negotiate have been to threaten,
• 2:42
  quote, irreversible cuts to federal spending
• 2:45
  and federal employees. He has also frozen $28
• 2:48
  billion in funding that was supposed to go to
• 2:50
  Democrat -run states for things like infrastructure
• 2:52
  and public transit. He says he's going to keep
• 2:54
  doing this until Democrats fold and vote for
• 2:56
  the Republican bill that has no Democrat concessions,
• 2:59
  which is not how anything is supposed to work.
• 3:02
  Very abuser -coded, but we knew that. Trump and
• 3:05
  his allies are trying to push that the Democrats
• 3:08
  have shut down the government because they want
• 3:10
  to, quote, give health care to illegal aliens.
• 3:13
  And I want to be clear, that is nonsense. I'm
• 3:15
  not out here trying to defend the Democrats.
• 3:18
  They've got their own problems, but they're not
• 3:20
  the ones who are unilaterally in power right
• 3:22
  now. And to say that their goal is to give illegal
• 3:25
  immigrants health care is whack. They don't even
• 3:28
  want to give U .S. citizens health care. They're
• 3:31
  asking for not wildly increasing premiums on
• 3:35
  private health insurance that already exists.
• 3:38
  And the argument that they're trying to give
• 3:39
  illegal immigrants healthcare is based on completely
• 3:42
  nothing. It is a lie. They point to legislation
• 3:45
  that they hope you won't read because that's
• 3:47
  not what it says. This course of action, the
• 3:50
  threatening cuts, the freezing funding, the lying
• 3:53
  about what's going on, is so much that even some
• 3:56
  Republican officials are quietly expressing their
• 3:59
  concerns about the precedents being set. If only
• 4:02
  they would be a bit more loud about their concerns
• 4:05
  instead of being cowards. As of now, it's a waiting
• 4:07
  game. Both parties think that they are currently
• 4:09
  coming out on top and it's just a matter of which
• 4:11
  party is going to buckle first. It could be a
• 4:13
  while. Let's talk about if we are or are not
• 4:15
  at war. A couple episodes ago, I asked the question,
• 4:18
  are we at war? And I'm very glad that I can finally
• 4:21
  give you an update to that answer. The answer
• 4:23
  to the question of are we at war has changed
• 4:26
  from sort of yes, but kind of no, to kind of
• 4:29
  no, but sort of yes. The White House has informed
• 4:32
  Congress that the United States is now engaged
• 4:34
  in a, quote, non -international armed conflict
• 4:38
  with drug cartels. This is what the White House
• 4:40
  is using as justification for the bombings on
• 4:43
  civilian vessels in the Caribbean by the U .S.
• 4:46
  military. We've done that four times now. We've
• 4:48
  killed at least 17 people. And the United States
• 4:51
  has not produced a shred of evidence to support
• 4:54
  their claims that these people were narco -terrorists.
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  And even if they were, that's supposed to fall
• 5:00
  to the Coast Guard. Not the US military. But
• 5:03
  that doesn't matter. If you are of the age that
• 5:05
  you should schedule your prostate exam, you might
• 5:07
  recognize the term non -international armed conflict.
• 5:11
  That is the same thing that George W. Bush used
• 5:14
  to label al -Qaeda, without having to actually
• 5:17
  formally declare war. The difference being that
• 5:19
  back then, Congress did give approval for use
• 5:21
  of military force against designated targets
• 5:24
  from that statement. In this case, both Democrats
• 5:27
  and Republicans have gone to the Pentagon being
• 5:29
  like, hey, what? The fuck, actually, can we get
• 5:32
  like a legal reason for these strikes? To which
• 5:35
  the Pentagon said, suck it. Which is great for
• 5:38
  international relations. The United States president
• 5:40
  cannot unilaterally declare war per the U .S.
• 5:43
  Constitution. That hasn't stopped this administration
• 5:45
  yet. We shouldn't expect this administration
• 5:47
  to follow the law. We should expect them to continue
• 5:49
  doing what they're doing, which is break the
• 5:51
  law as much as they can until they get a little
• 5:52
  bit of pushback and then break a different law
• 5:55
  while they deal with that one. And unfortunately,
• 5:57
  when they break the law, in some cases that results
• 5:59
  in murdering foreign civilians. The United States
• 6:03
  government is currently trying very hard to manufacture
• 6:05
  consent to get support to bomb any target that
• 6:09
  someone in the administration deems dangerous.
