Latest / Stuff Keeps Happening / Some Big Elections

Transcript

Some Big Elections · Stuff Keeps Happening

0:00
Hello, I got gold stars on every stage, but stuff
0:05
still happens. So what's up, snakes? For like
0:10
a minute. Dear listener, this episode is jam
0:12
-packed with logistics of elections. So before
0:16
we get to that, let's talk about snakes doing
0:18
cartwheels, just as a palate cleanser, just to
0:21
get ready. Some researchers in Japan wanted to
0:24
know how a snake does cartwheels. There's this
0:27
type of snake in Japan. does cartwheels. It's
0:30
called a dwarf reed snake and it apparently gets
0:33
away from predators by turning into a very fast
0:36
wheel, like just kind of up and out. So the snake
0:40
does cartwheels and researchers wanted to know
0:42
how, like specifically. So they took high frame
0:45
rate footage of this snake doing the thing and
0:48
I'm very happy to say I have the footage to share
0:51
with you. Unless you're listening on the podcast,
0:55
imagine if you will a snake doing cartwheels
0:58
or Go to skh .news to check the video. It's linked
1:02
in the description. That's the sound of the snake
1:05
makes when it does the cartwheels. I genuinely
1:08
stopped researching this after I saw that video.
1:12
That was good enough for me. So let's go on.
1:15
Upsets in elections in Brazil and Serbia surprised
1:18
a lot of people over this past weekend. We'll
1:20
start with Brazil, a place that has a lot of
1:23
rainforest and a lot of Brazilians. I see you,
1:26
Brazilians. I don't literally see you. I'm a
1:29
little too far away from you to see you. But
1:32
you're pretty chill. So Brazil just voted for
1:34
a new president and the options that they were
1:35
voting for were Lula, their current president
1:38
who is a left -leaning candidate, and Flavio
1:40
Bolsonaro, the son of the previous Bolsonaro
1:43
president, who is currently serving out a sentence
1:46
for doing a coup. Flavio Bolsonaro's campaign
1:49
was basically, I'm my dad's son and I'm going
1:52
to free my dad and just keep doing what he was
1:56
doing. The stuff that got him You know, arrested.
2:03
Because it's 2026 and nothing makes sense anymore,
2:05
this was a very close election. On October 4th,
2:08
there was actually a first round of elections
2:10
where Flavio came out ahead. Flavio got about
2:13
47 % of the vote to Lulo having about 45 -ish
2:17
percent, and neither of them crossed the necessary
2:20
50 % threshold, so they went to a runoff. That's
2:22
the election that just happened, which was on
2:24
October 25th, and it turns out Lulo won by four
2:28
percentage points. There was a turnout of about
2:30
80 % of the electorate. That's 128 .24 million
2:34
voters, according to my notes here. And those
2:37
notes are according to sources. And those sources
2:40
are according to research. But this victory,
2:42
this turnaround, was a shock. This is the first
2:45
time that a presidential candidate has come back
2:48
from not being in first place after the first
2:50
round of voting since the return of presidential
2:53
direct voting in Brazil in 1989. The point I'm
2:58
trying to make here is that this is pretty rare
3:00
and it's very convoluted as to why, but it's
3:03
pretty rare. Rare enough that there are people
3:05
trying to say the election was rigged because
3:07
this has never happened before, but I would just
3:10
point out that there was an election, people
3:13
saw the results, had a month to think about it,
3:16
and then there was another one where there was
3:19
fewer candidates and more voters. It is genuinely
3:22
not unthinkable that people would... move around
3:26
their votes, or think, oh shit, I should really
3:28
vote, because I don't want that. It goes beyond
3:30
just being surprising. People were ready for
3:33
Flavio Bolsonaro to win. The markets in Brazil
3:36
had already priced in his victory. And when Lula
3:39
won, their markets kind of went... That's the
3:42
sound of a market going just bazonkers. There
3:46
was a whole bunch of, like, sell -offs and stuff.
3:47
Largely, like, the Bolsonaro family is a lot
3:49
like the Trump family. And investors, at large...
3:53
We're hoping that they were going to be able
3:55
to get something out of Brazil with that in mind.
