Weekly Roundup

SKH Roundup: March 16th 2026

Boots on the ground doesn't mean boots on the ground, you see. Also, Valve texts back.

Endeavorance

16 Mar 2026 — 8 min read

Iran War Updates

Unfortunately I have a suspicion that this is going to be quite the broken record of a segment for a while.

The United States and Israel are continuing the bombardment of Iran and Lebanon, while the White House continues to scramble to explain why we're at war with Iran when it was obvious as hell that war with Iran would mean a massive disruption of global trade and stability.

But hey, at least Benjamin Netanyahu gets to finally live out his dream, per his own words.

The Strait of Hormuz—a shipping passage that Iran has "shut down" to disrupt global oil shipping in retaliation of the attacks. The Strait of Hormuz is not some small canal that Iranian officials just threw a "Sorry, we're closed" sign on. It's around 21 miles wide at its thinnest, and is currently controlled by Iran with naval drones and mines.

A map of the Strait of Hormuz with a large "Sorry, we're closed" sign over top of it — A FAR simpler solution for closing the Strait of Hormuz

The White House postured for a bit about escorting oil ships through the Strait, but that never ended up manifesting. So now we've been bombing even more, as well as having dispatched the first set of troops to the region, though Washington would very much like you to understand that sending actual military members to an active war zone apparently does not constitute "boots on the ground," so stop implying that these men—whose boots shall be touching the ground in Iran—are boots on the ground. That'd make us look bad.

Though we don't need much to make us look bad, what with the ongoing investigations into the bombing of an Iranian girl's elementary school killing hundreds of children seeming to show that it was our fault entirely and was possibly based on bad intelligence or sloppy targeting plans. Again, broken record, I know. But "we struck an elementary school full of children with a Tomahawk missile, possibly the most recognizable symbol of US global aggression" is something I'm probably not gonna let folks forget about any time soon.

Meanwhile, Russia is loving this war. I mean, they're a bit stretched thin, what with the whole ongoing war they've got going on against Ukraine, but due to the global oil market disruptions and emergency policy changes, Russia is now selling more oil than before, netting them a lovely profit to fuel their own war. The US has claimed that Russia seems to be sharing intelligence with Iran, which does make sense, and I'm not sure why that wouldn't be the case since Russia and Iran have a prior established economic and political relationship. Plus, if they can keep oil prices high, seems like a slam dunk on their part.

Last on this, I want to preface by saying that it's my general policy to not write about what some politician said on Twitter or on some viral video the other day. I don't find that to be a helpful thing to focus on, as we should expect repugnant people to do and say repugnant things. Continuously focusing on their repugnance doesn't accomplish much when they don't give a shit.

Still, over the past few weeks we've seen a huge spike in overt, proud racism and bigotry from Republicans in congress, with two of the more rambunctious chuds in their ranks sticking out in particular.

I won't quote them specifically because again—no need for me to spread their bile—but the short version is that Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) and Randy Fine (R-FL) are both seemingly trying to out-bigot each other regarding Muslims, saying the usual crap about how "Islamism is incompatible with the west" and how Muslims are "the enemy" and don't belong here.

This shit is gross, but of course it is not new. They just feel empowered to talk like this more publicly now, as this hatred is being normalized intentionally. What's interesting about these guys is they seem to think that you're allowed to just endlessly run your mouth and a cult of followers will protect you. That may have been true for Donald Trump, but boy howdy is that not gonna be a factor in keeping their various teeth attached to their jaws should what goes around decide to, eventually, come around.

What's ICE Been up To?

Oh, the usual. Killing people and abducting dissenters.

ICE agents recently abducted a Spanish-language journalist from a local news agency in Tennessee, doing so without a warrant and despite her legal status and work visa.

Estefany Rodriguez Florez was abducted by federal agents on March 6th. She is a Colombian citizen who has worked legally in the US for five years. She had been producing news clips critical of ICE activity before her car was surrounded by federal agents and taken to a detention center where ICE has been holding her away from her husband and daughter.

While attorneys for Florez state she was shown no warrant for her arrest—a thing that has been happening near constantly with ICE—attorneys for ICE filed a statement saying that their arrest of Florez is "not in violation of any laws or regulations," so I guess that fixes it!