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  And being the state that arbitrarily bombs random
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  foreign vessels, claiming that they are evil,
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  is not a good state to be. We don't have the
• 6:23
  option to unbomb those boats, but we sure as
• 6:27
  hell can bomb them. But why target foreign nationals
• 6:30
  when we've got so many nationals domestically?
• 6:33
  In the early hours of the night on September
• 6:35
  30th, 2025, the United States government unleashed
• 6:38
  a federal agent raid on a residential apartment
• 6:42
  building in Chicago. When I say raid, I mean
• 6:44
  it. Masked federal agents rappelled from Black
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  Hawk helicopters onto the top of the apartment
• 6:50
  building while others stormed in from the streets.
• 6:53
  They indiscriminately ripped people from their
• 6:55
  homes, zip -tied them, dragged them out in the
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  middle of the night. They separated people from
• 7:00
  their children, zip -tying children, in some
• 7:02
  cases naked children taken from their beds, separated
• 7:06
  from their parents, and zip -tied in the street.
• 7:09
  Everyone. Citizen or not. Not that that's an
• 7:12
  acceptable way to treat anyone of any status.
• 7:16
  The federal government claims that this apartment
• 7:17
  building had some illegal immigrants in it, which
• 7:20
  was their justification for - doing that. They
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  turned around and boasted by posting on social
• 7:25
  media a dramatic video about how successful this
• 7:28
  operation was, boasting that they got two people
• 7:31
  who are suspected gang members. I'm going to
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  read you an excerpt from reporting from a local
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  Chicago public radio station. This is from WBEZ.
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  Roger Johnson, 67, is one of many residents who
• 7:44
  were detained by federal agents during the South
• 7:47
  Shore raid. A U .S. citizen, he said agents broke
• 7:51
  through his door and dragged him out in zip ties.
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  Johnson said he was left tied up outside the
• 7:56
  building for nearly three hours before agents
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  finally let him go. Quote, I asked agents why
• 8:02
  they were holding me if I was an American citizen
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  and they said I had to wait until they looked
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  me up. I asked if they had a warrant and I asked
• 8:09
  for a lawyer. They never brought one. When residents
• 8:12
  went back to their apartments, they found that
• 8:14
  their property was strewn about, missing or destroyed.
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  There's reports that the building was in disrepair
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  to begin with, but residents went back and found
• 8:21
  their personal belongings destroyed. This was
• 8:24
  the federal government sending their goons in
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  in the middle of the night to raid a residential
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  building in a city that voted against the current
• 8:31
  administration. This is a gargantuan and indisputable
• 8:34
  violation of civil rights. And I hope that each
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  and every one of these people get a multi -million
• 8:40
  dollar payout. This is not the last time this
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  is going to happen, and it is a miracle that
• 8:44
  nobody was killed. I want to note that there
• 8:46
  are also suspicious circumstances surrounding
• 8:48
  a real estate dealing with this building and
• 8:51
  an investigation from the Fed of this building
• 8:53
  just a few weeks before this raid. I am waiting
• 8:56
  to get more information on this as this information
• 8:58
  is coming out. I've linked to an early article
• 9:01
  researching this in my newsletter. The last thing
• 9:03
  about ICE, they are also working real hard to
• 9:06
  increase their digital surveillance nationwide.