3:58
But Lula's policies are more social focused and
4:01
government spending on social safety programs
4:03
and borrowing money to be able to do that. Stuff
4:06
like that. Things that don't make markets get
4:08
real happy. And notably, this is just an interesting
4:11
little tidbit, governance is not about making
4:16
the markets as happy as possible. It's about
4:19
governance. The other thing that differed pretty
4:21
greatly on is how they approach protecting the
4:23
Amazon. Where Lula has said basically, let's
4:26
protect it. And we've seen deforestation in the
4:29
Amazon drop under his term. Bolsonaro, when he
4:32
was in office, deforestation in the Amazon spiked
4:35
60%. So that's good. I like air. Of course, with
4:38
a major election comes major rat fucking. And
4:41
that's definitely what happened in this election.
4:44
On the day of, suddenly, a bunch of public transit
4:47
wasn't working. Across multiple municipalities,
4:49
public transit was just... off. There were dozens
4:53
of buses just sitting in garages that were supposed
4:56
to be taking people to the polls. This was enough
4:58
that there was an arrest warrant for a transportation
5:00
minister who was actually in France at the time.
5:03
The arrest warrant was cancelled the next morning.
5:07
It was not a good look. So you've got essentially
5:10
Lula's campaign saying, hey look, it looks like
5:12
there's municipalities where elected officials
5:14
who are loyal to Bolsonaro are trying to... Fuck
5:18
with the election, right? They're trying to make
5:20
it so that people can't go and vote. Meanwhile,
5:23
over in Flavio land, they were upset because
5:26
there was very heavy rain in some places in southern
5:28
Brazil during voting hours, specifically in some
5:32
conservative leaning spaces that are good for
5:33
Flavio. So both the Lula campaign and the Flavio
5:37
campaign petitioned the government to extend
5:40
voting hours. They both did that. A Supreme Court
5:43
justice ultimately ruled to extend voting hours
5:46
for places that had yet to actually close voting,
5:49
and ultimately Lula won the election. From there,
5:52
Bolsonaro was then like, eh, the election is
5:54
illegitimate because they extended the voting
5:56
time, despite being one of the people asking
5:58
for that. And pretty shortly after, Bolsonaro's
6:01
own party was like, yeah, we lost. But it doesn't
6:04
end there for Flavio, because after losing the
6:06
election, He fled Brazil. The dude is under investigation
6:10
for corruption and some other shit already, and
6:13
his passports were cancelled. Despite that, he
6:16
fled the country. Dude lost the election, fled
6:19
the country to, you guessed it, Argentina. But
6:24
then we were confused because we asked Argentina,
6:27
hey, do you got that Flavio? And they're like,
6:29
no, he went to Ecuador. But then Ecuador was
6:31
like, we don't know what you're talking about.
6:33
Anyway, turns out he's in Miami, Florida. of
6:36
the United States, because the U .S. State Department
6:38
is going to issue him a U .S. passport. I'm not
6:42
joking. Flavio Bolsonaro, son of a convicted,
6:46
attempted coup man who's currently serving a
6:49
sentence in house arrest, lost the election and
6:52
then fled the country to here, where we are now
6:57
harboring him, while he's under investigation
6:59
by his own country. What are we doing? All of
7:05
this is not to mention external interference.
7:08
Obviously, Washington was really hoping that
7:10
Bolsonaro was going to win this election, as
7:13
evidenced by the whole, hey, hey dog, let me
7:14
give you a passport thing. And also, Lula's campaign
7:18
was accusing Metta, like Facebook and Instagram,
7:21
of favoring the Bolsonaro campaign and their
7:23
algorithms. That came along with a statement
7:25
from some experts at the UN saying that Metta
7:28
was favoring one campaign over another. Ultimately,
7:31
Lula won. I have seen that a lot of Bolsonaro
7:34
-aligned folks were elected into some other congressional
7:38
houses, so might be rough going for this term.
7:43
And it's not like Lula was gonna fix everything
7:45
anyway, but it's better than the alternative.
7:48
Now we're going to go past just a few miles of
7:51
water over to Serbia. The year is November 2024.
