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Transcript

Closing Out 2025 · Stuff Keeps Happening

• 0:00
  Hello. We made it through another year. But stuff
• 0:05
  still happened. So what's up, dear listener?
• 0:08
  It is the end of the year. And you didn't warn
• 0:11
  me. Not a single one of you sons of bitches sent
• 0:13
  me a calendar invite for the end of the year.
• 0:16
  I don't know how I was supposed to know this
• 0:19
  was happening otherwise. Uh, yeah. End of the
• 0:21
  year. It's true December. Cold time. Unless you're
• 0:24
  in the southern hemisphere, in which case, warm
• 0:26
  time. Enjoy that. So just real quick before we
• 0:29
  get into everything that I'm gonna talk about
• 0:31
  today I just want to say remember to take a second
• 0:34
  to just like Be in the moment as we close out
• 0:38
  the year. It's been a it's been a hell of a year.
• 0:40
  It's been a lot It's been a not good one. I ranked
• 0:42
  them I ranked every single year and this one
• 0:44
  it wasn't in the top 50 % But that's okay. I'm
• 0:49
  gonna keep saying that at least because if you
• 0:51
  go outside and you take a second you're gonna
• 0:54
  hear The wind rustling through the trees, you're
• 0:56
  gonna see some critters hopping around, prepping
• 0:59
  for the winter. Life is going on. And yes, life
• 1:03
  is really bad for a lot of people right now.
• 1:07
  And things are getting pretty crazy. At the same
• 1:10
  time, we can't fix all of it by just... being
• 1:14
  aware of it. We fix it by taking action. We fix
• 1:17
  it by being able to take care of ourselves and
• 1:19
  the people around us. Spiraling out of control
• 1:22
  and just saying everything is hopeless and just
• 1:24
  being purely doomer is not what I'm going for
• 1:28
  here. So I highly encourage you to just take
• 1:30
  a second and just base yourself every once in
• 1:32
  a while. I'm asking you to be based. Can you
• 1:35
  do that for me? Let's move on. We'll start with
• 1:37
  the big one, the obvious one. They released the
• 1:41
  Epstein files. Kind of. Sort of. So there's this
• 1:45
  like pesky little thing in the United States
• 1:47
  government called the Legislative Branch. It
• 1:49
  contains the Senate and the House and they made
• 1:51
  a law that said release the Epstein file. They
• 1:54
  voted on it. It was a whole ass law and it went
• 1:57
  to the desk of the guy that's the president who
• 2:00
  signed it. Keen listeners will recall that when
• 2:03
  the Legislative Branch passes a bill and the
• 2:06
  president signs it... that becomes a law. So
• 2:08
  what's in the bill? It's like two pages long
• 2:10
  and it's actually pretty short, which honestly
• 2:12
  is a bit of a problem. So the bill says that
• 2:15
  the Department of Justice has to release the
• 2:17
  unredacted Epstein files within 30 days of the
• 2:19
  bill becoming law. That time has come and gone.
• 2:22
  But here's the thing, that's kind of all it says.
• 2:25
  That's basically it. It doesn't say what happens
• 2:27
  if they don't. It just says, we... We super expect
• 2:31
  this to happen. And so there's been politicians
• 2:33
  that are like, ah, Pam Bondi is breaking the
• 2:35
  law by by not releasing the Epstein files. And
• 2:38
  it's like, OK, so arrest her. There should not
• 2:41
  be any expectation that they're going to do something
• 2:44
  about this. Like there's not nothing's going
• 2:46
  to happen. There does not exist the political
• 2:48
  will to actually hold the administration accountable.
• 2:51
  Now. That doesn't mean there won't be fallout
• 2:54
  from the Epstein files. So they released like
• 2:57
  300 ,000 documents or so and they said that more
• 3:00
  are going to be coming over time. These documents
• 3:03
  were super heavily redacted. The bill says that
• 3:06
  it could be redacted but that they couldn't redact
• 3:08
  for the sake of protecting a public figure who
• 3:11
  should not be protected for being a pedophile.
• 3:14
  And like obviously... Like, we know that Trump
• 3:17
  is in the Epstein files. Anyone who says otherwise
• 3:19
  is delusional. But of course, as I kind of predicted
• 3:23
  on my stream recently, they essentially just
• 3:25
  released the files that are going to incriminate
• 3:28
  low -hanging fruit for the Republican party.
