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Transcript

A Broken Record · Stuff Keeps Happening

• 0:00
  Hello. I lost my mentor at the height of Act
• 0:03
  2. But stuff still happens. So what's up? Today
• 0:08
  I'm going to do my best broken record impersonation.
• 0:11
  Today I'm going to do my best broken record impersonation.
• 0:15
  That was it. Because we're going to talk about
• 0:16
  the Iran War and - Lo and behold we're still
• 0:19
  doing it. The US and Israel are still bombarding
• 0:22
  Iran and Lebanon because reasons primarily because
• 0:25
  Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to. The death tolls
• 0:28
  are rising and at this point I just I don't I
• 0:31
  don't really know what to do with regards to
• 0:33
  talking about this so here's just kind of where
• 0:35
  things are right now. The current focal point
• 0:38
  is the disruption to oil trade as there's a whole
• 0:40
  bunch of ships waiting to get through the Strait
• 0:42
  of Hormuz. This is a critical shipping route
• 0:44
  that isn't just some canal that Iran put some
• 0:48
  sort of like sorry we're closed sign on. At its
• 0:51
  thinnest the strait is still more than 20 miles
• 0:53
  wide and so what Iran is doing is basically saying
• 0:55
  hey we're not gonna let any of these ships through.
• 0:58
  They're using munitions and naval drones which
• 1:01
  are basically ships with bombs that and they've
• 1:04
  already hit multiple tankers like it sucks. This
• 1:07
  very obvious retaliation from Iran was very obvious
• 1:11
  before we went to war. But that didn't stop us
• 1:14
  from going to war and causing the very obvious
• 1:16
  outcome. And so those skyrocketing oil prices
• 1:19
  have stayed skyrocketed and it doesn't look like
• 1:21
  it's gonna come down in time soon. Which is why
• 1:23
  people are paying like four, five, six dollars
• 1:27
  at the pump in the US and they're like, what's
• 1:29
  going on here? Now the White House was posturing
• 1:32
  as if we were gonna send out ships that would
• 1:34
  escort these oil tankers through the strait as
• 1:36
  if that's a thing that we can do. That didn't
• 1:38
  happen. So instead we're just bombing a whole
• 1:41
  lot more and oh, would you look at that? We've
• 1:44
  dispatched thousands of marines to the region.
• 1:47
  Now, to be clear, these aren't boots on the ground.
• 1:50
  Yes, they are being sent to a war zone wearing
• 1:53
  boots which will be on the ground, but that's
• 1:55
  not what boots on the ground is. Boots on the
• 1:57
  ground is something else entirely, but not this.
• 2:00
  Why are you asking for clarification on what
• 2:02
  boots on the ground is? No, I think you should
• 2:04
  be satisfied with the answer that... I gave you
• 2:08
  already. Hey podcast listeners, I just did kind
• 2:12
  of like a gag where I ran out the door while
• 2:14
  saying that. If you imagine, if you will, me
• 2:16
  running out of a door. Of course, they want to
• 2:18
  avoid acknowledging putting boots on the ground
• 2:20
  because that would just acknowledge our continued
• 2:22
  failure in Iran. All we've truly managed to do
• 2:25
  is kick up dust and kill a guy that was going
• 2:28
  to die probably this year anyway, as well as
• 2:31
  thousands of civilians. Oh, and that girls elementary
• 2:33
  school that we bombed? There's been more investigation
• 2:37
  into it and it really does look like we just
• 2:39
  kind of struck a girls elementary school with
• 2:42
  a tomahawk missile now again broken record I
• 2:45
  keep talking about the elementary school that
• 2:48
  was hit by a missile But I do that because it
• 2:50
  feels like hey guys We just hit a girls elementary
• 2:54
  school with a tomahawk missile, which is possibly
• 2:57
  the most recognizable US munition in the world
• 3:01
  That seems like something I should probably keep
• 3:02
  talking about. Meanwhile, Russia's kind of digging
• 3:05
  this. You know, one of the big reasons that we're
• 3:08
  over there in the first place or that we have
• 3:09
  any interest in Iran is because Iran works with
• 3:12
  China and Russia, specifically in oil and also
• 3:16
  military stuff. Russia's been fighting their
• 3:17
  own war with Ukraine. for a while and so like
• 3:20
  they aren't really able to jump in and be like
• 3:22
  hey we're gonna side with Iran here but it does
• 3:25
  seem like they are pretty happy with this war
• 3:28
  because they are now able to sell their oil for
• 3:31
  a much higher price because of the geopolitical
• 3:33
  disruption Russia is now in a position to sell
• 3:37
  more oil in more places at a higher price, which
• 3:40
  they can use to fund their war. The US has claimed
• 3:42
  that Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran,
• 3:45
  and while I don't tend to take what the US says
• 3:47
  as fact, duh, why wouldn't they? Not only does
• 3:52
  Russia get more money as this war goes on, but
• 3:55
  they've already got prior relationships in economics
• 3:58
  and war shit. Makes sense to me. I want to say
• 4:01
  one more thing for this before we move on, and
• 4:03
  I want to preface by saying that it's generally
• 4:05
  my policy to not have segments where I just talk
• 4:08
  about what some politicians said that's repugnant.