7:58
A canopy roof of a train station in Serbia Collapses.
8:02
Claiming 16 lives. This was a catalyst for a
8:05
surge of protests across Serbia, demanding accountability
8:08
and demanding an end to government corruption.
8:11
Essentially, there was a bunch of investigations
8:13
that didn't go anywhere, and it seemed like the
8:15
government was just trying to cover this up,
8:17
or just pump the brakes and wait as long as they
8:20
can until people forgot about it. But they didn't
8:22
forget about it, and they protested. Hard. Now,
8:25
tell me if this sounds familiar. During the protests,
8:28
the students who were mostly leading the protests
8:30
were categorized as terrorists by the government
8:33
and government -aligned media. So much so that
8:35
the sitting president, Vucic, which I'm pretty
8:37
sure is Vucic, pardoned multiple of his supporters
8:41
after they were caught assaulting protesters.
8:45
They were charged with assault and pardoned before
8:47
the charges could land. That didn't go over very
8:51
well. Eventually, the president resigned. Did
8:54
he, did he come to his senses and have a change
8:56
of heart? No. He resigned because he was about
8:59
to be term -limited and he was going to run for
9:01
prime minister after calling a snap election
9:04
just before resigning. So this guy, who is like
9:06
a strongman leader, he's been in power for a
9:08
while, is like, I'm gonna try to just yoink my
9:11
way into having more power for longer. Unfortunately
9:14
for him, he forgot about the students. So you
9:17
may have heard of the student list, and that's
9:21
basically the party, if you want to say that.
9:23
that won over the current sitting president.
9:26
Basically, the students that were a part of that
9:27
protest and people who support their cause formulated
9:30
an entire political movement of common folks
9:34
approved by the students. These are not students
9:38
running as politicians, they are people, professionals,
9:41
workers in various fields, experts, who were
9:44
audited and voted on internally by the students.
9:47
They then created a list of all the candidates,
9:49
and that's the group that won real big on October
9:52
25th. Student list won about 52 .7 % of the vote,
9:57
getting them about 140 seats. They need 126 to
10:01
have a majority. So they're going to get to make
10:03
a government. They just did that. The president
10:07
of Serbia resigned to try to do some more rat
10:11
fucking, but lost. Like he's not going to be
10:14
the prime minister and resigned his seat. But
10:16
how, you asked? How did they do this? We've been
10:20
trying to make change for a while and it's not
10:22
working. You've got a very familiar situation
10:24
if you live in a country. You've got a government
10:29
that is branding protesters as terrorists. You've
10:32
got media aligned with that government reaching
10:34
out into the far reaches of rural places in the
10:37
country that you are just not going to be able
10:39
to get into. They are the ones beaming disinformation
10:43
directly into the eyes of your parents and grandparents.
10:46
So how did they push back against it? By pushing
10:49
back against it. For about two years, members
10:52
of the student list organization were going out
10:54
to rural areas and meeting with people directly
10:57
and establishing connections with those communities
10:59
to explain like, hey, we're trying to do good
11:02
for everyone here. It is a lot harder to brand
11:06
someone as a terrorist when that person is your
11:09
buddy that you have bumped into a few times and,
11:12
like, helped you move one day or something. Or
11:16
maybe they're, like, having a bake sale. and
11:18
talking about how they want to help make your
11:20
cost of living go down. It's pretty hard to call
11:22
those people a terrorist. So they put in the
11:24
work. They routinely made sure that they were
11:27
subverting the narrative from the media in the
11:30
eyes of the people being targeted by that narrative.
11:32
And they won because of that. They built a true
11:35
coalition. It is not functionally left or right.
11:38
It is more about rooting out corruption and re
11:41
-establishing democracy in Serbia. Like, they're
11:43
gonna have some trouble aligning on stuff like
11:45
foreign policy, but for their domestic issues,
11:48
they are, they are on it. So congratulations,
11:51
student list people, and everybody who did work.
11:55
I'm proud of you. I'm jealous. Congratulations.