• 3:30
  Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, really anyone named
• 3:32
  Bill. Sorry to all the Bills out there. Maybe
• 3:35
  one day you'll become a law and then it won't
• 3:37
  be a problem anymore. So they release a bunch
• 3:38
  of redacted files. People aren't particularly
• 3:40
  happy about that. Everyone's scouring through
• 3:42
  the files and they discover a handful that didn't
• 3:45
  redact Trump's name. And then some of those have
• 3:48
  now gone missing from the Department of Justice's
• 3:50
  website. They were like, oh, we removed them
• 3:53
  because there were other concerns that had nothing
• 3:55
  to do with Trump. Stop asking questions. There's
• 3:58
  been murmurings of the victims of Epstein, like
• 4:00
  releasing their own concrete list or something.
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  We've learned a bunch of garbage about the FBI
• 4:05
  ignoring warnings about Jeffrey Epstein, but
• 4:08
  like it's the FBI. I don't know what anybody
• 4:10
  expected. If I'm coming across jaded here, I'm
• 4:13
  not trying to just be... jaded. I'm just trying
• 4:16
  to look at things through a sober lens. This
• 4:19
  administration is just doing crimes. They just
• 4:21
  do crimes, right? Like we're just... That's normal
• 4:24
  now. And so people being like, oh, the Department
• 4:26
  of Justice is doing crimes by not releasing the
• 4:28
  full Epstein list. Like, okay, sure. But they've
• 4:31
  also been doing crimes this whole time by not
• 4:34
  enforcing the TikTok ban. Those aren't morally
• 4:36
  the same thing, but legally they're the same
• 4:39
  thing. Like the Trump administration has just
• 4:41
  been not enforcing that law because it's politically
• 4:43
  expedient. It's the same situation. So to think
• 4:45
  that they're going to act differently and to
• 4:47
  think that this time Congress is going to go
• 4:49
  after people because it's the Epstein List, I
• 4:52
  just don't see that happening. And so I'm tempering
• 4:56
  my expectations and remaining angry at all of
• 5:00
  them. Like we've got Tim Kaine over here being
• 5:02
  like, nah, nah, it's too early to hold them accountable.
• 5:05
  We can't be doing that. That's too aggressive.
• 5:07
  God. The Democrats are wild, man. Guys, we can't
• 5:11
  support trans people because Republicans might
• 5:13
  make fun of us. That's the platform, basically.
• 5:18
  Let's move on. Let's move on and be more patriotic.
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  As patriotic as we can get. If you are a viewer
• 5:23
  who does not live in the United States of America,
• 5:26
  you are now an honorary member of my nation.
• 5:30
  I determine who has citizenship and you haven't.
• 5:33
  You can have mine. You want to switch, actually?
• 5:35
  So we're all Americans now. Yeehaw. whiskey,
• 5:39
  baseball, so... War. We're doing it, right? Like,
• 5:44
  we're doing it. Like, we're trying to do it with
• 5:45
  Venezuela right now. We're, like, stealing their
• 5:47
  boats and bombing their boats. Lots of stuff
• 5:49
  with boats and bombs. But besides that, the so
• 5:53
  -called Department of War has decided to send
• 5:55
  out checks to service members at a value of $1776.
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  For all my new Americans in the audience, that's
• 6:03
  our freedom day. That's when the Declaration
• 6:05
  of Independence was signed. And it's like a big,
• 6:08
  it's a big deal number over here stateside. So
• 6:11
  Trump goes on TV and he announces that he's giving
• 6:14
  a payout to members of the military paid with
• 6:18
  tariffs. Like the money made from tariffs will
• 6:20
  be going to members of the military. They'll
• 6:22
  each get a check for 1 ,776 buckaroonies. Hey,
• 6:26
  guess what? That was so easily disprovable. It's
• 6:29
  not from the tariffs. And it's dumber than that.
• 6:32
  Instead of taking from the tariffs, which is
• 6:34
  already stupid as fuck because that's basically
• 6:36
  saying we're gonna give you a check for money
• 6:38
  that you had to pay extra and the check that
• 6:40
  we're giving you is less than you would have
• 6:42
  had to pay otherwise. What they're doing is worse!
