All-You-Can-Eat Police
A woman learns the extend of an all-you-can-eat special. Twitter is very heavy. Breonna Taylor still needs justice. Google unleashes destructive imagination.
Watch today's episode on YouTube, or search "Stuff Keeps Happening" wherever you get podcasts!
Can You Truly Eat It All?
Don't… get arrested… at Applebees…
A woman was arrested at an Applebees location in Indiana after attempting to order one "all-you-can-eat" special for the whole table to share.
The special was listed as "all-you-can-eat for $15.99." What a steal! Except: that is the price per person, not per table. When the restaurant noticed, they charged the table for more than the single $15.99 they expected. The table was not happy.
Shit got rowdy and the store called the cops. A crack team of investigators arrived on the scene and reviewed the holy literature (the Applebee's menu): it did indeed say $15.99 per person.
The mastermind behind the scheme was not having it, and ultimately was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor. Reportedly, the woman's friends tried to shut her up, even covering her mouth, but it didn't work.
Don't… get arrested… at Applebees…
Twitter is Heavy
Banks are not super thrilled with their past decision to lend money to Twitter for Elon's purchase. According to the Wall Street Journal and PitchBook, banks that backed the Twitter buyout are now stuck in a situation that hasn't been this bad since the '08 financial crisis.
The banks were hoping they'd be able to sell off this debt for a profit (because FINANCE)—but they can't even do that given how poorly Twitter is doing as a business. Instead, they're stuck with this massive loan taking up space in their balance sheet (think "list o' cash and debts") with basically nothing they can do with it.
The last time debt was held like this was in '08 when the banks did that lil oopsie-doopsie playing fast and loose with home loans that couldn't be paid.
So why did they do this obviously fucking stupid investment? According to the banks, the prospect of having the "richest man in the world" in their debt was quite appealing.
I genuinely cannot wrap my mind around that. These are gargantuan institutions shepherding an amount of assets which could destabilize the planet's economy should they fuck up badly enough. And yet, nobody considered that maybe Elon Musk purchasing fucking Twitter of all things was not the greatest ploy?
Regardless, however bad it is for the banks, its worse for Twitter and Elon. The banks are holding the debt. The debt is growing in scale, and Elon is the one who has to pay. I mean, in theory. They'll probably magically lose the envelope with the I.O.U. on it.
New Merch & Price Drops!
I've just finished a big update to the pricing on my merch store! Just about everything is significantly more affordable, with some items now costing $10 less than before. There's also a few new items available!
Merch is a great way to support my work and get some neat stuff out of it! Thank you for your support, and now let's get back to the stuff.
Breonna Taylor Deserves Better
A judge in Kentucky has dismissed most of the strongest charges against the cops who murdered Breonna Taylor in her sleep. As a quick refresher: cops in Kentucky falsified a warrant then forced entry into Taylor's home in the middle of the night, when her boyfriend then fired a warning shot thinking the cops were intruders (because of the intruding they were doing). The cops responded with 32 (thirty-two) shots, missing the boyfriend but managing to slaughter Taylor as she slept in her bed.
The cops were facing charges of violating Taylor's civil rights, but a judge has ruled that the boyfriend's warning shot, not the thirty-two bullets fired by the cops who were there based on falsified documents, was the legal cause of Taylor's death, freeing the cops from blame of violating her civil rights.
The cops are still facing charges for falsifying documents.
Prosecutors told Taylor's family they intend to appeal the decision, and the US Justice Dept is "looking over it," but this is essentially just a gargantuan slap in the face—not just to Taylor's family, and not even just to the Black residents of America who are again shown how little their lives are considered in our justice system—but to everyone with a pulse in the United States. Cops violently entered a private domicile on false pretenses. A man in the home fired a warning shot, believing his home to be invaded by aggressors. He was correct. The aggressors returned fire, murdered a woman asleep in her bed, and have been coddled the whole time since.
Falsified. Documents. They had no reason to be there.
We shouldn't be afraid to sleep in our own homes.
Let's Leave Imagination To Our Imaginations
Google's latest Pixel 9 phone has a new feature called "Reimagine," which can take a photo and a prompt to alter it, then uses generative AI to "reimagine" the photo with your input.
Neat right? Yeah, no, not right, nobody asked for this.
Because every tech company seems wholly fixated on creating the Torment Nexus, Google has shipped this functionality with what seems like virtually no forethought about what widespread accessibility of realistic, non-watermarked image manipulation in the palm of everyone's hands means.
Sure, people have been able to manipulate images for a long time using Photoshop or even other generative AI products as of late. But now, anyone with a phone can do it. The removal of any barrier to entry to create compelling deepfakes is pretty horrifying, as reporters are showing the system will happily generate images of fake car crashes, floods, drugs, crimes, and more.
Even if you completely ignore the vast amount of falsified information that this will create, just consider this: bullying. Imagine you are a teenager, and your parents—who are deeply ill-equipped to identify AI generated imagery—receive a very convincing photo of you breaking the law, doing drugs, or what-have-you. Or worse: wearing a fedora.
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More Stuff
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr has dropped out of the 2024 U.S. Presidential race and is backing Donald Trump, seeking a position in Trump's administration should he win.
A doctor in Florida is on probation after performing a colonoscopy on a patient. Oh, wait, hold on—they performed a colonoscopy on a patient without wearing their hearing aid, causing them to not hear the patient screaming from not being properly sedated.
A hunter was out hunting when he was mauled by a bear. Then he was shot during the scuffle with the large animal. We don't know who's shot it was, but the man definitely got shot while being mauled by a bear. He's alive but I mean, not doing particularly well.
Members of the super-rich family of Mike Lynch—a British tycoon—died after their yacht sank off the coast of Sicily. 7 in total are dead, including members of Lynch's family and their guests. More notably, hundreds if not thousands of migrants seeking refuge die from shipwrecks of far less luxurious craft each year.
70 previously unpublished works of poetry by J.R.R. Tolkien will be published soon in a new book called "The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien." It was put together by his son with the help of some experts on the Tolkien legacy.
Nintendo is shutting down Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp on November 28th. That said, they've announced they'll be putting out a version of it with basically all of the features unlocked and the online features removed for a one-time payment. I played Pocket Camp for a bit and it's genuinely kinda fun but I actually think I'd prefer the non-microtransaction-version, ayo?
After a TikTok trend went viral involving eating an entire cucumber, Iceland has been hit with a cucumber shortage.
A U.S. border patrol agent in was arrested after requesting for multiple women to expose their breasts to him via webcam while working on vetting applications.
The Mormon church just issued a bunch of new restrictions on transgender members, equating them to predators and preventing them from holding positions in the church or working with children.
The founder of encrypted messaging app Telegram has been arrested by French authorities. They cite the app's lack of content moderation after an ongoing tug-of-war between the EU and encrypted messaging apps.
And finally for today, the stranded NASA astronauts now have a trip home planned in February 2025, riding back on a SpaceX mission rather than the original Boeing Starliner plans.