• 9:09
  They're working with tech companies to find ways
• 9:11
  to digitally track you everywhere, who you are,
• 9:13
  who you talk to, what you do. And Apple just
• 9:15
  pulled IceBlock, an app in the App Store that
• 9:17
  allowed people to say, hey, there's ice activity
• 9:20
  in these different areas. A thing that we're
• 9:22
  allowed to do. But Apple, and specifically Tim
• 9:25
  Cook, are fucking cowards. Thank you so much
• 9:27
  for being here, dear listener. I'm humbled that
• 9:29
  you would spend this time with me. If you want
• 9:31
  to help me out, sharing my content is always
• 9:33
  extremely helpful. Liking, comment, subscribe,
• 9:36
  all that good stuff. It's great. You can also
• 9:38
  head to isupport .dev, where you'll find links
• 9:40
  to more ways to support me. Thank you. Let's
• 9:44
  move on. Elsewhere! I'm gonna start by talking
• 9:47
  about Cash Patel, who's a US person, but I promise
• 9:49
  this is elsewhere. Cash Patel has a new challenge
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  coin, and it's awful. If you don't know what
• 9:54
  a challenge coin is, it's like a commemorative
• 9:56
  coin... thing. It's a thing in the US government,
• 9:59
  and probably elsewhere. But Cash Patel made a
• 10:01
  challenge coin, and it looks like this, and it's
• 10:03
  the worst. But that makes sense, because he's
• 10:05
  the worst. Anyway, he went to New Zealand. I'm
• 10:08
  sorry, New Zealand. He went to New Zealand, and
• 10:10
  he presented his counterparts in New Zealand,
• 10:12
  in their, like, intelligence agency, with a display
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  for his challenge coin. This display included
• 10:17
  multiple 3D -printed pistols, which were found
• 10:20
  to be possibly made operable with modifications.
• 10:23
  Pistols in New Zealand are heavily regulated,
• 10:25
  and if they can even be modified to be operational,
• 10:29
  they're illegal, without permits and such. And
• 10:31
  so they had to take the pistols and destroy them.
• 10:33
  So he brought an illegal gift to show off his
• 10:37
  awful fucking challenge coin. But why was he
• 10:39
  in New Zealand? It's because the United States
• 10:43
  has opened an FBI office in New Zealand that
• 10:46
  reports to Washington. and he was there for the
• 10:48
  opening of that office. And it was a secret.
• 10:51
  Like, literally, it wasn't supposed to come out
• 10:53
  that he was in New Zealand until after he had
• 10:55
  returned. But yeah, there's been an FBI presence
• 10:58
  in New Zealand for a while, but it was sort of
• 11:00
  like an oversight thing that worked with Australia
• 11:03
  and reported to Five Eyes stuff. Largely, there's
• 11:06
  now a direct FBI office in New Zealand. Welcome
• 11:09
  to the fun, y 'all. In Gaza, there is just a
• 11:13
  shred of hope. So the United States has proposed
• 11:15
  a 20 point plan to end the assault on Gaza by
• 11:19
  Israel and help to alleviate the incredible levels
• 11:23
  of human suffering that Israel has inflicted
• 11:26
  on the people of Gaza. At time of recording,
• 11:28
  nearly 2 million of the 2 .2 million people living
• 11:32
  in Gaza have been displaced. And estimates say
• 11:36
  that 2 .15 million of the 2 .2 million people
• 11:39
  in Gaza are facing a hunger crisis. None of this
• 11:43
  had to happen. Just wanted to say that. So Trump
• 11:45
  is tired of dealing with this and he's getting
• 11:48
  increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu. He has
• 11:50
  proposed a 20 point plan and Hamas has agreed
• 11:53
  to some of the plan. Arab nations have also been
• 11:56
  supportive of some of the plan. The plan is pretty
• 12:00
  shitty for Palestine in general. And so they're
• 12:03
  like, look, we're happy and we're looking forward
• 12:05
  to finding a path towards peace. But you can't
• 12:08
  you can't be just telling us that we can't exist.
• 12:11
  The United States proposal essentially is like,
• 12:13
  yeah, it'll all end, but also Palestine needs
• 12:15
  to be completely disarmed and under the purview
• 12:19
  of a neutral board and so on and so forth. And
• 12:22
  Palestinians are like, hey, we deserve our country.
