Heist

One Too Many War Crimes

The United Nations finds that the United States and Iran are both quite guilty of some less-than-savory things, and would very much appreciate if they would stop that

Endeavorance

25 Sep 2026 — 9 min read

I died in my dream and thus died in real life, but stuff still happened.

So, what's up?

Renoir's Second Healthbar

Art heists are on the rise in the EU. That may be distressing for museum curators and art preservationists, but it is excellent news for us degenerates who love to start our weekly newsletters with a literal heist story.

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Note: Stuff Keeps Happening does not officially endorse theft of art from museums.

On September 8th, two thieves used power tools to cut through the fencing around a museum in France which housed works by the famous impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. These two enterprising individuals hopped through a window, pulled out an angle grinder, and detached four paintings from their place in the museum.

Little did they know they had triggered Renoir's second phase.

The museum's alarm system kicked in, causing the thieves to panic. As cops arrived a few minutes later, the thieves scrambled to escape, dumping two of the four paintings before de-assing the area.

Renoir's "Coco Reading" and "Madame Colanna Romano" were the stolen originals

At time of writing, the thieves remain on the run. It's unclear what they can even do with the paintings, given that they are two incredibly famous pieces by an incredibly famous artist.

Still, after the heist at the Louvre recently and a string of other museums getting hit, it seems Europe is in for a helluva time. As far as art thefts go, at least.

Diesel, Diesel, Diesel

The President of the United States of America is very unintelligent. We knew that, but he reminds us of this every day, and it is important to remember that fact when we look at the decision making coming out of Washington.

Like, we're beefing with Canada in part because he kept trying to insult his way into somehow absorbing Canada into the United States, and started an endless war with Iran after campaigning on no new wars and focusing on domestic policy. (That is giving a LOT of leeway on "domestic policy" because "they're eating the dogs" is not a policy.)

Anyway, this dumb ass called up Ukraine's president Zelenskyy and asked him to end military strikes on Russian oil refineries, citing that it imperils the global diesel fuel market. NEVER YOU MIND ANYTHING ELSE; the only reason that Diesel prices are rising—of course—is that Ukraine struck Russian refineries as a part of their years-long defense efforts.

Totally not the US-Israel war on Iran.

So here is our president, making this call, and then turning around and saying the call was about—and this is important—"diesel, diesel, diesel."

Donald Trump loves replicated phrasing.

"Drill, baby, drill"
"Fight, fight, fight"
"Jobs, jobs, jobs"

From my experience in covering these topics, what I've noticed is a trend of this guy learning about something, turning around, and desperately trying to make it look like he's the worlds foremost expert on the topic. Often, he does so by suddenly expressing great interest in the topic for a week or so before moving on to the next thing.

A chart of diesel prices over the course of 2026

This is reads like a man who is constantly reacting to the latest blunder of his own creation.

So, today he's all about "diesel, diesel, diesel," which is because diesel fuel prices in the US are skyrocketing, setting new records daily. As prices continue to rise, the industries that Trump leans on for support get hit hard and fast: trucking and agribusiness. These, of course, will impact all of the downstream industries as well, but we're not talking about second-order effects. Again, we're talking about the Trump administration: they don't do foresight.

So we've got Republican senators tweeting about high Diesel prices while they do nothing to actually curb the thing that is impacting the market which is an unhinged man leveraging a failed attempt at a holy war. Meanwhile, the US president is seemingly trying to seek wartime relief for an adversary as a salve against his own wartime failures.

Chuck Grassley is simply confounded at how we got here!

I was hoping for healthcare in my lifetime, but that'll have to wait, I suppose.

Finding Facts in Iran

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Content Warning for this section: non-graphic discussion of mass death and child death

The United Nations launched a fact finding mission into the US/Israel war on Iran as well as Iran's actions during the mass protests earlier this year, seeking to find clarity on what all actually happened on the ground, and to determine the answer to the question, "who here committed war crimes?"

The report touches on both US and Iranian state actions, referencing on-the-ground investigations, eyewitness accounts, international expert analysis, as well as fielding information from the state governments themselves.

Though, asking governments for information about their own war crimes didn't quite work great. Iran ignored the majority of requests, and the US ignored them entirely.

I gave the report a read and pulled out some of the findings that I think help paint a clearer picture of what happened with some high profile events. Some of this we already knew, some was speculation before now, and some is net new info.

The Iranian State Sponsored Massacre

In late 2025, massive civil protests broke out across Iran, spanning the country with protestors filling the streets in largely peaceful demonstrations. Soon after the protests surged in scale, the Iranian government cut internet access to their people and the outside world, making it incredibly difficult to know what was happening.

According to the UN report, shortly after Iran cut off internet access, their state security forces rapidly increased the use of live ammunition on protesting crowds. Reviewed video shows armed forces with automatic rifles positioned atop buildings, firing into crowds with live ammunition.

