2024 In Review

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Heck of a year, eh?

What, you don't think so? Can't remember what all happened? I got you, no worries.

Let's take a trip down memory lane and see what 2024 had for us…

January

• Substack platforms Nazis
• An airplane door blew off
• 13-year-old beat tetris
• Epstein documents dropped
• I got COVID
• Twitter bans a bunch of journalists critical of Elon
• Voice actors in gaming were blindsided with an AI-focused shift
• A study into the effects of the "Male Gaze" on women performing tasks finds that women power through regardless
• Biden says he'd shut down the border if given the authority

February

• TikTok attempted to push into longform videos encouraging users to rotate their phone
• UMG pulled their streaming rights from TikTok, muting myriad videos
• Anti-trans policymaking spiked across several states
• Social media CEOs testified to congress about child exploitation
• Farmers from France to Italy end more protested strict regulations
• Despite not being at war, the United States dropped hundreds of bombs in Iraq and Syria after 3 US service members were killed by a drone strike from Iran
• Disney invested $1.5 Billion into Epic Games to get an equity stake in the company
• John Fetterman began really leaning in to his heel-turn against his own voters
• Taylor Swift joined the ranks of Elon Musk in taking legal action against a social media account tracking her already public air travel data
• An abandoned half-built tower in LA got graffiti-bombed and the LAPD got all mad about it
• The Apple Vision Pro released and did not have native support for porn
• Biden's mental acuity began really coming under question in public media
• Israel began their full force assault on Rafah, which was originally intended to be a refugee zone
• An abandoned ocean vessel began leaking oil outside of Trinidad
• Congress passed a $100B war funding bill for Ukraine and Israel, with Republicans upset that the bill didn't send more money
• Disney park employees sought unionization and ultimately ratified an improved contract
• Despite a police presence of 800 cops, a mass shooting occurred at a Superbowl victory parade in Kansas City
• Air Canada deployed an AI support agent which made up fake policies that landed them in court
• Reddit sold all of your content to train AIs for a mere $60 Million
• Alexei Navalny, famed Russian opposition figure, died in prison
• Medical research revealed that long COVID brain fog is very real
• Alabama's Supreme Court ruled that embryos fertilized in IVF count as children, sparking chaos across hospitals and fertility clinics. This is still an ongoing issue, though a temporary measure was put into place to sorta kinda help and there's an effort to make a constitutional amendment to overrule the actually absurd court ruling
• Mitch McConnell announced he would not be seeking another term as the leader of republicans in the senate
• I launched my merch store :)

March

• A study in the UK found that there are virtually only upsides to using a 4-day workweek
• The Surgeon General of Florida said that COVID vaccines are severing our connection to god
• RFK—trying desperately to pretend he isn't antivax—launched an AI chatbot on his campaign website which affirmed vehemently that he is, indeed, antivax.
• A group of Israeli women soldiers take a selfie in front of the destruction and rubble of Gaza
• Rooster Teeth announced their shutdown
• Republican Senator Katie Britt did a weird tradwife monologue response to the State of the Union from her kitchen
• The TikTok ban effort sprung back into full force

April

• Facebook was sued for "Project Ghostbusters," an effort from the company to get people to use their VPN so they can see what you do in other apps
• A 9-year-old boy brought cops on a car chase as he tried to drive himself to school (he almost made it!)
• Eclipse done happened
• McDonalds felt the heat after their Israeli locations were supporting Israel's army in their assault on the people of Gaza
• Discord, by accident, broke YouTube's 24 hour view count record
• The Human AI pin released and the reviews were so bad that it sparked a (fairly insincere) conversation about how tech reviewers can "kill a company"
• Google fired employees who protested their cloud contracts with the Israeli government
• We forgot about the Apple Vision Pro
• Amazon's Ring cameras were allowing unauthorized external access to video, so the FTC forced them to hand out $5.6 Million in refunds
• John Barnett, a Boeing whistleblower, was found dead
• Biden signed the TikTok ban bill