• 6:46
  They're taking it from a fund that was appropriated
• 6:49
  specifically for housing assistance for low -income
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  members of the military. It was a 2 .9 billion
• 6:55
  dollar budget that was earmarked in the so -called
• 6:57
  Big Beautiful Bill that was supposed to go towards
• 7:00
  helping these people have housing. It's a common
• 7:03
  program in the military. It's basically like,
• 7:05
  okay, we need to put these many people in this
• 7:07
  place. They're low -ranking members of the military
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  and we pay them like trash. So we'll subsidize
• 7:13
  their housing using this fund. Now, depending
• 7:15
  on the level of income of the member and where
• 7:17
  they need to be stationed and various market
• 7:20
  factors, that money was doled out. case by case.
• 7:24
  So what they did was take that money instead
• 7:26
  of using it for its intended purpose, which was
• 7:28
  supporting affordable housing for the military
• 7:30
  for the next year. They're just doing this little
• 7:33
  gimmick check. Is it going to help some people?
• 7:35
  Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. You got the money?
• 7:37
  Spend it. Go hard. Have fun. Yikes. The back
• 7:42
  of the napkin math is that this is a $2 .6 billion
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  spend out of a $2 .9 billion fund. They have
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  essentially cleared out the fund that was meant
• 7:52
  to help pay for housing for the military. Cool.
• 7:56
  Well done. This is essentially what we're gonna
• 7:58
  see on Loop Forever, right? It's what we've been
• 8:00
  seeing on Loop Forever. It is performative gesturing
• 8:03
  towards the military that's not actually for
• 8:06
  the military. It's for people who are not in
• 8:08
  the military, who think that empty gestures to
• 8:11
  the military equates to patriotism. If you are
• 8:13
  a struggling military family, and you were told,
• 8:16
  hey, you're getting a one -time check for $1
• 8:18
  ,776, but now we can't supplement your housing
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  costs, which are far more than that per year,
• 8:26
  you're probably not thrilled. Instead of, you
• 8:29
  know, covering for our veterans and providing
• 8:31
  mental health care so they stop killing themselves
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  at an alarming rate. We're just doing this, and
• 8:36
  it's 1776, guys. It's the patriotic number. Don't
• 8:40
  you feel American, doll? Doesn't that make you
• 8:41
  feel good? What are you talking about? What affordability
• 8:44
  crisis? Speaking of affordability crisis, Disney
• 8:48
  cannot afford for you to not see Avatar a lot.
• 8:52
  So Disney slash Marvel have been working on the
• 8:54
  upcoming new Avengers movie, Avengers Doomsday.
• 8:57
  And it's kind of a mess. We'll go over some of
• 9:01
  the reasons why it's a mess, but... Up front,
• 9:04
  they've decided recently to make four different
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  trailers for the movie to send out to theaters
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  to show before showings of the new Avatar movie.
• 9:13
  Also, there's a new Avatar movie. I didn't even
• 9:15
  know that. But the idea is that they're only
• 9:17
  going to show one trailer per showing of Avatar.
• 9:21
  So if you want to see all the trailers, you have
• 9:23
  to go to at least four showings of Avatar. It's
• 9:27
  certainly a choice. It is certainly a choice.
• 9:30
  Now, I want to get a few things clear up front.
• 9:32
  I'm not a giant Marvel fanboy. I am just a casual
• 9:36
  member of society in which Marvel exists as an
• 9:40
  entertainment franchise. I've seen the movies,
• 9:43
  most of them, and they're fine sometimes. That's
• 9:46
  fine, okay? But... This shit's whack. So 10 years
• 9:51
  ago in 2024, they announced Avengers Doomsday.
• 9:54
  And in that announcement, they made a big deal
• 9:56
  out of how Dr. Doom, the new big bad evil guy
• 9:58
  for the entire franchise, is going to be played
• 10:00
  by Robert Downey Jr., who used to be Iron Man.
• 10:03
  Now, Robert Downey Jr. had, there was a scene,
• 10:05
  spoiler alert, there was a scene in Endgame where
• 10:09
  some rocks killed him. And then he left the MCU.
• 10:12
  So RDJ was just like, OK, I've done this enough.
