Stuff Kept Happening

Listen to today's newsletter at the Stuff Keeps Happening podcast

I was gone for just a week. I asked very nicely for stuff to just not happen for a bit, and yet…

Turns out the Mormon Church is a big hedge fund

They had over a dozen shell companies set up to hide tens of BILLIONS of dollars. Of course, now they're having the SEC come after them and will be paying a whopping few million. Like, a single digit million dollar fine for hiding double digit billions.

COOOOOOOOOOOOOL

The Dilbert guy sucks, but we knew that, but he still sucks

The guy who makes the Dilbert comics sucks and has sucked for a long, long time, but recently sucked loudly and hard enough that he got dropped by a bunch of newspapers. He went on a long racist tirade, saying Black people are "a hate group".

Not to miss out on loudly being as much of a jackass as possible, Elon Musk turned around and supported Dilbert Guy, because of fucking course he did.

Jimmy Carter is in hospice care

This happened like right when I left for vacation but feels like a thing I should probably include regardless. Former US POTUS Jimmy Carter is in hospice care. Of the living former US presidents, he's probably the most okay. I like that he did the house building stuff. Seems pretty chill.

Facebook is copying Twitter's poorly done homework

Because apparently digital extortion is now a thing, Meta/Facebook will be selling a subscription for "Meta Verified" accounts, in which they will independently verify that you are who you say you are and verify your account.

I say "digital extortion" because this is essentially Facebook saying "Hey, pay us money or who knows who will impersonate you".

This is your daily reminder that Real Names policies were never a good idea to begin with, and there exists no good reason why Facebook and other websites require you to give them your full name (unless you're paying them for a service, in which case KYC laws apply).

ANYWAY this is a bad idea and it's not working for Twitter. It might do better for Meta because of Instagram but like, its really really not working for Twitter.

There was a shooting at a funeral a day after a shooting at a funeral for a stabbing in Minnesota

I mean its not funny, its just absurd. Two people were killed and several more injured in two shootings on back-to-back days in Minnesota, both of them at funerals/celebration-of-life events. One of the funerals was for a high school student who was fatally stabbed weeks prior.

Layoff Watch

More layoffs in big tech because its a day that ends in "Y".

Meta is reportedly prepping for their NEXT round of layoffs. They recently doled out a disproportionate number of low performance evaluations, seemingly prepping to blame that.

Twitter (read: Elon) laid off more people, including the product manager who oversaw the relaunch of Twitter Blue, which as I mentioned really ain't it, dawg.

More Stuff

• Thieves in NYC are just yanking Airpods Max off of peoples heads
• Spotify is doing an AI DJ because nothing is sacred
• Feds making it harder to get stuff like OxyContin via telehealth
• Supreme court is looking at Biden's student debt relief stuff
• Google is asking employees to share desks because they just don't have the money, despite their trillion-plus market cap