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Reddit's Going Wackadoo

A portion of I-95 collapsed causing the traffic to remain terrible. Also, Reddit is losing its damn mind, a former president pleas not guilty again, the FTC is beefing with Microsoft, and congress injected a diety.

Endeavorance

Jun 14, 2023 — 4 min read

Portion of I-95 Collapses; Traffic Impacts Immeasurable Because it Was Already a Standstill

That was a joke. The traffic is defo impacted.

A portion of I-95 in Philadelphia collapsed after a vehicle caught fire underneath an overpass. A large portion of the major highway has been shut down in both directions, with estimates being that it will take many months to repair the damage.

If you own a vehicle, this is a reminder to go check that it is:

Not on fire
Not underneath an overpass on a major interstate

Reddit Situation is Getting Kinda Wackadoo

So here's the recap: Reddit announced they were going to start charging astronomic fees for apps to use their API with virtually no heads-up. They had calls with 3rd party app and integration developers which basically amounted to "deal with it, idiots".

The CEO then went on to do an AMA after the community was upset about these changes. The AMA did not go particularly well, with the CEO having a combative tone and answering barely any questions.

A bunch of subreddits have gone private in protest. Like, thousands of subreddits including some with tens of millions of users. So many went dark that the site actually crashed. Then, the CEO sent an internal memo basically saying "we don't care and will ignore this protest."

So now, what was going to be a two day protest is turning into an indefinite shutdown until Reddit budges at all, which the CEO has asserted will not happen.

So now we're in this weird standstill, watching this historically middling social media platform basically kill itself over ambitions to IPO at the expense of their users, which is like… their entire profit model.

MAKES A LOTTA SENSE

Former US President Goes to Court to Plead "not guilty" to Charges, Again

Trump got hit with those 37 federal criminal charges. He has since turned himself in to a court in Miami and plead "not guilty" to the charges. Yes, this happened not too long ago with his other charges in New York.

Here's what he did, summarized, according to the indictment: whereas other politicians had been found to have top secret documents they shouldn't have had, those people turned them back over to the government. Trump instead hid a portion of the documents he had, then lied about it to investigators when they came to browse the files he had. The investigators found classified documents and went back to the fed and said they finished their search. But stuff was still missing, so they got a warrant and searched Mar-A-Lago, where they found the documents he took steps to hide.

And I mean, even if that doesn't land, the indictment lists several other, similarly absurd things.

If you want an Actually Good breakdown of the indictment, Legal Eagle did a video on it.

It has essentially not moved the needle at all for his voting base. The majority of Republicans believe the charges to be unfair, and he holds a double digit lead in primary polling.

Again though: we knew this. We knew they don't care. Don't let it rile you up. The case against him is honestly way, way more solid than anyone expected. He's on tape admitting to his crimes. So. 🤷

FTC Jumps in to Stop Microsoft From Buying Activision-Blizzard

Microsoft has been trying to purchase Activision-Blizzard (video game company, they make Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, World of Warcraft, etc) for $75 Billion dollarydoos. Unfortunately for Microsoft, various government entities have been getting involved and being like "uhhhhh that seems like an anti-competitive move????"

Most recently, the FTC has stepped in to stop it from happening. Previously, regulatory bodies in the UK and EU have gone back and forth on allowing it or not. It's gonna be a long road yet.

Microsoft leadership is playing it cool and being like "naw its chill we're happy to show how not bad this purchase is". Buuuuut thats kinda contrasting their very obnoxious legal approaches, such as claiming they had no idea if Call of Duty is a major franchise, or when it was released.

On This day…

On this day in the year 1954, the United States amended its Pledge of Allegiance to add the phrase "under God" to it.

This change was in an effort to "push back" against communist interests which were often associated with atheism. It is believed that this move was to better establish America as a country whose existence and prosperity was because of God, and that capitalism is the only moral way to live.

So yeah. They changed the weird culty poem that kids mindlessly repeat in school to include religious symbolism because commies.

It was supposed to be "one nation, indivisible", but I guess they wanted God to get in the way.