• 12:26
  That you took from us. So conversations are now
• 12:28
  happening. Israel has still bombed Gaza even
• 12:31
  after the ceasefire discussions began, because
• 12:34
  of course. But I just want to note here that
• 12:35
  the world has seen what's happened. Internationally,
• 12:38
  there have been huge protests, millions of people
• 12:41
  taking to the streets, even just from the flotilla
• 12:44
  getting intercepted by Israel. Polls are showing
• 12:47
  that sentiment towards Israel among American
• 12:49
  citizens is rapidly changing. It used to be that
• 12:52
  Israel had an iron grip on public sentiment in
• 12:57
  America. If you said anything bad about them,
• 12:59
  the worst you would get would be people saying,
• 13:01
  oh, well, you know, it's just so complicated.
• 13:03
  I guess what I'm trying to say is it's gotten
• 13:05
  a lot less complicated for a lot more people.
• 13:07
  Anyway, Japan's woke. Liberals rejoice. This
• 13:11
  woman's probably going to be the next prime minister
• 13:12
  of Japan for the Liberal Democrat Party. She's
• 13:16
  super fucking conservative. So for international
• 13:19
  viewers in the US, the word liberal has been
• 13:22
  poisoned to mean, like, progressive slash leftist
• 13:26
  somehow. The closest thing that we have to a
• 13:28
  progressive party is the liberals, so the liberal
• 13:31
  democratic party being conservative is funny.
• 13:33
  So who is it? Let's talk about Sanae Takeiichi.
• 13:36
  Takeiichi is a woman in a very male -dominated
• 13:39
  party that is indisputable. Japan has a very
• 13:43
  different set of gender norms than even the US
• 13:45
  and UK. The gaps are even more significant. And
• 13:48
  so while it's significant that she's a woman
• 13:49
  that's gonna be leading this party for the first
• 13:51
  time, she's still deeply conservative. She's
• 13:53
  strongly anti -queer and not particularly good
• 13:55
  for women's rights. She's loudly against giving
• 13:57
  women the right to keep their maiden name after
• 14:00
  marriage. But largely, she's a conservative populist.
• 14:03
  That's her platform, is conservative populism.
• 14:06
  And it shouldn't be surprising at this point.
• 14:08
  This is kind of happening everywhere. Young people
• 14:10
  in Japan are becoming disillusioned with the
• 14:12
  status quo, and smooth -talking populists on
• 14:14
  the internet are convincing them to shift right.
• 14:17
  It is the same thing that's happening in Brazil
• 14:19
  and the US and the UK and France and Germany
• 14:23
  in a lot of places. So the Liberal Democrat Party
• 14:27
  in Japan has recently lost their stranglehold
• 14:30
  on the politics there. They had a majority and
• 14:32
  they lost it recently. So now they have to actually
• 14:34
  form a coalition before they can just choose
• 14:36
  the prime minister. And presumably they are running
• 14:38
  Takeichi because they want to take away from
• 14:41
  the growing far -right populism, like the very,
• 14:44
  very far -right. A new party has sprung up recently
• 14:46
  and is getting traction because of, again, the
• 14:48
  online conservatism, and I think they're trying
• 14:51
  to undercut that, essentially. But still, Japan's
• 14:55
  looking towards a new prime minister that's going
• 14:56
  to be very right -wing. The woman idolizes Margaret
• 15:01
  Thatcher. We'll leave it at that. Technology!
• 15:04
  The time has finally come. It's here. Everything
• 15:07
  that you've done, all of the work that you've
• 15:09
  been putting in, human existence. every thought,
• 15:13
  every moment has built to this point. PayPal
• 15:16
  and Venmo can now send money to each other. Yep,
• 15:19
  it took for fucking ever, but PayPal and Venmo
• 15:22
  can now actually send money back and forth to
• 15:24
  each other. Venmo is owned by PayPal. It's kind
• 15:27
  of shocking it took this long. Now again for
• 15:29
  international viewers, if you're watching this
• 15:30
  and you're like, why is that important? What?
• 15:33
  Or if you're wondering why the US has like a
• 15:35
  trillion different payment apps, or why we're
• 15:37
  just weird about money in general, it's because
• 15:39
  there's money to be made in moving money. We
• 15:42
  only have a viable consumer -grade money -moving
• 15:45
  system provided by our government that operates
• 15:47
  for free, like most of the world does. Instead,
• 15:51
  we have a bunch of private companies that sell
• 15:53
  the service of moving money for a cost. That
• 15:56
  cost may be paid by the sender or the receiver,
• 15:58
  or is eaten by a bank and then turned into bank
• 16:01
  fees or something, but there's always a cost
• 16:03
  they just try to hide it from you. So yeah, if
• 16:05
  you use Venmo slash PayPal, you'll be able to
• 16:07
  Venmo slash PayPal people cross, cross thing.