12:00
Elon Musk fucking sucks. I feel we all can agree
12:04
on that. Like, even fans of Elon Musk. I feel
12:07
like you, you must think that he fucking sucks,
12:09
even if you're a fan. But regardless, the point
12:12
remains, Elon Musk... Fucking sucks. There is
12:15
an entire documentary, actually, about how much
12:17
he sucks. A four -hour long documentary, mind
12:20
you. That's a lot of sucking. Alex Gibney made
12:23
a documentary called Musk, and it's been in the
12:26
news recently because, well, it came out, but
12:28
it's also been seemingly suppressed to all hell.
12:32
Now, for what I want to say, it does seem like
12:34
it's getting suppressed significantly, but I
12:37
want to go through the various things that are
12:38
happening here and try to tease out what is actual
12:41
foul play and what is possibly just normal stuff
12:45
getting wrapped up in it all. So Musk, it's a
12:48
documentary. It's about four hours long and it's
12:50
filled with all the garbage that Elon Musk has
12:52
done. It doesn't actually have a whole lot of
12:54
new information. It has like a few like new interviews
12:57
with people, but largely it's a big collection
12:59
of previously known information about this guy
13:02
just kind of like put together in one place.
13:05
Recall that like a lot of people who are not
13:08
watching shows like this don't think about Elon
13:10
Musk, and they don't know anything about him.
13:12
So despite all of the things that are out there
13:15
to show how awful of a person he is, most people
13:18
just know him as the guy that made the cars.
13:20
And that's sad, right? Like the dude is loudly
13:24
awful, and people should know that. It doesn't
13:26
take a lot of effort to learn that, but people
13:29
aren't gonna go out of their way to just learn
13:31
that fact, right? So cool, here comes this movie.
13:34
Now people can finally learn. Except the more
13:36
I think about it, the more I don't know who this
13:39
movie is for. Because think about it. Are you
13:42
gonna pay money to go to a theater for damn near
13:46
four hours? There's an intermission to watch
13:50
a movie about all the awful things about Elon
13:54
Musk. I don't particularly think I would do that.
13:58
So there's a story that's going around about
14:00
how there was the opening weekend, which is a
14:02
small opening release, just a few theaters, but
14:04
then there was a big expansion weekend where
14:07
there was 472 theaters showing this film. And
14:10
then one week later, that number was all the
14:12
way down to 64. That feels like suppression.
14:16
Except it might not be. The domestic release
14:19
is being managed by Bleecker Street. They are
14:21
based in New York, and they are basically the
14:23
ones that are trying to make sure that all the
14:25
movie gets distributed and played across the
14:28
country. But it's a business, as are theaters,
14:30
right? And theaters only have a certain number
14:32
of screens and so much time in the day. it's
14:35
kind of hard to fit in that four -hour chunk,
14:38
especially if not a lot of people want to go
14:40
watch it. So it genuinely does stand to reason
14:43
that after that first weekend, theaters would
14:46
tamp down the frequency that they're showing
14:48
this film, maybe to once a day, maybe to once
14:51
a week, or specialty times. Because it really
14:53
is kind of like a specialty movie. So that doesn't
14:57
ring super loud to me, but there's other stuff
15:02
going on too. For example, Elon Musk just recently
15:05
invested a billion dollars into Skydance. That's
15:09
Paramount slash Warner Bros slash Larry Ellison's
15:12
project. Skydance owns HBO and HBO owns the future
15:17
streaming rights for the documentary. It is unclear
15:20
as to the details of the investment from Musk
15:22
and it's unclear as to what the future is going
15:25
to be for streaming of this movie. It's not far
15:29
fetched to think that they're going to do something
15:32
to not stream it after all. That said, Bleecker
15:36
Street is planning to move up the streaming release,
15:39
like pay -per -view or whatever, to November
15:43
6th. That's like a month earlier than it originally
15:45
was going to be. So it's not like you're not
15:47
gonna be able to watch it anywhere, right? Like,
15:49
it's gonna be hard to find in theaters. It might
15:51
be weird with, like, streaming on HBO Max or
15:53
whatever, but for, like, buying a rental from
15:57
somewhere. That's gonna be a thing. So we got,
16:00
let's see, the cinema number drop. We got...