• 4:11
  These politicians are repugnant, and they say
• 4:14
  and do a lot of repugnant things. And if I talked
• 4:17
  about all the things that they posted on Twitter,
• 4:19
  I would never talk about anything else. And constantly
• 4:21
  calling them out for being repugnant doesn't
• 4:22
  really do a whole lot because they don't care.
• 4:25
  At all. And I could be spending my time trying
• 4:28
  to get everybody to pay attention to said repugnance,
• 4:30
  but most people stop once they hear politician
• 4:33
  being bad and they're like, yeah, duh. Which
• 4:35
  is why I tend to focus on other things, but with
• 4:36
  all of that said, there has been a sharp uptick
• 4:39
  in blatant, overt racism being proudly posted
• 4:45
  by members of Congress. Now, members of Congress
• 4:47
  in the US being racist is as far from new as
• 4:52
  you can get. But in recent years, they've largely
• 4:55
  felt that they've had to use dog whistles and
• 4:57
  coded language to give themselves benefit of
• 4:59
  the doubt. And now they're just saying, no, I
• 5:03
  meant the hard R. Granted, instead of being a
• 5:06
  hard R here, it's them saying Islamism is incompatible
• 5:11
  with the West. Specifically, most recently, we've
• 5:13
  got Andy Ogles and Randy Fine posting things
• 5:16
  to Twitter and saying things on video of them
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  basically just being like, Muslims don't belong
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  here and they're the enemy. I'm not going to
• 5:23
  quote their exact stuff because I do not need
• 5:24
  to replicate their bile, but the point is that
• 5:26
  they are feeling comfortable just saying this
• 5:28
  and doubling down to clarify that they mean it.
• 5:32
  They didn't accidentally insult a large group
• 5:35
  of people by accidentally misinterpreting what
• 5:38
  words they said. They were like, no, I meant
• 5:39
  that. Get them out of here. And I want to be
• 5:42
  clear that they're saying this. because there
• 5:45
  is a contingent of people that support them in
• 5:47
  saying that, and they're trying to capture that
• 5:49
  group. Trump is going to fucking beef it soon,
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  and a lot of people are trying to be the new
• 5:53
  big crazy guy in the room that'll get everyone
• 5:56
  behind them. I have a very strong suspicion that
• 5:59
  no one's gonna be able to recapture the lightning
• 6:01
  in a bottle that Trump had. Do I think that him
• 6:03
  going away will fix all of this? No, absolutely
• 6:05
  not. But I do not think that right now the best
• 6:09
  strategy is to publicly go on record being as
• 6:13
  awful as you can possibly be to large groups
• 6:15
  of people around the world. That worked for Trump.
• 6:18
  It's not gonna work for you, Randy Fine. Moving
• 6:21
  on. What has ICE been up to? The usual. Abducting
• 6:25
  people, killing citizens. It's what they do.