And then we have another US citizen dead at the hands of ICE agents. Or rather, we learned more about someone whose murder was all the way back in March of 2025.

The footage shows 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez slowly driving his car through an area where ICE agents are directing traffic. He seems to be maneuvering his car through the area before agents start to shout "stop him," with agents firing at Martinez shortly after, taking his life.

The DHS report of the incident? To be honest, I don't think it matters. These are the same reports that try to claim that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were somehow aggressive monsters deserving of death. Meanwhile, DHS was all too happy to keep quiet about this killing of a US citizen, seeing as there weren't enough bystanders to record evidence until the body cams came out. Up until now, it was a much quieter story with far fewer details. I wonder why.

2025 was the deadliest year for ICE since the early 2000's, and 2026 is on pace to be worse. With disease, torture, and suicide in ICE's concentration camps, things have gotten honestly bleak. That said, all is far from lost. Around the country, people are pushing back as ICE continues to try and purchase warehouses to store human beings. Cities like Kansas City, Missouri are passing regulations to prevent these from opening in their region. There is real, meaningful pushback, and while it fucking sucks that we're in a situation where "there's some pushback against the concentration camps" is what we have to look towards for some kind of hope, it's still true. People care. They do.

Valve Replies

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the New York AG suing video game company Valve over their use of "loot boxes." Now, it seems Valve has some words for the New York AG.

In a post to their support website, Valve made a rare direct-to-consumer plea regarding an ongoing legal situation. In it, they refuted some of the framing of the New York lawsuit while also tapping in to the growing fears of increased online surveillance.

They start off by making the "loot boxes are like trading card booster packs" argument:

We shared with the NYAG that these types of boxes in our games are widely used, not just in video games but in the tangible world as well, where generations have grown up opening baseball card packs and blind boxes and bags, and then trading and selling the items they receive.

The post then pivots to noting that Valve's terms of service already prohibit the behaviors outlined by the NYAG:

In the process of cooperating with the NYAG's investigation, we shared with them our efforts over many years to shut down accounts found to be using Valve game items on gambling sites in violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement.

From there, the post argues that the changes requested by the NYAG would be bad for the consumer, pointing out that these changes would remove the ability to trade items between players, which is a pretty normal and fun thing for most users:

First, the NYAG seems to believe boxes and their contents should not be transferable

But also they argue that the requested changes would include additional information collection to undermine the privacy of users from the state of New York in order to ensure the laws are properly applied:

The NYAG also proposed to gather additional information (beyond what we normally collect in the course of processing payments) about each game user on the off-chance someone in New York was anonymizing their location to appear outside of New York, such as by using a VPN.

They end with calling out that the New York Attorney General's arguments include an insinuation that video games cause violence, which Valve maintains has been disproven time and again.

Here's what the NY AG stated in a press release:

In addition, although this case is about illegal gambling, it is important to note that Valve's promotion of games that glorify violence and guns helps fuel the dangerous epidemic of gun violence, particularly among young gamers who can become numbed to grave violence before their brains are fully developed.

To which Valve replied:

In addition, although this case is about mystery boxes, we feel the need to address comments made by the NYAG about games, real world violence, and children. Those extraneous comments are a distraction and a mischaracterization we've all heard before. Numerous studies throughout the years have concluded there is no link between media (movies, TV, books, comics, music, and games) and real world violence. Indeed, many studies highlight the beneficial impact of games to users.

Ultimately it's just an initial response, and we're gonna have to see how this all plays out in the legal system. I do want to take a quick moment to clarify some of my thoughts on the "are loot boxes gambling" discussion though.

Are loot boxes gambling? I don't think that's answerable. The legal definition of "gambling" varies wildly across the world, let alone individual states. The mechanics around loot boxes vary from game to game.

I am far more interested in the "are loot boxes an expression of common anti-consumer design in software and games" question, of which I think the answer is plainly "yes."

The US especially lacks consumer protection laws that we desperately need, and I think targeting specifically loot boxes misses the forest for the trees. I think it will at best cause companies to rework a few mechanics and at worst will introduce some more classic US ass-backwards regulation that requires age verification to play a video game.

In-game systems can be deftly tweaked to avoid a legal classification. Meaningful consumer protection laws, such as those which require transparency, alternatives, and openness are what we desperately need to disrupt the networks that exploit these systems.