16:04
Skydance invested by the target of the movie.
16:07
The third thing is Universal Pictures. They are
16:09
the ones that are in control of the international
16:11
release, and for a hot second there it looked
16:14
like they were going to just not do that. There
16:16
was reporting that they were considering not
16:18
releasing it at all and giving the rights back
16:20
to the filmmakers, and it was a little questionable
16:22
as to why, but since then they have said that
16:25
they're committed to releasing the film starting
16:26
early next year overseas. So I don't know what
16:30
gave them pause. I can think of a few things
16:32
that might have given them pause, but we're going
16:33
to move on to the next next thing that's weird
16:36
about this movie's release, which is accounts
16:38
for this movie got banned on a whole bunch of
16:40
social media platforms right as the movie was
16:42
coming out. TikTok banned the advertising account
16:45
for the movie on the expansion weekend and kept
16:47
it banned for a couple days. They eventually
16:49
lifted it. They cited political content as the
16:52
reason for the banning the advertisement. It
16:55
was the advertising account specifically that
16:57
got banned. The movie's like normal account was
17:00
not banned. YouTube and Metta both refused to
17:03
run ads for the movie at first, but later said
17:06
that that was a mistake and it was accidentally
17:09
flagged, but originally they did both say that
17:11
it was pulled for political content. Elon Musk's
17:14
Twitter slash X is doing the pretty obvious move
17:17
of refusing to show this trailer at all, but
17:19
they're actually going the extra step of refusing
17:22
to show any ads for any movie from Bleecker Street,
17:25
which is a lot. So ultimately, I don't know.
17:27
Does it look like it's being suppressed in some
17:29
ways? Yeah. Are you going to be able to watch
17:31
it in some ways? Yeah. Do you want to watch it?
17:34
That's a good question. Like, sure. But I for
17:39
me, at least, I feel like I wouldn't really learn
17:41
a whole lot. And also, like, I'm already on board
17:44
with hating the guy. Like, he sucks. I once had
17:47
a co -worker that tried to brag to me about the
17:50
access that he had to Elon Musk, and he would
17:52
brag to me by saying that he could tell me stories
17:54
that would blow my mind with how awful of a person
17:57
Elon Musk is. And I'm like, one, that's a weird
17:59
thing to brag about, and two, you don't need
18:02
to do that. I wish the guy was dead already.
18:05
Imagine the progress we could make. Fun fact,
18:08
when the movie Citizen Kane was coming out, William
18:11
Randolph Hearst, who the movie was painting in
18:13
a pretty bad light, did pretty much the same
18:16
thing, tried to stop the release of the movie.
18:18
Actually, one of his allies went as far as to
18:19
try to buy the rights to the movie and destroy
18:22
it. That didn't work. And Citizen Kane is, like,
18:26
considered one of the most important films of
18:28
all time. Lightning Round. Airbnb is gonna start
18:30
cracking down on hosts that give you a litany
18:32
of chores to do before you leave. And the hosts
18:34
are not particularly happy about that. Researchers
18:36
in Australia studied how spiders sleep. Which
18:40
is not a thing I've ever thought about before
18:42
and apparently they did it by Making the spiders
18:45
sleep deprived by routinely releasing a fly into
18:49
their habitat every so often So that they would
18:51
want to go for the tasty treat and not fall asleep
18:53
But then the next night they slept real well
18:55
Israel had elections at time of recording. I
18:58
don't have anything concrete that I can say about
19:00
the outcome aside from Fuck Benjamin Netanyahu.
19:04
The folding iPhone duo screen is reportedly cracking
19:07
for some users and Apple's like Well, and finally
19:11
for today, according to a recent study from Oxfam,
19:14
the top 0 .1 % of people in the world produce
19:17
more carbon emissions than the bottom 3 .5 billion.
19:21
That's a lot of private jet rides. Thank you
19:24
so much for listening to today's episode of Stuff
19:26
Keeps Happening. Head to skh .news for sources,
19:29
bonus content, and the truth about my carbon
19:34
emissions. My name is Endeavorance. We'll talk
19:36
again soon. Take care and be well.