• 6:27
  ICE recently abducted a Spanish -language journalist
• 6:30
  from a local news station in Tennessee. Estefany
• 6:32
  Rodriguez Flores was abducted on March 6 after
• 6:35
  doing a few pieces at her network. critical of
• 6:38
  ICE. What a fucking shocker that not long after
• 6:42
  she started being critical of ICE, her car, which
• 6:44
  was marked as a work vehicle for the station
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  she worked for, was accosted while she was driving
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  by multiple other vehicles. Vehicles full of
• 6:52
  ICE agents cornered her and abducted her and
• 6:55
  she is now being held away from her husband and
• 6:58
  daughter. They never showed a warrant. Flores
• 7:00
  has been working in the US legally for over five
• 7:03
  years. She has a visa and is here legally. According
• 7:07
  to her lawyers, ICE never showed any warrant
• 7:09
  and there's no legal precedent for them to hold
• 7:11
  her, which is exactly what we've seen from ICE
• 7:14
  all over the place. But ICE responded, and they
• 7:17
  cleared everything up. They said that their detainment
• 7:19
  of her is, quote, not in violation of any laws
• 7:23
  or regulations. I guess that clears it up. Work
• 7:28
  here is done. Meanwhile, or rather, not meanwhile,
• 7:31
  last year in March, it turns out, ICE killed
• 7:34
  another US citizen. Ruben Ray Martinez was 23,
• 7:38
  and he was driving his car slowly through an
• 7:40
  area that ICE officers were, like, directing
• 7:43
  traffic. Originally, ICE put out the exact statement
• 7:47
  you would expect. They killed someone who was
• 7:49
  in a car. They claimed that that car was coming
• 7:52
  right at them with deadly intent, just as we
• 7:55
  heard with Renee Good and... basically anything
• 7:58
  that involves a vehicle and ICE officers discharging
• 8:01
  their weapons. The body cam footage that's out
• 8:03
  now shows that he was driving slowly past a few
• 8:06
  officers. There didn't appear to be any officers
• 8:09
  in front of his car. They started to yell, stop
• 8:12
  him! and then they unloaded bullets into him.
• 8:15
  DHS originally claimed this was self -defense
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  and didn't originally identify the officers as
• 8:19
  ICE, and it's pretty clear as to why. There wasn't
• 8:22
  any evidence recorded by onlookers to prove them
• 8:24
  wrong. This body cam footage came out, it's blurry
• 8:27
  and it's not great and still doesn't fully prove
• 8:30
  them wrong, but it's pretty clear that their
• 8:32
  story doesn't add up. I will say that one of
• 8:34
  the wildest parts of the story for me is that
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  Martinez's mother voted for Donald Trump. and
• 8:39
  said that she doesn't blame Trump for her son's
• 8:41
  death because Trump didn't pull the trigger.
• 8:43
  She said that something's got to be done to reign
• 8:45
  this in, but I can't think of a more concise
• 8:49
  example of the mindset of a Trump voter than
• 8:51
  that. 2025 was the deadliest year on record for
• 8:55
  ICE since the early 2000s, and 2026 is on pace
• 8:59
  to beat that. With disease, torture, and suicide
• 9:02
  rampant in these ice concentration camps, things
• 9:05
  are pretty fucking bleak right now, and I'm not
• 9:07
  gonna sugarcoat that. But I wanna call out that
• 9:09
  all is not lost. I know that a lot of the things
• 9:13
  I talk about are really horrific and bad. It's
• 9:15
  not good right now, but people care. If people
• 9:18
  didn't care, it'd be a whole lot worse. But people
• 9:21
  care, and they are making moves. One example
• 9:24
  is Kansas City, Missouri, which recently passed
• 9:26
  a law saying... No, ICE cannot make any more
• 9:29
  of their people warehouses here. They are far
• 9:31
  from the only municipality doing that. There
• 9:33
  is real, meaningful pushback happening constantly
• 9:36
  all around this country every single day, and
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  I do not want to dismiss the effort that people
• 9:41
  have been putting in to push back against all
• 9:44
  of this bullshit. So thank you to everyone who
• 9:46
  has been going out and chasing down ICE officers
• 9:49
  and getting in their faces, blowing their whistles,
• 9:52
  helping protect our neighbors. Because you have
• 9:55
  more grit in your pinky than any of these fucking
• 9:58
  basement dwellers that sit around talking about
• 10:01
  how happy they are that people they've never
• 10:03
  met in towns they'd never visit are being killed
• 10:07
  by federal agents. Hey, so I want to take a second
• 10:09
  and just say I know that a lot of this is real
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  rough. Trust me. I know. Thank you for being
• 10:16
  here. Thank you for sticking it out with me.
