Gaming

Fifty Airplane Holes

Boeing has some holey airplanes. Disney makes an epic investment. John Fetterman draws progressive ire. Taylor Swift pulls and Elon Musk.

Endeavorance

Feb 8, 2024 — 4 min read

Quality Quality Control

Remember how just a couple of weeks ago, a plug door flew off of a Boeing 737 Max mid-flight? Well, after some more inspection, a supplier for Boeing found FIFTY additional new-construction aircraft with "mis-drilled holes".

I— Uh—

Said blown-out plug door from earlier this year

"Don't have the plane come apart mid flight" seems like the thing that should be top priority? But here we are: late stage capitalism eating away at any notion of quality and real competition, and now we have a situation where one of the TWO real commercial airliner producers is just… "mis-drilling" the holes to keep their aircraft together.

Don't worry though, they're on it. The CEO of Boeing sent a memo, so.

An Epic Investment by Disney

Disney is investing $1.5 Billion into Epic Games, the developers of Unreal Engine and Fortnite.

This will net Disney an equity stake in Epic, which basically just means Disney has more significant influence over the company's decisions. Ultimately, Disney seems to want to have Epic in their pocket as they work on more "interactive experiences" and whatnot.

This is like, huge, to be clear. This is a BIG investment, and Disney seems to be salivating at the idea of some kind of Disney-flavored live service platform metaverse-y thing. Look at how Fortnite is used as a game, social hub, and even a concert venue. Methinks Disney wants a piece of that particular pie.

Fetterman? More like… Idk.

John Fetterman, US Senator from Pennsylvania, positioned himself as "the betterman" during his campaign. He garnered a large progressive following, with the likes of AOC et al. endorsing him for his no-nonsense statements about the need for major reforms in healthcare, criminal justice, foreign policy, and basically everything else.

Then he got elected after a fierce competition with… check notes Doctor Fucking Oz.

Anyway he is a Senator now, and while he first made headlines for making Republicans mad by wearing shorts, he now is making his own supporters mad by being a pretty standard Democrat—which is to say: center-right at best.

Fetterman holding an Israeli flag. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

He strongly endorses Israel and continues to support sending them aid to genocide the people of Gaza. He's on the "border crisis" hype train. Now to be super duper clear: the man was pro-Israel when he got elected. That just wasn't on people's minds at the time. Or at least, it wasn't enough to stop him from being elected over LITERALLY DOCTOR OZ.

Anyway, his wife was an undocumented migrant, and Fetterman is riding the line about a migrant crisis now, so. This is your reminder: people who seek power aren't the ones who we should be giving power to. Aight, cool.

Rich Person Does Bad Thing

Look, I was drafting this newsletter a couple of days ago when the news was breaking about this, but if my TikTok FYP is of any indication, this is already news that is being published into textbooks and made into a required curriculum in all public schools, but here we go.

Taylor Swift made some music that one time and people like her for it. But now she's following in the footsteps of Elon Musk of all people, sending a cease and desist letter to our old friend Jack Sweeny. Jack is a young man who wrote some code to publish flight tracking information on social media to call attention to the needless private jet flights from celebrities.

Swift and Musk have both attempted to stop this guy, with Musk banning the original twitter bot that would post his flight info after buying the platform. They both have taken the stance of "this is an invasion of privacy," despite the fact that its entirely public record. It's not even the kind of public record that takes effort to get. It's literally like, highly available public records and all Sweeny is doing is importing that data and posting when there is new stuff.

So given the absurdity of "billionaire sues teen for posting about their private jet usage," even Swifties have started to acknowledge its… pretty fucking stupid.

A Challenge

At some point today, use your phone or computer or whatever and record a minute of whatever is on your mind. No think, just speak. Whatever comes out. Then set yourself a reminder to listen back in six months.