• 16:11
  Worldwide, that's kind of neat. Moving on. Do
• 16:13
  you have eggs? No? Give me your skin. For science.
• 16:20
  Scientists got weird with it. They have worked
• 16:22
  on a new fertility treatment that uses skin cells
• 16:26
  to produce human eggs. Let's say that you are
• 16:28
  struggling with fertility. Let's say you've got
• 16:30
  eggs and they're not cracking, so to speak. I
• 16:34
  don't know if that made any sense. You got eggs
• 16:36
  and they ain't working. Here's the idea. Scientists
• 16:38
  take egg and they yank the nucleus out of the
• 16:41
  cell. We're talking about biology. Then they
• 16:43
  take your skin cell and they take the nucleus
• 16:45
  out of a skin cell and Put it in the egg cell.
• 16:49
  It's like threading a needle, except for instead
• 16:51
  of thread, it's minuscule soft tissue. And instead
• 16:54
  of a needle, it's also minuscule soft tissue.
• 16:57
  The idea here is to empower people who otherwise
• 17:00
  can't produce genetic offspring to produce genetic
• 17:02
  offspring. That's pretty fucking cool. This is
• 17:06
  also hyper experimental. So for one, it's kind
• 17:10
  of dubious. It brushes up against cloning technology.
• 17:13
  So we're going to set all of that aside and just
• 17:15
  talk about what it could possibly do, because
• 17:18
  it could be a potential future treatment for
• 17:21
  infertility. It also could be a future way for
• 17:25
  people who do not have the ability to produce
• 17:27
  offspring themselves to have genetically related
• 17:30
  children. So like if you are a same -sex couple,
• 17:33
  for example. Now, that is nowhere near reality.
• 17:36
  I want to be super clear. According to the people
• 17:38
  involved in this kind of research, they're saying
• 17:40
  this is like... minimum 10 years off and that
• 17:44
  does not even include legality and discussions
• 17:46
  and approval and stuff like that. The embryos
• 17:49
  that they were able to cultivate existed, but
• 17:51
  none of them were like viable and none of them
• 17:54
  were kept growing past like six days. But like
• 17:57
  the proof is there. The concept is there. And
• 18:00
  fertility treatment is just one of those things
• 18:02
  that I think is really fucking cool because it's
• 18:04
  a thing that ruins so many people's lives. Like
• 18:07
  I don't have kids and don't want kids, but I
• 18:09
  know that there are people who really do. And
• 18:11
  I want them to have that. So that's cool. Anyway,
• 18:16
  give me your skin. Lightning round! A New York
• 18:19
  City apartment building partially collapsed as
• 18:21
  a chimney just crumbled to the ground, leaving
• 18:24
  a huge pile of rubble in the street. Leaders
• 18:26
  of a church in Florida who had a mansion had
• 18:29
  their mansion raided in which federal agents
• 18:31
  found 57, quote, forced laborers who were working
• 18:35
  the mansion. Some would call that slaves. A blizzard
• 18:38
  at Mount Everest has trapped hundreds of hikers
• 18:40
  on the mountain. And finally for today, the head
• 18:43
  of a major U .S. beef producer has warned that
• 18:46
  U .S. beef is not producing enough beef for the
• 18:49
  U .S. Apparently we're too hungry for protein,
• 18:51
  and with the tariffs and everything, there's
• 18:54
  just not enough beef, which is why it's expensive.
• 18:56
  I guess the point I'm trying to make here is,
• 18:57
  where's the beef? Thank you so much for listening
• 18:59
  to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
• 19:01
  Head to SKH .News for sources, bonus content,
• 19:04
  and a map with a location. of the beef. My name
• 19:08
  is Endeavorance. We'll talk again soon. Take
• 19:10
  care and be well.