May

• On the heels of the Human AI pin, the Rabbit RI came out to similarly horrid reviews
• A second Boeing whistleblower died after suspiciously falling ill
• Ceasefire talks continuously fell through with Israel as the ICC began to consider charging Netanyahu with war crimes (foreshadowing!)
• Data published by the New York Times showed that billionaires in the US now pay a lower effective tax rate than the working class for the first time ever
• A cop murdered a 23-year-old member of the US Air Force in his own home after the cops went to the wrong apartment
• The President of Iran and a bunch of high ranking officials died in a helicopter crash
• Dorothy Jean Tillman II became the youngest person in her field to get a doctorate degree at the age of 17
• Texas Governor Gregg Abbott pardoned a literal convicted murderer who killed a BLM protestor
• Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito claimed his wife was to blame for pro-Trump symbolism at their house during the whole "Stop the steal" situation
• Carlo Acutis who died at the age of 15 from leukemia became the first millennial to ascend to sainthood
• Belle Delphine announced that she actually lost money from the whole "gamer girl bathwater" thing due to PayPal giving her the run-around
• Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door was remade for Nintendo Switch and it remains a 10/10 game

June

• Zeus got mad at a very specific cattle farmer in Colorado
• TikTok began their full force scramble in the face of the impending ban
• Ceasefire talks with Israel continued to fail as Netanyahu insisted the only option is to wipe out Gaza entirely
• OpenAI announced they found that Israel and Russia were using their systems to generate and distribute propaganda in several languages
• Microsoft announced their "Recall" feature to the extreme dismay of every living security researcher
• Elon Musk's requested $50 Billion pay package was rejected for the first time
• The US House of Representatives passed a resolution to sanction the International Criminal Court due to the ICC seeking Netanyahu's arrest. This came just after Israel bombed a school in Gaza, killing 33 civilians
• The investigation into the Oceangate Titan Submersible dug up some increasingly hilarious details
• The Wall Street Journal released a huge report interviewing dozens of women who were groomed and abused by Elon Musk across his various companies
• Hunter Biden was found guilty of possessing a firearm while using narcotics. Joe said he'd not pardon Hunter (foreshadowing!)
• Dell tried to tell their workforce to return to office. About half of their employees said to shove it.
• Unrest began to grow exponentially in New Caledonia as indigenous residents continue to push back against France's colonization
• TikTok and several creators sued the US Government over the TikTok ban bill, which netted only about 30% public support
• Volunteer scientists emerged from a year-long mission living in a simulated Martian environment
• Biden took the stage with Trump and had what would become one of the worst presidential debate performances in American history

July

• People got so tired of AI that even Goldman Sachs put out a paper saying "y'all best start making this worth it"
• Boeing plead guilty to criminal fraud conspiracy around their 737 Max crashes
• A giant Poseidon statue was erected in the Gulf of Mexico and people were like, "why?"
• Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 Presidential race after previously saying he wouldn't run in the first place
• The Supreme Court ruled that US Presidents have "absolute immunity" for "official acts" setting a horrific precedent
• HR company Lattice tried to roll out a feature that listed AIs alongside human employees in org charts
• We got some really good HIV drug trial results that point to a far more effective and less invasive PrEP drug
• Elon Musk began to put his full endorsement behind Trump, dropping his original rhetoric about keeping Twitter a politically neutral space and instead adding MAGA-related hashtag features
• Hundreds of employees across Bethesda Game Studios unionized
• The first assassination attempt of Donald Trump failed, and HOW DO YOU MISS?