• 10:18
  And I want to be clear that it's not your job
• 10:21
  to fix everything. You should have good values,
• 10:24
  you should try to participate however you can,
• 10:26
  but this is not all your fault and it's not your
• 10:29
  job to fix it all. Let's talk about anything
• 10:32
  else. Valve did not leave the New York Attorney
• 10:35
  General on red. A couple of weeks ago, I talked
• 10:37
  about how Letitia James, the New York Attorney
• 10:39
  General, is suing Valve Software, the video game
• 10:42
  company that makes Steam, Counter -Strike, and
• 10:44
  Dota, over loot boxes. The argument is essentially,
• 10:48
  loot boxes are gambling, and it also allows children
• 10:51
  to gamble. That's illegal. Valve has now responded
• 10:54
  with a pretty rare statement on their part. They
• 10:57
  posted a rebuttal, more or less, on their help
• 11:00
  website. And so I want to go through sort of
• 11:02
  what they've said, how they are responding to
• 11:05
  this claim, and then I want to give some more
• 11:06
  of my own thoughts here because I feel like I
• 11:09
  didn't really clarify how I think about this
• 11:11
  last time. Let's start with their blog post.
• 11:13
  It's very lawyer -friendly, I would say that,
• 11:17
  but one of the first things it does is it kicks
• 11:19
  off by making the argument that loot boxes are
• 11:21
  basically the same as booster packs for a trading
• 11:24
  card game. Quote, we shared with the New York
• 11:26
  AG that these types of boxes in our games are
• 11:29
  widely used, not just in video games, but in
• 11:31
  the tangible world as well, where generations
• 11:34
  have grown up opening baseball card packs and
• 11:36
  blind boxes and bags, and then trading them and
• 11:39
  selling the items they receive. But then the
• 11:41
  post pivots to being like, except also, the stuff
• 11:45
  that you said is against our terms of service.
• 11:47
  Quote, in the process of cooperating with the
• 11:49
  NYAG's investigation, we have shared with them
• 11:51
  our efforts over many years to shut down accounts
• 11:54
  found to be using Valve game items on gambling
• 11:56
  sites in violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
• 11:59
  I too violate the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
• 12:03
  It's up to you to figure out how. After that,
• 12:05
  they go on to be like, okay, also the changes
• 12:07
  that the New York Attorney General wants us to
• 12:09
  make would themselves be consumer hostile. Valve
• 12:12
  pushes back saying that if they implemented these
• 12:14
  changes, they would make it so that items couldn't
• 12:16
  be transferred, which would be anti -consumer
• 12:18
  and fair. They also go on to say that they would
• 12:21
  have to start collecting more information to
• 12:24
  specifically adhere to the law in New York by
• 12:26
  doing more like geolocation stuff and trying
• 12:28
  to catch people who are using VPNs to get around
• 12:30
  certain laws and whatnot. Essentially tapping
• 12:33
  into the current fear of like age verification
• 12:35
  and surveillance on the internet, which is a
• 12:37
  fair fear. They end by calling out the New York
• 12:39
  Attorney General for her use of the video games
• 12:42
  cause violence line, which I'll go ahead and
• 12:45
  read you that quote. This is from the New York
• 12:46
  Attorney General press release regarding the
• 12:48
  lawsuit, quote, Valve basically replied saying
• 13:04
  that's bullshit, and there are studies that say
• 13:06
  that's bullshit, and I agree. That's bullshit.
• 13:09
  And there's been a lot of studies that say it's
• 13:11
  bullshit. Ultimately, this is just an initial
• 13:13
  response that this isn't like they've done anything.