• 10:15
  I'm out. Whatever. He's back. Bitches, so okay
• 10:19
  cool. Whatever fan service That's kind of weird
• 10:22
  that you're gonna have like one of the main characters
• 10:24
  who played a hero turn around like I get what
• 10:27
  you're doing Maybe it'll land so one of these
• 10:30
  four trailers comes out and turns out Chris Evans
• 10:32
  Captain America is also returning so also in
• 10:36
  Avengers Endgame the previous movie Chris Evans
• 10:38
  also leaves the franchise, but he's back He's
• 10:42
  back. So we've got that But apparently we've
• 10:45
  also got a situation where the script hasn't
• 10:47
  really been completed, which is not super rare
• 10:49
  for Marvel projects, but there are actors who
• 10:53
  don't even know if they've finished recording
• 10:55
  or not. They've basically been in like a non
• 10:56
  -stop rewrite in part because Dr. Doom wasn't
• 10:59
  even really supposed to be the next big bad evil
• 11:01
  guy. It was supposed to be Kang the Conqueror.
• 11:04
  So this is what I'm really getting to the limits
• 11:06
  of my Marvel knowledge here, but my understanding
• 11:09
  is that Kang and Thanos and Dr. Doom are all
• 11:13
  like real big bads, right? Like real big bads.
• 11:17
  And so they were going to try to go from like,
• 11:18
  okay, Thanos, you know, everybody knows the snap
• 11:20
  thing, the, you know, all the memes. We've moved
• 11:23
  on, right? The next big one was going to be,
• 11:26
  hey, but there were a few problems. One of those
• 11:28
  problems was that his like, debut villain movie
• 11:30
  was Ant -Man Quantamania and did not do well.
• 11:34
  And then the other problem was that he was played
• 11:36
  by Jonathan Majors, who was arrested for domestic
• 11:40
  assault. Disney didn't like that. Very much and
• 11:43
  so they had to scramble and instead of recasting
• 11:45
  him. They just said fuck it We're gonna do an
• 11:48
  entirely different everything. This is the part
• 11:50
  where I'm just gonna raise my hand and say They
• 11:53
  could have recast him to Michael B Jordan and
• 11:55
  it would have been fucking spectacular That would
• 11:57
  have fucked that would have saved the franchise.
• 11:58
  But instead very thankfully we got sinners instead
• 12:02
  of that so Nature's healing Anyway, they had
• 12:07
  to pivot away from Kang the Conqueror as their
• 12:10
  new big bad guy. And they're like, what do we
• 12:12
  do? Doctor Doom? Played by Robert Downey Jr.
• 12:17
  Fixed it. It's a mess. It's a mess. And I'm genuinely
• 12:20
  curious to see what happens here because like
• 12:22
  it's a Disney Marvel movie. It's going to do
• 12:25
  well. It's going to make a lot of money. I have
• 12:27
  no expectation that it's going to flop. But if
• 12:29
  it did. I am so curious to see what happened.
• 12:33
  I've barely even touched on all the problems
• 12:35
  that have leaked out of the production of this
• 12:36
  movie. I'm genuinely curious to see what happens
• 12:39
  if it did fail. Could this fuck up Marvel? Could
• 12:43
  this actually end it? I don't think so. I don't
• 12:46
  think so. I think the most likely case is it's
• 12:48
  gonna do just fine and like it's just gonna continue
• 12:50
  being a cheap win for Disney every once in a
• 12:53
  while. Who knows? But damn, four trailers. Go
• 12:58
  see Avatar, guys. Dear listener, we are heading
• 13:01
  into the last lightning round of 2025. I want
• 13:05
  to say thank you for being here with me and for
• 13:09
  spending what little time we have together, together.
• 13:13
  What I decided to do for this last little lightning
• 13:16
  round is just pick some stories from the entire
• 13:19
  year that... I think are really cool scientific
• 13:22
  advancements that give me some hope. So these
• 13:24
  are in no particular order and they didn't even
• 13:26
  all happen recently necessarily, but they all
• 13:28
  happened this year. And it's important to remember
• 13:31
  that good stuff still happens. So with that said,
• 13:35
  lightning round! For the first time ever in the
• 13:37
  first half of 2025, renewable energy produced
• 13:40
  more energy than coal. worldwide. This is led
• 13:44
  in part by China and Australia who have been
• 13:46
  making massive strides in solar production. It
• 13:49
  is genuinely getting to the point that energy
• 13:51
  companies seem to be spooked at the idea of too
• 13:54
  much energy production, making it not profitable.
