Incoming Government Shutdown?

I finished researching my unit upgrades, but Stuff still Happened.

Stateside

Eric Adams Joins Dropout

New York City mayor Eric Adams is joining the cast of popular internet comedy streaming service, Dropout—

Wait—

Apologies, I misread.

New York City mayor Eric Adams is dropping out of the mayoral race. Adams, known for his myriad scandals, corruption, bribery, and generally being about as much of a criminal as you'd expect from an NYPD Commissioner Turned Politician, has ended his campaign for re-election in the race which is now down to Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Silwa.

Andrew Cuomo is the former governor of New York State who resigned in disgrace due to being a sex pest among other scandals. Curtis Silwa is, well, Curtis Silwa. He founded a vigilante crime fighter group that faked encounters for publicity.

Meanwhile, Zohran Mamdani leads by double digits in polling. Earlier this month, Quinnipiac noted that even if Adams dropped out, Mamdani would still be leading by double digits in the polls. Regardless, top Democrat leadership has staunchly refused to endorse Mamdani, while praising Adams and otherwise having just come off a long campaign of "vote blue no matter who."

Mamdani currently leads in the polls for every borough, every age demographic, and is comparable in support across religious communities with other candidates. He expanded the scale of the electorate, getting out more new voters than expected.

What boggles my mind is how clear this all is. We're watching as a generational political figure emerges in one of the most important Dem strongholds in the country, only for the top leaders of the Dems to adhere so strongly to their donors-first ideology that they would rather suffer the ire of their potential voter base than even endorse the candidate in a race against a literal disgraced sex pest. I dunno, maybe they just see more of themselves in the disgraced sex pest than the charismatic, widely-supported dude.

Superintendent Arrested by ICE

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE, which is essentially an occupying private army at this point) arrested Dr. Ian Roberts, the current Superintendent of the Des Moines Public School District in Iowa.

Roberts has spent 20 years working in education in Iowa and has built up a name for himself in the field, as demonstrated by the immediate outcry from locals after his sudden arrest.

ICE arrested Roberts, claiming that he is in the country illegally and is a "threat to public safety," perhaps due to his multiple decades of educating youths. The Department of Homeland Security (of which ICE is a sub-agency) wanted to be clear that when he was arrested, he had $3,000, a handgun, and a knife on him, and that he fled from agents when arrested.

Notably, having money and a gun on your person is not illegal in the United States. He is, however, a Black man and originally from Guyana, which may now be illegal, I haven't checked the updated rulebook.

We don't know much more right now aside from that he's been taken, the community is pissed, and the claim of his "illegal" status and him being a threat to public safety is not landing with the people who suddenly no longer have their elected official due to what seems to be a political abduction from federal agents. Contrasting ICE claims, local officials stated that multiple comprehensive background and eligibility checks were carried out for Roberts before he was brought on to his position, none of which indicated outstanding criminal cases or a lack of work authorization or even citizenship.

I'm so proud to live in such a great nation. Finally, I can walk the streets safe from the threat of an educator who was born elsewhere. My dream come true.

Looming Shutdown

The US government is close to once again doing what it does best: shutting down due to a failure to produce a funding bill. Hm, I wonder why congress has a 61% disapproval rating?

Unless Trump and leaders from the Democrats and Republicans can agree on some massive changes to the current proposal, we're looking at a likely shutdown. Trump and Republicans—who currently fully control all three branches of the federal government—are blaming Democrats for the potential shutdown. Democrats are demanding concessions in the spending bill, which Republicans say are unacceptable changes to the bill, leaving us where we are now.

Love that classic bipartisanship where one party drafts the entire bill and then complains when the other party doesn't approve of it and then our government shuts down on loop forever.

A US government shutdown is pretty wacky, and usually means a good chunk of government services go away, while other chunks of the government continue to operate either with deferred pay or in some cases, reduced staffing.

However, since this current administration is all about being an asshole, Trump has directed his people to draft plans to fire an unknown number of government employees if the shutdown happens, seemingly using the livelihood of American workers as leverage to get Democrats to concede on a spending resolution which goes directly against popular policy, such as making healthcare more affordable and ensuring the longevity of social security.

Of course, because this administration's cruelty is only rivaled by its ineptitude, the US government also has a need to re-hire hundreds of hastily fired employees from Elon Musk's DOGE efforts, as understaffing has led to—wouldn't ya know it—problems! Weird! And to boot: those people being rehired essentially just got a seven month long paid vacation from taxpayers.

Fiscal responsibility in action.

Also, notably, while all of this is going on, there has been a distinct lack of release of the Epstein Files. Though, partially because the Republican speaker Mike Johnson is now preventing the seating of an elected member of congress to prevent them from voting to move forward with a vote to release the files. So, y'know.

Elsewhere

Venezeula Militias

Venezuela is preparing their citizens—including seniors—for a potential invasion from the United States, calling citizens in for militia training. Since then, we've seen images circulating of elderly people holding firearms while training when they should instead be, I dunno, doing literally anything else but worrying about an invasion from the United States for whatever reason.

The US has now extrajudicially slaughtered 17 Venezuelan citizens using military force in the waters off the border of Venezuela. Top officials in Venezuela have called it a, "non-declared war," as Trump and his gang continue to claim that we have the "absolute authority" to kill foreign civilians because those foreign civilians might be related to some drug trade which somehow they've managed to equate to weapons of mass destruction being actively used against US Citizens in an act of war.