State actors launched tear gas into crowds, then unloaded shotgun pellet rounds—leaving protestors scrambling with shrapnel wounds. Reports from medical staff speak of hundreds of people coming into hospitals with wounds, many with eye wounds and some losing sight entirely.

Not content to stop there, state security forces reportedly rushed into hospitals seeking out people who appeared to have wounds from the protests, detaining them. This caused people to avoid seeking medical attention over risks of being detained, which could in turn mean a death sentence.

Some medical workers noted treating patients without making a paper trail in an attempt to protect the patients from the state. This is a strong reminder: medical workers are genuine heroes.

The death and injury counts remain contested. Earlier reports made headlines of tens of thousands of casualties from the state's crackdown. The Iranian government claimed there were around 3,000 deaths and 25,000 injuries. The fact finding mission ultimately could not confidently state a presumed casualty count, citing that the estimates range wildly from the state's own reporting and external fact finding efforts. However, they make it a point to state that although they couldn't get enough evidence to confidently provide a specific count, they strongly believe the number to be far higher than the Iranian government reported.

Since then, Iran has been routinely executing people charged with crimes associated with the protests. More than two dozen people have already been executed, and more than 70 are facing a possible death sentence. At least three of those sentenced to death were under the age of 18 at the time of their alleged crimes.

The UN report ultimately holds that the Islamic Republic of Iran committed gross human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity.

The United States' Precision Strikes on Children

A little over a month later, we found ourselves waking up to the news that a primary school in Iran had been annihilated by what appeared to be Tomahawk missiles—something that would indicate the United States (or a close ally) launched the attack.

This strike was part of the opening salvo from the US in its ongoing war with Iran, seemingly started at the request of Benjamin Netanyahu and fueled by the holy war fever dreams of the current White House cabinet.

The school in question was a grade school inside of a decommissioned building from an Iranian state army facility. It had been a separate structure since 2016, and satellite imagery from before the strike clearly showed separate walls around the facility, as well as a separate entrance from a public road. Additionally, pre-strike photos showed obvious signs of active use as a school: playground equipment, school furnishings, and playful murals.

(Note: the spin about this story quickly became about how it's Iran's fault for having a school "in a military installation" which is not only inaccurate, but also ignores the 161 schools operated by the US military including in foreign military installations)

Analysis of the post-strike imagery by international weapons experts says the impact appears to be the work of a US-made Tomahawk missile. Reportedly, a missile struck the lower floor, prompting surviving staff to usher the children upstairs into the prayer room for shelter, only for a second missile to strike.

The US government opened an internal investigation into the matter, because like, holy shit. Of course, we shouldn't expect the US to investigate itself, find actual wrongdoing, and make actual changes.

Still, the New York Times was able to publish that the preliminary investigation found that the strike was conducted using outdated intelligence, which would mean we did target that specific building with multiple precision strikes, but oopsie doopsie, I guess we just didn't double check that it doesn't contain scores of children?

We don't really know the truth of what happened there. It could've been incompetence for sure. There is no shortage of that in this admin. It also could have been malice, of which there is no shortage either.

But we didn't stop there. Later that same day, the United States struck a sports center in Iran with another set of precision missiles in an indiscriminate attack that largely affected civilians. This Precision Strike Missile in question isn't just a typical fwoomp-boom kind of missile. Instead, it detonates above the target and rains down hundreds of thousands of tungsten pellets over the area.

Tungsten is heavy. Like, very heavy. Dropping of thousands of pellets over an area effectively ensures maximum collateral damage. The US pulled the strange move of both confirming that a Precision Strike Missile was used for the first time in the Iran strikes, and also claimed that the obvious impact of a Precision Strike Missile was, somehow, not that.

22 people were killed in the strikes, including more than a dozen people in surrounding neighborhoods.

Ultimately, the UN fact finding mission holds that the United States—in their targeted strikes on civilian structures which were clearly separate from Iranian military installations—carried out war crimes as a part of the opening strikes on Iran.

Now, if only that designation held water.

Getting Small Real Fast

Hey! Let's cool down with some science real quick.

I honestly don't have a lot to say about this one because frankly, I barely understand it; but I am getting hype regardless because it turns out there exists some kind of single-celled organism that lives underwater and can—at will—just kinda shrink itself down to a quarter of its normal size faster than you can blink.

In just 5 milliseconds, the spirostomum ambiguum (I'll call him Spiro for short) uses a sort of "fishnet of calcium-powered protein" to kinda cellularly corset itself into being an even littler guy.

This happens so fast that it basically appears as if this organism can just arbitrarily be one of two sizes, and it took electron microscopy and other processes that go way over my head to actually figure out how this little guy is getting so little.

Apparently this has some interesting implications in the field of bioengineering, since we can learn from this lil squirt about how to build biological structures capable of such things. Human muscle, by comparison, is too slow to accomplish such a feat. So who knows, maybe in the future we'll have some kind of hyper-powered exoskeleton whose secret sauce originates from our good friend Spiro.