• 13:58
  There was a lot of drama around Nobel prizes
• 13:59
  this year, but I want to talk about one of the
• 14:01
  recipients in the in the chemistry sector. A
• 14:04
  small team of scientists created a device that
• 14:06
  is capable of extracting potable water from desert
• 14:10
  air using nothing but ambient sunlight. like
• 14:13
  hundreds of liters of water per day, drinkable
• 14:16
  water, just using ambient sunlight and whatever
• 14:19
  else is available. That's incredible. In the
• 14:21
  field of HIV research, we are inching ever closer
• 14:24
  to an actual cure for HIV. I'm not going to say
• 14:27
  we're right there, but there was a really cool
• 14:29
  advancement this year using mRNA. mRNA, you know,
• 14:32
  it came into the public consciousness when the
• 14:35
  COVID vaccine started to roll out. It can do
• 14:37
  a lot of cool shit. And one of the cool shit
• 14:39
  it can do is essentially make its way into the
• 14:43
  white blood cells of a person to convince that
• 14:46
  white blood cell to narc on HIV. So, like, HIV
• 14:50
  hides in white blood cells, and it's difficult
• 14:53
  to find, it's difficult to target. They essentially
• 14:56
  use it to camouflage themselves. But researchers
• 14:58
  found a way to devise some mRNA and bundle it
• 15:01
  in such a way that it can get through the white
• 15:03
  blood cells, and it reprograms them to reveal
• 15:07
  the HIV. Now, because mRNA goes away pretty quickly,
• 15:10
  it doesn't create a lasting effect, that's just
• 15:12
  not how it works. So it can temporarily just
• 15:15
  help target HIV. There's not really a next step
• 15:18
  yet. Here it's more of like a, ooh, this opens
• 15:21
  up a new avenue, but that's rad. More biology.
• 15:24
  Hoo -ha! Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University
• 15:26
  may have found a new alternative to how we currently
• 15:29
  approach antibacterial stuff. So there's a huge
• 15:32
  problem in the world of medicine about, like,
• 15:34
  bacterial resistance, where if you use that antibacterial
• 15:37
  soap that's like, oh, it kills 99 .9 % of bacteria,
• 15:41
  guess what? That .01? Coming back with a vengeance.
• 15:45
  We are essentially speeding along the process
• 15:47
  of natural selection to make bacteria resistant.
• 15:50
  tube antibacterials. But these researchers have
• 15:53
  found a new way to target the bacteria that doesn't
• 15:55
  just kill it, but essentially deactivates it.
• 15:58
  This could be huge. Bacterial resistance is a
• 16:01
  massive problem. So that's pretty exciting. And
• 16:04
  finally, this is not a scientific advancement,
• 16:06
  but I think it's just as important. This year
• 16:09
  in California, the indigenous Yurok tribe completed
• 16:11
  the largest land back deal in California's history.
• 16:15
  I flubbed the reading here and it was supposed
• 16:17
  to be California. I said American in California
• 16:19
  history. Still a big deal. They were fighting
• 16:21
  for 23 years to reclaim some 73 square miles
• 16:26
  of land. That is 47 ,000 acres. I cannot conceptualize
• 16:32
  acres, or square miles, or time. They got back
• 16:35
  a bunch of ancestral land that has culturally
• 16:37
  significant landmarks on it, and largely it's
• 16:40
  just, it's a major milestone. I think that we
• 16:43
  could do with a bit more of Do It Right by the
• 16:47
  Indigenous folks. that we've got here. I don't
• 16:49
  know. I could think of a few more steps we could
• 16:52
  take. Thank you so much for listening to today's
• 16:53
  episode of Stuff Keeps Happening. Head to skh
• 16:56
  .news for sources, bonus content, and a two month
• 17:00
  extension on the end of the year to finish up
• 17:03
  all the things that you meant to be doing. My
• 17:05
  name is Endeavorance. We'll talk again soon.
• 17:08
  Take care and be well.