• 13:15
  We're gonna have to see how this all plays out
• 13:17
  in the legal system. But as for how I think about
• 13:19
  this, are loot boxes gambling? I don't think
• 13:22
  I can answer that question. Not because I can't
• 13:24
  see the arguments one way or the other, but because,
• 13:27
  one, the legal definition of gambling changes
• 13:29
  wildly between countries, let alone states in
• 13:32
  the US. And two, I don't think that it really
• 13:35
  matters whether or not it's gambling because
• 13:37
  I think this is all the wrong entry point into
• 13:40
  the problem. Said another way, I think that focusing
• 13:43
  on loot boxes and trying to target the regulation
• 13:46
  around loot boxes specifically misses the forest
• 13:49
  for the trees. What we really need are comprehensive
• 13:52
  consumer protection laws, especially in tech
• 13:54
  and gaming. If I'm a game developer and I was
• 13:56
  told that my loot box system is now too much
• 13:58
  like gambling, I would just figure out a new
• 14:00
  way to hide all those mechanics in other systems.
• 14:03
  Do that enough and bring on a lawyer and you've
• 14:06
  suddenly got, at the very least, another court
• 14:09
  case before you have to do anything. But unfortunately,
• 14:11
  the US is pretty much the worst country to ask
• 14:14
  to put in consumer protections for basically
• 14:17
  anything. Because we are already watching as
• 14:19
  age verification is being layered into everything,
• 14:22
  and the second that we start saying, oh, this
• 14:24
  is gambling and also targets children, think
• 14:26
  of the children, the think of the children is
• 14:28
  a huge alarm bell for me. Should kids be gambling?
• 14:31
  No. Should we have to verify our age with official
• 14:36
  documentation to play a video game? Also, no.
• 14:39
  For now, vote with your wallet, inform your friends,
• 14:41
  and continue to complain about bullshit patterns
• 14:44
  in game design. I say game design. It's not really
• 14:46
  game design. It's just like market design. Just
• 14:49
  nickling and diming people with microtransactions.
• 14:51
  Lightning round. Atlassian has laid off 10 %
• 14:53
  of their workforce, citing that they're gonna
• 14:54
  invest in AI. I'll be back next week with a different
• 14:57
  company doing the exact same thing. The sexting
• 15:00
  feature for ChatGPT has been delayed. OpenAI
• 15:03
  was planning to release an adult version of ChatGPT
• 15:06
  that you could... Fuck? Digitally? But that's
• 15:10
  being delayed. Washington state has passed a
• 15:12
  9 .9 % income tax on personal income over a million
• 15:16
  dollars. Washington's one of the only states
• 15:18
  that doesn't otherwise have income tax. Some
• 15:21
  business leaders are like... That was that was
• 15:25
  me being a business leader The US has dropped
• 15:27
  dramatically in its ranking among countries in
• 15:29
  the Americas with regards to free press went
• 15:32
  down from 4th to 11th in a year number one is
• 15:35
  the Dominican Republic Sonic the Hedgehog may
• 15:37
  have been ahead of his time scientists believe
• 15:39
  that some hedgehogs may be using inaudible communication
• 15:42
  frequencies while other scientists believe that
• 15:44
  they are simply rolling around at the speed of
• 15:47
  sound And finally for today, five drivers in
• 15:50
  Maryland owe over $600 ,000 of unpaid traffic
• 15:55
  violation fees in DC. Maryland and DC, they share
• 15:59
  a border. DC's kind of like cut out of Maryland.
• 16:02
  And Maryland drivers are known for being among
• 16:05
  the worst. But one dude accounts for $284 ,550
• 16:10
  in unpaid traffic violations in the city of Washington,
• 16:14
  DC. He somehow has a car. Thank you so much for
• 16:17
  listening to today's episode of Stuff Keeps Happening.
• 16:19
  Head to SKH .News for sources, bonus content,
• 16:22
  and a button to print your own traffic violations
• 16:25
  that you can just kind of play around with yourself.
• 16:28
  My name is Endeavorance. We'll talk again soon.
• 16:30
  Take care and be well.