We don't want this. We just want healthcare. To anyone out there reading this from outside the borders of the United States of America—please know that from within the country, among the vast majority of normal people, we don't want war with anyone. We just want to be able to afford food, medicine, and rent, which are increasingly becoming out of reach.

Global Sumud Flotilla

Multiple maritime aid missions from activist and humanitarian groups to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza have happened already, with Israel intervening to prevent the operations, instead citing that the literal aid ships were, "terrorists."

Recently, the Global Sumud Flotilla has been making their way, now with meaningful international military support after reports that Israel has used drones to attack the humanitarian aid operation.

The flotilla was organized and set sail in late August, with dozens of ships from 44 countries.

As the flotilla approached Gaza this month, Israel began to escalate their attacks on the activists. There were a few reports of drone operations in early September, which prompted several NATO countries to deploy their own ships to the flotilla to provide security. Still, Israel ramped up their attacks, culminating in drone strikes on and around ships in the flotilla, jamming their comms, going as far as to force ABBA songs to play on the flotilla radios. (It would be hilarious if this wasn't one of our closest attacking literal aid ships).

At this point, at least Spain and Italy have sent out ships, with more on the way. Italy's Defense Minister was quoted in saying:

"We have sent one ship and another is on its way, ready for any eventuality."
Guido Crosetto, Italian Minister of Defense

Little side note about Israel, Microsoft has finally caved to internal and external pressures to stop providing cloud infrastructure to the Israeli military. Though, it may be temporary, and isn't like they've suddenly grown a conscience. This move comes after a report had come out showing that the Israeli military used Microsoft's cloud servers to do mass surveillance on Palestinians. Microsoft was like, "oh, hm, weird, we'll have to look into that, and maybe pause their account in the meantime."

No Bummers, No Exceptions

Over in China, the government is launching a campaign to target social media posts which spread "excessive negativity" or pessimism.

The campaign is targeting social media companies more than individual posters, pushing the companies to regulate content on their platforms to either downrank or hide sentiment which they believe may be detrimental to the state.

There's a lot of unrest among young people in China who are feeling that hard work isn't getting people places, which creates a sense of apathy which can spread like wildfire on social platforms. Unfortunately, China has a history of tightening censorship to prevent the spreading of negative sentiment, rather than address the underlying cause of the sentiment.

However, it's also an interesting move because it means the Chinese government has formally acknowledged that negative economic sentiment is growing out of hand, which isn't something they're usually keen to legitimize.

While the censorship is of course pretty unusual to someone from a country with free speech laws, it's also increasingly easy to see how this kind of speech "curation" could happen anywhere, especially as major US tech firms consistently cozy up to the Trump admin.

Gaming

Stardew Valley 1.7 Is Happening But Don't Get Too Hype Yet

Stardew Valley stands as one of those games that will seemingly just keep getting updates forever, given that developer Concerned Ape (Eric Barone) seems incapable of stopping work on it.

Last month, he confirmed that another new major version will drop: version 1.7. He said not to expect a release date yet, and now has clarified that he "[doesn't] want too much hype at this point."

Unfortunately for the Good Ape Man, he is not the one who determines the level of frothing hype coming from the Stardew Valley fanbase, and honestly he should know that by now. I mean, no hate to the man whatsoever, but surely he knows that the second he utters the words, "one point seven," half of the internet would catch fire from the amount of posts in response.

We don't know what'll be in the patch yet, but we can wager a guess based on the past updates. Version 1.6 was similarly "not something to get too hype about," and then it dropped with an absolute cornucopia of new content as well as a completely overhauled community modding framework. So, presumably, Stardew Valley version 1.7 will release with a new feature that performs oral sex on the player while also containing the entirety of Grant Theft Auto 7.

E. A. Sports: It's Wildly Unethical

Jared Kushner and Saudi Arabia may be among the new private owners of gaming behemoth Electronic Arts as a deal to take the company private for more than $50 Billion could set records.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal later confirmed by EA, advanced talks are happening to take EA private, with a decision possible as soon as this week. If the deal goes through, EA would be privately owned by a coalition of private investors, including Silver Lake (a silicon valley investment firm), Jared Kushner, and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund.

Would this make EA a shittier company? Genuinely hard to say. We'll need to get our best thinkers on that one. Which is worse: EA as it stands, or an EA owned by literally Jared fucking Kushner?

Sony Did a Nintendo Direct

Sony had their Nintendo Direct State of Play recently, showing off a bunch of new titles n such.

Here's some of the highlights, or check out this blog from PlayStation with a more comprehensive overview.

• Gran Turismo 7
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (I remain floored by MS Flight Sim in general)
• Nioh 3
• Literally some… PlayStation branded wireless speakers?
• A new Sonic racing game
• Deus Ex Remastered
• Dynasty Warriors 3 Remastered

Here's the Weather

More Stuff

• Researchers have submitted a paper (not peer reviewed yet!) which investigates the role of LLMs in encouraging people to continue being shitty by being too agreeable
• A literal schoolchild dismantled a gun his classmate brought to school to help remove the thread and was expelled since he didn't report the weapon. He was scared and trying to help, since he had experience with hunting.
• Spaceballs 2 is now officially in production
• Dominion Voting Systems, who sued Rudy Giuliani for $1.3 Billion have settled the lawsuit, though details on the settlement are confidential.