August

• A background check company called National Public Data suffered a data breach affecting 2.9 billion people
• MrBeast began to face controversy around his Beat Games show, as well as credible allegations of child grooming and a litany of other allegations
• A woman was arrested at an Applebees for trying to game the system with an "all you can eat" deal
• After Trump's assassination attempt and a joke made on stage at a concert about it, Tenacious D looked like they'd be breaking up, but eventually clarified they'll be back
• NVidia was caught knowingly trying to hide their operations of scraping YouTube data to train their AI systems
• The bombardment of Gaza continued with death tolls landing somewhere between the "official" counts of 40-something-thousand souls and the 3rd party assessments which place the number in the hundreds of thousands dead
• Google rolled out their "Reimagine" AI-generated photo editing feature capable of editing photos of people to have unsavory content
• RFK dropped out of the 2024 Presidential race to join Trump's team
• 70 previously unpublished works of poetry from J.R.R. Tolkien were compiled and published
• The founder of Telegram was arrested in France

September

• A listeria outbreak was traced to its origin point of a Boar's Head meat processing facility in Virginia
• Australia passed a "right to disconnect" law, ensuring that workers are able to enjoy life outside of work when off the clock
• Official in Texas noted an uptick in sales of sausage, which usually indicates economic downturn
• France charges the now-arrested CEO of Telegram with money laundering and aiding the distribution of CSAM
• A Wells Fargo employee was found dead in her cubicle 4 days after she clocked in to the office
• Brazil blocked Twitter entirely after Musk refused to comply with local laws, helping to spark a mass migration to Bluesky
• The US Dept of Justice revealed that Tenet Media, a right wing media organization promoting a lot of the usual suspects, was secretly funded by Russia
• Oregon saw a measles outbreak among their children due to low vaccination rates
• OpenAI states that they wouldn't be able to operate if they had to actually follow the law
• After appointing a deeply unpopular Prime Minister after a contentious election, French President Emmanuel Macro saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in protest
• A man in North Carolina generated over $10,000,000 in revenue using AI to generate fake songs and users to stream those songs via streaming platforms
• JD Vance began to push the "Haitian migrants are eating housecats" line
• Trump repeated the line, solidifying its meme status
• Facebook began to scrape data from all of its Australian users to train their AIs without providing an option to opt-out, as there was not technically a legal requirement in that jurisdiction
• A suite of security flaws were revealed around Feeld, a dating app, including the ability to read other people's private messages and send private messages to anyone while pretending to be anyone
• The new USPS mail delivery trucks were revealed and are adorable
• Israel detonated devices across Lebanon, indiscriminately killing human beings
• The uh... Diddy situation played out
• Mark Robinson, then-gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina, was outed for calling himself a "Black Nazi" on porn forums
• The Teamsters Union formally chose not to endorse anyone in the POTUS election, breaking from tradition

October

I had a bit of a good ol' fashioned menty-b and decided to step away from everything and catch my break because of… everything above. Things got pretty wacky and wild with the election, and everyone started really going after each other online for all sorts of petty bullshit.

November

The lady did not win the election.

Also, Netanyahu was hit with an arrest warrant for his war crimes by the International Criminal Court

December

• Australia passed a bill disallowing social media websites from having users under the age of 16
• Biden pardoned his son
• Trump appointed a whos-who of horrific cabinet picks
• Musk was denied his $50 Billion pay package again
• Bluesky hit 24 Million users
• The French Government collapsed due to the awful PM pick
• Bashar Assad's grip on Syria since 2000 came to an end
• Two DHS agents were charged with selling bath salts
• An OpenAI whistleblower was found dead in his apartment
• A Judge attempted to stop The Onion from buying InfoWars
• Weird incel Gamers had an absolute meltdown over the Game Awards
• We learned about the BIG MUSHY

And Beyond

And so here we are, at year's end. We covered a LOT of stuff this year and yet we barely scratched the surface.

Look, I won't sugarcoat it: 2025 is going to be rough. Each year under the incoming administration is going to be worse than the last. That's just how it'll be. We are going to need each other now more than ever.

Be good. Support your countrymen. Extend empathy to those deserving, and reserve energy in the face of those unwilling to cooperate.

Do not suffer fools. We don't have the time or space to do so.

And as always,

Take care, be well, and I'll see you in 2025.

~ Endeavorance

Oh and uh

Here's the weather.